He earned a reputation as the "savior of Moscow" and one of those commanders who were highly appreciated by Stalin. He was even allowed to give comments to foreign journalists, which testified to the trust in the general. However, everything went smoothly only up to a certain point: in June 1942, the 2nd shock army, commanded by Vlasov, was surrounded. The general refused to leave his soldiers in trouble and did not board the plane sent to evacuate him.

Vlasov is among the commanders who especially distinguished themselves in the battle of Moscow. Newspaper "Izvestia"

After that, Vlasov hid from the enemy for several weeks, but was soon extradited. Events unfolded as follows: Vlasov, together with the cook Voronova, knocked on the door of the headman of the Old Believer village of Tukhovezhi, into which they wandered in the hope of finding food. The headman offered them lunch, and he himself, without wasting time, turned to the local auxiliary police. The next day a German patrol arrived in the village. No matter how Vlasov tried to convince everyone that he was a simple teacher, nothing came of it. His face was compared with a newspaper photograph and it was concluded that the prisoner was very valuable. The headman was generously rewarded: he became the proud owner of a cow, several packs of shag, a couple of bottles of vodka and even, which is especially nice, a certificate of honor.

On July 14, Vlasov was escorted to the headquarters of the 18th German Army. Many historians believe that during the interrogation, he devoted his opponents to the combat plans of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts, and also told everything he knew about the military industry, the supply of weapons, and much more.

Vlasov among German officers

The next place where Vlasov was taken was the Vinnitsa military camp, which contained captured senior officers. There he accepted an offer of cooperation with the Third Reich and became the head of the "Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia" (KONR) and the "Russian Liberation Army" (ROA). They included Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans.

It is not known whether Vlasov wore a German uniform. Having examined the surviving photographs, we can conclude that the only element of the Nazi symbols that was present on Vlasov's clothes was the ROA cockade. However, there is evidence that the Germans did not forget to celebrate the merits of the former Soviet general before the Third Reich. For example, in 1943 he was awarded the rank of colonel general.

Vlasov's name was on leaflets printed in German printing houses. The main idea of ​​these agitation was that it was necessary to rebel against Stalin, his subordinates and the state regime of the USSR as a whole. These leaflets fell into the hands of both prisoners of war and Soviet soldiers - the Nazis threw them in batches from airplanes. One of the most famous agitations, allegedly written on behalf of Vlasov, was called "Why I took the path of fighting Bolshevism."

Vlasov and officers of the ROA during the sentencing

In April 1945, Vlasov found himself in a precarious position. It was obvious that the Soviet government would not spare the traitor general. However, Vlasov refused the shelter that Franco planned to provide him: he again did not want to leave his soldiers. On May 12, Vlasov was again taken prisoner - this time by Soviet soldiers. The decision to execute the general was made only a year later, in July 1946. On August 1, the sentence was carried out: Vlasov was hanged.

Andrei Vlasov is a Soviet general who defected to the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. He gained fame after he began to cooperate with the Third Reich, leading the so-called Russian Liberation Army (an unofficial abbreviation for ROA).

After the end of the war, General Vlasov was accused of treason and sentenced to death by hanging. His name has become a household name and is used as a symbol of betrayal and cowardice.

Vlasov's army managed to push the enemy back and move forward significantly. But since the advance took place through dense forests surrounded by the Germans, the enemy could counterattack them at any moment.

A month later, the pace of the offensive slowed down significantly, and the order to take Lyuban was not carried out. The general repeatedly said that he was experiencing a shortage of people, and also complained about the poor supply of soldiers.

Soon, as Vlasov suggested, the Nazis launched an active offensive. German Messerschmitt planes attacked the 2nd shock army from the air, which eventually ended up in a ring.

Exhausted by hunger and the constant bombing of German aircraft, the Russian soldiers did everything possible to get out of the boiler.

However, everything was to no avail. The combat strength became smaller every day, as, indeed, the stocks of food and ammunition.

During this period, about 20,000 Soviet soldiers remained surrounded. It should be noted that even German sources said that the Russian soldiers did not give up, preferring to die on the battlefield.

As a result, almost the entire 2nd Army of Vlasov died heroically, not yet knowing what shame her native general would cover.

Captivity

Those few witnesses who somehow managed to get out of the boiler claimed that after the failed operation, General Vlasov lost heart.

There were no emotions on his face, and when the shelling began, he did not even try to hide in shelters.

Soon, at a council of officers, in which Colonel Vinogradov and Generals Afanasiev and Vlasov participated, it was decided to leave the encirclement in small groups. As time will tell, only Afanasiev will be able to get out of the German ring.

On July 11, General Vlasov, together with three comrades, reached the village of Tukhovezhi. Entering one of the houses, they asked for food, and the general himself called himself a teacher.

After they were fed, the owner suddenly pointed a weapon at them and ordered them to go to the barn, in which he locked them up.

Then he called the police, all the while carefully guarding the shed with the "teacher" and his associates.

On July 12, a German patrol came to the call. When the barn doors opened, General Vlasov said in German who he really was. Wehrmacht soldiers successfully identified the famous general from a photo posted in a newspaper.

The betrayal of General Vlasov

Soon he was taken to the headquarters, where he immediately began to interrogate. Andrei Vlasov gave detailed testimony, answering all questions.

Vlasov's meeting with Himmler

A month later, while in the Vinnitsa military camp for captured senior officers, Vlasov himself offered cooperation to the German leadership.

Deciding to go over to the side of the Nazis, he headed the "Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia" (KONR) and the "Russian Liberation Army" (ROA), which consisted of captured Soviet soldiers.

Vlasov with ROA soldiers

An interesting fact is that some pseudo-historians are trying to compare General Vlasov, who betrayed the Soviet Union in the years, with Admiral Kolchak, who in 1917 fought on the side of the White movement against the Reds.

However, for any more or less informed person it is obvious that such a comparison is at least blasphemous.

"Why I took the path of fighting Bolshevism"

After the betrayal, Vlasov wrote an open letter "Why did I take the path of fighting Bolshevism", and also signed leaflets calling for the overthrow of the Stalinist regime.

Subsequently, these leaflets were scattered by the Nazi army from aircraft at the fronts, and also distributed among prisoners of war.

Below is a photo of Vlasov's open letter:

What made him take such a step? Many accused him of cowardice, but it is very difficult to find out the true reasons for going over to the side of the enemy. According to the writer Ilya Erenburg, who personally knew Andrei Vlasov, the general chose this path not because of cowardice.

He understood that, having returned from the encirclement, he would certainly be demoted for having failed the operation with colossal losses.

Moreover, he knew perfectly well that in wartime they would not stand on ceremony with a general who had lost his entire army, but for some reason he himself survived.

As a result, Vlasov decided to offer cooperation to the Germans, since in this situation he could not only save his life, but also remain the commander of the army, albeit already under the banners.

Generals Vlasov and Zhilenkov at a meeting with Goebbels, February 1945

However, the traitor was deeply mistaken. His shameful betrayal in no way led him to fame. Instead, he went down in history as the main Soviet traitor during the Great Patriotic War.

The surname Vlasov became a household name, and Vlasov figuratively called those who betray the interests of the Motherland.

Death of Vlasov

In May 1945, during the fighting near Czechoslovakia, General Vlasov was captured by Soviet soldiers. At the trial, he pleaded guilty, as he committed treason due to cowardice.

Prison photo of A.A. Vlasov from the materials of the criminal case

By the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, he was deprived of his military ranks, and on August 1, 1946 he was hanged.

His body was cremated, and the ashes were scattered in the "bed of unclaimed ashes", located not far from the Donskoy Monastery. In this place, the remains of the destroyed "enemies of the people" were poured out for decades.

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A tall man in round glasses has not been able to sleep for several days now. The main traitor, General of the Red Army Andrei Vlasov, is being interrogated by several NKVD investigators, replacing each other day and night for ten days. They are trying to understand how they could miss the traitor in their orderly ranks, devoted to the cause of Lenin and Stalin.

He had no children, he never had a spiritual attachment to women, his parents died. All he had was his life. And he loved to live. His father, a church elder, was proud of his son.

Parental traitorous roots

Andrei Vlasov never dreamed of being a military man, but, as a literate person who graduated from a religious school, he was drafted into the ranks of Soviet commanders. He often came to his father and saw how the new government was destroying his family strong nest.

He used to betray

Parsing archival documents, traces of Vlasov's military operations on the fronts of the Civil War cannot be found. He was a typical staff "rat", which, by the will of fate, ended up at the top of the country's command podium. One fact speaks about how he moved up the career ladder. Arriving with an inspection at the 99th Infantry Division and learning that the commander was carefully studying the methods of action of the German troops, he immediately wrote a denunciation of him. The commander of the 99th Rifle Division, which was one of the best in the Red Army, was arrested and shot. Vlasov was appointed to his place. This behavior has become the norm for him. No remorse of conscience of this man was tormented.

First environment

In the early days of the Great Patriotic War, Vlasov's army was surrounded near Kyiv. The general leaves the encirclement not in the ranks of his units, but together with his fighting girlfriend.

But Stalin forgave him this offense. Vlasov received a new appointment - to lead the main attack near Moscow. But he is in no hurry to go to the troops, referring to pneumonia and poor health. According to one version, the entire preparation of the operation near Moscow fell on the shoulders of the most experienced staff officer Leonid Sandalov.

"Star disease" - the second reason for betrayal

Stalin appoints Vlasov as the main winner of the battle near Moscow.

The general begins "star fever". According to the reviews of his colleagues, he becomes rude, arrogant, mercilessly curses his subordinates. Constantly trumps his proximity to the leader. Does not obey the orders of Georgy Zhukov, who is his immediate superior. The transcript of the conversation between the two generals shows a fundamentally different attitude to the conduct of hostilities. During the offensive near Moscow, Vlasov's units attacked the Germans along the road, where the enemy's defense was extremely strong. Zhukov, in a telephone conversation, orders Vlasov to counterattack, off-road, as Suvorov did. Vlasov refuses, citing high snow - about 60 centimeters. This argument infuriates Zhukov. He orders a new attack. Vlasov disagrees again. These disputes last for more than one hour. And in the end, Vlasov still gives up and gives the order Zhukov needs.

How Vlasov surrendered

The second shock army under the command of General Vlasov was surrounded in the Volkhov swamps and gradually lost its soldiers under the pressure of superior enemy forces. Along a narrow corridor, shot through from all sides, scattered units of Soviet soldiers tried to break through to their own.

But General Vlasov did not go along this corridor of death. Through unknown ways, on July 11, 1942, Vlasov deliberately surrendered to the Germans in the village of Tukhovezhi, Leningrad Region, where the Old Believers lived.

For some time he lived in Riga, food was brought by a local policeman. He told the new owners about the strange guest. A car drove up to Riga. Vlasov came out to meet them. He said something to them. The Germans saluted him and left.

The Germans could not accurately determine the position of a man dressed in a worn jacket. But the fact that he was dressed in riding breeches with the stripes of a general said that this bird was very important.

From the first minutes, he begins to lie to the German investigators: he introduced himself as a certain Zuev.

When the German investigators began to interrogate him, he confessed almost immediately who he was. Vlasov stated that in 1937 he became one of the participants in the anti-Stalinist movement. However, at that time Vlasov was a member of the military tribunal of two districts. He always signed the execution lists of Soviet soldiers and officers convicted under various articles.

Women betrayed countless times

The general always surrounded himself with women. Officially, he had one wife. Anna Voronina from her native village led her weak-willed husband mercilessly. They had no children due to an unsuccessful abortion. The young military doctor Agnes Podmazenko, his second common-law wife, left the encirclement near Kyiv with him. The third, nurse Maria Voronina, was captured by the Germans when she was hiding with him in the village of Tukhovezhi.

All three women ended up in prison, suffered the brunt of torture and humiliation. But General Vlasov was no longer worried. Agenheld Biedenberg, the widow of an influential SS man, became the general's last wife. She was the sister of Himmler's adjutant and helped her new husband in every possible way. Adolf Hitler attended their wedding on April 13, 1945.

Place of birth: Lomakino village, Nizhny Novgorod province
Place of death: Moscow
Rank: Lieutenant General of the Red Army
Commanded: 4th Mechanized Corps, 20th Army, 37th Army, 2nd Shock Army (1941-1942),
Russian Liberation Army (1942-1945)
Battles/wars: Civil War in Russia, Great Patriotic War, Battle of Dubno - Lutsk - Brody (1941), Kyiv operation (1941), Moscow battle (1941-1942), Luban operation
Awards: Order of the Golden Dragon, Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner, Jubilee medal "XX Years of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army". Subsequently, he was deprived of all awards and titles.

Vlasov Andrey Andreevich- Soviet lieutenant general (since 1942; stripped of his rank by a court verdict). On April 20, 1942, he was appointed commander of the 2nd shock army, remaining part-time deputy commander of the Volkhov Front. During the war, he was captured and went to cooperate with the Nazis against the USSR, becoming the head of the military organization of collaborators from Soviet prisoners of war - the Russian Liberation Army (ROA).

Andrei Vlasov was born on September 14, 1901 in the village of Lomakino, now in the Gaginsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod region, in the family of a simple Nizhny Novgorod peasant. At the end of a rural school, he, as a very capable child, was sent to study further, but since the family was rather poor, they chose the cheapest educational institution for him - a religious school. But the funds were still not enough, and the teenager had to engage in tutoring.

In 1915, Vlasov graduated from college and enters the seminary, and after 1917 it passes into a unified labor school of the second degree. In 1919, he was already a student at the Faculty of Agronomy at the University of Nizhny Novgorod. But there was a civil war, and A.A. Vlasov went to the Red Army. The first front for him was the South, where he fought with other Red Army soldiers against Baron Wrangel. Then he participated in the battles of Makhno, Kamenyuk and Popov.

After the end of the civil war, the former student did not return to study at the University of Nizhny Novgorod. He remained to serve in the Red Army. First he commanded a platoon, then a company. After - he taught tactics at a military school in Leningrad. In the late 1930s, his promotion went especially fast. Vlasov was appointed division commander. A few months later he was sent on a secret government mission: he became a military attache in China under Chiang Kai-shek. In 1939, Vlasov received the post of division commander - in the Kiev Special Military District.

Excerpts from the army characteristics of Vlasov:

"Very intelligent growing commander"
“In the division, the general order has been tightened up in a few months”
“The level of tactical training in his division is very high”

According to the results of military exercises that took place in September 1940, Vlasov's division was awarded the Red Banner. It is worth noting that the exercises were held in the presence of the People's Commissar of Defense S.K. Timoshenko himself.

The Great Patriotic War

The war for Andrei Vlasov began near Lvov, where he served as commander of the 4th mechanized corps. He received gratitude for his skillful actions and, on the recommendation of N. S. Khrushchev, was appointed commander of the 37th Army, which defended Kyiv. After fierce battles, scattered formations of this army managed to break through to the east, and Vlasov himself was wounded and ended up in the hospital.

In November 1941, Stalin summoned Vlasov and ordered him to form the 20th Army, which would be part of the Western Front and defend the capital.

On December 5, near the village of Krasnaya Polyana (located 27 km from the Moscow Kremlin), the Soviet The 20th Army under the command of General Vlasov stopped parts of the German 4th Panzer Army, making a significant contribution to the victory near Moscow. In Soviet times, a version appeared that Vlasov himself was in the hospital at that time, and either the commander of the operational group A. I. Lizyukov or the chief of staff L. M. Sandalov led the fighting.

Overcoming the stubborn resistance of the enemy, the 20th Army drove the Germans out of Solnechnogorsk and Volokolamsk. On January 24, 1942, for the battles on the Lama River, he received the rank of lieutenant general and was awarded the second Order of the Red Banner. Near Vlasov, the armies of Rokossovsky and Govorov acted. Rokossovsky and Govorov subsequently became Marshals of the Soviet Union.

Zhukov assessed Vlasov's actions as follows:

“Personally, Lieutenant General Vlasov is operationally well prepared, he has organizational skills. He copes with the management of the troops quite well. After the successes near Moscow, Andrei Andreyevich Vlasov, along with other generals of the Red Army, is called the "saviors of the capital." On the instructions of the Main Political Directorate about Vlasov, a book is being written called "Stalin's commander"

On January 7, 1942, the troops of the 2nd Shock Army broke through the enemy defenses in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe settlement of Myasnoy Bor (on the left bank of the Volkhov River) and deeply wedged into its location (in the direction of Lyuban). But not having the strength to continue the offensive, the army was in a difficult position. The enemy cut her communications several times, creating a threat of encirclement. By March 26, the enemy managed to unite his Chudovskaya and Novgorod groupings, create an external front along the Polist River and an internal front along the Glushitsa River. Thus, the communications of the 2nd shock army and several formations of the 59th army were interrupted.

March 8, 1942 Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov was appointed Deputy Commander of the Volkhov Front. On March 20, 1942, the commander of the Volkhov Front, K. A. Meretskov, sent his deputy A. A. Vlasov at the head of a special commission to the 2nd shock army (Lieutenant General N. K. Klykov). “For three days, members of the commission talked with commanders of all ranks, with political workers, with soldiers,” and on April 8, 1942, having drawn up an inspection report, the commission departed, but without General A. A. Vlasov. The dismissed (“seriously ill”) General Klykov was sent to the rear by plane on April 16.

The question naturally arose, to whom to entrust the leadership of the troops of the 2nd shock army? On the same day, a telephone conversation took place between A. A. Vlasov and the divisional commissar I. V. Zuev with Meretskov. Zuev proposed to appoint Vlasov to the post of commander, and Vlasov - the chief of staff of the army, Colonel P. S. Vinogradov. The Military Council of the Volkhov Front supported Zuev's idea. So ... Vlasov from April 20, 1942 (Monday) became the commander of the 2nd shock army, while remaining deputy commander of the Volkhov Front. He received troops that were practically no longer able to fight, he received an army that had to be saved ...

During May-June, the 2nd shock army under the command of A. A. Vlasov made desperate attempts to break out of the bag.

“We will strike from the Polist line at 20:00 on June 4. We don’t hear the actions of the troops of the 59th Army from the east, there is no long-range artillery fire ”- Vlasov. June 4, 1942. 00 hours 45 minutes.

The commander of the Volkhov operational group, Lieutenant-General M. S. Khozin, did not comply with the directive of the Headquarters (dated May 21) on the withdrawal of army troops. As a result, the 2nd shock army was surrounded, and Khozin himself was removed from his post on June 6. For a short time it was possible to break through the encirclement. Then a narrow corridor 300 - 400 meters wide was formed. Under the crossfire of the enemy, it turned into the "Valley of Death": German machine gunners sitting on both sides shot thousands of our soldiers. When a “hill” formed from the corpses, the machine gunners simply climbed onto it and fired from there. So senselessly our soldiers perished. Until mid-July, small groups of fighters and commanders of the 2nd Shock Force still seeped through the front line.

MILITARY COUNCIL OF THE VOLKHOV FRONT. Before put: arm troopsand for three weeks they have been conducting tense fierce battles with the enemy ... The personnel of the troops are exhausted to the limit, the number of deaths and morbidity from exhaustion increases every day. As a result of the cross-fire of the army area, the troops suffer heavy losses from artillery mortar fire and enemy aircraft ... The combat strength of the formations has sharply decreased. It is no longer possible to replenish it at the expense of rears and special units. Everything that was taken. On June 16, battalions, brigades, and rifle regiments had, on average, only a few dozen men left. All attempts by the eastern group of the army to break through the passage in the corridor from the west were unsuccessful ”- Vlasov, Zuev, Vinogradov.

JUNE 21, 1942. 8 HOURS 10 MINUTES. HEAD OF GSHKA. MILITARY COUNCIL OF THE FRONT. “Army troops receive fifty grams of crackers for three weeks. The last days there was absolutely no food. We eat the last horses. People are extremely exhausted. Group mortality from starvation is observed. There is no ammunition ... "- Vlasov, Zuev.

On June 25, the enemy liquidated the corridor. The testimonies of various witnesses do not answer the question of where Lieutenant General Andrei Andreevich Vlasov was hiding for the next three weeks - whether he wandered in the forest or whether there was some kind of reserve command post to which his group made its way. On July 11, 1942, in the village of Old Believers Tukhovezhi, Vlasov was extradited by local residents (according to another version, he surrendered himself) to a patrol of the 28th Infantry Regiment of the 18th Wehrmacht Army.

Versions of the capture of General Vlasov

• A German officer, commander of a platoon of the 550th penal battalion, taken prisoner near Vitebsk in February 1944, testified during interrogation that Vlasov, dressed in civilian clothes, was hiding in a bathhouse near the village of Mostki south of Chudov. The village headman detained Vlasov and handed him over to the head of the intelligence department of the 38th Aviation Corps.
• A Soviet officer, former deputy head of the political department of the 46th Infantry Division, Major A.I. Zubov named a slightly different place - Sennaya Kerest. On July 3, 1943, he reported that in search of food, Vlasov went into one of the houses. While he was eating, the house was surrounded. Seeing the German soldiers entering, he said: “Don't shoot! I am the commander of the second shock army Andrey Vlasov "Cook A. Vlasov Voronova M. tells:" Being surrounded, Vlasov, among thirty or forty staff workers, tried to connect with the Red Army, but nothing happened. Wandering through the forest, we connected with the leadership of one division, and there were about two hundred of us. Around July 1942, the Germans discovered us in the forest near Novgorod and imposed a battle, after which I, Vlasov, the soldier Kotov and the driver Pogibko went to the villages. Pogiko with the wounded Kotov went to one village, and Vlasov and I went to another. When we entered the village, I don’t know its name, we went into one house, where we were mistaken for partisans, the local “samoohova” surrounded the house, and we were arrested.
• According to the latest version: Vlasov, the cook Voronova M., the adjutant and chief of staff Vinogradov, badly wounded, went to the village, where Vlasov's adjutant remained with the exhausted and sick Vinogradov. Vinogradov was shivering, and Vlasov gave him his overcoat. He himself, together with the cook, went to another village, where they asked the first person they met (as it turned out, the headman of the village) to feed them. In return, Vlasov gave him his silver watch. The headman told them that the Germans were walking everywhere and offered to sit in the bathhouse while he was carrying food, and in order not to arouse unnecessary suspicion, he would ban them. Vinogradov and the adjutant had not had time to eat, as the locals had already called the Germans to hand over the partisans. When the Germans arrived, they saw Vlasov's overcoat and a man who, according to the description, was very similar to Vlasov (they really were very similar), they immediately arrested him. And then they called from the "Vlasov" village. The Germans really did not want to go there - what do they care about ordinary partisans when they are taking Vlasov himself. But, in the end, this village was on the way to the headquarters, and they stopped by. They were very surprised when another “Vlasov” came out of the bathhouse, who said: “Do not shoot! I am Commander Vlasov! They did not believe him, but he showed documents signed by Stalin himself.

Vlasov himself wrote in his appeals and leaflets that was captured in battle. But both German and Soviet sources claim otherwise. Major Zubov, a participant in the exit from the encirclement of a group of officers of the 2nd Shock Army, recalled that Vlasov, under all pretexts, tried to reduce the size of his group. Maybe because it would have been easier to get out, but maybe they just didn’t need extra witnesses.

An alternative version of Vlasov's transition to the enemy side:

In separate memoirs, you can find a version that Vlasov was captured even earlier - in the fall of 1941, surrounded near Kyiv - where he was recruited and transferred across the front line. He is also credited with the order to destroy all the employees of his headquarters who did not want to surrender with him. So, the writer Ivan Stadnyuk claims that he heard this from General Saburov. This version is not confirmed by the published archival documents.

There is also a conspiracy theory but, according to which, in reality, instead of Vlasov, on August 1, 1946, another person was hanged, and Vlasov himself subsequently lived for many years under a different surname.

According to V. I. Filatov and a number of other authors, General A. A. Vlasov is a Soviet intelligence officer (an employee of the foreign intelligence of the NKVD or military intelligence - the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army), who since 1938 worked in China under the pseudonym "Volkov", conducting intelligence activity against Japan and Germany, and then during the Great Patriotic War was successfully abandoned to the Germans. The execution of Vlasov in 1946 is associated with a "welter" of the special services - the MGB and the NKVD - as a result of which, by the personal decision of Stalin and Abakumov, Vlasov was eliminated as a dangerous and unnecessary witness. Later, a significant part of the materials of the investigation on the “case” of Vlasov, Bunyachenko and other leaders of the Armed Forces of the KONR was destroyed.

Being in the Vinnitsa military camp for captured senior officers, Vlasov agreed to cooperate with the Nazis and headed the "Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia" (KONR) and the "Russian Liberation Army" (ROA), made up of captured Soviet soldiers.

General Vlasov and other encircled:

Many of those who remained in the encirclement held out to the end, mostly fighters captured in the corridor and lightly wounded from large hospitals were captured. Many, under the threat of capture, shot themselves, such as, for example, a member of the Military Council of the Army, divisional commissar I. V. Zuev. Others were able to go out to their own people or make their way to the partisans, such as, for example, the commissar of the 23rd brigade N. D. Allahverdiev, who became the commander of the partisan detachment. Warriors of the 267th division also fought in partisan detachments, military doctor of the 3rd rank E.K. Gurinovich, nurse Zhuravleva, commissar Vdovenko, and others.

But there were few of them, most were captured. Basically, completely exhausted, exhausted people, often wounded, shell-shocked, in a semi-conscious state, were captured, such as, for example, the poet, senior political instructor M. M. Zalilov (Musa Jalil). Many did not even have time to shoot at the enemy, suddenly colliding with the Germans. However, once captured, the Soviet soldiers did not cooperate with the Germans. Several officers who went over to the side of the enemy are an exception to the general rule: in addition to General A. A. Vlasov, the commander of the 25th brigade, Colonel P. G. Sheludko, officers of the headquarters of the 2nd shock army, Major Verstkin, Colonel Goryunov and quartermaster 1 rank Zhukovsky.

For example, the commander of the 327th division, General I. M. Antyufeev, being wounded, was captured on July 5. Antyufeev refused to help the enemy, and the Germans sent him to a camp in Kaunas, then he worked in a mine. After the war, Antyufeev was reinstated in the rank of general, continued to serve in the Soviet Army and retired as a major general. The head of the medical and sanitary service of the 2nd shock army, military doctor of the 1st rank Boborykin, specially remained surrounded in order to save the wounded of the army hospital. On May 28, 1942, the command awarded him the Order of the Red Banner. While in captivity, he wore the uniform of the commander of the Red Army and continued to provide medical assistance to prisoners of war. After returning from captivity, he worked at the Military Medical Museum in Leningrad.

At the same time, numerous cases are known when prisoners of war and in captivity continued to fight the enemy. The feat of Musa Jalil and his "Moabit Notebooks" are widely known. There are other examples as well. The head of the sanitary service and brigade doctor of the 23rd rifle brigade, Major N. I. Kononenko, was captured on June 26, 1942, along with the staff of the brigade medical unit. After eight months of hard work in Amberg, on April 7, 1943, he was transferred as a doctor to the camp infirmary in the city of Ebelsbach (Lower Bavaria). There he became one of the organizers of the "Revolutionary Committee", turning his infirmary in the Mauthausen camp into the center of the patriotic underground. The Gestapo tracked down the "Committee" and on July 13, 1944 he was arrested, and on September 25, 1944 he was shot along with other 125 underground workers. The commander of the 844th regiment of the 267th division V.A. Pospelov and the chief of staff of the regiment B.G. Nazirov were wounded, where they continued to fight the enemy and in April 1945 led an uprising in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

An illustrative example is the political instructor of the company of the 1004th regiment of the 305th division D. G. Telnykh. Having been wounded (wounded in the leg) and shell-shocked in June 1942, he was sent to camps, finally ending up in a camp at the Schwarzberg mine. In June 1943, Telnykh fled from the camp, after which the Belgian peasants in the village of Waterloo helped contact partisan detachment No. 4 of Soviet prisoners of war (Red Army Lieutenant Colonel Kotovets). The detachment was part of the Russian partisan brigade "For the Motherland" (lieutenant colonel K. Shukshin). Telnykh participated in the battles, soon became a platoon commander, and from February 1944 - a company political instructor. In May 1945, the “For the Motherland” brigade captured the city of Mayzak and held it for eight hours until the British troops approached. After the war, Telnykh, along with other fellow partisans, returned to serve in the Red Army.

Two months earlier, in April 1942, during the withdrawal from the encirclement of the 33rd Army, its commander M. G. Efremov and officers of the army headquarters committed suicide. And if M. G. Efremov, with his death, “whitewashed even those faint-hearted ones who trembled in difficult times and left their commander to escape alone,” then they looked at the fighters of the 2nd shock through the prism of A. A. Vlasov’s betrayal.

Vlasov wrote an open letter "Why I took the path of fighting Bolshevism". In addition, he signed leaflets calling for the overthrow of the Stalinist regime, which were subsequently scattered by the Nazi army from aircraft at the fronts, and also distributed among prisoners of war.

Why did I take the path of fighting Bolshevism "(A. A. Vlasov)":

Calling on all Russian people to rise up to fight against Stalin and his clique, for the construction of a New Russia without Bolsheviks and capitalists, I consider it my duty to explain my actions.

I was not offended by the Soviet regime.

I am the son of a peasant, I was born in the Nizhny Novgorod province, I studied for pennies, I achieved a higher education. I accepted the people's revolution, joined the ranks of the Red Army to fight for land for the peasants, for a better life for the workers, for a brighter future for the Russian people. Since then, my life has been inextricably linked with the life of the Red Army. I served in its ranks continuously for 24 years. I went from an ordinary soldier to an army commander and a deputy front commander. I commanded a company, battalion, regiment, division, corps. I was awarded the Orders of Lenin, the Red Banner and the medal of the 20th Anniversary of the Red Army. Since 1930 I have been a member of the CPSU(b).

And now I am coming out to fight against Bolshevism and calling for me the whole people, whose son I am.

Why? This question arises for everyone who reads my appeal, and I must give an honest answer to it. During the years of the Civil War, I fought in the Red Army because I believed that the revolution would give the Russian people land, freedom and happiness.

Being the commander of the Red Army, I lived among the fighters and commanders - Russian workers, peasants, intellectuals, dressed in gray overcoats. I knew their thoughts, their thoughts, their worries and hardships. I did not break ties with my family, with my village, and I knew what and how a peasant lives.

And now I saw that nothing of what the Russian people fought for during the years of the civil war, they did not receive as a result of the victory of the Bolsheviks.

I saw how hard life was for the Russian worker, how the peasant was forcibly driven into collective farms, how millions of Russian people disappeared, arrested without trial or investigation. I saw that everything Russian was trampled underfoot, that sycophants were promoted to leading positions in the country, as well as to command posts in the Red Army, people who did not care about the interests of the Russian people.

The system of commissars was corrupting the Red Army. Irresponsibility, surveillance, espionage made the commander a toy in the hands of party officials in civilian clothes or military uniforms.

From 1938 to 1939 I was in China as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek. When I returned to the USSR, it turned out that during this time the highest command staff of the Red Army was destroyed without any reason on the orders of Stalin. Many, many thousands of the best commanders, including marshals, were arrested and shot, or imprisoned in concentration camps and disappeared forever. Terror spread not only to the army, but to the whole people. There was no family that somehow escaped this fate. The army was weakened, the frightened people looked into the future with horror, waiting for the war being prepared by Stalin.

Foreseeing the enormous sacrifices that the Russian people would inevitably have to bear in this war, I strove to do everything in my power to strengthen the Red Army. The 99th division, which I commanded, was recognized as the best in the Red Army. By work and constant concern for the military unit entrusted to me, I tried to drown out the feeling of indignation at the actions of Stalin and his clique.

And so the war broke out. She found me at the post of commander of the 4th mech. corps.

As a soldier and as a son of my country, I considered myself obliged to honestly fulfill my duty.

My corps in Przemysl and Lvov took the blow, withstood it and was ready to go on the offensive, but my proposals were rejected. The indecisive, perverted by the commissar's control and confused management of the front led the Red Army to a series of heavy defeats.

I withdrew troops to Kyiv. There I took command of the 37th Army and the difficult post of head of the Kyiv garrison.

I saw that the war was being lost for two reasons: because of the unwillingness of the Russian people to defend the Bolshevik government and the created system of violence, and because of the irresponsible leadership of the army, interference in its actions by large and small commissars.

In difficult conditions, my army coped with the defense of Kyiv and successfully defended the capital of Ukraine for two months. However, the incurable diseases of the Red Army did their job. The front was broken through in the sector of neighboring armies. Kyiv was surrounded. By order of the High Command, I had to leave the fortified area.

After leaving the encirclement, I was appointed Deputy Commander of the South-Western Direction and then Commander of the 20th Army. It was necessary to form the 20th Army in the most difficult conditions, when the fate of Moscow was being decided. I did everything in my power to defend the capital of the country. The 20th Army stopped the advance on Moscow and then went on the offensive itself. She broke through the front of the German army, took Solnechnogorsk, Volokolamsk, Shakhovskaya, Sereda, and others, ensured the transition to the offensive along the entire Moscow sector of the front, and approached Gzhatsk.

During the decisive battles for Moscow, I saw that the rear helped the front, but, like a fighter at the front, every worker, every resident in the rear did this only because he believed that he was defending his homeland. For the sake of the Motherland, he endured incalculable suffering, sacrificed everything. And more than once I drove away from myself the constantly arising question:

Yes, full. Am I defending my homeland, am I sending people to death for my homeland? Is it not for Bolshevism, masquerading as the holy name of the Motherland, that the Russian people shed their blood?

I was appointed deputy commander of the Volkhov Front and commander of the 2nd shock army. Perhaps nowhere was Stalin's disdain for the life of the Russian people so affected as in the practice of the 2nd shock army. The management of this army was centralized and concentrated in the hands of the General Staff. No one knew about her actual position and was not interested in him. One order of command contradicted another. The army was doomed to certain death.

Fighters and commanders received 100 and even 50 grams of crackers a day for weeks. They swelled from hunger, and many could no longer move through the swamps, where the army was led by the direct leadership of the High Command. But everyone continued to fight selflessly.

Russian people died heroes. But for what? What did they sacrifice their lives for? What did they have to die for?

I stayed with the fighters and army commanders until the last minute. There were only a handful of us left, and we did our duty as soldiers to the end. I made my way through the encirclement into the forest and hid in the forest and swamps for about a month. But now the question arose in its entirety: should the blood of the Russian people be shed further? Is it in the interests of the Russian people to continue the war? What is the Russian people fighting for? I clearly realized that the Russian people would be drawn by Bolshevism into a war for the alien interests of the Anglo-American capitalists.

England has always been the enemy of the Russian people. It has always sought to weaken our Motherland, to harm it. But Stalin saw in serving the Anglo-American interests an opportunity to realize his plans for world domination, and for the sake of implementing these plans, he connected the fate of the Russian people with the fate of England, he plunged the Russian people into war, brought incalculable disasters on his head, and these disasters of war are the crown all those misfortunes that the peoples of our country suffered under the rule of the Bolsheviks for 25 years.

Is it not the first and sacred duty of every honest Russian person to take up arms against Stalin and his clique?

There, in the swamps, I finally came to the conclusion that my duty is to call on the Russian people to fight to overthrow the power of the Bolsheviks, to fight for peace for the Russian people, to stop the bloody, unnecessary war for the Russian people, for the interests of others, to the struggle for the creation of a new Russia, in which every Russian person could be happy.

I have come to the firm conviction that the tasks facing the Russian people can be solved in alliance and cooperation with the German people. The interests of the Russian people have always been combined with the interests of the German people, with the interests of all the peoples of Europe.

The highest achievements of the Russian people are inextricably linked with those periods of its history when it linked its fate with the fate of Europe, when it built its culture, its economy, its way of life in close unity with the peoples of Europe. Bolshevism fenced off the Russian people with an impenetrable wall from Europe. He sought to isolate our Motherland from the advanced European countries. In the name of ideas utopian and alien to the Russian people, he prepared for war, opposing himself to the peoples of Europe.

In alliance with the German people, the Russian people must destroy this wall of hatred and mistrust. In alliance and cooperation with Germany, he must build a new happy Motherland within the framework of a family of equal and free peoples of Europe.

With these thoughts, with this decision in the last battle, along with a handful of friends loyal to me, I was taken prisoner.

I was in captivity for over six months. In the conditions of the prisoner-of-war camp, behind its bars, I not only did not change my mind, but strengthened my convictions.

On an honest basis, on the basis of sincere conviction, with full awareness of responsibility to the Motherland, people and history for the actions taken, I call on the people to fight, setting myself the task of building a New Russia.

How do I imagine New Russia? I will talk about this in due time.

History does not turn back. I do not call the people to return to the past. Not! I call him to a brighter future, to the struggle for the completion of the National Revolution, to the struggle for the creation of New Russia - the Motherland of our great people. I call him to the path of brotherhood and unity with the peoples of Europe and, above all, to the path of cooperation and eternal friendship with the Great German people.

My call met with deep sympathy not only among the broadest sections of the prisoners of war, but also among the broad masses of the Russian people in areas where Bolshevism still reigns. This sympathetic response of the Russian people, who expressed their readiness to breastfeed under the banner of the Russian Liberation Army, gives me the right to say that I am on the right path, that the cause for which I am fighting is a just cause, the cause of the Russian people. In this struggle for our future, I openly and honestly take the path of an alliance with Germany.

This alliance, equally beneficial to both great nations, will lead us to victory over the dark forces of Bolshevism, will deliver us from the bondage of Anglo-American capital.

In recent months, Stalin, seeing that the Russian people did not want to fight for the international tasks of Bolshevism alien to him, outwardly changed his policy towards the Russians. He has destroyed the institution of commissars, he has tried to make an alliance with the corrupt leaders of the formerly persecuted church, he is trying to restore the traditions of the old army. To force the Russian people to shed blood for the interests of others, Stalin recalls the great names of Alexander Nevsky, Kutuzov, Suvorov, Minin and Pozharsky. He wants to assure that he is fighting for the Motherland, for the fatherland, for Russia.

This pitiful and vile deceit is necessary to him only in order to stay in power. Only the blind can believe that Stalin abandoned the principles of Bolshevism.

Pitiful hope! Bolshevism has not forgotten anything, has not retreated a single step, and will not retreat from its program. Today he talks about Russia and Russians only in order to achieve victory with the help of the Russian people, and tomorrow he will enslave the Russian people with even greater force and force them to continue to serve alien interests.

Neither Stalin nor the Bolsheviks are fighting for Russia.

Only in the ranks of the anti-Bolshevik movement is our homeland really created. The business of the Russians, their duty is the struggle against Stalin, for peace, for New Russia. Russia is ours! The past of the Russian people is ours! The future of the Russian people is ours!

The Russian people of many millions throughout its history has always found the strength to fight for its future, for its national independence. So now the Russian people will not perish, so now they will find the strength in themselves to unite and overthrow the hated yoke, to unite and build a new state in which they will find their happiness.

In early May 1945, a conflict arose between Vlasov and Bunyachenko - Bunyachenko intended to support the Prague uprising, and Vlasov persuaded him not to do this and stay on the side of the Germans. At the negotiations in the North Bohemian Kozoedy, they did not agree and their paths diverged.

May 12, 1945 Vlasov was captured servicemen of the 25th Tank Corps of the 13th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front near the city of Pilsen in Czechoslovakia while trying to escape to the western zone of occupation. The tankers of the corps pursued Vlasov's car at the direction of the Vlasov captain, who informed them that his commander was in this car. Vlasov was taken to the headquarters of Marshal Konev, from there to Moscow.

At first, the leadership of the USSR planned to hold a public trial of Andrei Vlasov and other leaders of the ROA in the October Hall of the House of the Unions, however, due to the fact that some of the accused could express views during the process that “objectively could coincide with the moods of a certain part of the population dissatisfied with the Soviet government”, it was decided to close the process. The decision on the death sentence against Vlasov and others was taken by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on July 23, 1946. From July 30 to July 31, 1946, a closed trial took place in the case of Vlasov and a group of his followers. All of them were found guilty of high treason. By the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, they were stripped of their military ranks and hanged on August 1, 1946, and their property was confiscated.

From the criminal case of A. A. Vlasov:

Ulrich: Defendant Vlasov, what exactly do you plead guilty to?
Vlasov: I plead guilty to the fact that, being in difficult conditions, I was cowardly ...

• WHO ARE YOU, GENERAL VLASOV? So - autumn 1941. The Germans attack Kyiv. However, they cannot take the city. The defense has been heavily fortified. And it is headed by the forty-year-old Major General of the Red Army, the commander of the 37th Army, Andrei Vlasov. The personality in the army is legendary. Passed all the way - from private to general. Passed the civil war, graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod Theological Seminary, studied at the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. Friend of Mikhail Blucher. Just before the war, Andrei Vlasov, then still a colonel, was sent to China as military advisers to Chai-kan-shi. He was awarded the Order of the Golden Dragon and a gold watch, which caused the envy of the entire generals of the Red Army. However, Vlasov did not rejoice for long. Upon returning home, at the Alma-Ata customs, the order itself, as well as other generous gifts from Generalissimo Chai-kan-shi, were confiscated by the NKVD ... Returning home, Vlasov quickly received general stars and was assigned to the 99th rifle division, famous for its backwardness. A year later, in 1940, the division was recognized as the best in the Red Army and was the first among the units to be awarded the Order of the Red Banner of War. Immediately after this, Vlasov, on the orders of the People's Commissar of Defense, took command of one of the four mech corps created. Headed by a general, it was stationed in Lvov, and practically one of the very first units of the Red Army entered into hostilities. Even Soviet historians were forced to admit that the Germans "got hit in the face for the first time", precisely from the mechanized corps of General Vlasov. However, the forces were unequal, and the Red Army retreated to Kyiv. It was here that Joseph Stalin, shocked by the courage and ability of Vlasov to fight, ordered the general to gather the retreating units in Kyiv, form the 37th army and defend Kyiv. So, Kyiv, September-August 1941. Fierce battles are going on near Kyiv. German troops suffer enormous losses. Trams run in Kyiv itself. Nevertheless, the notorious Georgy Zhukov insists on surrendering Kyiv to the attacking Germans. After a small intra-army "dismantling", Joseph Stalin gives the order - "Kyiv to leave." It is not known why Vlasov's headquarters received this order last. History is silent on this. However, according to some data that has not yet been confirmed, this was revenge on the obstinate general. Revenge is none other than General of the Army Georgy Zhukov. After all, just recently, a few weeks ago, Zhukov, inspecting the positions of the 37th Army, came to Vlasov and wanted to stay the night. Vlasov - knowing Zhukov's character, he decided to joke, and offered Zhukov the best dugout, warning about night shelling. According to eyewitnesses, the army general, who changed his face after these words, hurried to retreat from the positions. Of course, said the officers present at the same time - who wants to turn their heads ... On the night of September 19, the practically undestroyed Kyiv was abandoned by the Soviet troops. Later, we all learned that 600,000 military personnel fell into the "Kyiv cauldron" through the efforts of Zhukov. The only one who with minimal losses withdrew his army from the encirclement was "Andrey Vlasov, who did not receive an order to withdraw." Vlasov, who had been leaving the Kyiv encirclement for almost a month, caught a cold and ended up in the hospital with a diagnosis of inflammation of the middle ear. However, after a telephone conversation with Stalin, the general immediately left for Moscow. The role of General Vlasov in the defense of the capital is mentioned in the article “The failure of the German plan to encircle and capture Moscow” in the newspapers “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, “Izvestia” and “Pravda” dated 12/13/1941. Moreover, in the army, the general is called nothing more than “the savior of Moscow.” And in the “Reference to the commander of the army comrade. Vlasov A.A.”, dated February 24, 1942 and signed by Deputy. Head The personnel department of the NPO of the Personnel Department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Zhukov and Head. By the sector of the Personnel Administration of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Frolov we read: “For work as a regiment commander from 1937 to 1938 and for work as a rifle division commander from 1939 to 1941, Vlasov is certified as a comprehensively developed, well-trained in operational-tactical relation by the commander. ”(Military-historical magazine, 1993, N. 3, pp. 9-10.). This has never happened in the history of the Red Army, having only 15 tanks, General Vlasov stopped the tank army of Walter Model in the suburbs of Moscow - Solnechegorsk, and threw back the Germans, who were already preparing for a parade on Moscow's Red Square for 100 kilometers, while freeing three cities ... It was from which to get the nickname "savior of Moscow." After the battle near Moscow, the general was appointed deputy commander of the Volkhov Front.
• WHAT IS LEFT BEHIND THE SUMMARY OF THE OWL INFORMBURO? And everything would be just great if, after the completely mediocre operational policy of the Headquarters and the General Staff, Leningrad ended up in a ring akin to Stalingrad. And the Second Shock Army, sent to the rescue of Leningrad, was hopelessly blocked in Myasnoy Bor. This is where the fun begins. Stalin demanded the punishment of the perpetrators of the situation. And the highest military officials sitting in the General Staff really did not want to "give" Stalin their drinking buddies commanders of the Second Shock. One of them wanted to command the front with absolute authority, without having any organizational abilities for this. The second, no less “skillful”, wanted to take away this power from him. The third of these “friends”, who drove the Red Army soldiers of the second Shock Army with a parade step under German fire, later became the Marshal of the USSR and the Minister of Defense of the USSR. The fourth, who did not give a single intelligible command to the troops, simulated a nervous attack and left ... to serve in the General Staff. Stalin was also informed that "the command of the group needs to strengthen the leadership." Here Stalin was reminded of General Vlasov, who was appointed commander of the Second Shock Army. Andrei Vlasov understood that he was flying to his death. As a man who went through the crucible of this war near Kyiv and Moscow, he knew that the army was doomed, and no miracle would save it. Even if it’s a miracle he himself is General Andrei Vlasov, the savior of Moscow. One can only imagine that the military general in the Douglas, shuddering from the explosions of German anti-aircraft guns, changed his mind, and who knows, be the German anti-aircraft gunners happier, and shoot down this Douglas. What a grimace history would make. And we would not have the now heroically deceased Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant General Andrei Andreevich Vlasov. According to the existing, I emphasize, information that has not yet been confirmed, Stalin had a presentation on Vlasov on the table. And the Supreme Commander even signed it...
  Further events are presented by official propaganda as follows: traitor general A. Vlasov voluntarily surrendered. With all the ensuing consequences ... But to this day, few people know that when the fate of the Second Shock became obvious, Stalin sent a plane for Vlasov. Still, the general was his favorite. But Andrey Andreevich has already made his choice. And he refused to evacuate, sending the wounded on the plane. Eyewitnesses of this incident say that the general threw through his teeth "What kind of commander throws his army to death." There is evidence of eyewitnesses that Vlasov refused to abandon the soldiers of the 2nd Shock Army, who were actually dying of hunger due to the criminal mistakes of the High Command, and fly away for their lives. And not the Germans, but the Russians, who went through the horrors of the German, and then the Stalinist camps and, despite this, did not accuse Vlasov of treason. General Vlasov with a handful of fighters decided to break through to his ...
• CAPTIVITY On the night of July 12, 1942, Vlasov and a handful of soldiers accompanying him went to the Old Believer village of Tukhovezhi and took refuge in a barn. And at night, the barn, where the encircled people found shelter, broke into ... no, not the Germans. To this day, it is not known who these people really were. According to one version, they were amateur partisans. According to another, armed local residents, led by a church warden, decided to buy themselves the location of the Germans at the cost of generals' stars. On the same night, General Andrei Vlasov and the fighters accompanying him were handed over to regular German troops. They say that before that the general was severely beaten. Note - our own ... One of the Red Army soldiers who accompanied Vlasov then testified to the SMERSHA investigators - “When we were handed over to the Germans, they wanted to shoot everyone without talking. The general stepped forward and said, “Don't shoot! I am General Vlasov. My people are unarmed!” That's the whole story of "voluntary capture." By the way, in June-December 1941, 3.8 million Soviet military personnel fell into German captivity, in 1942 more than a million, in total about 5.2 million people during the war. And then there was a concentration camp near Vinnitsa, where senior officers of interest to Germans - prominent commissars and generals. A lot was written in the Soviet press that Vlasov, they say, got scared, lost control of himself, saved his life. The documents state the opposite: Here are excerpts from official German and personal documents that ended up in SMERSH after the war. They also characterize Vlasov from the point of view of the other side. These are documentary evidence of Nazi leaders, who by no means can be suspected of sympathy for the Soviet general, whose efforts killed thousands of German soldiers near Kyiv and Moscow. So, adviser to the German embassy in Moscow, Hilger, in the protocol of interrogation Captured General Vlasov on August 8, 1942 briefly described him: “It gives the impression of a strong and direct personality. His judgments are calm and balanced” (Archive of the Institute of Military History of the Moscow Region, d. 43, l. 57..). And here is the opinion of General Goebbels. Having met with Vlasov on March 1, 1945, he wrote in his diary: “General Vlasov is an extremely intelligent and energetic Russian military leader; he made a very deep impression on me ”(Goebbels J. Recent Recordings. Smolensk, 1993, p-57). With regard to Vlasov, it seems to be clear. Maybe the people who surrounded him in the ROA were the last scum and loafers who were just waiting for the start of the war to go over to the side of the Germans. But no, and here the documents give no reason to doubt.
• .... AND OFFICERS JOINING HIM The closest associates of General Vlasov were highly professional military commanders, who at various times received high awards from the Soviet government for their professional activities. So, Major General V.F. Malyshkin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the medal "XX Years of the Red Army"; Major General F.I. Trukhin - the Order of the Red Banner and the medal "XX Years of the Red Army"; Zhilenkov G.N., Secretary of the Rostokinsk District Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Moscow. - Order of the Red Banner of Labor (Military History Journal, 1993, N. 2, pp. 9, 12.). Colonel Maltsev M.A. (Major General of the ROA) - Commander of the Air Force of the KONR, was at one time an instructor pilot of the legendary Valery Chkalov ("Voice of Crimea", 1944, N. 27. Afterword of the editorial board.). And the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the KONR, Colonel Aldan A. G. (Neryanin) received high praise upon graduation from the Academy of the General Staff in 1939. The then Chief of the General Staff, General of the Army Shaposhnikov called him one of the brilliant officers of the course, the only one who graduated from the Academy with excellent marks. It is hard to imagine that they were all cowards who went into the service of the Germans in order to save their own lives. Generals F.I. Trukhin, G.N. Zhilenkov, A.A. Vlasov, V.F. Malyshkin and D.E. Zakupny during the signing ceremony of the KONR manifesto. Prague, November 14, 1944
• IF VLASOV IS INNOCENT - WHO THEN? By the way, if we are talking about documents, then we can recall another one. When General Vlasov was with the Germans, the NKVD and SMERSH, on behalf of Stalin, conducted a thorough investigation of the situation with the Second Shock Army. The results were put on the table to Stalin, who came to the conclusion - to recognize the inconsistency of the accusations leveled against General Vlasov in the death of the 2nd Shock Army and in his military unpreparedness. And what kind of unpreparedness can there be if the artillery did not have ammunition even for one salvo ... A certain Viktor Abakumov (remember this name) headed the investigation from SMERSH. It wasn't until 1993, decades later, that Soviet propaganda announced it through gritted teeth. (Military History Journal, 1993, N. 5, pp. 31-34.).
• GENERAL VLASOV - HITLER KAPUTS?! Let's go back to Andrei Vlasov. So the military general calmed down in German captivity? The facts speak otherwise. It was possible, of course, to provoke the guard to fire at point-blank range, it was possible to raise an uprising in the camp, kill a couple of dozen guards, run to your own and ... get into other camps - this time Stalin's. It was possible to show unshakable convictions and ... turn into an ice block. But Vlasov did not feel much fear of the Germans either. Once, the concentration camp guards, who “took on their chests”, decided to arrange a “parade” of captured Red Army soldiers and decided to put Vlasov at the head of the column. The general refused such an honor, and several "organizers" of the parade were sent by the general into a deep knockout. Well, here the camp commandant arrived in time for the noise. The general, who has always been distinguished by originality and non-standard decisions, decided to act differently. For a whole year (!) he convinced the Germans of his loyalty. And then in March and April 1943, Vlasov makes two trips to the Smolensk and Pskov regions, and criticizes ... German politics in front of large audiences, he is convinced that the liberation movement resonates with the people. But for "shameless" speeches, the frightened Nazis send him arrest. The first attempt ended in complete failure. The general was eager to fight, sometimes committing reckless acts.
• THE ALL-SEEING EYE OF THE NKVD? And then something happened. Soviet intelligence came to the general. A certain Milenty Zykov appeared in his entourage - he held the position of divisional commissar in the Red Army. The personality is bright and ... mysterious. He edited two newspapers for the general .... And it is still not known for certain whether this person was who he claimed to be. Only a year ago, circumstances “surfaced” that could turn all ideas about the “case of General Vlasov” upside down. Zykov was born in Dnepropetrovsk, a journalist, worked in Central Asia, then in Izvestia with Bukharin. He was married to the daughter of Lenin's comrade-in-arms, People's Commissar of Education Andrei Bubnov, after him he was arrested in 1937. Shortly before the war, he was released (!) and drafted into the army as a battalion commissar (!). He was captured near Bataysk in the summer of 1942, being a commissar, in a rifle division, whose number he never named. They met Vlasov in the Vinnitsa camp, where they kept Soviet officers of particular interest to the Wehrmacht. From there, Zykov was brought to Berlin by order of Goebbels himself. On the tunic of Zykov, who was delivered to the military propaganda department, the stars and commissar insignia remained unspoiled. Milenty Zykov became the general's closest adviser, although he received only the rank of captain in the ROA. There is reason to believe that it was Zykov who was a Soviet intelligence officer. And the reasons are very strong. Milenty Zykov was in very active contact with senior German officers, who, as it turned out, were preparing an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. For this he paid the price. It remains a mystery what happened on a June day in 1944, when he was called to the telephone in the village of Rasndorf. The captain of the ROA Zykov left the house, got into the car and ... disappeared. According to one version, Zykov was kidnapped by the Gestapo, who uncovered the attempt on Hitler, and then shot in Sachsenhausen. A strange circumstance, Vlasov himself was not very worried about the disappearance of Zykov, which suggests the existence of a plan for Zykov to go underground, that is, return home. In addition, in 1945-46. - after the arrest of Vlasov, SMERSH was very actively looking for traces of Zykov. Yes, so actively that there was an impression of a deliberate covering up of traces. When in the mid-nineties they tried to find the criminal case of Milenty Zykov in 1937 in the archives of the FSB, the attempt was unsuccessful. Strange, right? After all, at the same time, all the other documents of Zykov, including the reader's form in the library, and the registration card in the military archive, were in place.
• GENERAL'S FAMILY And one more significant circumstance, indirectly confirming Vlasov's cooperation with Soviet intelligence. Usually relatives of “traitors to the Motherland”, especially people occupying a social position of the level of General Vlasov, were subjected to the most severe repressions. As a rule, they were destroyed in the Gulag. In this situation, everything was exactly the opposite. In recent decades, neither Soviet nor Western journalists have been able to obtain information that sheds light on the fate of the general's family. Only recently it turned out that Vlasov's first wife, Anna Mikhailovna, who was arrested in 1942 after serving 5 years in the Nizhny Novgorod prison, lived and lived in Balakhna a few years ago. The second wife, Agnessa Pavlovna, with whom the general married in 1941, lived and worked as a doctor in the Brest Regional Dermatovenerologic Dispensary. She died two years ago, and her son, who has achieved a lot in this life, lives and works in Samara. The second son is illegitimate, lives and works in St. Petersburg. At the same time, he denies any relationship with the general. He has a son who is very similar to his grandfather ... His illegitimate daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren also live there. One of the grandchildren, a promising officer in the Russian Navy, has no idea who his grandfather was. So decide after that whether General Vlasov was a “traitor to the Motherland”.
• OPEN SPEECH AGAINST STALIN Six months after the “disappearance” of Zykov, on November 14, 1944, Vlasov proclaims in Prague the manifesto of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia. Its main provisions are: the overthrow of the Stalinist regime and the return to the peoples of the rights they won in the revolution of 1917, the conclusion of an honorable peace with Germany, the creation of a new free statehood in Russia, the "assertion of the national labor system", "the all-round development of international cooperation", "the elimination of forced labor", "liquidation of collective farms", "granting the intelligentsia the right to create freely". Aren't these very familiar demands proclaimed by the political leaders of the last two decades? From Soviet citizens in Germany, the KONR receives hundreds of thousands of applications to join its armed forces.
• STAR…. On January 28, 1945, General Vlasov takes command of the Armed Forces of the KONR, which the Germans allowed at the level of three divisions, one reserve brigade, two aviation squadrons and an officer school, about 50 thousand people in total. At that time, these military formations were not yet sufficiently armed. Lieutenant General A.A. Vlasov and representatives of the German command inspect one of the Russian battalions as part of Army Group North. May 1943. In the foreground is a Russian non-commissioned officer (deputy platoon commander) with epaulettes and buttonholes of the Eastern troops, entered in August 1942. The war was ending. The Germans were no longer up to General Vlasov - they were saving their own skin. February 9 and April 14, 1945, the only cases forced by the Germans, cases of participation of Vlasovites in battles on the eastern front. In the first battle, several hundred Red Army soldiers go over to the side of Vlasov. The second one radically changes some ideas about the end of the war. On May 6, 1945, an anti-Hitler uprising broke out in Prague ... At the call of the rebel Czechs, Prague enters ... The first division of the army of General Vlasov. She enters into battle with heavily armed SS and Wehrmacht units, captures the airport, where fresh German units arrive and liberates the city. The Czechs rejoice. And the very eminent commanders of the already Soviet army are beside themselves with rage and anger. Still, again this is the upstart Vlasov. And then strange and terrible events began. Vlasov is visited by those who only yesterday begged for help and ask the general... to leave Prague, because Russian friends are unhappy. And Vlasov gives the command to withdraw. However, this did not save the walkers, they were shot ... by the Czechs themselves. By the way, it was not a group of impostors who asked for help from Vlasov, but people who carried out the decision of the supreme body of the Czechoslovak Republic.
• ... AND THE DEATH OF GENERAL VLASOV But this did not save the general, Colonel General. Victor Abakumov - the head of SMERSH gave the command - to detain Vlasov. Smershevtsy took under the visor. May 12, 1945 the troops of General Vlasov in a vise between the American and Soviet troops in the southwestern Czech Republic. Vlasovites who fell into the hands of the Red Army are shot on the spot ... According to the official version, the general himself was captured and arrested by a special reconnaissance group that stopped the convoy of the first division of the ROA and SMERSH. However, there are at least four versions of how Vlasov ended up in the rear of the Soviet troops. We already know about the first one, and here is another one, compiled on the basis of eyewitness accounts. Indeed, General Vlasov was in the same column of the ROA. Only he didn’t hide in the carpet on the floor of the Willis, as Captain Yakushov allegedly took part in that operation. The general sat quietly in the car. And the car was not a Willis at all. Moreover, this same car was of such dimensions that a two-meter-tall general simply would not fit in it wrapped in a carpet ... And there was no lightning attack of scouts on the column. They (the scouts), dressed in full dress with orders, calmly waited on the side of the road when Vlasov's car caught up with them. When the car slowed down, the leader of the group saluted the general and invited him to get out of the car. Is this how they meet traitors? And then the fun began. There is evidence from the military prosecutor of the tank division, to which Andrey Vlasov was taken. This man was the first who met the general after his arrival at the location of the Soviet troops. He claims that the general was dressed in ... the general's uniform of the Red Army (old model), with insignia and orders. The stunned lawyer did not find anything better than to ask the general to present documents. Which he did, showing the prosecutor the paybook of the commanding staff of the Red Army, the identity card of the Red Army general No. 431 dated February 13, 1941, and the party card of a member of the CPSU (b) No. 2123998 - all in the name of Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov ... Moreover, the prosecutor claims, that the day before the arrival of Vlasov, an unimaginable number of army authorities came to the division, which did not even think of showing any hostility or hostility to the general. Moreover, a joint dinner was organized. On the same day, the general was transported to Moscow on a transport plane. Interesting - this is how traitors are met? Further, very little is known. Vlasov is located in Lefortovo. "Prisoner No. 32" was the name of the general in prison. This prison belongs to SMERSH, and no one, not even Beria and Stalin, has the right to enter it. And they did not enter - Viktor Abakumov knew his business well. For which he later paid the price, but more on that later. The investigation went on for over a year. Stalin, or maybe not Stalin at all, thought what to do with the disgraced general. Elevate to the rank of a national hero? It is impossible - the military general did not sit quietly - he spoke a lot. Retired employees of the NKVD claim that they bargained with Andrei Vlasov for a long time - repent, they say, before the people and the leader. Admit mistakes. And forgive. Maybe ... They say that it was then that Vlasov met Melenty Zykov again ...

  But the general was consistent in his actions, as when he did not leave the fighters of the Second Shock to die, as when he did not leave his ROA in the Czech Republic. Lieutenant General of the Red Army, holder of the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner of War made his last choice ...

  August 2, 1946 official TASS report, published in all central newspapers - August 1, 1946, Lieutenant General of the Red Army Vlasov A. A. and his 11 associates were hanged. Stalin was cruel to the end. After all, there is no death more shameful for officers than the gallows. Here are their names: Major General of the Red Army Malyshkin V.F., Zhilenkov G.N., Major General of the Red Army Trukhin F.I, Major General of the Red Army Zakutny D.E, Major General of the Red Army Blagoveshchensky I. A, Colonel of the Red Army Meandrov M A, Colonel of the USSR Air Force Maltsev M.A., Colonel of the Red Army Bunyachenko S.K., Colonel of the Red Army Zverev G.A, Major General of the Red Army Korbukov V.D. and Lieutenant Colonel of the Red Army Shatov N.S. Where the bodies of officers are buried is unknown. SMERSH knew how to keep his secrets.

• ... AND LIEUTENANT GENERAL VLASOV SOVIET ... SCOUT OFFICER?! Was Andrei Vlasov a Soviet intelligence officer. There is no direct evidence for this. Moreover, there is no document proving this. But there are facts with which it is very difficult to argue. Chief among them is this. It is no longer a big secret that in 1942, Joseph Stalin, despite all the successes of the Red Army near Moscow, wanted to conclude a separate peace with Germany and stop the war. At the same time, he gave up Ukraine, Moldova, Crimea .... There is even evidence that Lavrenty Beria "ventilated the situation" on this issue. And Vlasov was an excellent candidate to conduct these negotiations. Why? To do this, you need to look at the pre-war career of Andrei Vlasov. You can come to startling conclusions. Back in 1937, Colonel Vlasov was appointed head of the second department of the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District. Translated into civilian language, this means that the gallant Colonel Vlasov was responsible for all the KGB work of the district. And then the repressions broke out. And Colonel Vlasov, who received the first pseudonym "Volkov", was ... safely sent as an adviser to the already mentioned Chai-kan-shee ... And then, if you read between the lines the memoirs of the participants in those events, you come to the conclusion that none other worked in China , like ... Soviet Colonel Volkov ... scout. It was he, and no one else, who made friends with German diplomats, took them to restaurants, gave them vodka to drink until they fainted, and talked for a long, long time. It is not known what, but how can an ordinary Russian colonel behave like this, knowing what is happening in his country, that people were arrested only for explaining to foreigners on the street how to get to the Alexander Garden. Where is that Sorge with his attempts at undercover work in Japan. All female agents of Sorge could not supply information comparable to the data of Chai-kan-shi's wife, with whom the Russian colonel was in very close relations ... The seriousness of the work of Colonel Vlasov is evidenced by his personal translator in China, who claims that Volkov ordered him, at the slightest danger, shoot him. And another argument. I saw a document marked "Top Secret. Ex.. No. 1 "dated 1942, in which Vsevolod Merkulov reports to Joseph Stalin on the work to destroy the traitor general A. Vlasov. So, more than 42 reconnaissance and sabotage groups with a total number of 1,600 people hunted Vlasov. Do you believe that in 1942 such a powerful organization as SMERSH could not "get" one general, even if he was well guarded. I don't believe. The conclusion is more than simple, Stalin, knowing full well the strength of the German special services, tried to convince the Germans in every possible way of the betrayal of the general. But not so simple, were the Germans. Hitler did not accept Vlasov. But the anti-Hitler opposition Andrey Vlasov fell into the “suit”. Now it is not known what prevented Stalin from bringing the matter to an end, either the situation at the front, or the too late and, moreover, unsuccessful attempt on the Fuhrer. And Stalin had to choose between the destruction of Vlasov or his abduction. Apparently, they stopped at the latter. But ... This is the most Russian "but". The thing is that at the time of the "transition" of the general to the Germans, there were already three intelligence services in the USSR: the NKGB, SMERSH and the GRU of the General Staff of the Red Army. And these organizations competed fiercely with each other (remember this). And Vlasov, apparently, worked for the GRU. How else can one explain the fact that the general was brought to the Second Shock by Lavrenty Beria and Kliment Voroshilov. Interesting, right?

  Further, the trial against Vlasov was decided by SMERSH and did not let anyone into this case. Even the trial was closed, although logically, the trial of a traitor should be public and open. And you need to see photos of Vlasov in court - eyes that are waiting for something, as if asking, "Well, for a long time, stop clowning." But, Vlasov did not know about the swarm of special services. And he was executed ... People present at the same time claim that the general behaved with dignity.

  The scandal began the day after the execution, when Joseph Stalin saw fresh newspapers.

  It turns out that SMERSH had to ask the Military Prosecutor's Office and the GRU for written permission for the execution. He asked, and they answered him - “The execution should be postponed until further notice”, this letter is still in the archives to this day.

  But Abakumov “did not see” the answer. For which he paid. In 1946, on the personal instructions of Stalin, Viktor Abakumov was arrested. It is said that Stalin visited him in prison and reminded him of General Vlasov. However, these are just rumors...

  By the way, there is no article incriminating “Treason to the Motherland” in the indictment of Andrei Vlasov. Only terrorism and counter-revolutionary activities.

On September 14, 1901, Andrei Vlasov was born in one of the villages of the Nizhny Novgorod province. He was destined to become the most scandalous military leader in Soviet history. The very name of the general became a household name, and every Soviet citizen who served with the Germans was called a Vlasov.

Little is known about the early life of the future general. Andrei Vlasov was born in a village in Nizhny Novgorod in 1901. His father, according to some reports, was a non-commissioned officer of extra-long service. According to others - an ordinary peasant. There were 13 children in the family, Andrei was the youngest of them. Nevertheless, with the help of his older brothers, he managed to study at the Nizhny Novgorod Seminary. Then Vlasov studied at a local university as an agronomist, but he completed only one course. The Civil War flared up, and his education was interrupted by mobilization in the Red Army. And so began his military career.

In the Red Army, which lacked literate and educated people, Vlasov quickly made his way to the company commander, and then was transferred to staff work. He headed the headquarters of the regiment, then led the regimental school. He joined the party relatively late, only in 1930.

Vlasov was in good standing and was considered a competent commander. It is no coincidence that in the late 30s he was sent to China as part of a group of military advisers to Chiang Kai-shek. Moreover, for several months, Vlasov was considered the main military adviser to the Chinese leader. At the end of 1939, he was recalled to the USSR and appointed commander of the 99th division.

There Vlasov again proved himself from the best side. In just a few months, he managed to restore such order that, according to the results of the exercises, she was recognized as the best in the Kiev military district and was especially noted by the highest authorities.

Vlasov also did not go unnoticed and was promoted to commander of a mechanized corps, and also received the Order of Lenin. The corps was stationed in the Lvov region and was one of the first Soviet units to engage in hostilities with the Germans.

He proved himself well in the first battles, and a month later Vlasov again went on promotion. He was urgently transferred to Kyiv to command the 37th Army. It was formed from the remnants of the units retreating from the west of the Ukrainian SSR, and the main task was not to allow the Germans to take Kyiv.

The defense of Kyiv ended in disaster. There were several armies in the cauldron. However, Vlasov managed to prove himself here too, units of the 37th Army were able to break through the encirclement and reach the Soviet troops.

The general is recalled to Moscow, where he is entrusted with the command of the 20th Army in the most important direction of the German strike - Moscow. Vlasov did not fail again, during the German offensive, the army managed to stop the 4th Göpner Panzer Group near Krasnaya Polyana. And then go on the offensive, liberate Volokolamsk and go to Gzhatsk.

Lieutenant General Vlasov became a celebrity. His portrait, along with several other military leaders, was printed on the front pages of the largest Soviet newspapers as the most distinguished in the defense of Moscow.

Doomed to captivity

However, this popularity had a downside. Vlasov began to be perceived as a lifesaver, which in the end led to an inglorious end. In the spring of 1942, the 2nd shock army penetrated the German defenses, occupying the Luban salient. It was planned to use it as a springboard for a further offensive on Leningrad. However, the Germans took advantage of the favorable conditions and closed the encirclement in the Myasnoy Bor area. The supply of the army became impossible. The headquarters ordered the army to withdraw. In the area of ​​​​Myasny Bor, they managed to break through the corridor for a short time, along which several units came out, but then the Germans closed it again.

Vlasov at that time served as deputy commander of the Volkhov Front Meretskov and, as part of a military commission, was sent to the army to assess the situation on the spot. The situation in the army was very difficult, there was no food, no ammunition, it was also impossible to organize its supply. In addition, the army suffered very heavy losses in the battles. In fact, the 2nd shock was doomed.

By this time, the commander of the Klykov army was seriously ill, and he had to be evacuated by plane to the rear. There was a question about the new commander. Vlasov proposed to Meretskov the candidacy of Vinogradov, chief of staff of the army. He himself did not want to take responsibility for the perishing army. However, Meretskov appointed him. In this case, his track record played against Vlasov. He already had a successful experience of breaking through the encirclement, and also showed himself well near Moscow. If someone could save the perishing army, then only a person with such experience.

However, the miracle did not happen. Until the end of June, with the support of the 59th Army, desperate attempts were made to break out of the encirclement. On June 22, for several hours, they managed to break through a 400-meter corridor, along which some of the wounded were carried out, but soon the Germans closed it.

On June 24, the last, desperate attempt to break through was made. The situation was very difficult, the army had been starving for a long time, the soldiers ate all the horses and their own belts and still died of exhaustion, there were no more artillery shells, there was almost no equipment. The Germans, in turn, carried out a hurricane of shelling. After a failed attempt to break through, Vlasov gave the order to escape, as best he could. Break into small groups of 3-5 people and try to covertly get out of the environment.

What happened to Vlasov in the following weeks has not yet been established and is unlikely to ever become known. Most likely, he was trying to get to the reserve command post, where food was stored. Along the way, he entered the villages, introducing himself as a village teacher and asking for food. On July 11, in the village of Tukhovezhi, he entered the house, which turned out to be the house of the headman of the village, who immediately handed over the uninvited guests to the Germans. Having set the table for them in the bathhouse, he locked them up and informed the Germans about it. Soon their patrol detained the general. In some sources there are allegations that Vlasov deliberately intended to surrender to the Germans, but this is somewhat doubtful. For this, it was not necessary to wander for two and a half weeks through the forests, hiding from patrols.

In captivity

Smolensk Appeal"

Smolensk Appeal", in which Vlasov called to go over to his side in order to build a new Russia. It even contained some political points such as the abolition of collective farms. The German leadership approved the appeal, but considered it as a purely propaganda action. They wrote about it in newspapers, there were also leaflets were printed in Russian to be thrown into Soviet territories.

The party leadership was completely indifferent to Vlasov. Hitler and Himmler did not care about the captured general, he did not interest them. The main lobbyists of Vlasov were the military, who may have seen in Vlasov a potential leader of the future puppet government, if there is such a thing. On the initiative of Field Marshals von Kluge and von Küchler, Vlasov made several trips to the location of Army Group North and Center in the winter and spring of 1943. He not only met with prominent German military leaders, but also spoke to local residents in the occupied territories and gave several interviews to collaborationist newspapers.

However, the party did not like that the military was playing their game and trying to enter their territory. The Russian committee was disbanded, Vlasov was temporarily banned from speaking publicly, and the military was reprimanded. The Nazi Party had no desire to turn Vlasov into anything more than a propaganda phantom.

Meanwhile, the activities of Vlasov became known in the USSR. Stalin was so indignant that he personally corrected the newspaper article "Who is Vlasov?". This article reported that Vlasov was an active Trotskyist who planned to sell Siberia to the Japanese, but was exposed in time. Unfortunately, the party took pity on Vlasov and forgave him, allowing him to lead the army. But as it turned out, even in the first days of the war, he was recruited by the Germans, and then returned to Moscow, showed himself well for some time in order to avoid suspicion, and then specially encircled the army and finally defected to the Germans.

Vlasov found himself in a difficult position. In Moscow, they already learned about his activities, but in Germany he was in limbo. The party leadership, including Hitler, did not want to hear about the creation of a separate army, which was what the military wanted. When Field Marshal Keitel tried to probe the waters, Hitler made it clear that he would not allow it to go beyond the usual propaganda actions.

For the next year and a half, Vlasov became a party-goer. His patrons organized meetings for him with prominent figures who looked at the "Russian question" not as radically as the leaders. In the hope that, having enlisted their support, it would be possible to influence Hitler and Himmler at least indirectly, Vlasov was even arranged for a marriage with the widow of an SS man.

But all that his patrons managed to achieve was the creation of a "school of propagandists" in Dabendorf. For more, the party did not give permission.

Russian Liberation Army

Heavi" down to the village police, who had nothing to do with the ROA.

However, at the beginning and middle of the war, the Germans created small detachments (usually the size of a company / battalion and very rarely a regiment), the so-called. eastern battalions / companies, which were often involved in anti-partisan operations. A significant part of their personnel was later transferred to the ROA. For example, the former Soviet commissar Zhilenkov, before getting to Vlasov, held a prominent post in the RNNA - the Russian National People's Army, numbering several thousand people. Which just acted against partisans in the occupied territories.

For some time, the RNNA was commanded by the former Soviet colonel Boyarsky, who later also became a person close to Vlasov. Most often, the eastern battalions and companies were part of the German divisions, under which German officers were created and controlled. The personnel of these units sometimes wore cockades and stripes used later by the ROA, which creates additional confusion. However, these units, which appeared even when Vlasov was a Soviet general, were subordinate to the Germans and Vlasov had no influence on them.

the same Bolsheviks, only against the collective farms. "Thus, we can sum up this confusing issue. The ROA did not operate in the occupied Soviet territories, but part of the personnel of this army had previously served in the German eastern battalions in Soviet territories.

The combat path of the newly minted army turned out to be very short in general. During the five months of its existence, units of the ROA only twice took part in battles with Soviet troops. Moreover, in the first case, this participation was extremely limited. In February 1945, three platoons of volunteers from the Dabendorf school took part in the battle on the side of the Germans with the 230th division of the Red Army.

And in early April, the 1st division of the ROA fought along with the Germans in the Furstenberg area. After that, all parts of the ROA were withdrawn to the rear. Even with the imminent end, the Nazi leadership did not have much confidence in the newly minted allies.

By and large, the ROA has remained a propaganda, and not a real fighting force. One combat-ready division, which only once took part in hostilities, could hardly have had any influence on the course of the war, except for propaganda.

Arrest and execution

Vlasov hoped to get to the location of the Americans, as he expected a new world war between the USSR and the USA. But he never managed to get to them. On May 12, 1945, he was arrested by a Soviet patrol on a tip. However, the Americans would have given him to the USSR anyway. First, he was a symbolic and familiar figure. Secondly, militarily, the ROA was not any significant force, so even as a potential ally by the Americans in the event of a new war, it would not be considered. Thirdly, an agreement on the extradition of Soviet citizens was reached at the conference of allies, only a few managed to avoid this extradition.

Vlasov and all his associates from among the Soviet citizens were taken to Moscow. Initially, it was supposed to hold an open trial, but Abakumov, who supervised it, was afraid that the leakage of the views of the defendants would cause some undesirable consequences in society, and suggested that they sort it out quietly. In the end, it was decided to hold a closed trial without any publications in the press. The final decision was made by the Politburo. Instead of an open trial of traitors on August 2, 1946, a stingy note was given in Soviet newspapers that Vlasov and his closest associates were found guilty of treason and executed the day before by the verdict of a Soviet court.