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Rodion Malinovsky
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==World War II== ===Early assignments=== After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, with the Red Army suffering enormous defeats and losing hundreds of thousands of troops in German encirclements, Malinovsky emerged a competent general. His corps of three partly formed rifle divisions faced German [[Blitzkrieg]] along the line of the [[Prut River]]. While, as a rule, Red Army generals would lead their forces from behind the frontline, Malinovsky went to the crucial sectors of the battles to be with his soldiers and encourage them. Unable to stop the Wehrmacht, Malinovsky had to retreat along the [[Black Sea]] shore, while frustrating enemy attempts to encircle his troops. The Germans succeeded in cornering his corps in [[Mykolaiv|Nikolaev]], but Malinovsky breached their ring and retreated to [[Dnipropetrovsk]]. In August, he was promoted to Chief of Staff of the badly battered [[6th Army (Soviet Union)|6th Army]], and soon replaced its commander. He halted the German advance in his section of the front and was promoted to [[Lieutenant General]]. After the retreat of the Red Army to the [[Donbas]], Malinovsky commanded a joint operation of the 6th and 12th armies, managing to drive the Wehrmacht out of the region. In December 1941, Malinovsky received command of the [[Southern Front (Soviet Union)|Southern Front]], consisting of three weak field armies and two division-sized cavalry corps. They were short of manpower and equipment, but Malinovsky managed to push deep into the defenses of the Germans, who, after 6 months of fighting, were suffering from fatigue and shortages as well. ===Battle of Kharkov=== On 12 May 1942, Malinovsky and the [[Southwestern Front (Soviet Union)|Southwestern Front]], under the overall command of Timoshenko, launched a joint attack in the [[Second Battle of Kharkov]] pushing the Germans back {{convert|100|km}}. Timoshenko overestimated the Red Army's offensive capabilities and suffered a heavy defeat. Although Stalin, in spite of opposition by his top military advisers, supported the ill-fated Kharkov attack, he became suspicious that Malinovsky had intentionally failed his troops (he feared that Malinovsky had established and kept connections with foreign interests during his World War I stay in France). In July 1942, the Southern Front was taken out of combat, its units and staff were transferred to the [[North Caucasian Front]] as a [[Don Operational Group]] under the command of Malinovsky (who also became Front's deputy commander). Stalin ordered Malinovsky to stop the intrusion of the German [[Army Group A]] towards [[Rostov-on-Don]] and the vital oilfields of [[Caucasus]]; the Germans had a sizeable technical superiority over Malinovsky, and cut through his weak defenses. As a consequence, [[Stavka]] disbanded the Don Operational Group in September. ===Stalingrad and Ukrainian Front=== The Red Army was hard-pressed by Germans in the [[Battle of Stalingrad]], and Stalin entrusted Malinovsky with the command of the hastily formed [[66th Army (Soviet Union)|66th Army]] to hold positions north-east of Stalingrad. At the same time Stalin ordered [[Nikita Khrushchev]], who served as his top political officer in Stalingrad, to "keep an eye" on Malinovsky.{{Citation needed|date=August 2021}} The 66th Army had no combat experience, but this was the first time in the war Malinovsky had commanded a unit that was near full strength in both troops and equipment. In September and October 1942, he went on the offensive. His territorial gains were marginal, but he denied the Germans an opportunity to encircle Stalingrad from the north, and, slowed down, they decided to push into the city. Later that month, Stavka dispatched Malinovsky to the [[Voronezh Front]] as its deputy commander; in December 1942, he was sent back to [[Stalingrad]]. There the Red Army achieved its greatest success to that point in the war: on 22 November the Red Army fronts encircled the [[6th Army (Wehrmacht)|German Sixth Army]]. The German [[Army Group Don]], commanded by Field Marshal [[Erich von Manstein]], gathered its [[Panzer]] troops in the town of [[Kotelnikovo, Volgograd Oblast|Kotelnikovo]] {{convert|150|km}} west of Stalingrad and launched a desperate counterattack to save the Sixth Army. Malinovsky led the powerful [[Soviet Second Guards Army]] against [[Hermann Hoth|Hoth]]. In vicious fighting he forced the Germans to retreat, breached deeply echeloned and well-prepared German defenses, and destroyed the Kotelnikovo army grouping. It was the first World War II large-scale clash of armor to be lost by Germany. Malinovsky's victory sealed the fate of 250,000 German and other [[Axis Powers]] soldiers trapped in the Stalingrad pocket. Stalin promoted Malinovsky to colonel general, and awarded him with the highest Soviet decoration for outstanding generalship — the [[Order of Suvorov]] of the 1st degree. In February 1943, Malinovsky resumed his command of Southern Front, and in less than two weeks he expelled Manstein from Rostov-on-Don, opening the road to Ukraine to the Red Army. In March 1943, Stalin elevated him to rank of [[Army General (Soviet rank)|Army General]] and gave him command of Southwestern Front, tasked to drive German troops away from the industrially rich [[Donbas]]. Through a sudden attack in mid-October, Malinovsky managed to surprise a large German force in the region's key city of [[Zaporizhia]] and captured it. The campaign split German forces in the South and isolated German forces in [[Crimea]] from the rest of the German [[Eastern Front (World War II)|Eastern Front]]. On 20 October, the Southwestern Front was renamed [[3rd Ukrainian Front]]. From December 1943 to April 1944, Malinovsky smashed the German [[Army Group South]], and [[Battle of West Ukraine (1944)|liberated much of the southern]] [[Ukraine]], including [[Kherson]], [[Mykolaiv|Nikolaev]] and his home city of Odessa. By that time, according to Khrushchev's opinion, Stalin grew much more confident of Malinovsky's loyalty. ===Romania and Hungary=== [[File:2° Fronte Ucraino parata della vittoria.jpg|thumb|Malinovsky leading a contingent from the [[2nd Ukrainian Front]] at the [[Moscow Victory Parade of 1945]].]] In May 1944, Malinovsky was transferred to the [[2nd Ukrainian Front]]. He expelled the Germans from the remaining Soviet territory and participated in an unsuccessful invasion of the [[Balkans]] (the [[first Jassy–Kishinev Offensive]]) together with Marshal [[Ivan Konev]] and Army General [[Fyodor Tolbukhin]] (who received Malinovsky's former command over the smaller 3rd Ukrainian Front). However, during the [[Jassy–Kishinev Offensive (August 1944)|second Jassy–Kishinev Offensive]] in late August and early September 1944, Malinovsky unleashed a highly successful Soviet version of the [[Blitzkrieg]]. Together with Tolbukhin, he destroyed or captured some 215,000 German,<ref>{{cite book |language=de |first=K. W. |last=Böhme |title=Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in sowjetischer Hand. Eine Bilanz |location=München |year=1966 |page=112 |oclc=246020642 }}</ref> and 200,000 Romanian troops,<ref>{{cite news |language=de |work=Siebenbürgische Zeitung |url=http://www.siebenbuerger.de/sbz/sbz/news/1093160289,50778,.html |title=Ein schwarzer Tag für die Deutschen |date=22 August 2004 }}</ref> forcing Romania to overthrow pro-German ''[[Conducător]]'' [[Ion Antonescu]], and switch from the Axis to the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] camp (''see [[Romania during World War II]]''). A triumphant Stalin recalled Malinovsky to Moscow, and on 10 September 1944 made him [[Marshal of the Soviet Union]]. Malinovsky was also nominal head of the [[Allied Commission]] in Romania (represented by [[Vladislav Petrovich Vinogradov]]).<ref>{{cite book |language=ro |first=Adrian |last=Cioroianu |author-link=Adrian Cioroianu |title=Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc |publisher=[[Editura Curtea Veche]] |location=Bucharest |year=2005 |page=59 |isbn=973-669-175-6 }}</ref> He continued his offensive drive, crossed the [[Southern Carpathians]] into [[Transylvania]] (entering [[Hungary|Hungarian]]-ruled [[Northern Transylvania]]), and on 20 October 1944, captured [[Debrecen]], defended by a large Axis force. His troops were tired after several months of combat and needed to be replenished and resupplied, but Stalin ordered Malinovsky to [[Battle of Budapest|take the Hungarian capital Budapest]], in order to open the road to Vienna and take Vienna before the [[Allies of World War II|Western Allies]]. With the help of Tolbukhin and the Romanian [[Romanian First Army|First]] and [[Romanian Fourth Army|Fourth]] armies, Malinovsky carried out Stalin's order, and faced [[Adolf Hitler]]'s determination to defend Budapest at any cost. The Germans and their Hungarian [[Arrow Cross Party]] allies tried to turn Budapest into a "German Stalingrad"; Hitler engaged the bulk of his Panzer troops (among them six [[Waffen SS]] divisions and five army Panzer divisions; one-fourth of the Wehrmacht's armor{{citation needed|date=December 2015}}), weakening German forces fighting the Red Army in [[Poland]] and [[Prussia]], as well as those engaging the Western Allies on the [[Rhine]]. Malinovsky's strategic and operational skills enabled him to overcome his troops' weakness and to conquer Budapest on 13 February 1945, following an exceptionally harsh battle. He captured 70,000 prisoners. Continuing his drive westward, Malinovsky routed Germans in Slovakia, liberated [[Bratislava]], on 4 April 1945 captured Vienna, and finally, on 26 April 1945 freed [[Brno]], second largest city in Czechoslovakia. These new victories established the Soviet's supremacy over the [[Danube|Danubian]] heartland of Europe. In return, Stalin rewarded him with the highest Soviet military decoration of the period, the [[Order of Victory]]. Malinovsky ended his campaign in Europe with the liberation of [[Brno]] in the [[Czechoslovakia|Czech]] lands, observing a jubilant meeting of his and American advance forces. ===Japanese Front and Far East Command=== After the [[German Instrument of Surrender, 1945|German surrender]] in May 1945, Malinovsky was transferred to the [[Russian Far East]], where he was placed in command of the [[Transbaikal Front]]. In August 1945, he led his forces during the last Soviet offensive of the war under the overall command of [[Aleksandr Vasilevsky]]. Vasilevsky's forces invaded [[Manchuria]], which was under the occupation of the 700,000 strong [[Japan]]ese [[Kwantung Army]] and crushed the Japanese in ten days. Malinovsky was awarded the Soviet Union's greatest honor, the order of a [[Hero of the Soviet Union]], and was appointed a member of the [[Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union]] by Stalin himself. Following the Japanese surrender, Malinovsky was made supreme commander of the [[Far Eastern Military District]]. During the [[Soviet occupation of North Korea]], Malinovsky was an influential figure in the establishment and training of the [[Korean People's Army]], and continued to provide support for them during the early phases of the [[Korean War]].
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