Eremenko, General Andrey

Eremenko, General Andrey (1892–1970),Red Army officer who was part of the top Soviet command echelon when the Germans invaded the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA) and remained there to the finish. Stalin never deemed him worthy of a marshal's star, and he did not receive one until 1955, two years after Stalin died. Nevertheless, his career during the German–Soviet war was more representative of Soviet command performance than Zhukov's, for instance.

He lost the greater part of his first front (army group), Briansk front, in October 1941 (see Briansk–Vyazma). After recovering from wounds he took over the Fourth Shock Army in early 1942, made a deep thrust behind German Army Group Centre, but did not reach his objective, the main German supply line. Recovered again from wounds, he distinguished himself commanding Stalingrad front, which defended Stalingrad from August to November 1942, but Stalin did not esteem defensive successes. His mission in the counter-offensive was to regroup his armies and seize Rostov-on-Don. A German counter-attack threw him off stride, and the quarry escaped him.

Throughout 1943, apparently doing penance, he commanded Kalinin (later First Baltic) front in a secondary sector. After briefly commanding an army in the Crimea in early 1944, he went to Second Baltic front, where he participated for a year in the slow-moving contest for the Baltic States (see Courland). In February 1944, Stalin transferred him to Fourth Ukrainian front, thereby giving him a chance of becoming a marshal if he could make himself the liberator of Czechoslovakia; but his route, through the Carpathians, and the season prevented that.

Earl Ziemke