Vasilevsky, Marshal Aleksandr

Vasilevsky, Marshal Aleksandr (1895–1977),Red Army officer who, although he was among the foremost in ability, was one of the least celebrated Soviet marshals. This was probably because his education for the priesthood, service as an officer in the tsarist army, and belated entry into the Communist Party (in 1938) did not fit the preferred image. He may himself have considered a certain obscurity advisable.

The German–Soviet war accelerated his career. A colonel with twenty years' service transferred into the general staff in 1938, he became its chief and a member of the Stavka, in May 1942. Four months later Stalin, his faith in his own military genius badly shaken, gave Zhukov and Vasilevsky a free hand in planning and managing a Soviet winter offensive. The results were the victory at Stalingrad, recovery of the Caucasus, and a German retreat to the line from which they had started their summer campaign. Vasilevsky, who was at the front throughout the winter, received a two-step promotion to Marshal of the Soviet Union in February 1943. Thereafter, although he retained the title until early 1945, he did not resume the duties of chief of the general staff. Zhukov, distinctly abrasive, and Vasilevsky, somewhat benign, both highly competent, had given Stalin what he sorely needed: a team capable of handling operations equalling in scale those the German field marshals had conducted.

The collaboration continued in the battle of Kursk and the 1943 summer offensive, which evolved into winter and spring offensives in 1944 during which Vasilevsky co-ordinated Third and Fourth Ukrainian fronts (army groups) in the advance from the lower Dnieper to the Dniester and Prut rivers. In June and July 1944, after organizing it, he and Zhukov co-ordinated fronts in the operation that destroyed Army Group Centre, the strongest German Army Group.

The subsequent course of his fronts—Third Belorussian and First and Second Baltic—took him off the direct line of approach to Germany and towards east Prussia, Lithuania, and Latvia, which no longer figured significantly in the military outcome of the war but were extremely important to Stalin. Until February 1945, Vasilevsky co-ordinated the fronts on the north flank, and thereafter, until May, he commanded Third Baltic front. From 9 August to 2 September, as C-in-C of Soviet Far Eastern Forces he conducted operations against the Kwantung Army in Manchukuo.

Earl Ziemke