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The Russian liberation movement was a group of Soviet soldiers fighting on the side of the German [[Wehrmacht]] in the World War Two.
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The '''Russian Liberation Army (RLA)''',<ref>'''ROA''' is the Russian abbreviation</ref> created from a nucleus of Soviet soldiers captured by the German [[Wehrmacht]] in the early days of the invasion of the [[Soviet Union]] in the [[Second World War]], achieved neither German goals nor its own anti-Soviet objectives. While it had some supporters in the German command structure, it never received full support due to the anti-Slavic doctrines of the Nazis in general and [[Adolf Hitler]] in particular. Lacking any effective German support, it was never more than a "symbolic initiative versus a real fighting force."<ref name=Willis>{{citation
| url = http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA436298 
| title = After the Blitzkrieg: The German Army’s Transition to Defeat in the East
| author = [[Bob E. Willis Jr.]]
| publisher = School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army [[Command and General Staff College]]
| date = Academic Year 2004-2005}}, p. 27</ref>  After the war's end, the Soviets were harsh on its members, whom it considered to be enemies of the state.


== Declared foundation of the Russian liberation movement: Proponent angle ==
Relations between the Soviet Union and Germany, prior to the German invasion and during the first years of fighting, were complex. Germany had achieved strategic surprise with its attack, with success in both the diplomacy of the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]] of 1939 and clandestine deception.  Soviet theory called avoiding war with German the "wise peace policy" of Comrade Stalin.<ref>{{citation
| title = The United Front: The Struggle Against Fascism and War
| editor = Georgi Dimitroff
| publisher = Proletarian Publishers 
| year = 1975
| url = http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/TUF35i.html
| contribution = The Present Rulers of the Capitalist Countries Are But Temporary; The Real Master of the World Is the Proletariat (Seventh Communist International, 1935)
| author = [[Josef Stalin]] and  Georgi Dimitroff
}}, p. 133</ref>


A large group of Soviet soliders wanted to fight for the liberation of [[Russia]] or the nations of the [[Soviet Union]] from the existing system lead by [[Iosif Stalin]].<br/>
Writing about the invasion planning some 60 years later, then-Major [[Bob E. Willis Jr.]] of the U.S. Army observed that "very little effort was expended on the transition between the destruction of the Red Army and the establishment of the security necessary to realize the ultimate political and economic goals."  His paper for the School of Advanced Military Studies draws parallels between the effective military operations in this operation, as well as the U.S. advance in the [[Iraq War]], and the failure to establish the post-high-intensity-combat environment.
An opportunity to achieve this goal was presented with the German invasion. In June 1942, leaflets encouraging Soviet soldiers to lay down their arms and welcome Adolf Hitler as the liberator were dropped at the front and in the areas being occupied. As a counter-move, the Soviet leadership attempted to paint a picture of the German as an evil enemy – the Germans, who were allies a short time ago. As Soviet citizens were accustomed to reading between the lines in the official statements, this campaign made little impression on the population. Part of the Soviet soldiers and civilians had had contact with Germans in the 1st World War and could not match their personal impression with the one offered in official publications.<br/>
Also, this alliance gone sour produced another alliance with the former (and later) arch enemies Great Britain and USA. This strengthened the impression that the priorities of the Soviet leadership were not in reality what they were officially.<br/>
And so, there was an interest in an alliance with the German state. This because it was impossible to imagine that it could be the intention of German leadership to conquer and continually occupy all of the Soviet Union, due to its massive size – not to mention the experience with the Russian geography done by [[Napoleon]]. Ergo, it would be in the interest of [[Nazi Germany]] to cooperate with a group interested in creating an alliance, in which the Soviet Union – or Russia, depending on which interest group was consulted – would exist as a democratic republic – or, as some suggested, a monarchy again – which would be a supportive military and trade ally of Germany.<br/>
Germany was seen as a nation with positive associations, because it was part of a European traditionally shared cultural community. It also had a certain effect that it was a practicing Christian society, as opposed to the Soviet Union, in which the state had made a substantial and rather heavy-handed effort to eliminate religious practice.<br/>
The figurehead of the movement was Lieutenant General [[Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov]], a decorated war hero, who had made his way up through the ranks of the [[Red Army]], based on merit. In the autobiography of one of the leaders of the Southern Front, responsible for the defence of [[Kiev]] – and later General Secretary [[Nikika S. Khrushchev]], Vlasov is mentioned as an able commander.<br/>
After the defeat of his 2nd Shock Army in the summer of 1942, Vlasov is captured by German forces. He offers to fight in an established Russian liberation army.<br/>
While working on this, he stresses some good things with the Soviet system as opposed to Imperial Russia, but he also stresses that which is unacceptable in the new system – that the system is not, what it is pretending to be.
The German army responded positively to the idea, but postponed taking full advantage of it due to the scepticism of the political leadership, based on ideological issues. Vlasov was allowed to travel to POW camps and occupied areas, where he presented his cause – which was popular, and the soldiers already active in the Wehrmacht, albeit not as part of a common coordinated force, started wearing the ROA insignia, as they saw themselves as part of a shared cause – a liberation army.<br/>


==Soviet context==
Prior to the invasion, there had been a brief period of relatively warm German-Soviet relations. Soviet citizens, independent of ethnic Russian patriotism, had had much reason, however, to distrust their own government. Memories of the "Great Terror", or massive purges of the 1930s, were fresh, and both Soviet leadership and ordinary citizens lived in fear of the [[Organs of State Security]].  As long as the Soviet government could not stimulate patriotic sentiment, there indeed were conditions where Germany might turn opposition to its advantage. Ironically, Stalin was probably more concerned about this threat than was Hitler.


== The Soviet official position: Critical angle ==
===Invasion===
[[Stalin]] received a warning document, in May 1939, about ''The Future Plans of Aggression by Fascist Germany,'' based on a German briefing obtained by Soviet spies in Warsaw. A Soviet agent first reported that [[Hitler]] planned to declare war on the Soviet Union in March 1941, and refined the estimate, by February 28, to May 20. Confirmation came from sources in Bucharest, Budapest, Sofia and Rome, and especially  the [[Richard Sorge]] (code-named Ramsay) espionage network in Tokyo; Sorge's cover identity was that of a German journalist and he had excellent contacts in German circles. <ref name =Prange>{{cite book
| author = Gordon Prange
| title = Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring
| publisher = McGraw-Hill
| year = 1984
| ISBN=0070506779}}</ref>. On April 17 a Prague informant predicted a German invasion in the second half of June. The precise date and time of the invasion were revealed by a reliable source in Berlin fully three days before the Germans attacked: June 21.


A minor group of Soviet citizens cooperated with the German occupation force. The collaborators were either former prisoners of war or soldiers and civilians, who changed sides during the war.<br/>
Stalin refused to believe the threat. Typically, he scrawled on the bottom of the Prague report: ''English provocation! Investigate!'' On May 19, Sorge predicted that 150 divisions were being readied by the Germans for an invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin retorted with an expletive.
Having surrendered to the invaders, the prisoners of war were already counted as traitors by Soviet definition, as these were considered people, who were not willing to make an effort and sacrifice to defend their country – who had let themselves get surrounded on the battlefield and taken the easy way out by surrendering instead of fighting to the end. Volunteering for the liberation movement after capture demonstrates their weakness, either by making the choice based on threats of physical abuse, or allowing themselves to be bribed with pay, food and relative freedom.<br/>
 
The soldiers and civilians, who changed sides, were perceived as cowards and opportunists in the same fashion, as people willing to sacrifice the future of their homeland to be on the (apparently) winning side, where it was possible to gain something for oneself. It was seen as typical for the kind of people who are weak and deceitful by nature – or as a variation of this, people who had lost land, fortune and privileges with the people's revolution, well-off families and large-scale farmers ([[kulaki]]), who had no interest in the preservation of the Soviet Union.
Literally nothing was done to prepare for the German assault. Soviet planes were not camouflaged. Troops were not in defensive positions; indeed they were ordered not to occupy such positions, for fear of provoking the Germans. Worse, Stalin responded to the gathering storm with yet another purge of suspected threats to his own authority.  Stalin had previously, in 1937, purged the senior command staff of the Red Army, leaving a leadership vacuum when the Germans launched the [[Operation Barbarossa]] invasion.
Vlasov had allowed the defeat of the 2nd Shock Army and surrendered to the German army in order to live comfortably and benefit. He, too, was a chameleon, who made his alliances, where he found a winning side. Upon capture, he let the Wehrmacht use him as a propaganda marionet, partly to weaken the moral of the soldiers of the Red Army, partly to keep the prisoners of war passive and partly to recruit troops, that could be used for various purposes of use to the Wehrmacht. This treason was compounded by the establishment of the [[Comittee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia]] (KONR), where he not only led his German masters lead him, but actively took control in the campaign against his homeland.<br/>
===Security operations===
The assumptions about Vlasov are confirmed by the circumstances around his capture by Soviet soldiers; he was captured on the way to the American sector, where he was found to be in possession of a large amount of money. This is interpreted as meaning that he had gained what he could and was searching for a new winning master – yet another capitalist state, which the USSR had allied with temporarily, but which should be treated with caution.
Even though the Soviets did not do well in preventing the formation of the RLA, they had significant intelligence penetration of German-sponsored resistance movements. Boris Miklashevsky was a former boxing champion and clandestine intelligence officer, resident in Berlin between 1941 and 1944. After the war's end, he was assigned to hunting down RLA forces; he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and returned to boxing in 1947.<ref name = Sudoplatov>{{cite book 
During the final trial in 1946, he admitted to having lost heart, that he was offended by his country, and admitted to his treason. So, when he and his inner circle were hanged, they got the punishment which was to be expected  and deserved for traitors of such a caliber.<br/>
| author = [[Pavel Sudoplatov]]
| coauthors =  Anatoli Sudoplatov, Jerrold L. Schecter, Leona P. Schecter
| title = Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster
| publisher = Little, Brown and Company
| year = 1994
| isbn = 0316773522}}, pp. 115-116</ref>
 
===Early defeats and Vlasov===
After the invasion on June 21, Soviet defenses were ineffective. The Volkhov Front <ref>A Soviet front was a high command headquarters roughly equivalent to a U.K. or U.S. Army Group</ref>had been formed in late 1941. It was positioned to support the Leningrad Front, and later as a counterattack force to help break the siege of Leningrad. Red Army [[lieutenant general]] <ref>A Soviet lieutenant general is equivalent to a two-star Western [[major general]]</ref> [[Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov]] (1900-1946) was made its deputy commander of the Front in March 1942, arriving directly from General Headquarters, accompanied by [[Georgi Malenkov]], a member of the inner cabinet, and Marshal [[Kliment Voroshilov]], defense minister. This indicated he was regarded well at the high command level; subsequent criticism of his military skills are likely to be part of the Soviet effort to discredit a traitor.<ref name=Andreyev>{{citation
| title = Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories
  | author = Catherine Andreyev
| url = http://books.google.com/books?id=ORYvFXeW8OAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Vlasov+and+the+Russian+Liberation+Movement%22&source=bl&ots=PdegpMPY6h&sig=AhF9lNLexOy-gL1r094NPKeB9WU&hl=en&ei=IuGRS_WpDtaOtgfEnI3VCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false
| publisher = Cambridge University Press
| year = 1987
| isbn = 9780521389600
}}, pp. 24-26</ref>
 
The Volkhov Front, however, was dissolved on 23 April, and subordinated to the Leningrad Front. Vlasov was reassigned, after its commander became seriously ill, to command one of major counterattack forces, the Second Shock Army.  It was overrun in late June. There are reports that Merentsov tried to rescue Vlasov with a tank unit, but he preferred to share the fate of his men.<ref>Andreyev, p. 28</ref>   He was captured during this time.
 
After issuing several no-retreat orders, Stalin issued Directive 270 on 16 August 1942:  <ref>{{citation
| title =  The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II
| author = Andrew Nagorski
| url = http://books.google.com/books?id=ubWQW24RiqsC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=Stalin%22Order+270%22&source=bl&ots=76Wja1CfBT&sig=WPSOP0uEulikmwlv4n5a2efksrA&hl=en&ei=wlCUS8z2KIH28QbTpLmoBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CCEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Stalin%22Order%20270%22&f=false
| publisher = Simon & Schuster | year = 2007 | isbn = 978-0743281102
}}, p. 71 </ref> "I order that
#anyone who removes his insignia during battle and surrenders should be treated as a malicious deserter whose family is to be arrested as a breaker of the oath and betrayer of the Motherland. Such deserters are to be shot on the spot.
#Those falling into encirclement should fight to the last and try to reach their own lines. And those who prefer to surrender should be destroyed by any available means, while their families are to be deprived of all State allowances and assistance."
===Capture and early opposition===
After his capture, Vlasov worked in developing anti-Soviet statements, culminating in the [[Smolensk Manifesto]] of 27 December 1942.<ref name=Parrish>{{citation
| http://books.google.com/books?id=3mtxloeK994C&pg=PA425&lpg=PA425&dq=%22Smolensk+manifesto%22&source=bl&ots=TB1bKUCd2R&sig=I1M485bbq-g5s1T4uqmyig7zn44&hl=en&ei=OiWTS_jzI5GXtgeVttnUCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBkQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22Smolensk%20manifesto%22&f=false
| title = Sacrifice of the generals: Soviet senior officer losses, 1939-1953
| author = Michael Parrish
| isbn= 978-0-8108-5009-5
| year = 2004
}}, p. 425</ref> While it opposed the Soviets and proposed an opposition, it was not pro-German.
 
By June 1943, he was arrested by Hitler for being too independent, although he later met with Himmler and others and issued the [[Prague Manifesto]] of 14 November 1944.<ref>{{citation
| title = Twentieth century Russia
| author = Donald W. Treadgold, Herbert J. Ellison
| url = http://books.google.com/books?id=Xs8sYy1vIS0C&pg=PA302&lpg=PA302&dq=%22Prague+Manifesto%22+Vlasov&source=bl&ots=k20VxVwBBN&sig=zU562I6kl9bqFS8WloE6bGCkMoU&hl=en&ei=nSeTS92HEI21tgfjmNDUCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CBIQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=%22Prague%20Manifesto%22%20Vlasov&f=false
| year = 1999 | isbn = 978-0813336725
| publisher = Westwood Press}}, p. 302</ref>
 
===Lack of development===
While the RLA was under the command of Vlasov, the Germans never fully armed it nor gave it an adequate command structure. Instead, they regarded it as the putative military wing of the German-created [[Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia]] (KONR). 
===War's end===
Vlasov was tried by the Soviets and executed in 1946.<ref name=RFE>{{citation
| url = http://files.osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/68-1-258.shtml
| publisher = [[Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty|Radio Free Europe Research]]
| title = General Vlasov's Last Hours
| date = 27 April 1973}}</ref>    The Soviet trial record says "Here is where things got bogged down. The prisoners
of war refused to serve in the ROA. With the greatest
of effort, Vlasov was able to recruit people for the
second division. Hitlerites who were aware of the
pro-Soviet mood among the majority of the soldiers in
this division, provided them with no weapons until the
end of the war."
 
No personal papers of Vlasov are known to exist. Even though the number of anti-Soviets may have been in the millions, Vlasov was only allowed to form a two [[division]] force in January 1945. <ref>Andreyev, p. 3</ref> Earlier, some of the ROA troops were used against Soviet guerrillas in the Balkans and against the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1944.<ref>Sudoplatov, p. 170n.</ref>
 
While the Soviet official position was that he was merely an opportunist, his commander, Marshal K. A. Meretskov, said the defeat of his force in 1942 was due to more than his choice. <ref>Andreyev, p. 10</ref> Vlasov, as opposed to his subordinates, never wore a German uniform. He joined the Red Army in 1919, and rose through the ranks, entering the Communist Party in 1930.<ref>Andreyev, pp. 19-21</ref>
 
At his trial, which started on 30 July 1946, the Soviet record states all responses were voluntary. <ref>A.V. Tishkov: "Predatel' pered sovetskim sudom" in Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo" No. 2/1973, cited by RFE</ref> Vlasov was quoted as saying "I took advantage of the invasion of the Germans in the village where I was and surrendered voluntarily."
 
==German context==
Hitler was personally opposed to any strategic relationships with independent leadership in the East. Even tactically, Germany simply was unprepared to fight on an effective political and psychological level, dooming any Russian resistance.
===Policy level===
During the invasion planning on March 1941, he stated policy (<u>emphasis added</u>) as <blockquote>'''Clash of two ideologies'''. Crushing denunciation of Bolshevism, identified with a social criminality. Communism is an enormous danger for our future. We must forget the concept of comradeship between soldiers. A Communist is no comrade before nor after the battle. This is a war of extermination. If we fail to grasp this, and though we are sure to beat the enemy, we shall again have to fight the Communist foe 30 years from now. We do not wage war to preserve the enemy. . . .
<br /><br />
'''War against Russia'''. Extermination of the Bolshevist Commissars and of the Communist intelligentsia. <u>The new States must be Socialist, but without intellectual classes of their own. Growth of a new intellectual class must be prevented. A primitive Socialist intelligentsia is all that is needed.</u> We must fight against the poison of disintegration. This is no job for military courts. The individual troop commander must know the issues at stake. They must be leaders in the fight. The troops must fight back with the methods with which they are attacked. Commissars and [[Organs of State Security|GPU]] men are criminals and must be dealt with as such. This need not mean that the troops get out of hand. Rather the commander must give orders which express the common feelings of his troops.
<ref name=NMT-High-Comm>{{citation
| url = http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/wcc/ghctrial3.htm
| title = Case No. 72  [[High Command Case (NMT)|The German High Command Trial]], Trial of [[Wilhelm von Leeb]] and thirteen others
| publisher = United States Military Tribunal, Nuremberg
| date = 30 December 1947-28 October 1948
| contribution = Part III, (b)  Evidence with Particular Reference to the Commissar Order
| author = [[Adolf Hitler]], quoted in war diary by [[Fritz Halder]]}}</ref></blockquote>
As was typical under Hitler (and, to a lesser extent, Stalin), authority was split. Hitler himself, as well as [[Alfred Rosenberg]]'s ''Ostministerium'', had no interest in an independent Slav state, but rather its exploitation.
 
[[Joseph Goebbels]],  Propaganda Minister, noted in April 1942 that Ukrainians had initially welcomed the Germans, but had turned against them due to harsh treatment. He favored working with puppet regimes, and taking a stand of fighting Bolshevism rather than the Russian people, although German domination was never questioned.<ref>Andreyev, p. 31</ref>
 
===Opposition===
As an example, General [[Walter von Reichenau]], commanding the  German Sixth Army in the invasion, penned his own order that “historic and cultural values do not have any significance.<ref name=Grenkevich>{{citation
| author = Leonid Grenkevich
| title = The Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941-1944
| publisher = Frank Cass and Company | year = 1999}}, p. 9, ''cited by'' Willis</ref>  The movement, surprisingly given the racial theories of the [[Schutzstaffel]], did have the support of [[Heinrich Himmler]], but "continuously derailed by Hitler’s refusal to alter his policy on limited self-rule and the creation of an autonomous Russian Army in the occupied areas...From historical hindsight however, it is clear that Stalin and the Soviet government effectively tapped into the Russian cultural consciousness whereas Hitler and the German Army proved unable, or unwilling, to do the same."<ref>Willis, p. 43</ref>
 
===Support===
Key to establishing the preconditions for the RLA was Captain [[Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt]], an ethnic Baltic German who had served in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I.<ref>{{citation
| author = Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt
| title = Against Stalin and Hitler: Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement, 1941-1945  | publisher = Macmillan | year = 1970}}</ref> He joined to join German Army Group Center in 1941, serving on Russian affairs as special advisor to Field Marshal [[Fedor von Bock]]. His official role was to train Russian propagandists for the German military. His personal goal, in the special camp he established at Dabendorf near Berlin, to form a resistance army.<ref>Willis, pp. 40-41</ref>
 
==References==
{{reflist|2}}[[Category:Suggestion Bot Tag]]

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The Russian Liberation Army (RLA),[1] created from a nucleus of Soviet soldiers captured by the German Wehrmacht in the early days of the invasion of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, achieved neither German goals nor its own anti-Soviet objectives. While it had some supporters in the German command structure, it never received full support due to the anti-Slavic doctrines of the Nazis in general and Adolf Hitler in particular. Lacking any effective German support, it was never more than a "symbolic initiative versus a real fighting force."[2] After the war's end, the Soviets were harsh on its members, whom it considered to be enemies of the state.

Relations between the Soviet Union and Germany, prior to the German invasion and during the first years of fighting, were complex. Germany had achieved strategic surprise with its attack, with success in both the diplomacy of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 and clandestine deception. Soviet theory called avoiding war with German the "wise peace policy" of Comrade Stalin.[3]

Writing about the invasion planning some 60 years later, then-Major Bob E. Willis Jr. of the U.S. Army observed that "very little effort was expended on the transition between the destruction of the Red Army and the establishment of the security necessary to realize the ultimate political and economic goals." His paper for the School of Advanced Military Studies draws parallels between the effective military operations in this operation, as well as the U.S. advance in the Iraq War, and the failure to establish the post-high-intensity-combat environment.

Soviet context

Prior to the invasion, there had been a brief period of relatively warm German-Soviet relations. Soviet citizens, independent of ethnic Russian patriotism, had had much reason, however, to distrust their own government. Memories of the "Great Terror", or massive purges of the 1930s, were fresh, and both Soviet leadership and ordinary citizens lived in fear of the Organs of State Security. As long as the Soviet government could not stimulate patriotic sentiment, there indeed were conditions where Germany might turn opposition to its advantage. Ironically, Stalin was probably more concerned about this threat than was Hitler.

Invasion

Stalin received a warning document, in May 1939, about The Future Plans of Aggression by Fascist Germany, based on a German briefing obtained by Soviet spies in Warsaw. A Soviet agent first reported that Hitler planned to declare war on the Soviet Union in March 1941, and refined the estimate, by February 28, to May 20. Confirmation came from sources in Bucharest, Budapest, Sofia and Rome, and especially the Richard Sorge (code-named Ramsay) espionage network in Tokyo; Sorge's cover identity was that of a German journalist and he had excellent contacts in German circles. [4]. On April 17 a Prague informant predicted a German invasion in the second half of June. The precise date and time of the invasion were revealed by a reliable source in Berlin fully three days before the Germans attacked: June 21.

Stalin refused to believe the threat. Typically, he scrawled on the bottom of the Prague report: English provocation! Investigate! On May 19, Sorge predicted that 150 divisions were being readied by the Germans for an invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin retorted with an expletive.

Literally nothing was done to prepare for the German assault. Soviet planes were not camouflaged. Troops were not in defensive positions; indeed they were ordered not to occupy such positions, for fear of provoking the Germans. Worse, Stalin responded to the gathering storm with yet another purge of suspected threats to his own authority. Stalin had previously, in 1937, purged the senior command staff of the Red Army, leaving a leadership vacuum when the Germans launched the Operation Barbarossa invasion.

Security operations

Even though the Soviets did not do well in preventing the formation of the RLA, they had significant intelligence penetration of German-sponsored resistance movements. Boris Miklashevsky was a former boxing champion and clandestine intelligence officer, resident in Berlin between 1941 and 1944. After the war's end, he was assigned to hunting down RLA forces; he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and returned to boxing in 1947.[5]

Early defeats and Vlasov

After the invasion on June 21, Soviet defenses were ineffective. The Volkhov Front [6]had been formed in late 1941. It was positioned to support the Leningrad Front, and later as a counterattack force to help break the siege of Leningrad. Red Army lieutenant general [7] Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov (1900-1946) was made its deputy commander of the Front in March 1942, arriving directly from General Headquarters, accompanied by Georgi Malenkov, a member of the inner cabinet, and Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, defense minister. This indicated he was regarded well at the high command level; subsequent criticism of his military skills are likely to be part of the Soviet effort to discredit a traitor.[8]

The Volkhov Front, however, was dissolved on 23 April, and subordinated to the Leningrad Front. Vlasov was reassigned, after its commander became seriously ill, to command one of major counterattack forces, the Second Shock Army. It was overrun in late June. There are reports that Merentsov tried to rescue Vlasov with a tank unit, but he preferred to share the fate of his men.[9] He was captured during this time.

After issuing several no-retreat orders, Stalin issued Directive 270 on 16 August 1942: [10] "I order that

  1. anyone who removes his insignia during battle and surrenders should be treated as a malicious deserter whose family is to be arrested as a breaker of the oath and betrayer of the Motherland. Such deserters are to be shot on the spot.
  2. Those falling into encirclement should fight to the last and try to reach their own lines. And those who prefer to surrender should be destroyed by any available means, while their families are to be deprived of all State allowances and assistance."

Capture and early opposition

After his capture, Vlasov worked in developing anti-Soviet statements, culminating in the Smolensk Manifesto of 27 December 1942.[11] While it opposed the Soviets and proposed an opposition, it was not pro-German.

By June 1943, he was arrested by Hitler for being too independent, although he later met with Himmler and others and issued the Prague Manifesto of 14 November 1944.[12]

Lack of development

While the RLA was under the command of Vlasov, the Germans never fully armed it nor gave it an adequate command structure. Instead, they regarded it as the putative military wing of the German-created Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR).

War's end

Vlasov was tried by the Soviets and executed in 1946.[13] The Soviet trial record says "Here is where things got bogged down. The prisoners of war refused to serve in the ROA. With the greatest of effort, Vlasov was able to recruit people for the second division. Hitlerites who were aware of the pro-Soviet mood among the majority of the soldiers in this division, provided them with no weapons until the end of the war."

No personal papers of Vlasov are known to exist. Even though the number of anti-Soviets may have been in the millions, Vlasov was only allowed to form a two division force in January 1945. [14] Earlier, some of the ROA troops were used against Soviet guerrillas in the Balkans and against the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1944.[15]

While the Soviet official position was that he was merely an opportunist, his commander, Marshal K. A. Meretskov, said the defeat of his force in 1942 was due to more than his choice. [16] Vlasov, as opposed to his subordinates, never wore a German uniform. He joined the Red Army in 1919, and rose through the ranks, entering the Communist Party in 1930.[17]

At his trial, which started on 30 July 1946, the Soviet record states all responses were voluntary. [18] Vlasov was quoted as saying "I took advantage of the invasion of the Germans in the village where I was and surrendered voluntarily."

German context

Hitler was personally opposed to any strategic relationships with independent leadership in the East. Even tactically, Germany simply was unprepared to fight on an effective political and psychological level, dooming any Russian resistance.

Policy level

During the invasion planning on March 1941, he stated policy (emphasis added) as

Clash of two ideologies. Crushing denunciation of Bolshevism, identified with a social criminality. Communism is an enormous danger for our future. We must forget the concept of comradeship between soldiers. A Communist is no comrade before nor after the battle. This is a war of extermination. If we fail to grasp this, and though we are sure to beat the enemy, we shall again have to fight the Communist foe 30 years from now. We do not wage war to preserve the enemy. . . .



War against Russia. Extermination of the Bolshevist Commissars and of the Communist intelligentsia. The new States must be Socialist, but without intellectual classes of their own. Growth of a new intellectual class must be prevented. A primitive Socialist intelligentsia is all that is needed. We must fight against the poison of disintegration. This is no job for military courts. The individual troop commander must know the issues at stake. They must be leaders in the fight. The troops must fight back with the methods with which they are attacked. Commissars and GPU men are criminals and must be dealt with as such. This need not mean that the troops get out of hand. Rather the commander must give orders which express the common feelings of his troops.

[19]

As was typical under Hitler (and, to a lesser extent, Stalin), authority was split. Hitler himself, as well as Alfred Rosenberg's Ostministerium, had no interest in an independent Slav state, but rather its exploitation.

Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister, noted in April 1942 that Ukrainians had initially welcomed the Germans, but had turned against them due to harsh treatment. He favored working with puppet regimes, and taking a stand of fighting Bolshevism rather than the Russian people, although German domination was never questioned.[20]

Opposition

As an example, General Walter von Reichenau, commanding the German Sixth Army in the invasion, penned his own order that “historic and cultural values do not have any significance.[21] The movement, surprisingly given the racial theories of the Schutzstaffel, did have the support of Heinrich Himmler, but "continuously derailed by Hitler’s refusal to alter his policy on limited self-rule and the creation of an autonomous Russian Army in the occupied areas...From historical hindsight however, it is clear that Stalin and the Soviet government effectively tapped into the Russian cultural consciousness whereas Hitler and the German Army proved unable, or unwilling, to do the same."[22]

Support

Key to establishing the preconditions for the RLA was Captain Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, an ethnic Baltic German who had served in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I.[23] He joined to join German Army Group Center in 1941, serving on Russian affairs as special advisor to Field Marshal Fedor von Bock. His official role was to train Russian propagandists for the German military. His personal goal, in the special camp he established at Dabendorf near Berlin, to form a resistance army.[24]

References

  1. ROA is the Russian abbreviation
  2. Bob E. Willis Jr. (Academic Year 2004-2005), After the Blitzkrieg: The German Army’s Transition to Defeat in the East, School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army Command and General Staff College, p. 27
  3. Josef Stalin and Georgi Dimitroff (1975), The Present Rulers of the Capitalist Countries Are But Temporary; The Real Master of the World Is the Proletariat (Seventh Communist International, 1935), in Georgi Dimitroff, The United Front: The Struggle Against Fascism and War, Proletarian Publishers, p. 133
  4. Gordon Prange (1984). Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring. McGraw-Hill. 
  5. Pavel Sudoplatov; Anatoli Sudoplatov, Jerrold L. Schecter, Leona P. Schecter (1994). Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0316773522. , pp. 115-116
  6. A Soviet front was a high command headquarters roughly equivalent to a U.K. or U.S. Army Group
  7. A Soviet lieutenant general is equivalent to a two-star Western major general
  8. Catherine Andreyev (1987), Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521389600, pp. 24-26
  9. Andreyev, p. 28
  10. Andrew Nagorski (2007), The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-0743281102, p. 71
  11. Michael Parrish (2004), Sacrifice of the generals: Soviet senior officer losses, 1939-1953, ISBN 978-0-8108-5009-5, p. 425
  12. Donald W. Treadgold, Herbert J. Ellison (1999), Twentieth century Russia, Westwood Press, ISBN 978-0813336725, p. 302
  13. General Vlasov's Last Hours, Radio Free Europe Research, 27 April 1973
  14. Andreyev, p. 3
  15. Sudoplatov, p. 170n.
  16. Andreyev, p. 10
  17. Andreyev, pp. 19-21
  18. A.V. Tishkov: "Predatel' pered sovetskim sudom" in Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo" No. 2/1973, cited by RFE
  19. Adolf Hitler, quoted in war diary by Fritz Halder (30 December 1947-28 October 1948), Part III, (b) Evidence with Particular Reference to the Commissar Order, Case No. 72 The German High Command Trial, Trial of Wilhelm von Leeb and thirteen others, United States Military Tribunal, Nuremberg
  20. Andreyev, p. 31
  21. Leonid Grenkevich (1999), The Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941-1944, Frank Cass and Company, p. 9, cited by Willis
  22. Willis, p. 43
  23. Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt (1970), Against Stalin and Hitler: Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement, 1941-1945, Macmillan
  24. Willis, pp. 40-41