Marshal rokossovsky death
- •
Konstantin Rokossovsky: Marshal of Two Historic Enemies
By Blaine Taylor
The year was 1944, and the embattled Soviet Union’s top-level field commanders were meeting in conclave to discuss Operation Bagration, an upcoming offensive against the retreating German Army. Presiding over the affair was Communist Party General Secretary Josef Stalin himself, and the boss was at odds with his “Polish” cavalry hero from the Russian Civil War days, Konstantin K. Rokossovsky.
At issue was whether the Red Army should stick with Stalin’s longstanding military policy of making a sole breakthrough of the enemy front—in keeping with Red Army combat doctrine—or go with the fractious Rokossovsky’s demand for a dual-penetration approach instead.
Rokossovsky, was on thin ice, as Stalin wasn’t used to being contradicted in front of his own commanders, especially by one who had already narrowly missed being executed during an earlier three-year imprisonment after being falsely charged as both a Polish and Japanese spy.
In the course of torturing Rokossovsky, his jailers had beat
- •
Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky
(1896–1968)
Polish-born Soviet field-marshal. Rokossovsky enlisted in the Tsarist army and joined the Red Army in 1919. Arrested during Stalin's purges, he was released from prison camp to become one of the outstanding generals of World War II, taking part in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and others. His Red Army troops stood by (August–September 1944) on the outskirts of Warsaw without helping in the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupying forces. After the war he was transferred to the Polish army and became Deputy Premier and Minister of Defence under President Bierut. Rokossovsky led the army in a bloody suppression (June 1956) of Polish workers in Poznán, who were demonstrating for “bread and freedom”. On 20 October Polish and Soviet troops exchanged fire; Rokossovsky's troops were recalled to Moscow, and Gomułka's new nationalist government was able to claim some independence from interference by the Soviet Union.
Related content in Oxford Reference
- •
Konstantin Rokossovsky
Konstanty Rokossovsky, Polish: Konstanty Rokossowski, (21 December 1896 in Warsaw - 3 August 1968 in Moscow) was a Marshal of the Soviet Union (1944), a Marshal of Poland (1949), and twice a Hero of the Soviet Union (1944, 1945).
In World War II he commanded an army in the Moscow battle, Bryansk, and Donskoy fronts (in the Stalingrad battle).[1]