Andrey Vlasov (14 September 1901 – 2 August 1946) was a Lieutenant-General of the Soviet Union who led the 2nd Shock Army during World War II. Captured by Nazi Germany in 1942, he collaborated with them and led the "Russian Liberation Army", an anti-Soviet army of Russian POWs. He was executed for treason after the war.
Biography[]
Andrey Vlasov was born on 14 September 1901 in Lomakino, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire. In 1919 he joined the Red Army after giving up his path towards becoming an Orthodox Christian priest, and from 1938 to 1939 he was an adviser to Chiang Kai-shek under the Soviet Union. By June 1941, the start of World War II for the Soviet Union, he was in command of the Soviet 4th Mechanized Corps in Przemysl, Poland. After leading a counterattack against Nazi Germany that retook Solnechogorsk, Vlasov was promoted to command the 2nd Shock Army. However, he was captured by Georg Lindemann's German 18th Army during the Siege of Leningrad, and he decided to collaborate with the Germans so that he could give a better life to the people of Russia than they could get under Joseph Stalin, as well as to prevent himself from getting killed by Stalin for his defeat. His attempts to recruit Russian prisoners in Germany to fight against the Soviet Union were hampered by Adolf Hiter's doubts, and his Russian Liberation Army was not as large as he had hoped. In May 1945, he decided to win the Allied Powers' favor by helping the Soviets and rebels in the Prague Uprising, and he then surrendered to the United States. Vlasov was turned over to the Soviet authorities, who had him tried for treason and hanged in 1946.