Ivan Vasilyvich Letlev was the political officer of the Red Army 13th Guards Rifle Division during World War II.
Biography[]
Ivan Letlev was a political commissar of the Soviet Union, holding a high rank in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as one of its political officers. Letlev was a cruel leader, known for his executions of "coward" soldiers, who he defined as soldiers who were either literal cowards, soldiers who did not obey his orders, did not kill enough Germans, or soldiers who were poor-quality, as well as German prisoners.
On 17 December 1941 he took command of the 13th Guards Rifle Division's political bureau and trained his troops before the Battle of Moscow. His army went from using potatoes as practice grenades due to lack of supplies to being a major unit of the Red Army, with his division capturing Pavlov's House from the Wehrmacht and the Spanish Division Azul. Letlev would later be killed in the invasion of Berlin from German gunfire.