Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky (23 November 1898-31 March 1967) was a Marshal of the Soviet Union who commanded the 2nd Ukrainian Front at the end of World War II, playing a major part in the Battle of Stalingrad and the Budapest Offensive. Malinovsky held the title of Supreme Commander of the Far-East Forces from 1947 to 1953, commanding the Soviet forces that might have intervened in the Korean War of 1950-53. From 1953 to 1964 he was also the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Army and the deputy Minister of Defense under Georgy Zhukov.
Biography[]
Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky was born on 23 November 1898 in Odessa in the Russian Empire (present-day Odessa Oblast, Ukraine) to a Karaite father and a Ukrainian mother. Malinovsky was only 15 at the start of World War I in July 1914, but he decided to sneak aboard a train to the front lines to fight against the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. His age was discovered, but his commanders later allowed him to fight alongside the regular soldiers on the Eastern Front. In October 1915 he was badly wounded, but returned to service in 1916 as a member of the Russian expeditionary force that served with the French Foreign Legion on the Western Front in northern France. He was promoted to senior NCO at the end of the war and had been awarded the Croix de Guerre for his services.
In 1919, he returned home to Odessa and joined the Red Army at the start of the Russian Civil War and fought with distinction in the campaign in Siberia against Admiral Alexander Kolchak's White Army there. He graduated from the Frunze Military Academy in 1930 and volunteered for service with the communist forces that fought against Francisco Franco's republican forces during the Spanish Civil War. Upon returning home in 1938, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of Lenin, the two highest accolades of the Soviet Union's military.
During Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 during World War II, Semyon Timoshenko promoted Malinovsky to Major-General and assigned him to command the Soviet 9th Army. He served in the Battle of Stalingrad as one of the major army commanders of the Soviet side, and he is credited with the victory over the Germans alongside Vasily Chuikov and Georgi Zhukov. In late 1943 he was given command of the 3rd Ukrainian Front and served in the Crimea, where he helped with the relief of the Siege of Sevastopol. From December 1943 to April 1944 he launched an offensive against Germany's Army Group South before the start of Operation Bagration and liberated large parts of the Ukraine from Axis control, capturing the cities of Kherson and Odessa and liberating the Crimea from Axis control.
In May 1944, he took command of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, another major force in Operation Bagration. He led his front into the Balkans to fight against Germany, Romania, and Bulgaria, and was able to inflict defeats on Ion Antonescu's Romanian forces. By late August, King Michael I of Romania appealed to his troops to lay down their arms, and Romania was overrun swiftly by Soviet forces. Bulgaria fell without much resistance at all, and Malinovsky moved north into Hungary with the help of the Romanian 1st Army and Romanian 4th Army. His goal was to create a "German Stalingrad", and he wound up capturing 70,000 German and Hungarian troops and capturing the capital of German-occupied Hungary. The victory here led to the collapse of German forces in southern Europe, and he moved north into Czechoslovakia. He was able to liberate the second-largest Czech city of Brno and the First Slovak Republic;s capital of Bratislava before the end of April, and in May, he ended the war in Czechoslovakia.
After the German surrender, Malinovsky was transferred to command Soviet forces in the Far East to defeat Japanese forces in Manchukuo, as promised to the Allies. In August, his forces pushed into Manchukuo and captured the capital city of Harbin (Shenyang), along with other key Japanese cities such as Mukden. The fall of Manchuria persuaded the Japanese to surrender to the United States on 2 September 1945, only a day after the six-year mark of World War II.
From 1947 to 1953, he was the Supreme Commander of the Far-East Forces, and had the Soviet Union joined the Korean War with their army, Malinovsky would have commanded the Soviet troops. From 1953 to 1964 he was the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Army and Deputy Minister of Defense under Georgy Zhukov, holding high rank under his friend, the Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev. After the overthrow of Krushchev in 1964, Malinovsky retired, and he died in 1967.