Ivan Chernyakhovsky
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Ivan Danilovich Chernyakhovsky, (Cherniakhovsky), 1906 - 1945, Russian General of the Army (the youngest ever to have this rank), twice Hero of the Soviet Union, brilliant commander of the 3rd Belorussian Front, died from wounds received outside Knigsberg at age 39. He was the youngest Front commander in the Red Army. He was Jewish by birth.
Some highlights of his brief but very dramatic military career:
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1942: Liberates Kursk
The 60th army of General Ivan Chernyakhovsky hoisted a victorious Red Banner over the city of Kursk on February 8 1942.
1944: Battles in Belarus
The offensive to clear Belarus coincided with a time of great German weakness as after July 20 confusion reigned in the German High Command after Lieutenant Colonel Stauffenberg's failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. The offensive was launched after a four month break in activities because of the spring thaw. The Russians launched their attack on June 22 on four fronts with 146 infantry and 43 armored divisions. General Bagramyan's 1st Baltic Front and General Chernyakhovsky's 3rd Byelorussian Front struck to the north and south of Vitebsk and took the city on June 27. Chernyakhovsky's left wing then took Orsha - this meant that the Moscow - Minsk highway could not be used to threaten the German rear. To the south, General Zakharov's 2nd Belorussian Front, north of the Pripet Marshes, destroyed a force of 33,000 at Babruysk on that day. Chernyakhovsky's army now headed for Minsk. On July 2 his mobile forces reached Stolbtsy, 40 miles away. General Rotmistrov's tanks entered Minsk on 3 July and 50,000 Germans were trapped.
The offensive pressed on to Baranavichy (8 July) and to Hrodna (13 July) on the Polish border. In the south Rokossovsky cleared the Pripet Marshes taking Pinsk and Kovel on 5 July. In the north Bagramyan turned to the Baltic States and took Vilnius in Lithuania and Daugavpils in Latvia on 13 July. This split the Army Group North in two (East Prussia and the Baltic States). The Russians arrived on the Polish border within 24 days and claimed to had taken 158,000 men, 2,000 tanks, 10,000 guns, and 57,000 motor vehicles. They also claimed to have killed 38,000 Germans. It was a resounding defeat for the Germans and Hitler dismissed Busch from the command of Army Group Centre, replacing him with Model. The Russians had swept the Germans from Belorussia by mid-July 1944 and they pressed their advantage by attacking Poland. In the north Generals Chernyakhovsky and Zakharov joined to take Bialystok on 18 July.
1944: Victory in East Prussia
In summer 1944 General Chernyakhovsky pressed the Germans on the frontiers of their own land in East Prussia. His 3rd Belorussian Front drove across the Niemen, taking Kaunas on 1 August, and pressed the eastern border of East Prussia. The center thrust took Suwalki on July 26 and General Bagramyan occupied the Tukums junction on the Gulf of Riga
1944: Into Germany
Prior to his death in 1945, Chernyakhovsky thrust into East Prussia against stiff resistance from the III Panzer Army. He was part of the drive on Berlin. Together with General Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front, which attacking East Prussia from the south and then head north westwards towards the Baltic coast around Danzig (Gdansk), the 3rd Belorussian Front, commanded by General Chernyakhovsky was ordered to attack from the east towards Knigsberg, even though this meant throwing his armies against heavy German defence works. These two fronts mustered 1,670,000 men with 28,360 guns and heavy mortars and 3,300 tanks.
1945: Soviet Supreme Commander of East Prussia - Killed in action
General Rokossovsky's army made contact with Marshal Zhukov's forces at Grudziadz (German: Graudenz) and they wheeled north towards Danzig to cut off East Prussia. More than 500,000 Germans were caught in a pocket, but many were evacuated. On 10 February, Rokossovsky reached the coast near Elbing (Elblag) and East Prussia was under siege from the south and east by the 3rd Byelorussian Front.
From January 1945 until February 18 1945, General Ivan Chernyakhovsky was appointed Soviet supreme commander of East Prussia.
On 1 February General Chernyakhovsky split the pocket by attacking between Elbing and Knigsberg, but Chernyakhovsky was killed in action and General Vasilievsky took over; he crushed a bridgehead at Braunsberg (Braniewo) on March 20 and on April 9, Knigsberg was stormed and surrendered.
General Chernyakhovsky was buried in Vilnius, Lithuania, near a square named for him, but his body was later taken back to Russia in the 1990s after Lithuania, which declared its indendence in 1990, was no longer part of the Soviet Union (which ceased to exist in 1991).
After World War II, when the Soviet Union annexed northern East Prussia and expelled the Germans, the town of Insterburg in East Prussia (now in Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia) was renamed Chernyakhovsk in honor of General Chernyakhovsky.ru:Черняховский, Иван Данилович