Vasily Chuikov
Васи́лий Ива́нович Чуйко́в
“Every German soldier must be made to feel that he is living under the muzzle of a Russian gun”
Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov (Василий Иванович Чуйков) was born in a village south of Moscow in the Russian Empire on February 12, 1900 into a large family that would eventually boast twelve children. He escaped his life as a peasant twelve years later by moving to St. Petersburg to work in a factory, apprenticing as a mechanic. The Revolution came in 1917, and Chuikov joined the Red Guard, eventually joining the Red Army during the subsequent civil war. His first action would be during the long siege of Tsaritsyn on the Volga, before redeploying to fight the White Army of Admiral Kolchak on the Siberian Front.
After the end of the revolution Chuikov’s distingushed combat record led to an appointment to the M. V. Frunze Military Academy, from which he graduated in 1925, staying on another year afterward to study Chinese, and he was subsequently sent as Soviet military attaché in China. He remained there until relations soured between the two countries in 1929, when he served in an intelligence capacity during the short conflict that ensued.
German and Soviet soldiers in Poland, 1939
As war in Europe loomed in 1939, Chuikov was posted as commander of the 4th Army, tasked with participating in the invasion of Poland in mid September. Following the rapid subsequent collapse of the over-extended Polish forces, the 4th Army participated in a joint victory parade with the Wehrmacht in Brest-Litovsk, but this was only the beginning for Chuikov. He soon was sent to take command of the 9th Army during the Soviet invasion of Finland in the early winter.
By the end of 1940 he was back in China, serving as the Red Army’s representative to Chiang Kai-shek. His overarching goal here was to coordinate Soviet material aid to the Chinese to ensure the Japanese were kept tied down and thus not a threat to the eastern USSR, and he oversaw the shipment of vast quantities of arms and munitions to the Nationalists, although an incident involving these weapons being used against the Chinese Communists led to some friction. He remained in China even after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941.
Chuikov in his headquarters during the defense of Stalingrad
He returned home in March of 1942 to join in the Great Patriotic War, and late in that year he took command of the 62nd Army, tasked with the defense of the city of Stalingrad, where he had, decades earlier, had his baptism of fire when it was still called Tsaritsyn. He set up his new command post on a hill near the city, and initiated Stalin’s General Order 227, decreeing that no retreat would be allowed from the city.
During the street fighting for Stalingrad, Chuikov developed a tactic of keeping in as close proximity as possible to the Germans, thereby negating the air superiority enjoyed by the Luftwaffe as well as making it more difficult for German artillery to be effective without friendly fire. His forces put up a tenacious fight against the German 6th Army, but by November the situation was growing precarious as the Red Army found itself with its back to the Volga.
Chuikov addresses his men in Stalingrad as the 62nd Army becomes the 8th Guards Army
In late November the Red Army launched a major counteroffensive to break the Germans at Stalingrad, pushing to encircle the Germans in the city. The Germans had weakened their flanks in order to deploy more troops to break Chuikov’s 62nd Army , and this was exploited in full. Chuikov and his men joined in this attack, pressing their advantage against the Germans until the 6th Army collapsed and surrendered in January of 1943.
Chuikov and the 8th Guards Army subsequently participated in the Soviet drives through Ukraine and into Romania, before being transferred to Marshal Georgi Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front for the offensive into Poland and East Prussia. This would take them to Warsaw and the German “Festungstadt” or Fortress City of Poznan in early 1945.
Chuikov with staff officers at the Seelow Heights
As the end of the war drew near in the spring of 1945 Chuikov and the 8th Guards Army were redeployed again to take a leading role in the Berlin Strategic Offensive, the planned coup de gras intended to capture the German capitol. The symbolism of the defenders of Stalingrad taking a lead in the capture of Berlin was no accident, as Stalin himself had ordered the action. As the Red Army assaulted the last German defenses before the capitol along the Seelow Heights, Chuikov and his men led the way from their bridgehead at Kustrin, penetrating the line and bringing the Fuhrer’s capitol under the guns of the Red Army by April 20th.
German General Hans Krebs outside Chuikov’s headquarters in Berlin
The fighting in Berlin was reminiscent of that in Stalingrad; with brutal hand to hand combat characterizing the battle. Despite the fanatical resistance of the Germans, the Red Army surrounded the city and began to push in from all sides, and on April 30th Adolf Hitler, leading the collapsing Reich from his bunker under the shell-blasted ruin of his Reich Chancellery, commited suicide.
His successor, Josef Goebbels, authorized Army Chief of Staff General Hans Krebs to bring this news to Chuikov with an offer of surrender. Chuikov was the first Allied officer to learn of the death of Hitler, although he attempted to conceal this ignorance from the Germans. He had indeed moments before been in conversation with junior officers and a war correspondent, and when hearing that a German delegation had arrived he hurriedly pushed the reporter into a cupboard and gave medals and high rank insignia to the subordinates to make himself appear more intimidating to the enemy officers. The offer of surrender was extended, but Chuikov rejected anything but unconditional surrender, leading Krebs to leave and Goebbels to commit suicide.
Chuikov attending the victory parade on Red Square in Moscow
The following day Chuikov accepted the unconditional surrender of all German forces in Berlin by General Helmuth Weidling, who was now the senior official in the city the the suicide or flight of what remained of the Wehrmacht command and the government.
Following the end of the war Chuikov remained in command of the 8th Guards as they took up occupation duty in Germany, and in 1949 he was appointed commander of all Soviet troops in Germany. He was eventually reassigned to command the Kiev Military District, being promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1955. He would then serve as commander in chief of the Red Army in the early 1960s, before moving to direct national civil defense until his retirement in 1972. He would spend the rest of his life as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, dying in 1982. He was buried in the Stalingrad memorial on the once fiercely fought over hill Mamayev Kurgan, which he had helped design.
