Proshlyakov - Marshal of the Soviet Union: Biography

Alexei Proshlyakov - Marshal of the USSR is one of the generals who brought victory over Nazi Germany. From the first days of the war, its units resisted the invaders. For all his life the marshal participated in three wars, in which he displayed both personal courage and the ability for brilliant strategic decisions, for which he was awarded the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Alexei Proshlyakov (marshal): biography

Alexey Ivanovich was born on the eighteenth of February 1901 in the territory of the modern Ryazan region. From a small age I worked hard helping my parents. At the age of sixteen he enters a seminary where he studies for a teacher. But the wind of change overwhelmed the young man's warm heart and he volunteered for the Red Army to fight the enemies of the Soviets. In the twenty-first year as a company commander, he fought in the east.

After returning from the front, he joins the Communist Party. Five years later he begins to serve in the engineering troops. Supervised by the regimental school. Then he serves in the territory of Belarus. Service combines with training. He studies both military strategy and technical details of new types of engineering structures. By the thirty-eighth year he was serving up to the chief of staff.

Liberation campaign of the Red Army

A year later, his unit received orders for the urgent formation of the fourth army. Alexei Proshlyakov was appointed commander of engineering groups (the marshal later wrote that this was a fateful decision). As part of the new compound, his men take part in the Polish Red Army campaign. A few kilometers from the Wehrmacht troops they occupy western Byelorussia.

After the accession of new territories, Proshlyakov is instructed to immediately begin to work out the defensive lines on the western border. In this area there were practically no stable lines of defense, so the Red Army men had to erect them in a hurry. In particular, Proshlyakov was engaged in the construction of the Brest Fortified Area.

The beginning of the Second World War

With the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, the Nazi hammer hit hardest in the area of western Byelorussia, where Proshlyakov was. Marshal described these days as one of the most difficult in life. Under constant bombing, in the turmoil of retreat and panic, he had to quickly create new lines of defense. In a record-breaking short time, it was possible to organize the defense of Mogilev, thanks to which the Nazis for a long time got bogged down.

Nevertheless, the superior forces of the enemy invariably crowded the Red Army men and they had to retreat. Alexei Proshlyakov took up the defense of the capital. In the battle for Moscow, his unit was distinguished by exceptional courage. After that, the engineering troops erected a line of defense around Tula, which the Nazis never managed to break through during the war years.

The decisive battle

In 1942 Alexei was transferred to the south, where he commanded the engineering troops of the Stalingrad Front. Konstantin Rokossovsky personally noted the general as one of the best. Therefore, almost the entire war, he kept it to himself. With the start of the Battle of Stalingrad, a new deputy commander-in-chief, Alexei Proshlyakov (marshal), was appointed. Interesting facts about one of the most bloody battles in the history of mankind he described in his memoirs. In the conditions of constant bombing and terrible cold, his fighters had to bring ammunition and fuel and lubricants to the front line. The defense of the city was also hampered by its almost total destruction.

For the action in the area of Stalingrad, special shock groups were formed, consisting of sappers, archers and firemen. This strategy has shown itself from the positive side already in the first days of application.

It is noteworthy that in almost all the decisive battles Great Patriotic engineering operations were led by Proshlyakov, Marshal of Victory was engaged in strategic planning of the Battle of the Kursk Bulge, the battle for the Dnieper and many others. His troops provided the Red Army during the crossing of the Oder and the invasion of Pomerania.

In the harshest conditions of the storming of Berlin, Proshlyakov directed several directions at once. A few days after the Victory, for these merits, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

After the war

At the end of the Great Patriotic War the Marshal worked in the Red Army Commissariat. Inspected the engineer troops. For a long time he served as Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet troops in the German Democratic Republic. He graduated from the higher academic command courses in Moscow.

Alexei Proshlyakov is Marshal of Victory, he lived in the usual village of Trudovaya-Severnaya, where in forty-five he was given a plot of land. During his stay there he read a lot and wrote memoirs. In the sixty fifth year he became a military inspector and adviser to a group of inspectors general of the USSR.

On December 12, Alexei Proshlyakov (marshal) died in Moscow. A photo of the USSR hero was published on the front pages of many newspapers.