On Thursday, March 1, Matt Bracken's first novel Enemies Foreign and Domestic will be put into Amazon Kindle's free library, for a period of only four or five days. Mark your calendar, and tell your friends. BTW, I highly recommend Matt's novels. His latest novel, Castigo Cay, is another page-turner.
Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov was a Russian Orthodox seminarian when the Jews and Freemasons carried out their "Russian" Revolution. In 1919, he joined the Red Army. Fighting in the southern theatre in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and the Crimea, he distinguished himself, and rose through the ranks. He joined the Communist Party in 1930. He was a military adviser to the Freemason Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek from 1938 to 1939.11. He was then given command of the 99th Rifle Division, which, after nine months under his leadership, was recognized as one of the best divisions in the Army. General Semyon Timoshenko presented Vlasov with an inscribed gold watch, as he "found the 99th the best of all," and he was promoted to major general.
On 1941.06.22, when the Germans and their allies liberated Russia, Ukraine, The Baltic States, and The Caucasus, Vlasov was commanding the 4th Mechanized Corps. He was decorated 1942.01.24 with the Order of the Red Banner, put in command of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front, and ordered to lead the Lyuban-Chudovo Offensive Operation. Other forces (the Volkhov Front's 4th, 52nd, and 59th Armies, 13th Cavalry Corps, and 4th and 6th Guards Rifle Corps, as well as the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front) failed to exploit Vlasov's advances, and his army was left stranded in German-held territory, was surrounded, and was destroyed. Vlasov rejected a chance to escape by aeroplane, and was captured by the German liberators on 1942.07.12.
With Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Boyarsky, Vlasov wrote a memo to the German military leaders suggesting cooperation between patriotic Russians and the German Army. In Berlin, together with other Soviet officers, he drafted plans for the creation of a Russian provisional government and the recruitment of a Russian army of liberation under Russian command. He founded the Russian Liberation Committee. In Spring 1943, Vlasov wrote an anti-Bolshevik leaflet -- the "Smolensk Proclamation" -- which was dropped from aircraft by the millions on Soviet forces and Jew-controlled territory. Several hundred thousand former Soviet citizens served in the German army wearing the patch of the Russian Liberation Army (Russkaya Osvoboditel'naya Armiya, ROA), but never under Vlasov's command.
On 1943.04.03 Hitler issued directives to dismantle efforts to form a proper ROA. Vlasov was permitted to make several trips to Nazi-occupied Russia: most notably, to Pskov, where Russian pro-German volunteers paraded. Vlasov threatened to return to the POW camp, but was dissuaded by his confidants. In 1944.09, Germany permit Vlasov to raise a proper ROA. He formed and chaired the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, and proclaimed by the Prague Manifesto of 1944.11.14. He also hoped to create a Pan-Slavic liberation congress, but German political officials would not permit it. Vlasov's only combat against the Red Army took place on 1945.02.11, on the river Oder. After three days of battle against overwhelming forces, the First Division of the ROA was forced to retreat, and marched southward to Prague.
On 1945.05.06, Vlasov received a request from the commander of the first ROA division, General Sergei Bunyachenko, for permission to turn his weapons against the SS, and aid Czech resistance fighters in the Prague Uprising. Vlasov at first disapproved, then reluctantly allowed Bunyachenko to proceed. Two days later, the first division was forced to leave Prague, as communist Czech partisans began arresting ROA soldiers in order to hand them over to the Soviets for execution. Vlasov was offered a chance to escape to Spain, but refused, and instead began marching ROA survivors westward.
On 1945.05.10, Vlasov and his men surrendered to Western Allied forces. On 1945.05.12, returning from talks with Captain Richard Donahue (Armor Company Commander, 37th Tank Battalion), Vlasov's car was surrounded by Soviet troops, his American escort did not resist as Vlasov was arrested. He was imprisoned in Moscow's Lubyanka prison. A summary trial held in the summer of 1946 and presided over by Viktor Abakumov sentenced him and eleven other senior officers from his army to death for treason, and they were hanged on 1946.08.01. A memorial dedicated to General Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement was erected at the Novo Deveevo Russian Orthodox convent and cemetery in Nanuet, New York, where twice annually, on the anniversary of Vlasov's execution and on the Sunday following Pascha, a memorial service is held. In 2001, a Russian Federation military prosecutor concluded that the law of rehabilitation of victims of political repressions did not apply to Vlasov and refused to ever consider the case again personally.
will be put into Amazon Kindle's free library, for a period of only four or five days. Mark your calendar, and tell your friends. BTW, I highly recommend Matt's novels. His latest novel, Castigo Cay, is another page-turner.
