Batov Pavel Ivanovich (1.06.1897-19.04.1985) - one of the combat commanders of the Red Army during the Second World War, a participant in the Spanish Civil War , twice Hero of the Soviet Union.
Childhood and youth
Who was Pavel Ivanovich Batov by birth? His biography began in the family of Yaroslavl peasants in a village near Rybinsk. After studying for a couple of years in a rural school, already a 13-year-old teenager, Pavel was forced to start earning a living. He goes to St. Petersburg, where he works, as they would put it now, in the service sector - he delivers various purchases to addresses. At the same time manages to engage in self-education, so that externally passes exams for 6 classes of the school.
At the beginning of a military career
Pavel Batov began his military career on the battlefields of the First World War. An 18-year-old volunteer, he was enrolled in the training team of the 3rd Life Guards Rifle Regiment in 1915. He came to the front the following year, served as commander of a reconnaissance unit, showed courage and was twice awarded the St. George Crosses. After being wounded and cured in a hospital in Petrograd, he was appointed to the training team to prepare for the ensign school, where agitator A. Savkov introduced him to the political program of the Bolsheviks.
Civil war and the interwar period
Batov Pavel Ivanovich served for four years in the Red Army during the Civil War, first as a commander of a platoon of machine gunners, then as an assistant to the chief of the Rybinsk military enlistment office, he served in the apparatus of the military district in Moscow. Since 1919, in the combat units of the Red Army commanded a company.
In 1926 he graduated from the officer courses "Shot" and was appointed to command the battalion of an elite military unit - the 1st Infantry Division. He will serve in this unit for the next nine years, rising to the post of regiment commander. During this period, Batov Pavel Ivanovich graduated from the Frunze Academy in absentia.
Spanish Civil War
Colonel Batov Pavel Ivanovich in 1936, under the name of Pablo Fritz, was sent as a military adviser to the Spanish Republican army, to the 12th inter-brigade under the command of the famous General Lukac, under whose name the Hungarian revolutionary Mate Zalka fought. In June 1937, Batov and Zalka, during a trip in a car for reconnaissance in the area of the city of Huesca, came under fire from enemy artillery. At the same time, Zalka was killed, and Batov, who was sitting next to him in the back seat and was seriously wounded, still survived.
Oddly enough, but probably this tragic episode played a role in the fact that Batov was not touched during the “Yezhovshchina” period when, after being wounded, he returned to his homeland in August 1937. It is no secret that almost all military advisers who visited Spain, along with their leader Antonov-Ovseenko, were destroyed upon their return home. The Stalinist satraps did not like the people who fought alongside the anarchists, Trotskyists, adherents of bourgeois democracy, who were many in the Spanish inter-brigades. But Batova, as they say, this cup has passed, because blaming a man whose blood literally mixed with the blood of General Lukac, who became one of the symbols of resistance to fascism, was clearly politically unprofitable.
Prewar time
Since August 1937, Batov successively commanded the 10th and 3rd rifle corps, participated in a campaign against Western Ukraine in September 1939, then in the Soviet-Finnish War. The combat merits of the commander were marked by his production as a division commander, and then as lieutenant general. In 1940, he was appointed deputy commander of the Transcaucasian Military District.
The initial period of the Second World War
Batov began the war as the commander of the Crimean 9th Corps, later transformed into the 51st Army, in which he became deputy commander. The army fought desperately with the Germans at Perekop and in the Kerch region, but was defeated, and in November 1941 its remnants were evacuated to the Taman Peninsula. Batov, promoted to commander, was entrusted with its reformation.
In January 1942 he was sent to the Bryansk Front as commander of the 3rd Army, and then transferred to the front headquarters as an assistant commander.
Battle of Stalingrad and subsequent battles of the Second World War with the participation of Batov
October 22, 1042 Batov became commander of the 4th Panzer Army on the outskirts of Stalingrad. This army, soon renamed the 65th Army, became part of the Don Front, which KK Rokossovsky was appointed to command. Batov remained her commander until the end of the war.
He helped plan the Soviet counterattack during Operation Uranus surrounding the 6th German Army General Paulus. His army was a key strike force in this offensive and the subsequent operation "Ring" to destroy the German group surrounded in Stalingrad.
After this victory, the 65th Army was redeployed to the northwest to the new Central Front, commanded by the same Rokossovsky. In July 1943, Batov’s army fought in the gigantic Battle of Kursk, repelling the advance of the enemy in the Sevsk region. After the defeat of the Germans during the offensive from August to October, the 65th Army fought more than 300 kilometers and reached the Dnieper, which it crossed on October 15 in the Loev area in the Gomel region.
In the summer of 1944, the Batov army took part in a major strategic operation in Belarus during the destruction of the Bobruisk enemy grouping. For several days, the German 9th Army was surrounded and almost completely destroyed. After that, Batov received the rank of colonel general.
Then there were the battles in Poland, the forcing of the Vistula, the assault of Danzig and the capture of Stettin. The last volleys of Katyushas of the 65th Army in April 1945 were sent along the German garrison of the island of Rugen.
After the war
During this period, Batov held various leadership positions. He commanded the 7th mechanized army in Poland, the 11th guards army with headquarters in Kaliningrad. In 1954, he became the first deputy commander of the FGP in Germany, the following year - the commander of the Carpathian Military District. During this period, he participated in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Later he commanded the Southern Group of Forces, was deputy chief of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces. Batov resigned as an active general of the Soviet Army in 1965, but continued to work in a group of military inspectors of the Ministry of Defense, and from 1970 to 1981 led the Soviet Committee of Veterans. He remained a close friend of Marshal Rokossovsky until the latter's death in 1968, and he was entrusted with editing and publishing memoirs of his former commander.
Batov Pavel Ivanovich, whose books on military theory are widely known, is also the author of interesting memoirs. During his long and interesting life, he gained considerable military and human experience. What did Pavel Ivanovich Batov call his memoirs? “In campaigns and battles” is the name of his book, which, during the author’s life, has survived 4 editions.
Russia continues to remember its faithful son. Seas and oceans plowed "Pavel Batov" - a ship built in 1987 and assigned to the port of Kaliningrad.