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 civil war in Spain, twice Hero of the Soviet Union.
Childhood and youth
Who was Batov Pavel Ivanovich by birth? His biography began in a 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 his living. He travels to St. Petersburg, where he works, as they would say now, in the service sector - he delivers various purchases to addresses. At the same time, he manages to engage in self-education, so much so that he takes exams externally for 6 classes of the school.
Early military career
Pavel Batov began his military career on the battlefields of the First World War. As an 18-year-old volunteer, in 1915 he was enrolled in the training team of the 3rd Life Guards Rifle Regiment. He went to the front the following year, served as the commander of the intelligence squad, showed courage and was twice awarded the St. George Cross. After being wounded and cured in a hospital in Petrograd, he was assigned to a training team to train ensigns at the school, where agitator A. Savkov introduced himwith the political program of the Bolsheviks.
Civil War and 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 registration and enlistment office, served in the apparatus of the military district in Moscow. Starting in 1919, he commanded a company in the combat units of the Red Army.
In 1926 he graduated from the officers' courses "Shot" and was appointed to command a battalion of an elite military unit - the 1st Infantry Division. He would serve in this unit for the next nine years, rising to the rank of regimental 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 International Brigade under the command of the famous General Lukács, under whose name the Hungarian revolutionary Mate Zalka fought. In June 1937, Batov and Zalka, while traveling 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 injured, nevertheless survived.
Strange as it may seem, but this tragic episode probably 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 have been in Spain, along with theirhead Antonov-Ovseenko were destroyed upon returning home. The Stalinist satraps did not like the people who fought side by side with the anarchists, Trotskyists, adherents of bourgeois democracy, who were many in the Spanish international brigades. But Batov, as they say, passed this cup, because it was clearly politically unprofitable to accuse a person whose blood was literally mixed with the blood of General Lukacs, who became one of the symbols of resistance to fascism.
Pre-war times
Since August 1937, Batov consistently commanded the 10th and 3rd rifle corps, participated in the campaign against Western Ukraine in September 1939, then in the Soviet-Finnish war. The military merits of the commander were marked by his promotion to divisional commanders, and then to lieutenant general. In 1940, he was appointed Deputy Commander of the Transcaucasian Military District.
The initial period of the Second World War
Batov started 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 reorganization.
In January 1942, he was sent to the Bryansk Front as commander of the 3rd Army, and then transferred to the front headquarters to the post of assistant commander.
Battle of Stalingrad andsubsequent battles of the Second World War with the participation of Batov
On October 22, 1042, Batov became the commander of the 4th tank army on the outskirts of Stalingrad. This army, soon renamed the 65th Army, became part of the Don Front, commanded by K. K. Rokossovsky. Batov remained its commander until the end of the war.
He helped plan the Soviet counteroffensive during Operation Uranus to encircle General Paulus's 6th German Army. His army was a key striking 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 as part of the new Central Front, commanded by the same Rokossovsky. In July 1943, Batov's army fought in the gigantic Battle of Kursk, repulsing the enemy's advance 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 was forced by it on October 15 in the Loev area in the Gomel region.
In the summer of 1944, Batov's army took part in a major strategic operation in Belarus during the destruction of the enemy's Bobruisk grouping. Within a few days, the German 9th Army was surrounded and almost completely destroyed. After that, Batov received the rank of colonel-general.
Further there were battles in Poland, the crossing of the Vistula, the assault on Danzig and the capture of Stettin. The last volleys of Katyushas of the 65th Army in April 1945 were directed at the German garrison of Rügen Island.
After the war
During this period, Batov held various leadership positions. He commanded the 7th Mechanized Army in Poland, the 11th Guards Army headquartered in Kaliningrad. In 1954, he became the first deputy commander of the GSF in Germany, the next 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 retired as an active general in the Soviet Army in 1965, but continued to work in the group of military inspectors of the Ministry of Defense, and from 1970 to 1981 led the Soviet Veterans Committee. He remained a close friend of Marshal Rokossovsky until the latter's death in 1968, and was entrusted with editing and publishing the 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 accumulated considerable military and human experience. How did Batov Pavel Ivanovich call his memoirs? “In campaigns and battles” is the name of his book, which went through 4 editions during the life of the author.
Russia continues to remember its faithful son. Pavel Batov, a ship built in 1987 and assigned to the port of Kaliningrad, plows the seas and oceans.
