Sixty years after the end of the Second World War we are remembering the Russian heroes who saved the world from the Nazi scourge. We will never forget the heroic effort and contribution to our common victory made by the great Russian military leaders of whom Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky is certainly one… 

Konstantin Rokossovsky was born on 1896 in Velikiye Luki into the family of a Polish-born rail engine operator Ksavery Rokossovsly and his Russian wife Antonina.  Soon after Konstantin was born the family moved to Warsaw, which was then part of the Russian Empire.  The next few years were a happy time for the boy. The bliss ended in 1910 when his father got killed in a rail crash. Mother died shortly after and, to survive, Konstantin, still in his teens, had to do all kinds of hard manual labor. 

World War One turned his life all around. Konstantin Rokossovsky, then 18, volunteered to join a westbound Russian regiment. He was readily accepted and from that day on his life was never the same again. Smart and talented, Rokossovsky was fast moving up the ranks. The Red Army desperately needed young officers and Rokossovsly had the best of recommendations. 

It looked like everything was going fine but in 1937 his career was cut short by the start of Josef Stalin’s Big Terror. The young commander fell victim to intrigue and slander. Accused of ties with foreign intelligence, Rokossovsly denied all the charges brought against him and about three years later he was fully exonerated and put in charge of a Cavalry corps.  Adolf Hitler was now poised to attack the Soviet Union and because cavalry was no longer seen as a viable military force, Konstantin Rokossovsky was put in charge of a mechanized infantry corps. A month after the June 22 1941 German invasion, Konstantin Rokossovsky was appointed commander of the 4th Army, which managed to halt the German advance. In December Rokossovsky’s army successfully counterattacked against the Nazi forces outside Moscow. Overwhelmed by the Red Army’s surprise rebound, the Germans beat a hasty retreat and were eventually thrown back 250 kilometers away from the capital. The theretofore-invincible Wehrmacht thus suffered its first major debacle… 

During the battle of Stalingrad Josef Stalin, who was well aware of Konstantin Rokossovsky’s impressive track record, appointed him commander of the Don Front. Rokossovsky’s armies, working in close contact with the Southwestern Front, tightened the noose around the 6th German Army taking hundreds of thousands of prisoners, including the 6th Army commander, Field Marshal  Paulus. 

In 1943 Konstantin Rokossovsky took over the Central Front putting up a strong defense during the Kursk battle and then launching a stinging counteroffensive west of the city during which the Red Army routed the Nazi forces and drove them back all the way to Kiev. Shortly after, the Red Army stormed into the Ukrainian capital and was now poised to liberate Byelorussia. The whole operation was codenamed Bagration after the legendary Russian general Pyotr Bargation who fought valiantly during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia back in 1812.  As part of Operation Bagration, one of the biggest battles fought on the Eastern Front, the Red Army thrashed the enemy’s strongest Central group of armies. In five days of nonstop fighting the Soviet troops cracked open the enemy lines along a 200-kilometer stretch and pushed more than a hundred kilometers deep into the German defenses. Seventeen enemy divisions and three brigades ceased to exist and fifty more divisions lost more than half of their manpower. In recognition of that momentous victory Konstantin Rokossovsky was promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. 

In late summer of 1945, exactly 30 years after Konstantin Rokossovsky last saw Warsaw, his armies reached the banks of the Vistula River and encircled the Polish capital.  Looking at the burning city of his youth through the binoculars, Rokossovsky felt anything by sentimental because there was so much bloodshed still waiting ahead… In the victorious year 1945 his armies made three major advances eventually meeting the Anglo-American allies on the Elbe… 

On June 24 of 1945, shortly after the German surrender, Konstantin Rokossovsky was commanding a Victory Parade in Moscow. Marshal Georgy Zhukov was reviewing the troops. The two celebrated Marshals, sitting on beautiful horses, rode past the lines of decorated heroes of one of the bloodiest wars ever fought… 

Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky was loved and admired by everyone who had even chanced to fight under his command and he returned that love in full measure always caring for his soldiers who were everything to him. For people like Rokossovsky and his soldiers one’s duty to his country always came first. His memoirs he worked on until his very last moment were very aptly titled “A Soldier’s Duty”. When the pilot copy of his book was ready, Rokossovsky was already on his deathbed in a Moscow clinic. Sifting through the pages, the Marshal signed it. For the last time in his life… 

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Illustration: Encyclopedia “The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945”, Soviet Encyclopedia, Moscow, 1985