15.4. 1944 General Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin died

He was respected for his originality of leadership and aggressiveness. Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin was one of the best generals of the Red Army and a favorite of Stalin. He died on April 15, 1944.

Vatutin was born in Chepukhin, near Valuye, Voronezh province. In 1920 he joined the Red Army and the Communist Party. He diligently attended command courses in Poltava and, from 1924, the military school in Kiev and later the Frunze Military Academy, where he studied postgraduate studies from 1934. In 1937 he became assistant chief, a year later chief of staff of the Kiev Special Military District.

All the time Vatutin combined intensive military service with party activities. He was one of the great favorites of Stalin himself and one of the few Soviet officers to escape Stalin's repression in the 1930s.

"In the autumn of 1939, he was promoted to chief of the General Staff's Operations Administration and the...subsequently became deputy chief of the general staff in charge of mobilization and force development. After the German invasion, Vatutin, as chief of the Northwestern Front, succeeded in slowing the advance on Leningrad," writes Peter D. Antill in his book Stalingrad 1942.

Vatutin's military career continued in the spring of 1942, when he briefly served as deputy chief of the general staff under Vasilevsky and was appointed representative of Stavka at the Bryansk Front. Shortly thereafter he became commander of the Southwestern and simultaneously Voronezh Fronts when he participated in the counteroffensive at Stalingrad.

"Throughout, Vatutin displayed considerable strategic talent. This is also why he earned a promotion and was put in charge of the South-Western and at the same time Voronezh Fronts, which had in common themarch south along the Don to cut off German forces not only from the Don steppe but also in the Caucasus and liberate Rostov," writes Miloslav Jensik in his book Stalingrad: Every House, Every Window, Every Stone.

Vatutin's counterstrike succeeded, leading to the encirclement of Paulus's 6th German Army. In the spring of 1943, he also occupied the Donbas region. He suffered his only career defeat in Mannstein's flank strike. But he went on to success in the Battle of Kursk. He made a significant contribution to the clearing of eastern Ukraine of German forces.

He also participated in the liberation of Kiev. "During the Vatutin military winter offensive on February 29, 1944, he was killed together with the political member of the military council of the front K. V. Kraynyukov and ten security men while driving a car from the headquarters of the 13th Army in Rovno to the headquarters of the 60th Army in Slavuta, into an ambush by Ukrainian nationalist partisans and was wounded. He died on 15 April in Sepsi," Peter D. Antill. Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov completed the cleansing of Ukraine under Vatutin.

Sources. Antill, Stalingrad 1942, Miloslav Jensik, Stalingrad: every house, every window, every stone, www.ukrinform.net