Rokossovsky, whose father was a railroad engineer, served in the imperial army as a noncommissioned officer in World War I. In 1917 he joined the Red Army and served in the Civil War, rising through the ranks to various Far Eastern commands, notably leading a cavalry brigade during the Soviet-Chinese dispute over control of the Chinese Eastern Railway (1929).
He was imprisoned in 1938 during the Stalinist purges but was released upon the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 because his military talents were needed. During World War II Rokossovsky had major roles in the battles at Moscow (1941), Stalingrad, and Kursk (1943), as well as in the Soviet drives into Bielorussia (1944), East Prussia, and Pomerania (1945). He won his greatest renown at Stalingrad when he directed six Soviet armies of the Don River front that, along with other Soviet forces, first trapped and then annihilated the 22 divisions of the German Sixth Army. He is the designer of the operation "Bagration"(with Joukov and Vassilievski) whose success, decisive through the destruction of the entire Army Group Center Wehrmacht, earned him his promotion to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union.
In 1949
he was named Soviet defense minister and deputy chairman of the Council
of Ministers of Soviet-dominated Poland and was accorded the title
marshal of Poland. He held these positions until the return to power of
Władysław Gomułka, former secretary of the communist Polish Workers’
Party, who had been imprisoned in 1948. Upon his expulsion by Gomułka
(28 October 1956, on charges of attempting to stage a pro-Soviet coup),
Rokossovsky returned to the U.S.S.R., where he was deputy minister of
defense (1956–62) and held various other military posts until his
retirement in 1962.
When he died in 1968, his funeral urn was sealed in the Kremlin wall.
When he died in 1968, his funeral urn was sealed in the Kremlin wall.
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