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America Accidentally Attacked the Soviet Union and Other Lesser Known History Moments

Khalid Elhassan February 27, 2020 34 min

Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star - Aircraft — American F-80s in action during the Korean War. Squdron

5. Turning Traitor

Andrey Vlasov after his capture by the Germans. World War Two in Pics

Vlasov was put in charge of the 2^nd Shock Army after its commander fell ill. However, it got cut off and encircled as it advanced towards Leningrad, and was destroyed in June, 1942. Vlasov escaped temporarily but was captured 10 days later. In captivity, he agreed to switch sides. Taken to Berlin, he and other Soviet traitors began drafting plans for a Russian provisional government and for recruiting a Soviet turncoat army.

In 1943, Vlasov wrote an anticommunist leaflet, millions of copies of which were dropped on Soviet positions. Using Vlasov’s name, the Nazis recruited hundreds of thousands of Soviet defectors, forming them into a “Russian Liberation Army“. Although they were nominally under Vlasov’s command, they were kept strictly under direct German control, with Vlasov exercising little or no authority.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.