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Turncoat Generals – Commanders From History Who Switched Sides

Khalid Elhassan April 3, 2025 17 min

Turncoat - Benedict Arnold — Benedict Arnold. Smithsonian Magazine

14. A Brilliant Commander Who Earned Stalin’s Admiration

Andrey Vlasov, left, in China. Wikimedia

Vlasov was sent to China on 1938 as a Soviet military advisor to its generalissimo, Chiang Kai-Shek. Vlasov was a mechanized corps commander in Ukraine when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. He was one of the few generals who managed to get their units to safety, as he successfully fought his corps out of multiple encirclements. Such skill and aggressiveness brought Vlasov to Stalin’s attention. The Soviet dictator summoned him to the Kremlin in November, 1941, and promoted him to command an army in Moscow’s defenses. Vlasov played a key role in keeping the Germans out of the Soviet capital. In January, 1942, he spearheaded a counteroffensive that pushed the Germans 100 miles from Moscow. Vlasov earned decorations and acclaim, plus the admiration of Stalin, who promoted him to deputy commander of the Volkhov Front, 300 miles northwest of Moscow.

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.