13. Switching Sides from the Communists to the Nazis
Vlasov was eventually put in charge of the 2nd Shock Army after its commander fell ill. However, his army got cut off and encircled as it advanced towards Leningrad, and was destroyed in June, 1942. Vlasov escaped temporarily, but was captured ten days later. In captivity, he agreed to become a turncoat and switch sides. Taken to Berlin, he and other Soviet traitors drafted plans for a Russian provisional government and for the recruitment of a Soviet turncoat army. Vlasov wrote an anticommunist leaflet in 1943, of which millions of copies were airdropped on Red Army positions. Using Vlasov’s name, the Nazis recruited hundreds of thousands of Soviet defectors for a so-called Russian Liberation Army. The Russian turncoats were nominally under Vlasov’s command, but he exercised no real authority, as the men were kept strictly under direct German control.
