Author: General Huan Wu
After the Sino-Soviet Treasure Island incident in 1969, many radical factions in the Soviet Union clamored for war against China and carried out nuclear strikes against China. The most famous of these are Marshal Trikov, who twice came to China during the Northern Expedition and the War of Resistance Against Japan as a military adviser to the Nationalist government, and the protagonist of this article, Marshal Andrei Antonovich Grechko, then Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union.
<h1>Born in the cavalry, he has a lot of experience</h1>
Grečko was born on October 17, 1903 in the village of Golodayevka in southwestern Russia. Coming from a poor peasant family, he joined the Red Army at the age of 16 and became a member of the 11th Division of the 1st Cavalry Army under the famous Red Army cavalry general Budyonny. After the baptism of fire of the Civil War, the young Grečko entered the 6th Cavalry School.
Marshal Budyonny
After graduating in 1928, he successively served as a platoon commander and a company commander in the cavalry unit, and joined the CPSU two years later. Due to his outstanding ability during his tenure, he was promoted successively, and later entered the Frunze Military Academy, known as the "cradle of senior military commanders" in the Red Army. Later, he served as regimental commander, division chief of staff, and participated in the Soviet-Finnish War.
Frunze Military Academy
<h1>If the command is determined, it is invincible</h1>
In July 1941, after the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa, Grechko came to the Caucasus front and returned to his old profession as commander of the 34th Cavalry Division of the Southwestern Front, and soon after was promoted to commander of the 5th Cavalry Army. Glechko led his troops in several encounters with the Germans. Because of his good command, the Soviet army repeatedly won, and his troops broke the German army in the Battle of Bavinkov-Lozova, capturing a large number of booty, including 261 cars and 160 wagons of military supplies, which can be called a bright color in the defeated Soviet army.
Beginning with command of the 5th Army on 15 January 1942, Gletschko began commanding large corps operations. Three months later, he was officially appointed commander of the 12th Army. In the year and a half that followed, Glechko served as commander of the 12th, 47th, 18th, and 56th Armies, leading these units to engage the Germans on the Caucasus front, and strategizing, surprisingly winning, and making many achievements, recovering a large number of lost lands, including the Taman Peninsula.
The Red Army in World War II
Due to his outstanding military achievements, Grechko was promoted to deputy commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front and commander of the 1st Guards Army, and later he led his army across the Carpathian Mountains, expelled the German army from the country, and even took advantage of the victory to pursue, all the way to liberate the Czech capital Prague, the army reached Austria, Hungary and other places.
In 2002, the Russian Academy of Military Sciences began a judgment on the capabilities of the commanders of the various arms of the Red Army during World War II. Because of his rich experience in war, Glechko was good at creating conditions for the mobility of troops, and was good at mobilizing concentrated troops and weapons and equipment to carry out bold detours against enemy targets and carry out mobile warfare in a wide area, ranking fourth among the 33 evaluators.
Marshal Grechko
<h1>Held important positions and had heavy troops in hand</h1>
After the victory in World War II, Glychko, who had made great achievements in battle, successively became the commander of the Kiev Military District. The Kiev Military District is the most important first-line military district in the western region of the Soviet Union, which bears the heavy responsibility of the second combat echelon of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries, and is a large-scale mobile corps that plays the role of mobile combat reinforcements.
In 1953, Glechko was sent to East Germany, the forefront of the Cold War standoff, to command the Soviet army stationed there after World War II. The 9 group armies under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Army in Germany are all ace units that have made great achievements in the Great Patriotic War, all of which are guards group armies and assault army groups, which are the highest level of combat readiness, the highest full rate, and the most valued hundred battle divisions in the Soviet army, and are equipped with a large number of weapons and equipment beyond the establishment, and even have the most advanced equipment in the Soviet Army and the entire Warsaw Pact country.
In the same year he was promoted to general, and on 11 March 1955 Gletschko was promoted to field marshal. Subsequently, he successively served as the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Army, the commander-in-chief of the Joint Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact States parties, and the first deputy minister of defense of the Soviet Union, directly commanding all the armies on the Western Front of the Warsaw Pact front, which can be described as a heavy army.
In 1964, Brezhnev succeeded Khrushchev, who had stepped down after the Cuban Missile Crisis, as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Glychko, who fought with Brezhnev in the Great Patriotic War, served as Soviet defense minister on 12 April 1967 until his death in office in 1976.
Brezhnev
<h1>Clamor for a nuclear strike against China</h1>
Shortly after Glychko took office, the "Treasure Island Incident" broke out between China and the Soviet Union, and the whole world was in an uproar. At this time, Glychko, who was defense minister, and his assistant "China Tong" Trikov advocated being tough on China. They ordered all Soviet forces facing China on the front line from the Far East to Central Asia to be put on combat readiness, with troops replenishing their posts, distributing ammunition, and mobilizing reserves and mobile corps to assemble in the border areas.
For a time, the Trans-Siberian Railway was full of trains carrying soldiers' weapons and equipment, and the Soviet army was ready to gather dozens of tank divisions and mechanized divisions to the world as "Chen Soldier Millions", intending to repeat the tactics of the Kwantung Army, and carry out large-depth and large-scale surprise operations with the help of large-scale desert grasslands on a large scale to attack China.
Glebkov even ordered the Soviet army's medium-range ballistic missile units to enter a state of first-class combat readiness, ready to be launched at any time. It also threatened to use medium-range ballistic missiles in the Far East, carrying nuclear warheads of millions of tons equivalent, to carry out "surgical" nuclear strikes against China's political centers, important cities, industrial bases and nuclear base Lop Nur to "eliminate the Chinese threat once and for all."
Soviet Border Guards
In the end, the Treasure Island incident was resolved peacefully, but Grekov's toughness also impressed many Chinese people of that era.
<h1>Promoter of Soviet modernization reform and aircraft carrier program</h1>
After Grečko became defense minister, he carried out drastic reforms of the Soviet army and supported the development of weapons and equipment for all services to keep up with the trend of the times and win the next war. He vigorously advocated that the Soviet army take the route of quality army building, so that the Soviet army completely realized the motorization. In his view, the training and education of the troops is the most important component of the Soviet army, and it is necessary to put the advanced nature of training and weapons and equipment to the same level.
In addition, he stressed that tactics are the basis of campaigns and strategies at any time in the future, and under his strict supervision, the tactical quality of all units of the Soviet Army has been greatly improved, and the ability to coordinate and synthesize combat has also risen to a new height.
In 1970, the Politburo of the CPSU included Grechko and Brezhnev
He also strongly recommended that every Soviet division should be equipped with tactical nuclear weapons as a means of opening an offensive breakthrough. He proposed the theory of warfare, which has been dubbed the "three-plate axe":
First use the long-range ballistic missiles of the Strategic Rocket Force and air- and sea-based nuclear weapons to carry out nuclear strikes on the strategically deep ports, transportation hubs and important bases in Western Europe, and delay the reinforcement of nato's second echelon and put them into the battlefield; use front-line aviation and medium- and short-range ballistic missiles to strike airfields and assembly areas in Western Europe;
Tactical nuclear weapons were used to open a breakthrough on the front line of confrontation, and a mixed campaign assault – synthetic cluster was used to launch a deep penetration from the breakthrough point, and to detour, divide and envelop NATO forces, completely completing the march from Berlin to the sea within a week.
He also continued to promote the development and equipment of Soviet nuclear weapons to make them comparable to the United States, and by 1976, when he died, the number of nuclear weapons equipped by the Soviet Army was very close to that of the United States, and the quality was not far behind, and two years later, it achieved a comprehensive surpass.
For the Red Navy to be able to win the ocean with the U.S. Navy, Gletschko has continuously promoted the reform and development of the Navy and innovated its operational thinking. Together with Gorbachev, he strongly supported the development of large nuclear-powered aircraft carriers equipped with catapults and a large number of carrier-based aircraft, and supported the Red Navy with a protective umbrella with fixed-wing carrier-based aircraft cover, the most famous of which was the Type 1153 aircraft carrier.
Type 1153 aircraft carrier two views
Unfortunately, due to his death in office in 1976, the successor Defense Minister Ustinov was not interested in this, so that the Soviet Red Navy did not have the first large aircraft carrier "Kuznetsov" until the 1980s. However, the Red Navy's efforts had a weak brigade that could only carry out near-shore combat tasks, and in the "Cuban Missile Crisis", it became an offensive ocean-going navy in the mid-to-late 1970s.
Thanks to Grechko's contribution to the development of the Navy, the Kuznetsov Naval Academy of the Russian Navy was now named the Grechko Naval Academy in 1975 and was renamed the Kuznetsov Naval Academy until 1992.
Naval Academy of Grechko
On April 26, 1976, Glechko died as Minister of Defense at the age of 73. His ashes, like many Soviet generals, are buried in the Kremlin's Red Square cemetery.