The Man Who Made The Improbable Trip From Gulag To General
General KK Rokossovsky
Joseph Stalin was notoriously paranoid. He nearly ruined his chances of winning World War II by embarking on a massive purge of his military officers in the years leading up to 1941. Anyone that was suspected of being disloyal or having dangerous ideas was promptly charged and shipped off to distant gulags to live out their days doing hard labor. Those were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones simply vanished or were killed in public executions.
It is safe to say that anyone who ended up on the wrong side of the Great Purge usually did not come out on the other side. While many high ranking officers were murdered, exiled, or worked to death, one man managed to escape the gulag and climb the ranks of the Soviet military. General Rokossovsky managed to be released from his imprisonment and was reinstated. And he did not waste his second chance at life.
To The Gulag
General Konstantin Rokossovsky made his way to senior command during the 1930s. He was tutored by Marshal Tukhachevsky, an ingenious modern military mind that was attempting to revolutionize the Soviet military. The problem was Stalin saw any type of revolution as dangerous. Marshal Tukhachevsky was quickly blacklisted, and his closest underlings were put under great…
