Wartime Command
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Kulik took command of the 54th Army on the Leningrad front. Here his incompetence caught up with him, and he presided over heavy Soviet defeats that resulted in the city of Leningrad being surrounded and necessitating that General Georgi Zhukov be rushed to the front in order to stabilize the defenses. In March 1942 he was court-martialed and demoted to the rank of Major-General. His status as one of Stalin's cronies saved him from the firing squad that was the fate of other defeated Soviet generals. In April 1943 he became commander of the 4th Guards Army. From 1944 to 1945 he was Deputy Head of the Directory of Mobilization, and Commander of the Volga Military District.
Read more about this topic: Grigory Kulik
Famous quotes containing the words wartime and/or command:
“The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)
“For experience showed her that she had not, by marrying a man of a large fortune, obtained any great proportion of property which she could call her own or command at her pleasure.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)