Amazasp Khachaturovich Babadzhanyan

Амазасп Хачатурович Бабаджанян
Soviet Union state institutions Marxism–Leninism Soviet Union Armenia 1906–1977 ○ Natural causes

Armenian chief marshal of armoured troops who crossed the Dniester first and drove into central Berlin

Born to an Armenian peasant family in Chardakhly, Elisabethpol Governorate, he joined the Red Army in 1925. As commander of the 3rd Mechanised Brigade from 1942 he fought in Operation Mars and the Battle of Kursk, and in March 1944 he was made Hero of the Soviet Union for being among the first across the Dniester. From August 1944 he led the 11th Guards Tank Corps all the way into central Berlin. He took part in suppressing the Hungarian uprising of 1956, became chief of the tank troops of the Soviet Army in 1969 and was made Chief Marshal of the Armoured Troops in 1975.

Also known as: Hamazasp Babadzhanian · Hamazasp Babajanian

Activities and affiliations

Career Timeline

"Armo", commander of the 11th Guards Tank Corps

Babadzhanyan's 20th Guards Mechanised Brigade fought across the Western Bug, the San and the Vistula in the Lvov–Sandomierz operation of summer 1944, and the Katukovs' letters to Yuri Zhukov of Komsomolskaya Pravda single it out among the units that fought best. He was wounded in the throat in this fighting, and in a letter of 1 September 1944 Katukov announced that on recovery he would take Getman's place at the head of the 11th Guards Tank Corps; on paper he had been appointed to the corps on 25 August. In the Vistula–Oder operation of January 1945 the corps passed through Łódź and Kutno and reached the German border by the end of the month, and Katukov wrote that he "is again showing marvels of personal courage". In the Berlin operation the corps broke through several defence lines and fought its way into the centre of Berlin. For this Katukov put him forward for a second Hero of the Soviet Union title, but the higher authorities replaced it with the Order of Suvorov.

Katukova calls him "brave as Bagration" and recalls that everyone in the army called him "Armo" and that wherever he fought there was success. Yet she held that his 1972 memoir Roads of Victory, like the books of Getman and Popel, put his own merits forward, and that the passage in which Georgy Zhukov consulted him on how to win the battle was not true but flattery.

After the war he entered the Voroshilov Higher Military Academy in January 1947. According to Katukova, Katukov had pushed for him to study, and Babadzhanyan, who had wanted to stay in Germany, told her himself that he resented being sent to Moscow on purpose. Hearing of this, Katukov was surprised and said that a brilliant future awaited him after the academy. Babadzhanyan did in the end become Chief Marshal of the Armoured Troops, a rank above Katukov.