Andrei Lavrentyevich Getman

Андрей Лаврентьевич Гетман
Soviet Union state institutions Marxism–Leninism Soviet Union 1903–1987 ○ Natural causes

Tank commander from the approaches of Moscow to Berlin who later headed DOSAAF

Born to a peasant family in Klepaly, Kursk Governorate, he joined the Red Army in 1924 and fought at Lake Khasan and Khalkhin Gol. In 1941 he led the 112th Tank Division in the Battle of Moscow and the recapture of Kaluga. In April 1942 he took the 6th Tank Corps, which joined the 1st Tank Army in January 1943 and became the 11th Guards Tank Corps in October; in August 1944 he became deputy commander of the 1st Guards Tank Army. After the war he commanded the Carpathian Military District and from 1964 chaired the Central Committee of DOSAAF. He became Army General in 1964 and Hero of the Soviet Union in 1965.

Also known as: Andrey Getman

Activities and affiliations

Career Timeline

Corps commander and deputy commander in the 1st Guards Tank Army

Getman's 6th Tank Corps was one of the core formations of Katukov's 1st Tank Army when it was created on 30 January 1943; after the Battle of Kursk it became the 11th Guards Tank Corps in October 1943. On 25 August 1944 he handed the corps to Amazasp Babadzhanyan and succeeded Yefim Baranovich as the army's deputy commander. In a letter of 1 September 1944 to Yuri Zhukov of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Katukov wrote that Babadzhanyan, in hospital with a wound to the throat, would take Getman's place on recovery and Getman would become his deputy, adding that this was "still a secret".

Katukova's memoir judges Getman harshly. In her account he never hurried, was cautious and waited, moving only once a neighbouring formation began to succeed, and his corps seldom reached the river crossings on time. This is the view of Katukov's wife looking at a former colleague who had become estranged from her husband. Babadzhanyan, who took over his corps, remembered the opposite: Getman knew every man of the corps, from brigade commanders to tank drivers, and was a commander and educator worth learning from. It was also Babadzhanyan who initiated Getman's Hero of the Soviet Union title in 1965.

In 1973 Getman published the memoir Tanks Go to Berlin. According to Katukova, the book never names Katukov, referring only to "the commander of the 1st Guards Tank Army", and writes as if the corps belonged to no one and made its own decisions; she held that the memoirs of Popel and Babadzhanyan put their own merits forward in the same way. After Katukov's death in 1976, she writes, Getman was among the generals of the army's veterans' council who were cool towards commemorating him.