7. The Soviet Union’s Greatest Traitor of WWII
Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov (1900 – 1946) was one of Joseph Stalin’s favorite Red Army generals. However, he was captured by the Germans in 1942, and ended up turning on the Soviet dictator and switching sides. Throwing in his lot with the Nazis, Vlasov turned coat and fought with the Germans against the Soviet Union at the head of the so-called Russian Liberation Army.
Vlasov had been drafted into the Red Army in 1919, and fought in its ranks with distinction during the Russian Civil War. Rising steadily through the officer ranks, he earned a reputation for his ability to whip poor units into shape. In 1930, Vlasov gave his career a boost by joining the Communist Party, and in 1938, he was sent to China as a Soviet military advisor to its generalissimo, Chiang Kai-Shek.