Ivan Chernyakhovsky - 1945: Soviet Supreme Commander of East Prussia - Killed in Action

Killed in Action

Marshal Rokossovsky's front made contact with Marshal Zhukov's forces at Grudziadz (German: Graudenz) and they wheeled north towards Danzig to cut off East Prussia. More than 500,000 Germans were caught in a pocket, but many were evacuated. On 10 February, Rokossovsky reached the coast near Elbing (Elbląg) and East Prussia was under siege from the south and east by the 3rd Byelorussian Front.

From January 1945 until February 18, 1945, General Ivan Chernyakhovsky was appointed Soviet supreme commander of East Prussia.

On 1 February General Chernyakhovsky split the pocket by attacking between Elbing and Königsberg. Just over 2 weeks later, on February 18, General Chernyakhovsky, the youngest front commander of World War II, was killed by shell fragments from artillery fire while inspecting preparations for an offensive.

General Chernyakhovsky was buried in Vilnius, Lithuania, near a square named for him. After Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, Chernyaknovsky's remains were reburied at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

After World War II, when the Soviet Union annexed northern East Prussia and expelled the Germans, the town of Insterburg was renamed Chernyakhovsk in his honor.