Lieutenant General Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov.
Commander of the 62nd Russian Army
 

Born on Feb. 12 [Jan. 31, Old Style], 1900, Serebryannye Prudy, near
Moscow, Russian Empire. Died on March 18, 1982, Moscow, Russia,
U.S.S.R.), Soviet general (and later marshal) who in World War II
commanded the defense at the Battle of Stalingrad, joined in turning
Adolf Hitler's armies back, and led the Soviet drive to Berlin.

The son of peasants, Chuikov worked as a mechanic apprentice from the
age of 12. At the age of 18, after the Russian Revolution, he joined the
 Red Army. His first taste of battle in the Civil War occurred at Tsaritsyn
(later named Stalingrad; now Volgograd), and by the following year, in
1919, he was a member of the Communist Party and a regimental
commander. He graduated from the M.V. Frunze Military Academy in
1925, took part in the Soviet invasion of Poland (1939) and in the
Russo-Finnish War (1939-40), and had just finished serving as military
attaché in China when he was called to Stalingrad to command that city's
defense.

In August 1942 the Germans launched a direct attack against Stalingrad,
committing up to 22 divisions with more than 700 planes, 500 tanks,
1,000 mortars, and 1,200 guns. Chuikov, in response, allegedly
declared, "We shall hold the city or die here." Much of the fighting in the
city and on its perimeters was at close quarters, with bayonets and hand
grenades. About 300,000 Germans were killed or captured in the course
of the campaign; Soviet casualties totaled more than 400,000. In
November the Soviet forces began to counterattack and by the end of
the year were on the offensive. General Chuikov subsequently led his
forces into the Donets Basin and then into the Crimea and north to
Belorussia before spearheading the Soviet drive to Berlin. Chuikov
personally accepted the German surrender of Berlin on May 1, 1945.

After the war he served with the Soviet occupation forces in Germany
(1945-53), commanding those forces from 1949. He headed the Kiev
military district from 1953 to 1960 and thereafter held a variety of
military assignments in Moscow. He was a candidate member of the
Communist Party's Central Committee from 1952 to 1961 and a full
member from 1961 until he died. He buried in Volgagrad, formerly Stalingrad.