Jakov Djugashvili Stalin

Stalin's son Jakov Djugashvili, prisoner of war (centre). Jakov, an engineer by profession, a senior lieutenant and battery commander of he 14th Howitzer Regiment, attached to the 14th Tank Division, was captured on 16th July 1941 near Vitebsk. On discovering that their prisoner was Stalin's son, the Germans attempted to exploit him for propaganda purposes, but did not succeed. Refusing privileges, he asked to remain with the rank-and-file soldiers. In all the photographs of Jakov, he deliberately refused to look directly at the camera.

​

 

I would say all that makes him a hell of a guy and a true people's soldier. Another excellent photo and I'll have to find out what happened to him next and after the war if he survived ?

 

Same thought here Dave, what happened to this guy after the War, there must be a story out there.. :wtf:

 

I still haven't looked up his story but what gets me the most with what little I know about this seeming hero is that they say :
"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree"
:lol:

 

Long awaited!! :wtf:

Stalin’s son, Jakov Djugashvili Stalin was an engineer by profession, During the Second World War, he served as a senior lieutenant and battery commander of the 14th Howitzer Regiment, attached to the 14th Tank Division and was captured on 16 July 1941 near Vitebsk by the Nazis.

On discovering that their prisoner was Stalin’s son, the Germans attempted to exploit him for propaganda purposes, but did not succeed. Refusing privileges, he asked to remain with the rank-and-file soldiers. In all the photographs of jakov, he deliberately refuses to look directly at the camera. This didn’t prevent the Germans from leafletting to Red Army soldiers “Do not shed your blood for Stalin! He has already fled to Samara! His own son has surrendered! If Stalin’s son is saving his own skin, then you are not obliged to sacrifice yourself either!”

After the battle of Stalingrad, Hitler suggested through the Swedish Red Cross that Jakov be exchanged for Field Marshal Paulus. Stalin refused, saying: “A marshal would not be exchanged for a lieutenant”. Hitler’s counter proposition to exchange Jakov for Hitler’s nephew Leo Raubal was not accepted either. (Jakov never got along with his dad, who called him a “mere cobbler.”) Djugashvili died on the electrified wire of Sachenhausen concentration camp on 14 April 1943, below. Much controversy surrounded the death. Some believe it was suicide, others a failed escape attempt. Some saw the dirty hand of the German SS behind.

​

After the war, in an uncharacteristic move, Stalin offered a $250,000 reward in East Germany to anyone who could provide details of how Jakov died. In 1945, U.S. and British intelligence teams found a letter by Heinrich Himmler on details of the failed escape attempt and attached was the below picture of young Stalin stretched out on the camp fence. They decided, however, to withhold the information from Stalin in order to spare him any personal pain.

 

A German leaflet directed at Red Army soldiers, inciting them to desert: “Do not shed your blood for Stalin! He has already fled to Samara! His own son has surrendered! If Stalin’s son is saving his own skin, then you are not obliged to sacrifice yourself either!”

​

 

Yakov

Hi guys, new here. I'm currently reading the bio of Stalin by Montefiore (for about the 30th time) and I just randomly entered his original name, Djugashvili, into Google, thus arriving here. Poor old Yakov.

From a combination of reading Stalingrad, by Beevor, and Stalin, of Montefiore, I come up with a terrifying vision of what it was like to be alive and anywhere near the Eastern Front during WWII. My father was a radio operator in a B-24 of the 8th Air Force and completed all his missions, bombing mainly Germany -- I believe Berlin was one of his missions (please see Rackheath 44-45) but he wasn't anywhere near the filth and degradation of the Eastern Front. But what is far more disturbing is the picture of Stalin and his court.

From today's perspective, it's almost impossible to believe what I read, yet I know that Montefiore would not only not exaggerate, but understate, in all probability. Stalin was a thing from Hell, an impossible Gorgon from some kind of deadly myth -- it's nearly impossible to consider that he actually did the things he did. Hitler, one can almost forgive, for being such a psychopathically deranged madman that even he had no real inkling of the demon that he was. But Stalin; he comes across as human. Where Hitler is a cold, humorless, single-minded hate-filled bag of raging serpents, Stalin is a kindly uncle with a chuckle and a twinkle in his eye.

Stalin has doubts; Hitler does not. Stalin does not persecute for reasons of race, creed or other such dividing lines; indeed, his court is filled with Jews. Hitler methodically murders with the help of unusually psychopathic henchman like Heydrich -- human golems that only appear on the world stage once every thousand years -- while Stalin's ragtag bunch of perverts and misfits -- Beria and Molotov come to mind -- seem almost amateurish by comparison. The steely-eyed robotic German, countered by the spirited, faithful Russian is the image that filters through the story of those impossible years, yet they are impossible for me to contemplate.

How can one man have wrought such havoc, such blind, savage, mindless destruction and death? How did all that killing come from the mind of a living man? How is a human being capable of such monstrosities and able to somehow mentally minimise what he is doing in order to perpetrate them?

Readin Stalingrad, one just wonders why anyone, any single participant of that hell, actually took part in it, actually was able to function as a human being, instead of simply shooting oneself? I admit that it was a product of the times, that we don't go around murdering each other in vast, frenzied battlegrounds of blood and gore any more, but even then, how was anyone capable?

My wife, who is a Sephardic jew of Moroccan extraction, can't fathom my fascination with the second world war and my constant searching to understand how it ever could have happened. I get a lot of criticism for it, but seeing as my own father was a part of it -- that he had to go expose himself, voluntarily (you weren't drafted to fly in bombers) 25 times or more, to the possibility of being specks of brain matter on the inside of a metal tomb at 24,000 feet, I want to know, even if only one small part, what possessed humanity to become so inhuman.

Stalin was possibly a far worse psychopath than Hitler, but to get to the level of such mental depravity and still manage to control and dominate huge masses of humanity, willing or unwilling -- how is this possible? I simply cannot see anything like it happening now, or ever again. Oh sure, we'll have our Rwandas and Bosnias, but the systematic starving to death of tens of millions of people? You might quote North Korea, but they are so isolated that they might as well be on the moon.

And poor, poor Yakov. What a senseless death, and what a beast of a father to allow one's own son to die in such a manner . . . it's utterly inconceivable. But as I read both books, both for the nth time, I still can't wrap my mind around the hideous depths to which humanity sunk, a mere dozen years before I was born!

I guess to understand is to have been there, so my quest is a fruitless one. But appalling, nonetheless . . .

 

Thanks for the post kamakiri, you make the Book "Stalingrad" a must read, i will place this on my list to buy. Also i find it hard to believe a man in such a position would allow his son to perish the way Jakov did. :cry:

 

Well said kamakiri, i read Stalingrad by Beevor when it first was published, but having a memory like a fish of late, i may just get this book back out ... :botman: