In 1943, the offensive and defensive forces of the Caucasus campaign began to change momentum, the Germans went on the defensive, and the Soviets began to attack.
On January 5, 1943, Grechko began to serve as commander of the 56th Army. On February 9, the North Caucasus Front launched the Battle of Kra**dar, and the 56th Army, which was subordinate to the Black Sea Group under the Front, successfully broke through the strong German defense line under the leadership of Grechko, and continued to attack westward after liberating Kra**dar on the 12th, and by the end of the battle on March 16, Grechko advanced the front to 60 70 kilometers west of Kra**dar.
German mountain divisions in the Caucasus campaign.
In April 1944, the North Caucasus Front began an attack on the Kuban bridgehead, the last foothold of the German army in the Caucasus. Grechko's 56th Army was ordered to break through the lines of the 97th Chasseur Division of the German Lieutenant General Ernst Rupp in order to capture Kremskaya.
On April 4, Grechko launched an attack, but failed to break through the main position. He then adjusted his actions, and on the 14th, Grechko dispatched three divisions, each with a separate tank battalion to take the lead, and in one fell swoop broke into the German defense within 3 kilometers and occupied the forward position. On the 24th, the 56th Army continued its attack on the German second-line positions, and by May 4 it captured Kremskaya. On April 28, Grechko was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general.
In September 1943, after 360 days of holding out to the defenders of the October cement plant in Novoroysk, Grechko commanded the 56th Army, in cooperation with the 9th Army and the 18th Army, to launch the last battle against the German army in the Caucasus, and began the Novorossiysk-Taman campaign.
On 14 September, the 56th Army launched an attack under the command of Grechko, launching an offensive in the area around Gladkovskaya-Gostagaevskaya, forcing the Germans to withdraw westward to the ports of the Taman Peninsula, and by early October, the 56th Army had entered the Taman Peninsula. By 9 October, Grechko had commanded troops to occupy the entire northern part of the peninsula and Chushka, and had finally cleared the German strongholds on the lower Kuban River. On the same day, Grechko was promoted to the rank of general, and at the same time he was awarded the Order of Kutuzov of the 1st degree.
Order of Kutuzov.
On October 16, 1943, Grechko became deputy commander of the Voronezh Front, and on the 20th, the Front was renamed the 1st Ukrainian Front. The participation coincided with the beginning of the Battle of the Dnieper. Grechko, together with the commander General Vatutin, commanded the troops of the Front Army to complete the campaign for the liberation of Kiev and liberated Kiev on 6 November, the day before the anniversary of the October Revolution. In order to repel the German counterattack on Kiev, the Supreme Command transferred the 1st Guards Army from the base camp reserve to the 1st Ukrainian Front, and in December, Grechko was appointed commander of this army.
On December 24, 1943, Colonel-General Grechko took part in the Right-Bank Ukrainian campaign under the command of the 1st Guards Army, attacking from the Zhytomyr-Berdichev direction, crushing 6 divisions of the German 1st Panzer Army near Kamenets-Podolsky, advancing the front 200 kilometers west of Kiev.
In January 1944, Grechko commanded the 1st Guards Army in the Battle of Proskurov Lenovice, liberating most of Ukraine and advancing the front to the Romanian border. For this, on May 19, 1944, Grechko was awarded the Order of Suvorov of the 1st degree, the highest military honor of the Soviet Union before the appearance of the Order of Victory.
In July-August 1944, Grechko commanded the 1st Guards Army in the Battle of Lviv-Sandomierz and liberated Stanisław, essentially driving the Germans out of Poland. Later, in the Battle of the Eastern Carpathians, it entered the territory of Czechoslovakia. On 3 November, Grechko received his second Order of the Red Banner.
At the beginning of 1945, Grechko commanded the 1st Guards Army and the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps to break through enemy fortifications in the Battle of the Western Carpathians, and subsequently took part in the Moravia-Ostrava campaign. In May, the last battle of the Great Patriotic War was completed by eliminating the last heavy group of German troops in the Battle of Prague.
After the war, Grechko became the commander of the Kiev Military District in July 1945 and was elected a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Ukraine. In 1946, he was elected deputy to the Second Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
In May 1953, Grechko took over as commander-in-chief of the Soviet forces in Germany. Just a month after his arrival, the June 17 incident occurred in East Germany, and Grechko took tough action, sending tanks into the streets to disperse the demonstrators, resulting in the death of 55 people. On August 3, he was promoted to the rank of general. Two years later, on March 11, 1955, Grechko and six others were awarded the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union, reaching the pinnacle of his military career.
Soviet tanks on the streets of East Germany.
On December 17, 1957, Grechko returned to China as First Deputy Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Army. In July 1960, he became Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact. In 1967, Grechko served as Minister of Defense of the USSR.
In 1968, the "Prague Spring" broke out in Czechoslovakia, and as Minister of Defense, Grechko was ordered to send 250,000 troops to carry out a surprise attack on Czechoslovakia and occupy the entire territory of Czechoslovakia.
At that time, Sino-Soviet relations had reached a freezing point. In 1969, when Grechko heard the news that a conflict had broken out between China and the Soviet Union on Zhenbao Island, and that the Soviet army had been defeated and hundreds of people had been killed or wounded, he immediately scolded and shouted together with Marshal Chuikov, a hardliner in the army, that he would strike at China "once and for all" and use atomic bombs against China. The famous "surgical nuclear strike" came from Grechko's mouth. Not only that, but he also planned an ambush of a Chinese border patrol in the Tielekti area of Xinjiang in retaliation for the failure of Zhenbao Island, killing 38 Chinese border guards and 3 militiamen.
During his tenure as Minister of Defense, Grechko did a great deal to further strengthen the Soviet military capability. He devoted himself to the modernization of the Soviet army and spared no effort to expand the Soviet armed forces. Grechko believed that a nuclear war would be an inevitable event in the next world war, so he planned that as soon as the war began, the Soviet Union would immediately launch all nuclear ** to NATO countries.
In 1973, Grechko was elected a member of the Politburo of the CPSU at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 24th Central Committee of the CPSU. In October, he was awarded the honorable title "Hero of the Soviet Union" for the second time, and at the same time received the Gold Star Medal for his contribution to the consolidation of the Soviet Armed Forces.
Grechko in his later years.
Gretchko and Brezhnev were close personal friends, and when he was commander of the 18th Army in the Caucasus during the Great Patriotic War, Brezhnev was the deputy head of the Political Department of the Black Sea Cluster of the Transcaucasian Front, and also served in the 18th Army. But when Brezhnev, who loved the Order to the extreme, wanted to get the rank of "Marshal of the Soviet Union", Gretchko did not give face to his old friend, the General Secretary, who believed that Brezhnev was not qualified to be a marshal, and privately said that "it is not possible until I die." As a result, it turned out that Brezhnev really became Marshal of the Soviet Union two weeks after Grechko's death.
On April 26, 1976, Grechko died of illness and his body was buried under the walls of the Kremlin.
Grechko is a two-time recipient of the title "Hero of the Soviet Union", having been awarded 6 Orders of Lenin, 3 Orders of the Red Banner, 2 Orders of Suvorov of the 1st degree, 2 Orders of Kutuzov of the 1st degree, 1 Order of Bochdan Khmelnitsky of the 1st degree and 1 Order of Suvorov of the 2nd degree. In 2002, among the generals of the Great Patriotic War assessed by the Russian Military Academy, Grechko ranked 4th among the 33 commanders of the combined army of all arms.