GPS June 2020

operations. He was taken to Berlin under the protection of the Abteilung
Wehrmachtpropaganda (WPr, the propaganda department of the
Wehrmacht). In late 1942, WPr invented the ”Smolensk committee”,
a fictitious committee of anti-Bolshevik Russians who allegedly met
in Smolensk, the town that was to become the future seat of the new
imaginary Russian government under the leadership of Vlasov. The
“committee” issued an anti-Bolshevik leaflet containing the “Smolensk
Proclamation” that was dropped by the millions on Soviet troops and
territories. In the spring of 1943 Vlasov published an open letter titled
“Why Have I Taken Up the Struggle Against Bolshevism”. Vlasov’s
appeals were an important factor in the German campaign for the
recruitment of a Russian liberation army. To support the campaign,
Vlasov was even sent to Russia accompanied by a delegation of Germans
and Russians
Image 2. This German leaflet of 1943 illustrates General Vlasov visiting Smolensk.
The caption reads: “Lieutenant general A.A. Wlassow (third from left), chairman of
the Russian Committee, during his reception of important representatives of the
Russian liberation army returning from the front; far right – the secretary of the
Russian committee Major General V. F. Malyshkin.”
However, the idea of a Russian liberation army was vehemently
denied by Hitler in 1942 and 1943, and it was only in 1944 when the
Russian Liberation Army (Русская освободительная армия,
Russkaya osvoboditel’naya armiya, РОА/ROA) also known as the
Vlasov army (Власовская армия, Vlasovskaya armiya) was created, a
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