World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseIvan Alexeyevich Susloparov was born in the village of Krutikhints, Vyatka Governorate (now Kumyonsky District, Kirov Oblast), Russia. He fought in WW1 as a non-commissioned officer and then fought on the side of the Communists in the Russian Revolution. In 1925, he graduated from the Joint Military School at Kiev, Ukraine. In 1938, he graduated from the Engineering Command Department of Dzerzhinsky Military Academy in Moscow, Russia. In 1939, he was named the Soviet military attaché in Paris, France; some speculated that while in Paris he also ran a military intelligence network in Western Europe. In 1940, he was promoted to the rank of major general. He was among the first to report a possible German invasion shortly before the invasion commenced in Jun 1941, but his intelligence was regarded by Joseph Stalin as faulty. Returning to Russia after the German invasion, he was initially attached to the headquarters of the Red Army artillery, and then, between 1942 and mid-1944, he was the commander of the artillery of the Soviet 10th Army. In the summer of 1944, he was once again sent to Paris, as the chief of the Soviet liaison mission with the French Government and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. At 0230 hours on 7 May 1945, he represented the Soviets in the first German surrender ceremony; late on the following day, he was also present at the second German surrender ceremony. After the war, he was an instructor at the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, a training center for intelligence agents. He passed away in 1974 and was buried at Vvedenskoye Cemetery, Moscow.

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