page_title: Yakov Dzhugashvili
section_title: Capture
hierarchical_section_title: Yakov Dzhugashvili / Second World War / Capture
caption_attribution_description: Operation Barbarossa: Unseen Second World War photographs by Field Marshal Wolfram von Richthofen. Stalin's son captured.
context_page_description: Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili was the eldest of Joseph Stalin's three children, the son of Stalin's first wife, Kato Svanidze, who died 9 months after his birth. His father, then a young revolutionary in his mid-20s, left the child to be raised by his late wife's family. In 1921, when Dzhugashvili had reached the age of fourteen, he was brought to Moscow, where his father had become a leading figure in the Bolshevik government who eventually became head of the Soviet Union. Disregarded by Stalin, Dzhugashvili was a shy, quiet child who appeared quite unhappy and tried to commit suicide several times as a youth. Married twice, Dzhugashvili had three children, two of whom reached adulthood.
  Dzhugashvili studied to become an engineer, then – on his father's insistence – he enrolled in training to be an artillery officer. He finished his studies weeks before Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Sent to the front, he either surrendered or was captured by the Germans, and was held as a prisoner. He died at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1943. It is not clear whether he committed suicide or was killed by camp guards.
context_section_description: On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany and its allies launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin ensured that Dzughashvili and Artyom Sergeyev, his adopted son and fellow artillery officer, went to the front lines. Serving as a lieutenant with a battery of the 14th Howitzer Regiment of the 14th Tank Division near Vitebsk, Dzhugashvili was captured on 16 July during the Battle of Smolensk. The circumstances of his capture are disputed: Sergeyev later said that "the Germans surrounded Yakov’s battery. The order was given to retreat. But Yakov did not obey the order. I tried to persuade him […] but Yakov answered: 'I am the son of Stalin and I do not permit the battery to retreat." Other sources, including Soviet prisoners interrogated, claimed that they willingly gave up Dzhugashvili as they hated the Soviet system. Material from the Russian archives also suggests that he surrendered willingly.
  The Germans announced the capture of Dzughashvili on 19 July. Stalin reacted negatively to the news: he had previously ordered that no soldiers were to surrender, so the idea that his own son had done so was seen as a disgrace. He was angry that Dzughashvili had not killed himself instead of being captured, and suspected that someone had betrayed him. Meltzer was not immediately told the news and, suspicious of her motives and the idea that Dzhugashvili surrendered, Stalin had her arrested. With Meltzer imprisoned, Svetlana took care of Galina.
caption: Dzhugashvili shortly after being captured
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