Aleksey Zhadov was born on 30 March 1901 in the village of Nikolskoye in what is now Sverdlovsk district of Orel Oblast.

[2] Having primarily served in the Red Army's cavalry branch for 21 years, the promotion to command an airborne unit was a huge leap of responsibility for him.

[3] When he arrived in Moscow on the morning of 24 June, he expected to hear news that the German attack had been promptly repulsed and the fight taken to German territory, but instead he was informed that the Soviet forces in the border areas were being battered and that communication among units and their lines of command had broken down.

On the train, he met Colonel Nikolai Naumenko, who was en route to the headquarters of the Western Front's Air Force.

[2] They often got slowed down by heavy traffic moving in the opposite direction and also had to constantly avoid German air raids.

[4] Zhadov and Naumenko, instead of continuing to Minsk from Borisov, headed southeast to the headquarters of the Western Front located at a forest near Mogilev.

On the morning of 28 June, he reported to the commander of the Western Front, General Dmitry Grigoryevich Pavlov, who simply briefed him: "The situation is complex, difficult, and most importantly is unclear.

[2] In Zhadov's absence, the corps' Chief of Staff Colonel Alexander Fedorovich Kazankin had been commanding the unit, and had started preparations to execute Pavlov's orders of 28 June.

[16] Starting on 2 August 1941, he served as the Chief of Staff of the 3rd Army,[3] which was commanded by Lieutenant General Vasily Kuznetsov.

[3] His army took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, during which on 25 November 1942 he changed his surname from "Zhidov" to "Zhadov" on Joseph Stalin's request,[3][18] because the name[a] resembeled the word "Zhyd", what is derogatory term for Jewish people in Russian.

[23] After World War II, he served as Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Ground Forces from 1946 to 1949, and as the head of the M. V. Frunze Military Academy from 1950 to 1954.