In 1921, he commanded the 35th Independent Cavalry Regiment stationed in Irkutsk and played an important role in bringing Damdin Sükhbaatar, the founder of the Mongolian People's Republic, to power.

[11] Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, a legendary "White Russian" general, adventurer and mystic, allegedly believed he was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and had driven Chinese occupying forces out of Mongolia in 1920.

Rokossovsky quickly moved south from Irkutsk and met up with allied Sükhbaatar Mongol forces; together the units defeated Urgern-Sternberg's army, which retreated in disarray after a two-day engagement.

[19] Living relatives say that Svetlana Pavlovna, wife of Marshal Kazakov, confirmed that Rokossovsky sustained severe injuries, including broken and denailed fingers and cracked ribs, in addition to the psychological torture of mock shooting ceremonies.

In his famous "secret speech" of 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, spoke about the purges and was likely referring implicitly to Rokossovsky when he stated, "suffice to say that those of them who managed to survive, despite severe tortures to which they were subjected in the prisons, have from the first war days shown themselves real patriots and heroically fought for the glory of the Fatherland".

The operation met with numerous difficulties in mobilization, coordination, communication, transportation and execution but scored some initial successes, which were parried by the quick action of Von Rundstedt's Army Group South in Ukraine and ended in the destruction of most of the participating Soviet forces.

[24] On the same day elements of the 19th Mechanized Corps, operating to his east out of Rovno, had succeeded in temporarily driving the rearguard of the 11th Panzer Division from Dubno, cutting off its advance units.

[24] As German resistance stiffened, Mikhail Kirponos, the commander of the Southwestern Front, issued instructions to cease offensive operations that were immediately countermanded by his superior, Chief of General Staff G.K. Zhukov, who was visiting the headquarters.

[25]Because of this, Ryabyshev's 8th Mechanized, which had also scored some early successes operating out of Brody, was in effect continuing to attack from the south with the expectation of support from Rokossovsky, who had stood down his forces, and did not arrive from the north.

[25] Throughout the next days, Rokossovsky's forces put considerable pressure on the Germans at Lutsk and tried to recapture Rovno in their rear, while stopping the advance of the 14th Panzer by ambushing them with 85mm anti-tank guns at close range and with good effect.

The Battle of Smolensk commenced on 10 July when Army Group Center began advancing on a broad front to the north and south banks of the Dnepr river, just beyond the bend where it begins its southward flow.

The 3rd Panzer Group under General Hermann Hoth struck east at Vitebsk and then attacked along the land bridge that separates the West Dvina and Dnepr rivers with the aim of enveloping Smolensk from the north.

Heinz Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group pushed toward Smolensk directly through Orsha and bypassed Mogilev with the ultimate objective of making a deep penetration far to the rear of the Soviet front line beyond Yelnya and toward Moscow.

The 16th, 19th and 20th Soviet armies were threatened with impending encirclement and now strung out along the north bank of the river contained in a triangle between Vitebsk to the north-west, Yartsevo to the north-east, and Smolensk to the South.

[30] "Group Yartsevo" was in theory a large army-sized formation, but when Rokossovsky arrived at Timoshenko's headquarters on the evening of the 17th, he was in fact in charge of his own small staff, two quad anti-aircraft machine guns mounted on trucks and a radio van.

[35] What commenced was a confusing seesaw battle for control of Smolensk that saw portions of the city change hands several times over the next week, while Rokossovsky's group held the back door open and harassed the advanced German panzer formations.

[37] But on 19 July, German operational objectives for Smolensk changed when Hitler issued Führer Directive 33, ordering the Wehrmacht to temporarily cease its drive on Moscow, so that it could wheel south and finish off the Soviet defenders holding onto Kiev in Ukraine.

[37] In anticipation of this development, Rokossovsky had deployed the 107th Tank division to hold the area immediately south of Dnepr, and when the 10th Panzer undertook an unsupported attack northward toward Dorogobuzh from Yelnya, it was repulsed after three days of heavy fighting.

To make further headway, both Hoth and Guderian needed to bring infantry forward to disentangle their mobile forces from their containment operations, and free them for attack, slowing the pace of advance.

Rokossovsky is credited with slowing the German attack, and holding the Yartsevo corridor open for long enough to prevent the capture and destruction of a considerable numbers of Soviet troops.

On 18 November, during the last-ditch efforts of the Wehrmacht to encircle Moscow in 1941, General Rokossovsky, his soldiers under heavy pressure from Erich Hoepner's 4th Panzer Group, asked his immediate superior, Zhukov, if he could withdraw the 16th Army to more advantageous positions.

During 1942 the Wehrmacht commenced "Operation Fall Blau" and switched the axis of their offensive from Moscow and attacked southward into the eastern Ukraine towards the Don–Volga river line, Rostov, Voronezh, Stalingrad and the Caucasus beyond.

Rokossovsky recounts in his memoirs that during that summer Stalin phoned him personally to ask "whether I did not find the situation too dull for my liking"[51] and was then recalled to Moscow to undertake command of a new operation: The plan was to concentrate a strong force (no less than three combined armies and several armoured corps) on the flank of the enemy occupying the country between the Don and the Volga with the purpose of counter-attacking south and south-east from the vicinity of Serafimovich.

With German forces heavily engaged at Stalingrad and spread thinly due to their deep penetrations into the Caucasus, the Wehrmacht was increasingly reliant on their Romanian and Italian allies to cover the flanks of their extended line, on the north along the Don, and to the south along the Volga.

In less than a week, in the face of deteriorating weather and blizzard conditions, the Soviet forces had sealed the gap behind Stalingrad, and had begun to reinforce their investment around the city in order to prevent an attempted escape.

The Germans planned to drive two thrusts, one through each flank of the salient, and unite them at Kursk in order to cut off substantial Soviet forces, recover from the strategic loss at Stalingrad, and curtail further Russian advance.

In late June one German bomb load in a night raid hit Rokossovsky's HQ, and he escaped only because on a whim he had decided to set up his signals group in the officers' mess.

[60] The German offensive, code named "Operation Citadel", was originally scheduled to begin in May but the attack was delayed several times in order to bring up fresh Panzer formations equipped with Tiger I's and Panther tanks and their latest assault guns.

On 3 May 1945 he linked up with British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's 2nd Army in Wismar, Germany while the forces of Zhukov and Ivan Konev captured Berlin, ending the war.

[69] In the wake of the Poznan riots and the "rehabilitation" of the formerly imprisoned communist reformer Władysław Gomułka in 1956, Rokossovsky went to Moscow in a failed attempt to persuade Nikita Khrushchev to use force against the Polish state.