Rokossovsky, the front commander in this chapter, was one of the most prominent generals in the USSR after Zhukov, comparable to Konev or Vatutin. He was one of the officers that was sent to the gulag and tortured before '41 and released during the war due to the shortage of qualified officers. Accordingly he was known for being strong-willed and willing to defy orders as well as being a flexible operational thinker, most notably during the planning for Bagration where he was thrown out of the staff meetings by Stalin and kept returning to argue with him until he got his way. Because of this he's sometimes seen by western commentators as one of the more heroic of the Soviet generals, but he was also placed into a position of authority in Poland following the war and was a leading executor of the pro-Soviet political repression there despite being ethnically Polish himself.