The man known to history as Georgy Zhukov
was born on the 1st of December 1896 in the village of Strelkovka in Kaluga province around
eighty miles to the southwest of Moscow in what was then the Russian Empire. His father Konstantin was a widowed cobbler
who married his second wife Ustinya at the age of forty-one in 1892. The twenty-six-year-old Ustinya was a peasant
labourer who was a widow herself when she married Konstantin. The couple’s first child, a daughter named
Maria, was born in 1894, followed by Georgy two years later. A younger brother Alexei was born in 1902
but died within a year. At the time of Georgy’s birth, the vast
Russian Empire stretched from Poland to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast and from the shores of
the Arctic ocean to the mountains of Central Asia, with a total population of some 140
million people. Georgy’s native Kaluga province was in Russia’s
industrial heartland and the nearby town was named Ugodsky Zavod after the ironworks on
the banks of the River Ugodka Since 1996, the centenary of Georgy Zhukov’s birth,
the town has been known as Zhukov after its most famous son. Russia was undergoing rapid industrial development
at the turn of the 20th century which was accompanied by an expansion of primary education. Unlike most peasant children who were only
at school for two years, Georgy received three years of primary education, which he started
in 1903 at the age of seven. After completing his studies, in the summer
of 1908 Georgy was sent to Moscow as an apprentice to his maternal uncle Mikhail, who worked
as a furrier in the centre of the city not far from Red Square. While working twelve hours each day, Georgy
continued his education at night school. Georgy was a keen reader and in his spare
time studied the Russian language, mathematics, geography, and the sciences along with his
cousin Alexander, Mikhail’s son. After Alexander was sent to Germany to learn
German, he taught Georgy the language during his trips home to Moscow. By the summer of 1914 the seventeen-year-old
Georgy Zhukov had completed his apprenticeship as a furrier. The outbreak of the First World War in August
1914 pitched the Allied powers of France, Russia, and Great Britain against the Central
Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, who were joined a little later by the Ottoman
Empire, which ruled over Turkey and the Middle East. In the summer of 1915, Zhukov was conscripted
into the 5th Reserve Cavalry Regiment and went to Ukraine to join the 10th Cavalry Division
in Kharkov. Following training courses for a cavalryman
and a non-commissioned officer, Zhukov was posted to the River Dniestr in Moldova in
August 1916. Not long after, he used his German language
skills to capture a German officer and won the St George’s Cross 4th class. In October, he was knocked off his horse by
an enemy shell while on reconnaissance, for which he received the St George’s Cross
3rd class. After a hospital stay in Kharkov, he returned
to his original regiment at the end of the year. From his camp in Ukraine, Zhukov received
news that Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated his throne in March 1917 after mass demonstrations
on the streets of the imperial capital of Petrograd, formerly St Petersburg. The tsarist government had struggled to manage
the war effort, the economy was in crisis, and there was a shortage of food in the cities. While the liberal Provisional Government had
official authority, actual power was exercised by the socialist Petrograd Soviet of Workers
and Soldiers’ Deputies and a countrywide network of soviets or councils in which workers
and soldiers could have their say in decision-making. By July, the Bolshevik faction led by Vladimir
Lenin gained popularity as the only political group to demand an immediate end to the war. In November, Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized
power in Petrograd on behalf of the soviets. Zhukov had been a member of his regimental
soviet but his own unit was disbanded and he returned to Strelkovka by the end of the
year. In March 1918, Lenin signed the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, making large territorial concessions which increased
German control of Central and Eastern Europe. This encouraged opponents of the Bolsheviks
to take up arms, and Lenin authorised the establishment of a professional military force,
the Red Army, to defend the revolution. Under the political leadership of Leon Trotsky,
the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs, former officers and NCOs of the imperial army
were invited to join the ranks of the Red Army, and in October 1918 Zhukov joined the
4th Regiment of the 1st Moscow Cavalry Division. In March 1919 he became a candidate member
of the Bolshevik Party, which had been officially renamed the Communist Party in 1918, and a
full member in May 1920. In June 1919 Zhukov saw action against Admiral
Alexander Kolchak’s army advancing on European Russia from Siberia, but by September he was
at Tsaritsyn on the Volga River in southern Russia, where he was injured by a grenade. He returned to duty in January 1920 and was
assigned to the 3rd Reserve Cavalry Division, but in March he was sent to Ryazan southeast
of Moscow, where he trained as a cavalry officer. He achieved good grades in all subjects and
helped to train other cadets before graduating from the course in August. He was assigned to the 2nd Moscow Rifle Brigade
which consisted of two infantry regiments and one cavalry regiment. After seeing action in southern Russia against
the anti-Bolshevik army of Baron Pyotr Wrangel, in October 1920 Zhukov transferred to Voronezh
province to suppress a peasant uprising known as the Tambov Rebellion, during which was
promoted to squadron commander and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. One of his comrades-in-arms in the suppression
of the rebellion was Alexandra Zuikova, who soon became his first wife. Zhukov remained in the ranks of the Red Army
after the end of the Civil War in 1921. In 1922 Lenin proclaimed the establishment
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the Soviet Union, which brought together
the soviet republics in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Caucasus in what was nominally a union
of equals but in practice dominated by Soviet Russia and its leaders in Moscow. Lenin had suffered a serious stroke that year
and died in January 1924. A power struggle ensued among the Soviet leadership
in which Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party, emerged at the head
of a dictatorship by 1928. Stalin’s most prominent rival, Leon Trotsky,
had been removed as War Commissar at the beginning of 1925. His successor Mikhail Frunze instituted a
reorganisation of the Red Army’s command structure. During the Civil War, the Red Army had a dual
command structure under which political commissars attached to each unit could veto decisions
made by army commanders. Frunze abolished the political commissar’s
veto in favour of a single military command, strengthening discipline in the army. Though Frunze died in the October 1925 from
complications following a surgery, he left behind a legacy of professionalism and discipline
among Red Army officers. The Bolsheviks had abolished military ranks
in the Red Army, but Zhukov’s responsibilities rapidly increased in the early 1920s and by
July 1923 he was commander of the 39th Cavalry Regiment in the 7th Cavalry Division, and
soon received praise for instilling discipline and order among the ranks. In October 1924 Zhukov was sent to the Higher
Cavalry School in Leningrad, which had been Petrograd prior to Lenin’s death. Zhukov’s classmates included Konstantin
Rokossovsky , a former tsarist officer from Warsaw who enjoyed a reputation as a talented
cavalry commander, and Ivan Bagramyan, an Armenian who fought for the tsar in the First
World War before becoming an officer in the army of the Republic of Armenia which was
absorbed by the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Both men played an important role in Zhukov’s
military career, and they recognised him as the most diligent and talented student in
the class. The course ended in the summer of 1925 with
a forced march from Leningrad to the River Volkhov and a swim across the river on horseback. At the end of the course, Zhukov and two colleagues
from the 39th Regiment decided they would ride all the way to their division in Minsk
on horseback, covering almost 1000 kilometres in seven days. In late 1928 Zhukov became a father when Alexandra
gave birth to a daughter named Era, and the couple would have another daughter named Ella
in 1937. In 1923 Zhukov had recommenced a liaison with
Maria Volkhova whom he had first met in late 1919 while recovering from his wound, and
in June 1929 Maria gave birth to an illegitimate daughter named Margarita. At the end of 1929 Zhukov went to the Frunze
Military Academy in Moscow, studying the theory and practice of modern combined-arms warfare,
bringing together tanks, artillery, aircraft, and motorised infantry. By the early 1930s, the Red Army had developed
a doctrine of ‘deep battle’ under which a heavy assault column would break through
the enemy defences and encircle it from the rear. These theories were developed by assistant
war commissar Mikhail Tukhachevsky, whom Zhukov held in high regard but whom Stalin considered
a leadership rival. After graduating from the Frunze Academy,
in May 1930 Zhukov was promoted to command the 2nd Cavalry Brigade in the 7th Division,
where his old classmate Rokossovsky was now commander. In February 1931 Zhukov went to Moscow to
serve as a cavalry inspector reporting to Semyon Budyonny, a legendary cavalry commander
from the Civil War. Budyonny praised Zhukov’s leadership abilities
but added that he could be “unnecessarily harsh and rude” in his disciplinary methods. After two years at the inspectorate, in March
1933 Zhukov took command of the 4th Cavalry Division, made up of four cavalry regiments,
a mounted artillery regiment, and a mechanised regiment. From its base at Slutsk in the Belorussian
Military District, Zhukov restored discipline and morale in his division and was awarded
his first of six Orders of Lenin in 1935. Zhukov’s four-year stint as a divisional
commander coincided with a massive investment programme in the Soviet military. By the end of the decade, defence spending
increased to 25 per cent of the state budget and the army’s manpower increased from one
million to four million. In 1935, the Soviet army reintroduced military
ranks up to colonel and created the new title of Marshal of the Soviet Union. The five men awarded to the accolade included
Stalin’s close associates Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny, as well as the politically
suspect Tukhachevsky. Less than two years later, in May 1937, Stalin
initiated a purge of the Red Army’s leadership during which Tukhachevsky and two of his fellow
marshals were arrested and executed. The dual command system was reintroduced to
assert political control over the army, and more than 34,000 officers were dismissed,
most of whom were shot or died in prison. The expansion of the Soviet army and the purge
of the Soviet officer corps allowed the likes of Zhukov, who kept his head down and raised
few objections to the arrests and denunciations taking place around him, to rapidly rise through
the ranks. In July 1937 he was given command of the 3rd
Cavalry Corps, and in under a year he was named deputy commander of the Belorussian
Military District in June 1938. The increase in Soviet defence spending during
the 1930s was in response to the threat of war from Japan in the east and Germany in
the west. In 1931, Japan’s invasion of the Chinese
province of Manchuria on the Soviet border led to fears that Japan might expand into
Siberia. The growing power of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi
Party in Germany created a new threat closer to home, as Hitler urged Germany’s eastward
expansion at the expense of the Soviet Union. In November 1936, Germany and Japan signed
an Anti-Comintern Pact aimed at the Communist International, the global revolutionary movement
founded by the Bolsheviks in 1919 but in effect directed at the Soviet Union. When Japan invaded northern China in 1937,
Stalin provided military aid to the Chinese Nationalist government. Sino-Japanese relations were further complicated
by the communist People’s Republic of Mongolia, established in 1924 with Soviet backing. A series of border disputes between Mongolia
and the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo escalated over the decade, leading to skirmishes
at the Khalkh River, better known by its Mongolian name of Khalkhin Gol, in 1939. In May, the forty-two-year-old Zhukov was
sent to Khalkhin Gol to report on the 57th Special Corps deployed in the area. By the time of his mission to Mongolia, Zhukov
had served in the military for twenty-three years, more than half his life. He had fought in the First World War and the
Russian Civil War as a cavalryman and took a close interest in the development of mechanised
warfare. He was recognised as a hardworking officer
and stern disciplinarian and not only survived but thrived during the Great Purge. Within days of his arrival at Khalkhin Gol,
Zhukov carried out an inspection and sent a critical report to Moscow, following which
he was appointed commander of the 57th Corps on the 12th of June. On the 19th of July, the 57th was reorganised
into the 1st Army Group, allowing Zhukov to report directly to Moscow. After suffering thousands of casualties fighting
to defend the Soviet positions on the east bank of the river in July, Zhukov requested
significant reinforcements for an offensive in August. By the middle of August Zhukov had more than
60,000 men, over 500 artillery pieces, 900 tanks and armoured vehicles, and 500 planes. The opposing Japanese army had a similar amount
of artillery and aircraft but fewer than a hundred tanks. The Japanese position running north to south
was separated by the Khailasty Gol, a small tributary of the Khalkhin Gol running past
the village of Nomonhan. Zhukov planned to put the deep battle doctrine
into practice by dividing his army into three groups. The Central Group, consisting mainly of infantry,
would launch a frontal assault on the Japanese positions, while the Northern Group would
sweep around the Japanese right flank to the north of Khailasty Gol. In the meantime, the Southern Group on Zhukov’s
right would cross Khalkhin Gol towards Nomonhan, encircling the Japanese south of the Khailasty
before linking up with the other two groups to trap the entire Japanese army. After being informed by his intelligence operatives
that many Japanese officers had taken Sunday leave, Zhukov’s attack began on the morning
of Sunday the 20th of August 1939. While Soviet bombers and artillery bombarded
the Japanese positions, the tanks swiftly swept around the flanks, inflicting the majority
of Japanese casualties sustained during the battle. After defeating a Japanese counterattack to
break out of the Soviet encirclement with his reserves, Zhukov declared victory on the
27th of August and the final pockets of resistance were eliminated by the 31st. For winning the Red Army’s first victory
after the Civil War, Zhukov was made Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest accolade
of the Soviet state. While Zhukov was defeating the Japanese at
Khalkhin Gol, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union unexpectedly signed a Non-Aggression
Pact on the 23rd of August 1939. Stalin had attempted to negotiate an anti-German
alliance with Britain and France but the talks broke down as a result of mutual suspicions. The agreement enabled Hitler to invade Poland
on the 1st of September, and on the 3rd of September Britain and France declared war
on Germany, marking the start of the Second World War in Europe. On the 17th of September, as part of a secret
agreement with Germany to partition Poland, the Soviets invaded Poland and occupied the
Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The Soviet invasion of Finland in the winter
of 1939-40 proved a disaster, with Soviet forces suffering more than 300,000 casualties
in three months despite enjoying numerical superiority. Zhukov remained in Mongolia until May 1940
finalising details of the border with the Japanese. By the time he returned to Moscow in early
June, Hitler had launched his Blitzkrieg invasion of France, resulting in French surrender within
six weeks, leaving Britain and its empire to stand against Germany alongside the resistance
forces of nations under Nazi occupation. Despite the Non-Aggression Pact from 1939,
Stalin believed that after subduing his enemies in western Europe Hitler would turn his guns
at the Soviet Union. The calamity of the Finnish War demonstrated
that the Soviet military had a long way to go before it could fight the Germans on equal
terms. In May, Stalin began to reform the armed forces
by reintroducing the titles of general and admiral while reinstating thousands of surviving
officers arrested during the purges, including Zhukov’s classmate Rokossovsky who had been
imprisoned since 1937. Stalin dismissed Kliment Voroshilov as defence
commissar and replaced him with Semyon Timoshenko, a Ukrainian general who led the Soviet occupation
of Poland before restoring some of the Soviet army’s wounded pride in Finland. In June 1940 Zhukov was promoted to general
of the army and appointed to succeed Timoshenko as commander of the Kiev Special Military
District, the largest military district in the country which covered the whole of Ukraine,
including parts of western Ukraine which had been conquered from Poland. Zhukov’s reputation as an effective military
instructor and disciplinarian came in handy as the Soviet troops suffered from poor morale
and a shortage of supplies. Within a month of his appointment, Zhukov
led an operation to occupy Bessarabia and northern Bukovina from Romania, leading to
the formation of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in August. Zhukov’s military activities in Ukraine
put him in close contact with Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist
Party, with whom he would cross paths many times later. Zhukov’s Kiev Military District was one
of three military districts on the western border of the Soviet Union and would therefore
be vulnerable to a German invasion. Accordingly, Zhukov was expected to carry
out the Soviet army’s plans in the event of an invasion. A plan developed in the summer of 1940 predicted
that the Germans would invade in the north via Belarus and the Baltic states to Leningrad
and Moscow, and accordingly the main concentration of Soviet forces would be in the north in
order to counterattack. By October, the Soviet leadership came to
believe that an invasion would come in the south in order to target the industrial clusters
in Ukraine and southern Russia. Officials argued the bulk of the Soviet forces
should be concentrated in Zhukov’s sector in Ukraine. In December 1940, Zhukov presented a paper
under the title “The Character of Contemporary Offensive Operations” at a conference of
senior military leaders in Moscow. Drawing on the examples of Khalkhin Gol and
the German Blitzkrieg in Poland and France, Zhukov placed emphasis on coordination of
combined arms tactics involving tanks, infantry, artillery, and aircraft with the view of penetrating
deep into the enemy lines by pinning down the enemy in the centre and deploying strong
mobile columns along the flanks. Timoshenko endorsed Zhukov’s arguments and
added that defence could only be effective by preparing several defensive zones. At the beginning of January, immediately following
the conference, Zhukov participated in several war games against General Dmitry Pavlov. Zhukov commanded the German army in the first
game and the Soviet army in the second and gained an advantage on both occasions. Stalin was suitably impressed that he appointed
Zhukov Chief of the General Staff and Deputy Defence Commissar. Zhukov’s elevation to political and military
leadership positions was accompanied by his election as an alternate member of the Communist
Party’s Central Committee in February 1941. Although the Germans and the Soviets had developed
close economic and military ties since August 1939, Stalin felt uneasy about German dominance
over western and central Europe after the fall of France in July 1940, while Hitler
refused to entertain the extension of Soviet influence in the Balkans. By December 1940, Hitler decided to invade
the Soviet Union the following summer. In the spring of 1941 Soviet military intelligence
indicated that the Germans were shifting their military strength eastwards. Though Stalin continued to believe that an
invasion was not yet likely and that British agents were attempting to provoke him into
fighting Hitler, Zhukov was involved in the continued development of war plans in the
event of a German invasion. A mobilisation plan presented in February
1941 envisaged an increase in the army’s strength to eight million men and 300 divisions. In May 1941 a revised version of the war plan
was prepared by deputy chief of operations General Alexander Vasilevsky and signed off
by Timoshenko and Zhukov. While the plan reiterated the expectation
of a German attack in the south followed by a Soviet counterattack, it proposed a pre-emptive
strike while the Germans were still deploying. While some historians have cited the plan
as evidence that Stalin was planning to attack Germany in 1941, Zhukov’s biographer Geoffrey
Roberts argues that there is no indication that Stalin had approved or even seen the
plan, and the measures taken by the Soviet army during the first half of the year were
not sufficient for a pre-emptive strike. By June the risk of a German invasion was
heightened, and on the 19th of June Zhukov ordered Soviet commanders on the western front
to move to their forward command posts. While these orders were still being carried
out, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, began on the
22nd of June 1941. The invasion force numbering 3.5 million men
was formed of three army groups, Army Group North targeting Leningrad, Army Group Centre
targeting Moscow, and Army Group South headed for Ukraine. The Germans hoped to repeat what they had
done in Poland and France by breaking through the enemy line and encircling them from the
rear. Although the Soviets had anticipated the main
German attack to be in the south, the bulk of the invasion force was directed at Leningrad
and Moscow. Nevertheless, on the evening of the 22nd Zhukov
and Timoshenko issued orders for counteroffensives in Belarus and Ukraine. Zhukov personally supervised the counteroffensive
in Ukraine which temporarily held back the German attack, but General Pavlov’s operations
in Belarus enabled the Germans to attack his exposed flanks and encircle Minsk, capturing
400,000 Soviet prisoners in the process. While Stalin angrily berated Zhukov for failing
to keep him informed of the military situation, General Pavlov was arrested for treason and
executed within a month. On the 10th of July, Stalin took personal
charge of the Soviet war effort by becoming supreme commander of the Soviet armed forces,
head of the defence commissariat, and chair of the Supreme Command Headquarters, or Stavka. In the meantime, Voroshilov, Timoshenko and
Budyonny were placed in charge of the Soviet forces in the northwest, west, and southwest
respectively. During the first month of the war, Zhukov
followed Soviet doctrine by issuing a series of orders for counterattacks which gained
little ground and sustained heavy casualties. Nevertheless, he retained his composure and
on the 15th of July issued instructions to the front to reorganise the large unwieldy
army and corps commands to enable commanders to respond more effectively and rapidly to
changing situations. On the 30th of July, Stalin ordered Zhukov
to command the Reserve Front and lead a counteroffensive against the German bulge or salient at Yelnya
near Smolensk. In his autobiography, Zhukov claimed that
he had been removed by Stalin as Chief of Staff on the 29th after the latter disagreed
with Zhukov’s proposal to withdraw from Kiev. Geoffrey Roberts argues that Zhukov had adopted
this narrative to distance himself from the disaster befalling the Southwestern Front
in Kie v. Stalin believed that the Soviet defeats at the beginning of the war were due
to poor discipline in the army. On the 16th of August, he signed an order
for Soviet troops not to retreat one step, with extreme repercussions for the so-called
deserters and their families. The directive prevented Soviet troops from
retreating in good order and exposed large army formations to encirclement. By mid-September, the Germans had encircled
Kiev and inflicted more than 700,000 Soviet casualties. Zhukov was far more successful in conducting
the Yelnya offensive, one of several counterattacks designed to hinder the German offensive towards
Moscow, which prompted Zhukov’s wife and daughters to evacuate from the capital in
August. After his initial attacks were repulsed, on
the 30th of August Zhukov resumed his attacks against the bases of the German salient, completing
the operation to eliminate the salient by the 6th of September. Despite heavy losses, the Yelnya offensive
was the first Soviet victory of the war and help to restore Soviet morale. While Stalin may have had reservations about
Zhukov’s immediate response to the invasion in June, and Zhukov himself later admitted
that he was unprepared to head the General Staff, the success at Yelnya restored Stalin’s
faith in Zhukov’s abilities. Having regained his reputation as Stalin’s
troubleshooter, within days of his success at Yelnya Zhukov was appointed to the Leningrad
Front to rescue the besieged city on the 11th of September. German Army Group North planned to seize Leningrad
before linking up with Army Group Centre to attack Moscow. By the time the Germans reached the outskirts
of the city in early September, Hitler had shifted his attention to the capture of Moscow
and ordered Leningrad to be besieged. For the Soviets, the loss of the country’s
second largest city would not only facilitate German operations towards Moscow but would
also have an immense impact on morale. As commander of Soviet forces in the northwest,
Marshal Voroshilov had delayed the German advance but failed to prevent the enemy from
surrounding the city on the 9th of September. With around half a million men at his disposal
but without any tanks or air support, Zhukov managed to stabilise the Soviet defences on
the southern approaches to the city, though Hitler had already been withdrawing forces
from Army Group North to support the attack on Moscow. Leningrad remained under siege for another
three years, resulting in more than a million civilian deaths, though it did tie down German
forces. At the end of September, the Germans launched
Operation Typhoon, an attack on Moscow involving a million men, 1,700 tanks, and 1,000 planes. The defence of Moscow was naturally the most
important task for the Soviet military in late 1941, and accordingly Stalin summoned
Zhukov to Moscow in early October. Within days of his arrival, Zhukov was appointed
commander of the Western Front on the western approaches of Moscow, supported by General
Ivan Konev’s Kalinin Front to the north. Zhukov’s task was complicated by the fact
that in early October the Soviets had already lost half a million men encircled in Bryansk
and Vyazma southwest of Moscow. Before Zhukov’s arrival, the line of defences
had shrunk to be centred on Mozhaisk near Borodino, the site of the great battle between
General Kutuzov’s Russians and Napoleon’s Grande Armée in 1812. After the collapse of the Mozhaisk Line on
the 18th of October, the Soviet authorities declared that Moscow was under a state of
siege. On the 1st of November, Zhukov issued an appeal
to his men reminding them of their illustrious predecessors who had defeated Napoleon, vowing
that “in this hour of danger we will not spare our forces or our lives in erecting
a steel wall in defence of the Motherland and in defence of its sacred capital, Moscow.” While Zhukov was forced to withdraw further
towards Moscow, his constant counterattacks weakened the German offensive, enabling him
to reinforce his armies. On the 7th of November, the twenty-fourth
anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet troops paraded in Moscow on their way to the
front. In his address at the parade, Stalin appealed
to the great heroes of Russian military history – Alexander Nevsky, who defeated the Swedes
and the Germans in the 13th century, Dmitry Donskoy, who defeated the Tatars in the 14th
century, Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky who liberated Moscow from Polish occupation
in the 17th century, and Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov, who fought the Turks,
Poles, and the French at the turn of the 19th century. By the end of November, the Soviet defences
west of Moscow had withstood the German onslaught, and Zhukov was able to send reserves to turn
back the German offensive. In the meantime, Stalin had built a large
reserve force for a counteroffensive which began on the 5th of December. Zhukov relied on his preferred tactic of launching
a central assault to hold the enemy centre while carrying out strong attacks on the flanks
to destroy the German forces attempting to encircle Moscow. Almost 400,000 Soviet troops attacked 250,000
men of Army Group Centre, and by the end of December Zhukov’s men had advanced over
a hundred miles. Zhukov’s successful defence of Moscow was
not only celebrated by the Soviet press but made the front pages of the western newspapers. Stavka hoped to build on the successful counteroffensive
by launching a more ambitious attack towards Vyazma and Rzhev to encircle and annihilate
Army Group Centre. Stalin believed that once the initial German
attacks were defeated they would have no remaining reserves, and in January 1942 the 700,000
men of the Western and Kalinin Fronts were thrown forward. Contrary to Stalin’s expectations, the Germans
dug in and held firm, and the offensive was abandoned in April. In his memoirs, Zhukov admitted that he had
underestimated the enemy’s defences. Zhukov and the Soviet high command continued
to launch unsuccessful offensives against Rzhev throughout the year, sustaining more
than a million casualties in what was subsequently known as the Rzhev meatgrinder. The Germans by the spring of 1942 had lost
over a million men, a third of their combat strength on the Eastern Front, without achieving
their objectives of capturing Leningrad and Moscow. German strategic considerations were also
influenced by the entry of the United States into the war in December of 1941 following
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which was accompanied by a German declaration of
war on the United States. Faced with the prospect of the Soviets receiving
American military and economic aid, Hitler decided concentrate on southern Russia and
capture the oil fields of the Caucasus. In May 1942, a major Soviet counteroffensive
led by Timoshenko against Kharkov was defeated with a loss of almost 300,000 men. The Soviet defeat in Ukraine ensured that
the German offensive encountered less resistance, and by the end of August the Germans had reached
Stalingrad, the city on the banks of the Volga which Zhukov had known as Tsaritsyn prior
to its renaming in 1925. The Red Army had lost over 600,000 men, 7,000
tanks and 400 aircraft in July and August. Although the primary German objective had
been to capture the Caucasian oilfields, in July Army Group South was split into Army
Group A and Army Group B. The former was to capture Rostov-on-Don and
advance over the Caucasus towards Baku on the Caspian Sea, while the latter would head
east towards Voronezh before turning southeast along the Don and Volga Rivers to Stalingrad. Timoshenko’s defences had crumbled and his
Southwestern Front was reorganised into the Stalingrad Front. After the initial clashes outside Stalingrad,
on the 28th of July Stalin issued a famous order “Not a Step Back!” echoing Zhukov’s appeals during the defence
of Moscow. Although Stalingrad was far less politically
and strategically significant than Moscow, the city bearing the Soviet leader’s name
was an industrial hub which controlled access to the Volga and the Caucasus. Stalin continued to evoke past Russian military
glory, and on the 30th of July he introduced the Orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov, and Alexander
Nevsky. Stalin recognised that patriotism rather than
ideology was the motivating factor for the Red Army, and in October he abolished the
role of political commissars in the Soviet army. Soviet counterattacks failed to prevent the
Germans from laying siege to Stalingrad on the 23rd of August. On the 26th of August, Stalin appointed Zhukov
deputy supreme commander and sent him to Stalingrad as the Stavka’s representative. The battle for the city involved the German
6th Army under General Friedrich von Paulus and the Soviet 62nd Army commanded by General
Vasily Chuikov. Chuikov was under the direct command of General
Andrei Yeremenko, the commander of the Stalingrad Front, which also included several army formations
supporting Chuikov’s flanks. Though the Germans made steady progress on
the west bank of the Volga, Chuikov continued to receive reinforcements from the east bank. In early October, Zhukov criticised Yeremenko’s
handling of the defence of the city and ordered him to “turn every street and every building
in Stalingrad into a fortress.” After three months of heavy fighting through
the streets of the city, the Germans were in control of 90 per cent of Stalingrad, with
remaining Soviet resistance confined to the slopes of the Mamayev Kurgan, a hill overlooking
the centre of the city, and a narrow strip among the factories on the west bank of the
Volga. Chuikov’s army suffered 75 per cent casualties
but remained a viable fighting force. While the Germans were advancing inch by inch
in Stalingrad, Zhukov and Chief of Staff Alexander Vasilevsky were planning a counteroffensive
codenamed Operation Uranus to destroy the besieging forces. At the same time, Zhukov worked on Operation
Mars, yet another attempt to destroy Army Group Centre in Rzhev. While Mars failed to achieve its desired objectives,
Uranus proved far more successful. Launched on the 19th of November 1942, Operation
Uranus involved the forces of three Soviet fronts, Yeremenko’s Stalingrad Front, Rokossovsky’s
Don Front, and Nikolai Vatutin’s Southwestern Front. Yeremenko would attack south of Stalingrad,
while Rokossovsky would move in from the north. Vatutin would lead the main attack northwest
of the city, and the three armies would all converge on Kalach in the enemy rear. Paulus was caught by surprise and by the 23rd
of November almost 300,000 soldiers were caught in the Soviet trap, predominantly Germans
but also including a significant number of men from Hitler’s Romanian, Italian, and
Hungarian allies. A German operation to rescue the 6th Army
was stopped by the Soviet forces, though it managed to disrupt Operation Saturn, launched
on the 16th of December to recapture Rostov. In January 1943 Rokossovsky led an operation
to tighten the ring around the enemy, and on the 2nd of February 90,000 surviving Germans
surrendered, including Paulus. Although the Soviets had sustained 2.5 million
casualties during the campaign, the Red Army inflicted 1.5 million casualties on the Germans
and pushed them back to where they had been in June 1942. By the time of the German surrender in Stalingrad,
Zhukov had been back on the Leningrad Front to oversee Operation Iskra, an attempt to
break the Siege of Leningrad. The operation was launched on the 12th of
January and achieved partial success by reopening road and rail links by the 18th, the same
day Zhukov was promoted Marshal of the Soviet Union. Later that month, he received the Order of
Suvorov for his part in Operation Uranus. In February 1943 Zhukov returned to the northwest
to oversee Operation Polar Star, an ambitious plan he developed to destroy Army Group North,
but the operation proved a failure and cost the Red Army 250,000 casualties. Zhukov soon returned to Moscow, where he was
a member of a four man group responsible for strategic decision-making including Stalin,
Vasilevsky, and General Alexei Antonov, the General Staff’s chief of operations. In a report to Stalin from April 1943, Zhukov
predicted a German offensive towards the Kursk salient to support the ultimate objective
of capturing Moscow. He proposed that the Soviet army should adopt
a defensive posture before turning to the offensive. Accordingly, in May Zhukov supervised the
preparation of three defensive belts on the Central and Voronezh Fronts which met at the
Kursk salient. Following on from their success in Operation
Uranus, Vatutin was named commander of the Voronezh Front and Rokossovsky served as commander
of the Central Front. The two fronts had a combined 1.3 million
troops, 3,600 tanks, and 2,800 aircraft. Another half a million men and 1,500 tanks
under the command of General Konev was designated as a reserve to support a counterattack. Zhukov kept Stalin updated on the situation
on the ground and spent many hours in detailed discussions with General Rokossovsky. In the meantime, Soviet partisans operated
behind enemy lines to disrupt enemy communications. The anticipated German offensive began on
the 4th of July, as the German 9th Army from Army Group Centre and the 4th Panzer Army
from Army Group South aimed to execute a double envelopment of the Kursk salient. During the battle Zhukov oversaw the Central,
Bryansk, and Western Fronts, while Vasilevsky assumed responsibility for the Voronezh Front. The Battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle
in world history, involving 3,000 German tanks and 5,000 Soviet tanks. The German tank formations included heavy
Tigers and medium Panthers, both of which outgunned the main Soviet battle tank, the
T-34, which was cheaper and quicker to produce, thus enabling the Soviets to enjoy a large
numerical advantage. Though the Germans advanced several miles
into the Soviet lines, the Soviet defences held and the battle climaxed with the action
at Prokhorovka on the 12th of July. Though General Pavel Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards
Tank Army suffered heavy casualties, the Soviets could afford to lose more tanks and the German
attack was called off. Following Zhukov’s plans, the Soviets launched
two offensive operations both named after Russian generals of the late 18th century. Operation Kutuzov in the north was directed
against Army Group Centre in the Orel salient, and by the 5th of August Orel was captured
by the Soviets. Zhukov personally supervised Operation Rumyantsev
in the south which captured Belgorod on the 5th of August and Kharkov on the 23rd. A third operation named after Alexander Suvorov
recaptured Smolensk in September. The Soviet offensives following the Battle
of Kursk paved the way for the reconquest of Ukraine. While Zhukov favoured encirclement operations
to eliminate large groups of enemy personnel, Stalin considered these operations risky and
preferred to recapture as much territory as possible on a broad front. On the 26th of August the Central, Steppe,
and Voronezh Fronts which had taken part in the Battle of Kursk launched offensive operations
aimed at Kiev and the eastern bank of the Dnieper River. As the Red Army advanced towards Ukraine and
Belarus, the Voronezh Front was renamed the 1st Ukrainian Front, the Steppe Front as the
2nd Ukrainian Front, and the Central Front as the 1st Belorussian Front. As coordinator of the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian
Fronts, Zhukov supervised the attack on Kiev on the 3rd of November, resulting in the recapture
of the Ukrainian capital three days later, successfully meeting Stalin’s desire to
liberate the city before the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on
the 7th of November. By the end of the year, the Red Army had pushed
the Germans beyond the west bank of the Dnieper. The 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts under Vatutin
and Konev continued to advance in early 1944 before Vatutin was ambushed and shot by the
nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army at the end of February. Zhukov succeeded the mortally wounded Vatutin
as commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, continuing the offensive to the River Dniestr to cut
off Army Group South from Romania. At the end of May, Zhukov joined Stalin and
senior Soviet generals to finalise the plans for Operation Bagration, the offensive named
after the Georgian prince Pyotr Bagration who was one of the most famous Russian generals
from the Napoleonic Wars. The offensive conducted by the three Belorussian
Fronts and the 1st Ukrainian Front in the south was designed to destroy Army Group Centre
and liberate Belarus. The operation was the largest Soviet offensive
of the war, involving 2.4 million men, 36,000 artillery pieces, and over 5,000 tanks and
aircraft, an overwhelming numerical superiority over the Germans. As coordinator of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian
Fronts, Zhukov inspected the preparations for the offensive, which was timed to roughly
coincide with the D-Day landings in France on the 6th of June. After initial preparatory attacks by partisans,
the main attack was launched on the 23rd of June and the Red Army captured the Belorussian
capital of Minsk on the 3rd of July along with 100,000 Germans from Army Group Centre
caught in the Soviet net. Though Operation Bagration cost the Soviets
750,000 casualties, by the end of July Army Group Centre had suffered 400,000 casualties
of its own and was no longer a viable formation. After recapturing Belarus, the Soviet offensive
continued into Poland. By early August Rokossovsky’s 1st Belorussian
Front arrived at the Warsaw suburb of Praga on the eastern bank of the Vistula River. The 20,000 strong 1st Polish Army, formed
among the Poles who were deported to the Soviet Union following the invasion of 1939, was
given the privilege of leading the attack. However the Soviet offensive was losing momentum
and the Germans organised a strong defence of the Polish capital, which if lost would
open the way for the Soviets to advance on Berlin. Zhukov and Rokossovsky’s attempts to establish
a bridgehead on the west bank of the Vistula north of Warsaw were unsuccessful and the
Red Army abandoned further offensive operations until 1945. While the Soviets were advancing on Warsaw
from the east, anti-Soviet Poles affiliated with the Polish government-in-exile in London
launched the Warsaw Uprising within the city. While Stalin was criticised for failing to
assist the uprising which was brutally suppressed by the German authorities, both Zhukov and
Rokossovsky asserted after the war that the Soviets had repeatedly attempted offensive
operations during the uprising. In early September Zhukov supervised the Soviet
invasion of Bulgaria, during which the Soviets were welcomed as liberators and the pro-Nazi
government was overthrown in a communist coup. After returning to Poland, Zhukov was involved
in planning for the invasion of Germany. The 1st Belorussian Front would lead the drive
towards Berlin, and on the 12th of November Zhukov was appointed its commander, with Rokossovsky
transferred to the 2nd Belorussian Front. The decision strained the friendship between
the two men, as Rokossovsky was unhappy that he would be denied the honour of capturing
Berlin. In November 1944 the Soviet command developed
its plan for an offensive from the Vistula to the Oder River. Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front was to capture
Warsaw, advance to Poznan and take Berlin, while Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front would
target Breslau, now Wroclaw, the capital of the industrial region of Silesia. Between them, the two fronts had 2.2 million
men, 32,000 guns, 6,500 tanks and almost 5,000 aircraft, outnumbering the German forces more
than fivefold. Stalin coordinated the operation himself,
assisted by General Antonov, who soon succeeded Vasilevsky as chief of staff. The operation was to take forty-five days,
with Soviet troops marching into Berlin by the end of February. The Vistula-Oder Operation began on the 12th
of January 1945, and on the 17th Zhukov had successfully captured Warsaw, with the 1st
Polish Army being the first to enter the city as planned. A week later the 1st Belorussian Front reached
Poznan in western Poland near the pre-war Polish-German border. By the first week of February Zhukov was crossing
the Oder, hoping to capture Berlin by the middle of the month. In the meantime, Konev’s advance was going
to plan further south, but the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts had run into trouble in
the north. Stalin ordered Zhukov to halt the drive to
Berlin and turn north to counter the German concentration in the region of Pomerania on
the Baltic coast. By the end of March Zhukov was in a position
to submit plans for the capture of Berlin. On the 31st of March, Stalin and the western
allied commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower had agreed to coordinate their advances towards
Leipzig and Dresden in southern Germany, but a few days later, after receiving intelligence
that the British and Americans were planning to take Berlin, Stalin ordered Zhukov and
Konev to take Berlin as soon as possible. The 1st Belorussian Front would take Berlin
and advance up to the Elbe River while the 1st Ukrainian would attack German forces south
of Berlin and advance towards Dresden. The German capital was heavily fortified with
three defensive zones manned by a million German soldiers and 1,500 tanks. On the 16th of August, Zhukov launched a night
attack on the formidable German position on the Seelow Heights to the east of Berlin. In the meantime, Konev had obtained permission
from Stalin to attack Berlin from the south, encouraging Zhukov to quicken his attack on
the Seelow Heights, which were taken on the 19th. The following day, both Zhukov and Konev ordered
their tank commanders to race to Berlin, and the two fronts broke into the Berlin suburbs
simultaneously on the 21st. On the 23rd of April Stalin issued an order
dividing the city between Zhukov and Konev, with the primary objective of the Reichstag
building lying just inside Zhukov’s zone. Over the following week both fronts fought
their way through the streets of Berlin until the Reichstag building was captured on the
30th of April, the same day Hitler committed suicide. The Soviet flag was raised over the Reichstag
that evening by two of Zhukov’s men, an event that was later re-enacted and photographed. Having led the Soviet defence of Moscow in
1941, the counteroffensives at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1942 and 1943, Operation Bagration
in 1944, Zhukov fully deserved the honour of capturing the Reichstag in 1945. In the meantime, Konev’s men linked up with
the Americans at Torgau southwest of the German capital on the 25th of April. The remaining defenders of Berlin surrendered
on the 2nd of May, concluding a decisive but expensive operation that had cost the Soviets
more than 350,000 casualties. On the evening of the 8th of May Zhukov presided
over the ceremony where the German Instrument of Surrender was signed. By the time the surrender came into effect,
it was past midnight on the 9th of May in Moscow, and henceforth the Soviets celebrated
the 9th of May as Victory Day. Zhukov briefly returned to Moscow and was
involved in the planning of the Soviet invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Led by Vasilevsky in early August, the operation
took less than a week and coincided with the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
leading to the Japanese surrender on the 14th of August. At the end of May, Zhukov returned to Berlin
as commander of Soviet occupation forces in Germany. On the 24th of June, Zhukov was back in Moscow
to review the Victory Parade in Red Square mounted on a white Arabian stallion. According to Stalin’s son Vasily, the Soviet
dictator intended to review the parade on horseback but had been thrown off from the
same horse. The parade was commanded by Rokossovsky, while
Marshals Konev, Vasilevsky, Bagramyan and Yeremenko were among those leading the massed
columns of the victorious Soviet troops, while 200 Nazi banners captured as trophies of war
were thrown down against the Kremlin wall. After returning to Berlin, Zhukov was involved
in the preparations for the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945. Zhukov showed British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill and US President Harry Truman around the ruins of Berlin. Zhukov was not a delegate to the conference
but attended several meetings, and the three allied leaders agreed that the country would
be demilitarised and after a suitable interval the Allied occupation zones would give way
to a unified German government. These aspirations would not be realised as
the wartime alliance soon broke down on ideological grounds, leading to the confrontation between
Soviet-led communism and American-led capitalism in the Cold War. By 1948 the British, French, and American
occupation zones were united into West Germany, while the Soviet occupation zone became East
Germany. For the time being, in late 1945 and early
1946, Soviet-American relations remained harmonious and Zhukov and Eisenhower developed a mutual
respect for each other. In March 1946 Zhukov was recalled to Moscow
to serve as commander-in-chief of Soviet ground forces. Shortly after his return, at the beginning
of June he was denounced by the Soviet political and military leadership for “egoism and
disrespect for his peers” for refusing to share credit for the Berlin operation and
other Soviet victories. One of his chief detractors was Marshal Alexander
Novikov, who blamed Zhukov for his dismissal as head of the Soviet Air Force a few months
earlier. Accordingly, on the 9th of June Zhukov was
dismissed as commander-in-chief and posted to the Odessa Military District. The campaign against Zhukov continued, and
in February 1947 he was removed from the party Central Committee. In January 1948 an investigation ordered by
Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief, uncovered a vast collection of valuable items
including jewellery, furs, and paintings that had been taken from Germany. Though Zhukov pleaded that the items were
not stolen and were given to him as gifts or paid for with his money, he was ordered
to surrender the items to the state. On the 4th of February 1948 he was transferred
to the remote Urals Military District based in Sverdlovsk, now Ekaterinburg, and his name
was written out of the histories of the war and excluded from the list of marshals of
the Soviet Union. Zhukov’s fall from grace had a negative
impact on his health and he suffered a heart attack in 1948. In 1950, while in hospital in Sverdlovsk with
heart problems, Zhukov fell in love with his attending doctor, the twenty-four-year-old
Galina Semyonova. The relationship continued surreptitiously
for a decade, hidden from Zhukov’s wife Alexandra until 1957, when Galina gave birth
to a daughter named Maria. In 1965, Zhukov would divorce Alexandra in
order to marry Galina. By 1949, Zhukov began to be rehabilitated,
and in October 1952 he attended the 19th Party Congress and returned as a candidate member
of the Central Committee. On the 5th of March 1953, Stalin died at his
dacha west of Moscow, and the new defence minister Nikolai Bulganin appointed Zhukov
and Vasilevsky as his deputies. At the same time, Georgy Malenkov became Chairman
of the Council of Ministers or state premier, while Nikita Khrushchev emerged as the leader
of the party organisation. The most active member of the Soviet leadership
team after Stalin’s death was Lavrenty Beria, who uncharacteristically began to release
thousands of political prisoners from incarceration and spoke of improving relations with the
capitalist West. Other Soviet leaders feared that these initiatives
were part of an attempt by Beria to seize power, and Khrushchev, Malenkov and Bulganin
plotted to eliminate Beria. On the 26th of June Zhukov was urgently summoned
to the Kremlin and instructed to arrest the secret police chief. While Zhukov admitted that he had little experience
carrying out such an operation, he enthusiastically agreed to execute his orders. Within two hours, Zhukov and a small group
of armed officers, including the future Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, arrested Beria and
sent him to prison. Following a show trial, Beria was executed
in December. As deputy defence minister Zhukov supervised
the development of Soviet nuclear capabilities and conducted exercises simulating nuclear
warfare. Bulganin had been careful not to allow Zhukov
any political authority, but in January 1955 Khrushchev secured Malenkov’s dismissal
as premier and appointed Bulganin in his place. On the 7th of February 1955, Zhukov was appointed
minister of defence, and the following month Ivan Bagramyan was appointed to serve as his
deputy. In an interview to the American press on the
same day, he proposed a ban on nuclear weapons and expressed his hope for peaceful relations
with the United States. As defence minister, Zhukov presided over
the demobilisation of more than two million men from the Soviet army as Khrushchev sought
to deescalate the Cold War. At the same time, Zhukov and Foreign Minister
Vyacheslav Molotov established the Warsaw Pact, a collective security alliance bringing
together the Soviet Union and seven communist states in Eastern Europe. In July 1955 Zhukov accompanied Khrushchev,
Molotov, and Bulganin at the Geneva conference where he met Eisenhower, who had been President
of the United States since 1953. Zhukov attempted to reassure the US President
that the Soviet Union had no aggressive intentions and reiterated his desire for nuclear disarmament
though the West remained deeply sceptical. On the 25th of February 1956, following the
end of the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev delivered his secret speech which criticised
Stalin’s cult of personality and his handling of the Second World War. He argued that Stalin had taken credit for
victories in the war which belonged to Soviet marshals and generals, including Zhukov. At the same conference, Zhukov had been elevated
as a candidate member of the Presidium, the supreme decision-making body within the party
formerly known as the Politburo. Zhukov joined Khrushchev’s denunciations
of Stalin’s treatment of the Red Army’s officer corps during the Great Purge and Stalin’s
response to the invasion in June 1941. Under Zhukov’s influence, Marshal Tukhachevsky
was formally rehabilitated in January 1957, followed by General Pavlov, who had been scapegoated
for the disaster of June 1941, in July. Although Zhukov did not have voting rights
in the Presidium, his membership of the body allowed him to provide his input on political
and military matters, and he played an important role in the Soviet response to the political
crisis in Hungary in late October 1956. An anti-communist rebellion had broken out
in Budapest, leading to the creation of a new government led by the communist reformer
Imre Nagy. Zhukov hoped that Nagy would be able to stabilise
the situation, but Nagy’s decision to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact on the 1st of November
prompted a forceful Soviet response. On the 4th of November 1956, Marshal Konev
led a Soviet invasion of Hungary which resulted in 2,000 Soviet casualties and 25,000 Hungarian
casualties. Following his role in the Hungarian crisis,
Zhukov was awarded his fourth Order of Lenin in December 1956 on the occasion of his sixtieth
birthday. By the summer of 1957, Khrushchev’s authority
in the Presidium was being challenged by the old Stalinists Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich,
and former premier Malenkov. On the 18th of June, Khrushchev was criticised
for his leadership by most of the Presidium members, and Anastas Mikoyan was the only
full member of the body to come to the leader’s defence. The candidate members, Zhukov and Leonid Brezhnev,
spoke in Khrushchev’s defence but did not have voting rights. Zhukov helped Khrushchev summon a meeting
of the wider pro-Khrushchev Central Committee to discuss the matter, enabling Khrushchev
to survive the attempted coup. At the plenum meeting that followed, Zhukov
revealed details of Kaganovich and Molotov’s complicity in Stalin’s purges. Zhukov was rewarded for his loyalty to Khrushchev
with his promotion as a full member of the Presidium, but a few months later Khrushchev
turned against his minister of defence. In October 1957, while Zhukov was on a visit
to Yugoslavia and Albania, he was denounced in the Presidium for neglecting ideological
issues in the army. Following his return to Moscow Zhukov defended
himself from the allegations directed at him, but at a meeting of the Central Committee
on the 28th and 29th of October, Timoshenko, Konev, Yeremenko, Chuikov and Rokossovsky
denounced Zhukov’s cult of personality. Zhukov was duly dismissed from the Presidium
and the defence ministry, and his conduct during the war was once again criticised. Although Khrushchev had promised to give Zhukov
new responsibilities, in February 1958 he was retired from the Soviet armed forces. He was under surveillance from the KGB, the
secret police, and regularly criticised Khrushchev’s policies, including the heavy investment in
the Soviet space programme. The KGB was particularly concerned about Zhukov’s
memoirs, which he had begun writing in the late 1950s, inspired by Winston Churchill’s
six-volume history of the Second World War. In his memoirs, Zhukov also defended himself
against criticisms that he had failed to prepare adequately for the German invasion, and that
he was a ‘Bonapartist’ who had ambitions of seizing political power for himself. Zhukov knew that his memoirs would not be
published while Khrushchev remained in power, but in October 1964 Khrushchev was ousted
by Brezhnev. This paved the way for Zhukov’s rehabilitation,
and on the 8th of May 1965, the twentieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany,
Zhukov was invited to the Kremlin. His popularity with the people did not wane
during the intervening years, and for the rest of his life he was bombarded with offers
to give interviews and write for military journals. He was given access to Soviet military archives
and in the autumn of 1966, he delivered the 1,430-page manuscript of his memoirs. Zhukov resented the edits made by the editors
supervised by state censors, but the autobiography was published in April 1969 and sold millions
of copies in the Soviet Union and abroad. During the final decade of his life, Zhukov
basked in the glow of the Soviet general who defeated Hitler and captured Berlin, and he
was awarded his fifth and sixth Orders of Lenin in December 1966 and December 1971,
marking his seventieth and seventy-fifth birthdays. This period was a turbulent time in Zhukov’s
family life, as his divorce of Alexandra in 1965 caused his daughters Era and Ella to
cease contact with him. Though he managed to resume contact with his
daughters in 1966, Alexandra died of a stroke in December 1967, the same month Galina informed
him that she was suffering from terminal cancer. Zhukov himself suffered a stroke in January
1968 which paralysed his left side. He and Galina spent long periods away from
each other being treated in different hospitals, and he was unable to make it to Galina’s
bedside when she died in November 1973 aged forty-seven. Zhukov outlived her by several months, dying
on the 18th of June 1974 at the age of seventy-nine. His funeral was the largest Soviet state occasion
since the death of Stalin two decades earlier, and on the 21st of July his ashes were interred
at the Kremlin Wall. Marshal Georgy Zhukov enjoys a reputation
as the most famous Soviet general of the Second World War and as one of the best allied commanders
during the war, and General Eisenhower argued that Zhukov deserved the credit for the defeat
of the Nazis. Zhukov was awarded over seventy military medals
and decorations both Soviet and foreign, including the French Legion d’Honneur, the American
Legion of Merit, and the British Order of the Bath. Like many Soviet World War Two commanders,
Zhukov began his career in the Tsarist army as a cavalryman. After the Russian Civil War, he climbed up
the ranks and survived the purges in the late 1930s to deputy district command. At Khalkhin Gol, Zhukov won the Red Army’s
first victory since the Civil War, earning him widespread recognition and the key responsibilities
of preparing for hostilities with Germany as head of the Kiev Military District and
later Chief of Staff. Despite the disasters following the German
invasion of June 1941, Zhukov retained Stalin’s trust and successfully managed the defence
of Leningrad and Moscow. Zhukov’s counteroffensives demonstrated
that the German war machine was not invincible, and as Stalin’s deputy supreme commander
he played an instrumental role in planning the offensive that led to the encirclement
of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad in 1942, the partial lifting of the Siege of Leningrad
and the Battle of Kursk in 1943, the destruction of Army Group Centre during Operation Bagration
in 1944, and the capture of Warsaw and Berlin in 1945. Despite this superlative war record, he was
also responsible for the costly Soviet attacks against the Rzhev salient, and after the war
he was criticised for claiming too much credit for the great Soviet victories. Although Zhukov had no ambitions for political
leadership, his popularity and prestige as the man who defeated Hitler’s armies caused
him to sent away to distant commands by Stalin. His reputation recovered after Stalin’s
death and he played a key role in bringing Khrushchev to power by arresting Beria, a
scene played memorably by Jason Isaacs in the 2017 British comedy film The Death of
Stalin. As defence minister, Zhukov supported Khrushchev’s
efforts to reduce the temperature of the Cold War and prevented Khrushchev from being ousted
in June 1957, only to have the Soviet leader turn on him a few months later. Zhukov’s reputation was restored for a second
time under Brezhnev, and he ended his days as a celebrated war hero. What do you think of Georgy Zhukov? Was he the greatest allied commander of the
Second World War who saved the Soviet Union from destruction before turning the tide of
the battle and masterminding the defeat of Hitler and the capture of Berlin, or did he
repeatedly make mistakes which cost more Soviet lives than necessary? Please let us know in the comment section
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
