Georgy Zhukov

Georgy Zhukov (b 1896) commanded the Red Army and all the military forces of the Soviet Union for many years.

Born into a peasant family in Strelkovka, Maloyaroslavets Raion, Kaluga Guberniya (now Zhukovo Raion Kaluga Oblast), Zhukov was apprenticed to work in Moscow, and in 1915 was conscripted into the army of the Russian Empire, where he served in a dragoon regiment as a private. During World War I, Zhukov was awarded the Cross of St George twice and promoted to the rank of non-commissioned officer for his bravery in battle. He joined the Bolshevik Party after the Russian Revolution, and his background of poverty became an asset. After recovering from typhus he fought in the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1920, receiving the Order of the Battle Red Banner for subduing a non-communist (White) incited peasant rebellion.

By 1923 Zhukov was commander of a regiment, and in 1930 of a brigade. He was a keen proponent of the new theory of armoured warfare and was noted for his detailed planning, tough discipline and strictness. He survived Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of the Red Army command in 1937-39.

In 1938 Zhukov was directed to command the First Soviet Mongolian Army Group, and saw action against Japan's Kwantung Army on the border between Mongolia and the Japanese controlled state of Manchukuo in an undeclared war that lasted from 1938 to 1939. What began as a routine border skirmish—the Japanese testing the resolve of the Soviets to defend their territory—rapidly escalated into a full-scale war, the Japanese pushing forward with 80,000 troops, 180 tanks and 450 aircraft.

This led to the decisive Battle of Khalkhin Gol. Zhukov requested major reinforcements and on August 15, 1939 he ordered what seemed at first to be a conventional frontal attack. However, he had held back two tank brigades, which in a daring and successful manoeuver he ordered to advance around both flanks of the battle. Supported by motorized artillery and infantry, the two mobile battle groups encircled the 6th Japanese army and captured their vulnerable supply areas. Within a few days the Japanese troops were defeated.

For this operation Zhukov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Outside of the Soviet Union, however, this battle remained little-known as by the time World War II had begun. Zhukov's pioneering use of mobile armour went unheeded by the West, and in consequence the German Blitzkrieg against France in 1940 came as a great surprise.

Promoted to full general in 1940, Zhukov was briefly (January - July 1941) chief of the Red Army General Staff before a disagreement with Stalin led to his being replaced by Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov (who was in turn replaced by Aleksandr Vasilevsky in 1942). Ironically, this led to a relative non-accountablity of Zhukov's military role in the huge territorial losses during the German 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union thus ensuring his presence "in the wings" for later action.

According to his book of memoirs (written after the death of Stalin and during the peak of Nikita Khrushchev's Anti-Stalin campaign), Zhukov was fearless in his direct criticisms of Stalin and other commanders after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 (see Great Patriotic War). Zhukov, according to his own memoirs, alone among Soviet commanders, attempted to convince Stalin that the Kiev region could not be held and would suffer a double envelopement by the Germans. Stalin, who berated Zhukov and dismissed his advice, refused to evacuate the troops in the area. As a result, half a million troops became prisoners when the Germans took Kiev. Zhukov stopped the German advance in Leningrad's southern outskirts in the autumn of 1941.

In October 1941, when the Germans closed in on Moscow, Zhukov replaced Semyon Timoshenko in command of the central front and was assigned to direct the defense of Moscow. He also directed the transfer of troops from the Far East, where a large part of Soviet ground forces had been stationed on the day of Hitler's invasion. A successful Soviet counter-offensive in December 1941 drove the Germans back, out of reach of the Soviet capital. Zhukov's feat of logistics is considered by some to be his greatest achievement.

When the Race's Conquest Fleet arrived in 1942, Zhukov was initially forced to make huge concessions to the unexpected and far more advanced enemy. However, Zhukov pioneered innovative tactics which overcame the Race's technological superiority through the use of superior Soviet numbers (at tremendously high cost to his army) and increasingly short supply reserves for the Race. Zhukov turned the tide, stabilized the front, and began retaking territory from the Race, especially after the Soviet Union developed the atomic bomb.

After the war Zhukov remained Marshall of the Red Army. Following the death of Stalin, he became, along with Lavrenti Beria of the NKVD and Foreign Commisar Andrei Gromyko, one of General Secretary Vyahceslav Molotov's most important advisers. Molotov trusted neither Zhukov nor Beria and attempted to play them off against each other; the two had a deep-seated rivalry between them. However, in 1963, Beria and the NKVD attempted a coup against Molotov, and Zhukov suppressed it. He had a choice between restoring Molotov and making himself General Secretary. He chose to restore Molotov, but Molotov no longer had a counterbalance against him, and Zhukov felt at liberty to use the veiled threat of launching his own coup to influence Molotov's policy decisions. Ultimately, he continued to respect Molotov's authority for the remainder of his career.