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Hall of Military Commanders
Georgy Zhukov
Marshal of the Soviet Union; Stalingrad, Kursk, Berlin
- 1896 – 1974
- Military Commanders · 10 of 10
Hall of Military Commanders
Marshal of the Soviet Union; Stalingrad, Kursk, Berlin
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov (1 December [O.S. 19 November] 1896 – 18 June 1974) was a Soviet military leader who served as a top commander during World War II and achieved the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. During World War II, Zhukov served as deputy commander-in-chief of the armed forces under leader Joseph Stalin, and oversaw some of the Red Army's most decisive victories. He also served at various points as Chief of the General Staff, Minister of Defence, and a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Politburo).
Born to a poor peasant family near Moscow, Zhukov was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army and fought in World War I. He served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, after which he quickly rose through the ranks. In summer 1939, Zhukov commanded a Soviet army group to a decisive victory over Japanese forces at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, for which he won the first of his four Hero of the Soviet Union awards. In February 1941, Stalin appointed Zhukov as chief of the General Staff of the Red Army.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Zhukov lost his post as chief of staff after disagreeing with Stalin over the defense of Kiev. Zhukov, often in collaboration with Aleksandr Vasilevsky, was subsequently involved in the Soviet actions at Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk. He held the title of deputy commander-in-chief of the armed forces from August 1942, and was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in January 1943. He participated in the planning of Operation Bagration in 1944, and in 1945 commanded the 1st Belorussian Front as it led the Vistula–Oder Offensive into Germany, where he oversaw the Soviet victory at the Battle of Berlin. In recognition of Zhukov's key role in the war, he was chosen to accept the German Instrument of Surrender and to inspect the 1945 Moscow Victory Parade. He also served as the first military governor of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany from 1945 to 1946.
After the war, Zhukov's popularity caused Stalin to see him as a potential threat. Stalin stripped him of his positions and relegated him to military commands of little strategic significance. After Stalin's death in 1953, Zhukov supported Nikita Khrushchev's bid for leadership, and in 1955, he was appointed Defence Minister and made a member of the Presidium. In 1957, Zhukov fell out of favour again and was forced to retire. He never returned to a top post, and died in 1974. Zhukov is remembered as one of the greatest Russian and Soviet military leaders of all time, along with Alexander Suvorov, Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, and Mikhail Kutuzov.
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov was born into a poor Russian peasant family on 1 December [O.S. 19 November] 1896 in Strelkovka, a town then in the Maloyaroslavetsky Uyezd of the Kaluga Governorate of the Russian Empire and now in Kaluga Oblast, about 62 miles (100 km) east of Moscow. According to Geoffrey Roberts, Zhukov's mother, Ustin'ya, worked as a peasant labourer, while his father, Konstantin, was a cobbler who had been orphaned as a child and later adopted by Anuska Zhukova. Zhukov completed a three-year primary education course and was then apprenticed to his maternal uncle as a furrier in Moscow.
While working in Moscow, Zhukov continued his education through reading and night-school classes as his work schedule allowed. He completed his apprenticeship in 1912 and continued to work for his uncle and master, a role which included three young employees under his leadership.
In 1915, Zhukov was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army and served in the 10th Dragoon Novgorod Regiment; in October 1916 he was wounded by a land mine explosion. During World War I, he received the Cross of St. George twice and was promoted to non-commissioned officer ranks.
After the 1917 October Revolution, he joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Following a severe bout of typhus, he fought in the Russian Civil War, serving in a cavalry formation commanded by Semyon Timoshenko that was later absorbed into the 1st Cavalry Army led by Semyon Budyonny. He completed an officers' cavalry training course in 1920 and was commissioned. In 1921, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in connection with operations against the Tambov Rebellion.
Zhukov advanced through cavalry command positions in the 1920s, including troop and squadron command and deputy regimental command. In late May 1923, he was appointed commander of the 39th Cavalry Regiment. He entered the Higher School of Cavalry in 1924 and graduated in 1925, returning to command the same regiment.
He began studies at the Frunze Military Academy in 1929 and graduated in 1930. In May 1930, he became commander of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade of the 7th Cavalry Division. In February 1931, he was appointed Assistant Inspector of Cavalry for the Red Army. In May 1933, he was appointed commander of the 4th Cavalry Division. He later commanded the 3rd Cavalry Corps and the 6th Cavalry Corps. In 1938, he became deputy cavalry commander of the Belorussian Military District.
Some accounts alleged that Zhukov received training in Germany during the 1920s as part of Soviet–German military cooperation; this claim has appeared in later memoir and intelligence-report literature and remains dependent on the reliability of those sources.
In 1938, Zhukov was assigned to command Soviet forces operating with the Mongolian People's Army against Japan’s Kwantung Army along the border between the Mongolian People's Republic and Japanese-controlled Manchukuo, during the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts of 1938–1939. The fighting culminated in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol (1939). On 20 August 1939, Zhukov launched a major offensive supported by armour and air power; by the end of August, Japanese forces had been pushed from the contested area and the Soviet–Mongolian side secured control of the disputed border zone.
Coox notes that the campaign involved large-scale combined-arms manoeuvre, including encirclement operations using armoured formations and supporting artillery and infantry. The fighting also exposed technical and operational problems with Soviet armoured vehicles, including issues affecting the BT-5 and BT-7 series, and subsequent assessments informed later Soviet armoured development and training practices. For his role in the victory, Zhukov was named a Hero of the Soviet Union. In May 1940, he was promoted to general of the army.
In the autumn of 1940, Zhukov started preparing plans for the military exercise concerning the defence of the Western border of the Soviet Union. It had been pushed further to the west after the Soviet Union annexed eastern Poland and the Baltic republics. In his memoirs, Zhukov reports that in this exercise, he commanded the Western or Blue forces—the supposed invasion troops—and his opponent was Colonel General Dmitry Pavlov, the commander of the Eastern or Red forces—the supposed Soviet troops. He noted that Blue had 60 divisions, while Red had 50 divisions. Zhukov describes the exercise as being similar to events that later took place during the German invasion.
In this military exercise, I commanded Blue forces representing the Germans, while Pavlov, the commander of Western Military District, commanded the Red forces representing our army [...] After knowing the original documents and the real number of German forces, when commanding the Blue forces, I had the attacks developed into three directions, that in the following event the Germans also attacked us in the same manners. Our main main strikes at that time were also similar to the main strikes of the Germans later. The army groups built were also nearly similar to the army groups that the Germans formed during the war. [...] Comrade [Stalin] asked why the Blue forces were so powerful, why the original documents of the military exercise allocated too many large forces for the German. He was told that such forces corresponded to the German capability and the real calculation about the potential forces that the German could unleash after they managed to achieve great superiority on the main axes. That sufficiently showed why the Blue forces could make strong advances during the military exercise.
Russian historian Bobylev noted that the details of the exercises were reported differently by the various participants who published memoirs. He said that there were two exercises; one from 2 to 6 January 1941, for the North-West direction; another from 8 to 11 January, for the South-West direction. During the first, Western forces attacked Eastern forces on 15 July, but the Eastern forces counterattacked and, by 1 August, reached the original border.
At the time, the Eastern forces had a numerical advantage: 51 infantry divisions against 41; 8,811 tanks against 3,512—with the exception of anti-tank guns. Bobylev describes how by the end of the exercise, the Eastern forces did not manage to surround and destroy the Western forces. In their turn, the Western forces threatened to surround the Eastern forces. The same historian reported that the second game was won by the Easterners, meaning that on the whole, both games were won by the side commanded by Zhukov. However, he noted that the games had a serious disadvantage since they did not consider an initial attack by Western forces, but only an attack by Eastern forces from the initial border.
According to Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, the war-game defeat of Pavlov's Red Troops against Zhukov was not widely known. The victory of Zhukov's Blue Troops was widely publicized, which created a popular illusion of easy success for a preemptive offensive. On 1 February 1941, Zhukov became chief of the Red Army's General Staff. He was also elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union In February 1941, and was appointed a Deputy People's Commissar for Defence in March.
From 2 February 1941, as the chief of the general staff, and Deputy Minister of Defense, Zhukov was said to take part in drawing up the "Strategic plan for deployment of the forces of the Soviet Union in the event of war with Germany and its allies." The plan was completed no later than 15 May 1941, according to a dated document found in the Soviet archives after they were declassified in the 1990s. Some researchers, such as Victor Suvorov, have theorized that on 14 May, Soviet People's Commissar of Defense Semyon Timoshenko and General Zhukov presented these plans to Stalin for a preemptive attack against Germany through Southern Poland.
Soviet forces would occupy the Vistula Border and continue to Katowice or even Berlin—should the main German armies retreat—or the Baltic coast, should German forces not retreat and be forced to protect Poland and East Prussia. The attacking Soviets were supposed to reach Siedlce, Dęblin, and then capture Warsaw before penetrating toward the southwest and imposing final defeat at Lublin.
Historians do not have the original documents that could verify the existence of such a plan, and there is no evidence that Stalin accepted it. In a transcript of an interview on 26 May 1965, Zhukov said that Stalin did not approve the plan. But Zhukov did not clarify whether execution was attempted. As of 1999, no other approved plan for a Soviet attack had been found.
On 10 June 1941, Zhukov sent a message to the Military Council of the Kiev Special Military District, after someone, most likely the commander of the Kiev district, Mikhail Kirponos, had ordered troops on the border to occupy forward positions. Zhukov ordered: "Such action could provoke the Germans into armed confrontation fraught with all sorts of consequences. Revoke this order immediately and report who, specifically, gave such an unauthorised order." On 11 June, he sent a telegram saying that his immediate superior, Timoshenko, had ordered that they were to report back by 16 June confirming that the troops had been withdrawn from their forward positions." According to the historian David E. Murphy, "the action by Timoshenko and Zhukov must have been initiated at the request of Stalin."
David Glantz and Jonathan House, American scholars of the Red Army, argue that "the Soviet Union was not ready for war in June 1941, nor did it intend, as some have contended, to launch a preventative war." Gerhard Weinberg, a scholar of Nazi foreign policy, supports their view, arguing that Adolf Hitler's decision to launch Operation Barbarossa was not because of a sense of urgent foreboding, but rather from a "purposeful determination" and he had started his planning for the invasion well in advance of the summer of 1941.
On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, an invasion of the Soviet Union. On the same day, Zhukov responded by signing the "Directive of Peoples' Commissariat of Defence No. 3", which ordered an all-out counteroffensive by Red Army forces. He commanded the troops to "encircle and destroy [the] enemy grouping near Suwałki and to seize the Suwałki region by the evening of 24 June" and "to encircle and destroy the enemy grouping invading in [the] Vladimir-Volynia and Brody direction" and even "to seize the Lublin region by the evening of 24 June". This manoeuvre failed and disorganized Red Army units were destroyed by the Wehrmacht. Furthermore the subsequent Battle of Kiev in September, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were captured or killed, lowered his standing with Stalin. Zhukov subsequently claimed that he was forced by Joseph Stalin to sign the directive, supposedly written by Aleksandr Vasilevsky, despite the reservations that he raised.
When Stalin arrived unannounced at command headquarters on 29 June, demanding to know why he was not being told what was happening at the front, Zhukov said: "Comrade Stalin, our duty is first of all to help the front commanders and only then to inform you." But when he had to admit that they lost contact with the front commanders in Belarus, Stalin lost his temper and called him "useless".
Text from the Wikipedia article “Georgy Zhukov”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.