Georgi Zhukov

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Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov (Гео́ргий Константи́нович Жу́ков) (ZHOO-kaff) (December 1, 1896 - June 18, 1974) was a Soviet military commander and politician, one of the finest and certainly toughest and most overtly successful army commanders of World War II.

Born into a peasant family in Strelkovka, Kaluga Province, Zhukov was apprenticed to work in Moscow, and in 1915 was conscripted into a dragoon regiment as a private.

During World War I, Zhukov was awarded the St George Cross twice and promoted to the rank of non-commissioned officer for his bravery in battle.

He joined the Communist Party after the October Revolution, and his background of poverty became an asset. After recovering from typhus he fought in the civil war (1918-1920), receiving the Order of the Battle Red Banner for subduing a peasant revolt.

By 1923 Zhukov was commander of a regiment, and in 1930 of a brigade. He was a keen proponent of the new tank warfare and was noted for his detailed planning, tough discipline and strictness. He also survived the massive and grim Great Purges of the army command institued by Stalin in the 1930s.

Zhukov left the dangerous environment of Moscow to command the First Soviet Mongolian Army Group, and saw action against the Japanese Kwantung Army on the border between Mongolia and the Japanese controlled state of Manchukuo in an undeclared war that lasted between 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 Halhin Gol (commonly called "Nomohan" in English). Zhukov requested major reinforcements and on August 15, 1939 he ordered what seemed at first to be a conventional frontal attack. However, Zhukov had held back two tank brigades, which he, in a daring and entirely successful manouvere, then 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 several days the Japanese troops were defeated. For this operation Zhukov was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union. Outside of the Soviet Union, however, it remained little-known, as by this time World War II had begun in Europe. Zhukov's pioneering use of mobile armour went unheeded by the west, and in consequence the German Blitzkrieg twelve months later came as a great surprise.

Promoted to full general in 1940 Zhukov was briefly chief of STAVKA before a disagreement with Stalin led to him being replaced in June by Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov (who was in turn replaced by Alexander Vasilevsky in November).

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, (see Great Patriotic War), Zhukov was sent to the Leningrad military district to organise the city's defence. Showing remarkable military skills and ruthless determination, he managed to restore discipline in the defending forces and to call citizens to arms. He stopped the German advance in Leningrad's southern outskirts in autumn 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 (see Battle of Moscow). He also directed the transfer of troops from the far East, where two-thirds 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. Most analysts believe that Moscow would certainly have fallen without it.

In 1942 he was made Deputy Commander-in-Chief and sent to the southwestern front to save Stalingrad, overseeing the capture of the German Sixth Army in 1943 at the cost of perhaps a million dead. In January 1943 he orchestrated the first break-through of the German blockade of Leningrad. He gave General Vatutin command in the Battle of Kursk. Following the failure of Marshal Voroshilov he completely lifted the Siege of Leningrad in January 1944.

Zhukov led the Soviet offensive of 1944 and the final assault on Germany in 1945, capturing Berlin in April, and becoming the first commander of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany.

As the most prominent Soviet military commander of the Great Patriotic War, Zhukov inspected the Victory Parade on the Red Square in Moscow in 1945.

A war hero and a leader hugely popular with the military, Zhukov constituted a most serious potential threat to Stalin's dictatorship. As a result, in 1947 he was demoted to command the Odessa military district (which was far away from Moscow and lacking strategic significance and attendant massive troops deployment). After Stalin's death, Zhukov became deputy defense minister (1953) then defense minister (1955). In 1953 he supported the Khruschev-Bulganin-Malenkov faction in arresting (and eventually executing) Lavrenty Beria, head of the state security apparatus. We must appreciate that after decades of purges, Beria's organization inspired terror in the hearts of ordinary people and, indeed, still had great power; but the war and victory gave a new sense of self-worth and courage to the veteran officers, and Zhukov first and foremost. Lacking the moral authority to command and be obeyed by the soldiers, the secret police chiefs could not resist when the military came to arrest them on Zhukov's orders. The overthrow of Beria and the subsequent trials of many of his colleagues have effectively subjected the police and security apparatus to firm Party control and ended the legacy of arbitrary purges of the Stalin's era. Zhukov supported Nikita Khrushchev in 1957, and in June that year he was made a full member of the Central Committee. However, he had significant political disagreements with Khruschev in matters of army policy. Khruschev scaled down the conventional forces and the navy, while developing the strategic nuclear forces as a primary deterrent force, hence freeing up the manpower and the resources for the civilian economy. Zhukov, naturally, supported the interests of the military and disagreed. In a matter of four months Khruschev relieved him of his ministry and expelled from the central committee. In his memoirs, Khrusvhev claims that he believed that Zhukov was planning a coup d'etat against him and that he publicly accused Zhukov as grounds for expulsion at the Central Committee meeting. Only after Khrushchev was deposed in 1964 could Zhukov appear in public again.

He was buried with full military honours in 1974. In 1995, commemorating Zhukov's 100th birthday, present-day Russia adopted the Zhukov Order and the Zhukov Medal.


References

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