Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov

Zhukov gave his own explanation of the 1941 catastrophe: neither the People's Commissar nor he had the experience needed to prepare the armed forces for such a war, the experienced military cadres had been destroyed in 1937–1939, and the frequent turnover of senior command staff in the People's Commissariat of Defence and the General Staff before the war prevented sound plan development and a competent professional team. The purge atmosphere had touched him too. At a district party conference, as commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, he was accused of having 'failed to discern enemies of the people' and of being 'politically short-sighted'; he sent a telegram to Stalin and Voroshilov, received no answer, and was not further troubled.

As Chief of the General Staff and deputy People's Commissar of Defence from February to July 1941, he took part in drafting the 'Considerations on the plan of strategic deployment of the forces of the USSR in case of war with Germany and its allies', dated no earlier than 15 May 1941. It proposed not to cede the initiative to the German command but to forestall the enemy in deployment and attack German forces while still deploying; Timoshenko and Zhukov reported its content to Stalin. The plan's fate is not settled: the document is unsigned although signature places are marked, and in a 26 May 1965 interview Zhukov said Stalin did not approve it but did not specify which plan was actually in force when the war began.

After the German attack of 22 June, Zhukov prepared Directives No. 2 (sent 07:15) and No. 3 (sent 23:50) of the People's Commissar of Defence, ordering counter-attacks. The border district commands could not fulfil these tasks because the troops had not been brought to combat readiness in time, and the offensive of 23–28 June turned into a series of ineffective counter-blows. After the loss of Smolensk, on 29 July 1941 Stalin removed Zhukov from the post of Chief of the General Staff and appointed him commander of the Reserve Front, where he conducted the Yelnya offensive. Yelnya was the first successful Red Army offensive operation since the start of the war, at the cost of 31,853 Soviet troops out of 103,200 engaged.

By an order of 11 September he was appointed commander of the Leningrad Front. On 17 September he ordered the military councils of the 42nd and 55th armies to shoot immediately any commanders, political workers and soldiers who left a defence line without orders, and on 22 September he sent an encrypted telegram to the 8th Army demanding that its command personally lead troops into battle and warning that commanders who abandoned Peterhof would be shot as 'cowards and traitors'. Some publications assert that on 28 September he sent encrypted telegram No. 4976 to Leningrad Front troops instructing that it be explained to all personnel that the families of those who surrendered to the enemy would be shot and that they themselves would be shot on return from captivity. Assessments of his command style differed. Pokrovsky recorded that dealings with army commanders became rude under Zhukov and that one heard more about 'having heads removed' than about fixing matters; Rokossovsky wrote that no self-respecting commander has the right to insult subordinates, that Zhukov lacked this feeling, and that his personal 'I' often prevailed over common interests. At the same time Shtemenko recorded that Zhukov, a man of great generalship talent, bold and original in judgement and firm in carrying decisions through, could fairly sharply contradict Stalin when he felt he was right, which no one else dared do.

Georgy Zhukov mattered for more than winning individual battles. At Khalkhin Gol he coordinated armor and air power in an encirclement operation, and after Germany invaded in 1941 he helped hold the front together during the defense of Leningrad and Moscow. As a member of the high command, he then helped direct the offensives at Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin, concentrating forces and matériel as the strategic initiative shifted toward the Soviet side. His method valued operational scale and speed, but it cannot be separated from a harsh mobilization system that imposed enormous costs on soldiers and civilians. Zhukov should therefore be understood both as a highly capable operational commander and as a representative figure of a Soviet war effort that accepted extreme human costs for victory.

After the war, his reputation became both a source of military authority and a political liability. Stalin pushed him into peripheral commands, while Khrushchev used his authority during Beria's arrest and the ensuing reorganization of power in 1953. After clashing with the party leadership in 1957, Zhukov was removed from every post; in his memoirs he later presented his experience of the war and his tensions with the leadership. His career shows how a commander who exercised independent judgment in war remained subject to the political control of the party-state.

26 June 1953, Kremlin Politburo meeting. Lavrenti Beria strode in confidently. Three months since Stalin's death, Beria had already merged the KGB and MVD, amnestied camp prisoners, and proposed to solve the East German uprising himself. He was a threat to everyone.

On Malenkov's pre-arranged signal, Marshal Georgy Zhukov and officers waited outside the meeting room with concealed weapons. Mid-session, Malenkov suddenly pressed a buzzer under the table. Zhukov entered with armed officers and approached Beria: 'Stand up. You are under arrest.'

Beria, momentarily stunned, asked 'What's going on?' before being disarmed. He was detained in Malenkov's office, then executed without trial that December. Zhukov had defeated Napoleon and Hitler, but his most decisive moment was walking through a Kremlin office door.