Georgy Zhukov
Georgy Zhukov commanded at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin, and was twice removed from public life for being too popular. Born in 1896 to a peasant family near Kaluga, he was apprenticed to a furrier in Moscow, conscripted into the cavalry in 1915, won two St George's Crosses, and joined the Red Army in 1918. He survived the purge that killed most of the Soviet high command in 1937 and 1938 — around three-quarters of the senior officers — partly by being on the eastern periphery. That is where he made his reputation. At Khalkhin Gol on the Mongolian border in 1939 he destroyed a Japanese army with a double envelopment by armour, in a battle almost unknown in the West and consequential enough that Japan turned south rather than north in 1941. He was chief of the general staff in June 1941 and had argued for a pre-emptive concentration that Stalin refused. He then spent the war being sent wherever the situation was worst: Leningrad in September 1941, Moscow in October, the counteroffensive in December, the planning of Uranus that encircled the Sixth Army at Stalingrad, the defensive design at Kursk, and the drive to Berlin. His method was frontal pressure combined with deep envelopment, and it was expensive in men. He took the German surrender in May 1945 and rode a white horse at the victory parade. Stalin sent him to Odessa within a year. Khrushchev made him defence minister and dismissed him in 1957. He is the only Soviet marshal whose reputation survived both Stalin and de-Stalinisation.
- Lived: 1896 CE – 1974 CE
- Nationality: Russian
- Roles: field_marshal, military_leader
