Word: zhukov
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...Moscow young Zhukov became a member of the revolutionary committee of his old unit. This unit was soon incorporated in a cavalry regiment, commanded by ex-Cavalry Sergeant Semyon Timoshenko, which became part of a Red cavalry army led by Semyon Budenny, an ex-Cossack. The war unfolded on a 3,000-mile perimeter around central Russia. The Red cavalrymen fought as irregular shock troops, now galloping 400 miles to strike Poland's Pilsudski, now driving south at the White forces under General Denikin, finally pinning White General Piotr Wrangel in the Prekop isthmus and bringing...
...revolutionary Red army, he had revolt on his hands. He was able to form a general staff, training and technical commands out of a nucleus of experienced ex-Imperial army officers, among whom was the future Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. The old irregulars objected to being educated. Georgy Zhukov was an exception. When the chance came for a military course at Moscow's Frunze Academy, he grabbed it. Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov thought him "somewhat slow," but sent him off to Germany to study under General von Seeckt. The black-haired young Russian was a strange figure among...
...real acid test came months later, when Germany sent the whole weight of the powerful, cocky, victorious Wehrmacht charging into Russia. Zhukov fought a battle at Yelnia, near Smolensk, which drove the invaders back 20 miles. It was one of the few successful delaying actions. Stalin's first act of war was to reinstate the army commissars, but commissars were unable to prevent hundreds of Red army commanders, thinking they preferred Nazi to Communist tyranny, from surrendering their arms and their men. Quite a few commissars went over, too. Others, like Old Irregular Budenny, defeated in the Ukraine, beat...
...Kremlin, the dictator faced up to a frightened group of party sycophants. Outside in the streets of Moscow the angry, dismayed mob was ready to tear them limb from limb. Stalin was forced to yield all military decisions to the man with the highest professional qualifications in Russia: Georgy Zhukov. Zhukov's first decision: save Moscow...
When Hitler bellowed, "Moscow must be finished off at any price," Zhukov answered in the Biblically inspired words of Russia's famed 13th century hero Alexander Nevsky: "Whosoever comes against us with the sword shall perish by the sword. Such is the law of the Russian land, and such it will always be." Following the tactics of General Gallieni, who defended Paris against the Germans in 1914, Zhukov requisitioned every automotive vehicle he could find in Moscow, including the Kremlin limousines, and put a scratch army of volunteers on the Moscow-Mozhaisk road. He brought the Siberian army across...