General Zhukov is acclaimed as one of the best generals of WWII. Certainly he was efffective (he wound up beating the germans), but I don’t find him to be an exceptional strategist.
He seems to have relied upon a lot of costly direct assaults, and lost a lot of men. Of course, Stalin had given him a free hand, and made it clear that casualties were secondary to results.
For example, in the final assault upon Germany (Battle of Berlin), he poured his troops into a brutal frontal assault-where he could have attacked the German’s flanks.
What do historians today think?
Zhukov was sufficiently popular that Stalin feared his popularity…he wound up exiling Zhukov to a remote area (to get him out of the way).
I don’t have any kind of answer to this question, but I am subscribing to the thread because I am interested what others think.
While we are waiting for replies, have you listened to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History Podcast at all? He did a four part series called Ghosts of the Ostrfront that focused on the Eastern Front (obviously) and one part (part three I think) spent a lot of time talking about Zhukov and how unappreciated his role in the war is by the average Westerner.
“Stalin had given him a free hand, and made it clear that casualties were secondary to results.”
If your boss was Stalin and your brief was “Crush Germany and bugger the casualties”, I’m not sure low risk flanking moves would have been a viable strategic option.
Stalin wasn’t looking for the quickest, lowest cost way to win. He had territorial ambitions, revenge, historical grievances (not to mention homicidal mania) and destroying Germany as a military power was the way to achieve that. And he got to keep the western half of Poland.
Zhukov’s strength was in organising the logistics that so that they could do those head-on frontal assualts. He had the material advantage in numbers of men and machines and he exploited that.
When you think about it, Grant employed much the same tactics, and he had a much more accomodating boss,
That’s an excellent comparison. Now as a matter of fact I personally DO criticize Grant ( assuming all else is equal and it may not be due to political pressure ) for his tactics of attrition in the east. I think they were unnecessary, as by simply maneouvering and forcing Lee to hold the army of Virginia to face him, he could have run out the war while Sherman slowly gutted the confederacy from below, without the ruinous losses taken in slugging matches like the Wilderness.
But Zhukov wasn’t in the same strategic position as Grant. Regardless if you criticize Zhukov, you’re going to have to be willing to ding Grant for the same reasons.
By the way, just to illustrate that Zhukov was more than just a “scream and charge” type ( Grant certainly wasn’t either, as Vicksburg illustrates ), note the action at Khalkin Gol.
Zhukov won his battles and his war, moreso than any other WWII general. The only 20th century general who can be said to be better was General Giap of Vietnam, who lost virtually all of his battles and still won his wars. Giap was still alive last time I checked. Võ Nguyên Giáp - Wikipedia
I cam here to mention Khalkin Gol but see Tamerlane has beaten me to the punch. Nevertheless, beating the Germans was a far greater achievement IMHO.
I do like this quote in Wiki about Khalkin Gol:
The Japanese won this engagement, destroying half as many Soviet planes as they lost
Hmmm- wonder if that is incorrectly worded.
Zhukov also had armies under his command that dwarfed anything we used, millions of men thousands of tanks and planes. The western front was just a side show, 80% of the German war effort was on the eastern front.
We in the west often don’t recognize that a portion of Zhukov’s tendency to launch direct frontal assaults with little regard for the resultant casualties arose from his culture and background; mass human wave assaults were the traditional method of Russian warmaking.
And also for Aylmer Hunter-Weston.
End of hijack.
This is simply not true. It’s simplistic to the point of ignorance. I apologize for being blunt, but characterizing Russian/Soviet warmaking as “mass human wave assaults” is just as stupid as characterizing American warmaking as “bombing people from the air.”
An SDMB post is a short format to explain the entirety of Soviet and Russian military doctrine, so you’d be better off reading real histories of the Eastern Front, but suffice to say that what you’re describing is almost the opposite of the truth. It’s true the Soviets eventually had an overwhelming numerical superiority and they used it, but in fact “human wave” attacks did not work, as in fact one would expect. A thousand men can be killed by six guys with machine guns. When the Soviets tried such things they got their asses kicked.
The Soviets began winning the war when they began applying strategic, logistical and tactical intelligence to what they were doing. Soviet doctrine called for wars of maneuvre to be fought by bypassing enemy strongpoints - NOT assaulting them head-on - and by employing means of deception and misdirection (in Russian, “maskirovka,” a fantastic word) at all opportunities. They became superior to the Germans in every area of military logistics, and as the old saw goes, amateurs talk about tactics while professionals talk about logistics.
In each of the Soviet’s three most famous victories - Stalingrad, Kursk, and Bagration - victory was delivered not through frontal assaults but through excellent application of strategic and logistical techniques. Stalingrad was won through deception, by drawing the Sixth Army in to a city battle and then enveloping it with a suprise attack on the Axis flanks. Kursk was won defensively, through defense in depth, a technique the Soviets mastered. Bagration was won in large part to the the Soviet deception campaign that tricked the Germans into defending the wrong fronts (the deception campaign was similar to the Allied campaign to convince the Germans to defgend Pas de Calais instead of Normandy.)
Zhokov was definitely superior to that Irish fellow he replaced.
Rubbish.
Neither army had a truly competent junior officer corps, both were amateur armies, with militia units being the most experienced troops!:smack:
Zhukov didn’t get a truly skilled group of underlings, until the Siberian units arrived.
And Grant inherited no such troops.
Flanking movements require skilled subordinate officers, at the company level & below. No such animals in the Army of the Potomic.
Even if we accepted that this was true ( and I don’t, really ), I didn’t say anything about flanking movements, which in fact Grant continually essayed in his Overland Campaign. I just said Grant had to maneuver to present a threat to Lee, which really wouldn’t take much. As long as he sat in a position to threaten him, the army of Virginia could go nowhere, as it could not safely turn its back on such a powerful force under a competent commander. And as long as the army of Virginia was paralyzed, Sherman could continue his March unimpeded by any army strong enough to stop him. Eventually the Army of the West would have shattered the Confederacy from within and if necessary acted as the final hammer to Grant’s anvil.
Lee would have had to react before that happened, but his options were limited. Turn his back on Grant and he gets horribly mauled. Detach part of his army southwards and he risks the same fate, with poor odds of it making a difference against Sherman. Taking the offensive against Grant’s much more powerful force would give all the advantages to Grant on the defensive.
The argument for Grant’s incredibly costly campaign has always been that it was necessary to hold Lee in place. But I’ve never figured why this was so - Lee couldn’t ignore Grant and abandon Richmond, nor was he really in a position to attack him. So Grant could have basically just sat there and performed virtually the same function. The best counter-argument to that is that public and private pressure would demand some seemingly decisive offensive activity. But from a strictly strategic POV I think it was a waste.
Meanwhile Zhukov’s bloody final assault on Berlin ( which as RickJay points out is hardly a definitive example in a career of sustained ability that consisted of far more than just simple frontal attacks ) stemmed from different circumstances and even more political pressure. Zhukov was also facing a defensive expert in Colonel-General Heinrici, who was capable of making any victory costly.
Not that I can defend Grant completely on this issue, but I think that one argument for Grant’s attacking instead of simply serving as a counterweight to hold Lee in place is, well, Robert E. Lee. I know the Confederates were scraping the bottom of the barrel for manpower; I know their cavalry dominance was gone; I know they lacked the logistical resources to move the army easily. I just think that, of all history’s great captains, Bobby Lee is close to the last one I’d hand the initiative to (Jackson being dead by then, anyway.) I can see how any commander in Grant’s shoes would prefer to push Lee as much as possible rather than wait for Lee to throw him a surprise party. I know the casualties were heavy, but letting Lee act freely doesn’t necessarily save Union lives, if you get my drift.
How would Lee have done it? I don’t know. But if anyone could have, it would have been him. Just look at things like Chancellorsville…stopping and waiting for Lee to make the next move is counter-indicated, historically.
Also, I side with the historians who point out that Lee was partly responsible for the strategy of attrition during the Forty Days and after. It was forced upon him by his weakness; but he accepted it and hoped to wear out the Union will to take losses before Lincoln’s re-election.
Uh…on-topic: I agree with Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor that Zhukov’s tactical finesse was limited by the military tools he had to work with. The Soviet army logistics weren’t particularly flexible, but they brought a lot of power; hard-hitting attacks were something they could do, but flexible mobile dashes were a lot more difficult for them, both organizationally and materially.
It bears mentioning that late-war Soviet doctrine was artillery-heavy more than it was human-wave-oriented. Standard Soviet theory of war began by massing large quantities of heavy guns – but instead of endless WWI-style preparatory bombardment, the arty would be used in a short but intense barrage just preceding combined-arms assault by infantry, tactical air, and masses of tanks (just about the best tanks in the world, too). It was terrifying, and the better German commanders (Manstein, for one) proposed that the German reaction shouldn’t even be to stand and fight back, but to decamp and retreat before such a prepared assault broke upon them, turning it into a mobile campaign again, and specifically staying out of that artillery storm. The Soviet style was ponderous and involved a certain amount of massing before the heavy blow, which might have allowed the Germans to get away with this.
Hitler wouldn’t allow the “retreats,” even if the ground would later be regained. By forcing the Germans to stand and take Zhukov’s best punches, Hitler made it much harder for his troops.
This doesn’t mean Zhukov couldn’t handle mobile warfare against agile German commanders; it just means he didn’t have to do it, since they stood still and took his punches, so we’ll never know.
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Ok, Patton was not all that good either, twice in his career he faced dogged opposition, in Sicily and on the German Border and he made a nice meal of it.
harumph!
Zhukov was very possibly the best of the 20th century, in a century where skill on the battlefield mattered less than ever, he is the only one along who I can really rank highly.
As for the Grant Overland Campaign, it should be pointed out the the at the start of it the armies were pretty much in the same position as 1861, at end of it, Lee was barely hanging on to Richmond and his army could do nothing but hang on and wait for the end.
Lee’s army was shattered in the campaign. And then by sending Early away he ensured that he had nothing to stop Grant when the Spring of 65 campign began.
Well, Lee was certainly a tactical wunderkind, so I don’t doubt that was part of the reasoning. But while nothing is impossible and acknowledging that hindsight is 20/20, in hindsight I just don’t see how Lee pulls that rabbit out of his hat.
As you say his army was, relatively speaking, was running on fumes. And you have to factor in that Grant was no slouch. Not Lee’s equal as a battlefield tactician I’d think, but competent enough, obviously temperamentally capable of responding aggressively and with a truly massive advantage. It’s of course total armchair quarterbacking, but I would have given Lee enough rope to hang himself. While you’re right it wouldn’t necessarily have saved lives, it very probably would. Not many scenarios could have been worse than the series of meat-grinders that actually occurred.
Which of course is exactly what Heinrici did at the Seelow Heights defending Berlin ;). Heinrici is probably very generally underrated - he really does seem to have been a superb defensive commander. Oddly enough Hitler let himself be talked into promoting the best man for the job ( after Manstein perhaps ), just far too late to really matter.
It’s from Seelow that Zhukov gets hit with the “unnecessary frontal assault” charge, but its probably at least partially an unfair criticism given the circumstances. And as has been argued that’s just one incident out of a much larger career.
But Zukov’s (and USSR’s military and government) not really caring about a high casualty count allowed him to broaden his military options.
The Siberian units were also a gigantic shot in the arm.
Zhukov did care a lot about casualties. He was running on fumes and made it clear the battle for Moscow would be decided by availability and proper employment of reserves.
If your standard is did’nt want to suffer casualties, then the US did not “care about casualties” either as Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Salerno show.