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in the West. He played a leading role in the councils of the Soviet high command from the first days of the war in June 1941. Critics argued that luck and German blunders did as much as Zhukov’s own generalship to win his laurels in the battles of Leningrad and Moscow, but this seems ungenerous. In January 1943 he received his marshal’s star. His wholesale executions of men suspected of cowardice or desertion demonstrated a ruthlessness which did Zhukov no disservice in the eyes of Stalin. During the defence of Leningrad, he directed that any man who abandoned his post without written orders should be shot. He deployed tanks behind the forward positions not to kill Germans but to shoot down mercilessly any Russian who fled. Zhukov’s high intelligence and grasp of all military matters, matched by a sobriety unusual among Soviet senior officers, were generally acknowledged. He had been leading large armies for longer than any other Allied commander. While Zhukov was directing the defence of Leningrad back in 1941, Eisenhower was still Chief of Staff of Third Army in Louisiana, newly promoted to brigadier. The Russians did not always get it right—indeed, their mistakes were on a scale as extravagant as everything else about the Eastern Front. But Soviet generals in the last two years of the war handled large forces with much greater assurance than their American and British counterparts.

Zhukov’s perfectionism, his meticulous staffwork and summary dismissal of any officer who failed to meet his standards made him a harsh taskmaster. Yet he was the servant of an even harsher one. In 1941, he burst into tears after a tongue-lashing from Stalin. Reading the memoirs of Russia’s wartime commanders, it is easy to be deluded into supposing that they inhabited a rational world, recognizable to Americans and west Europeans. They did not. From the first day of the war to the last, they existed and fought in a universe more fearsome than that of Hitler’s commanders. Under Stalin, failure signalled death. Not even the greatest marshal was secure from degradation, torture and execution. One day in 1941, Russia’s senior airman became drunk and complained to his supreme warlord: “You’re making us fly in coffins.” Stalin responded quietly: “You shouldn’t have said that.” The general—Pavel Rychagov—was shot, along with much of the Red Air Force high command. Stalin’s military subordinates existed in a state of permanent fear. It is not easy to compare relative evils, rival monsters, yet it is a matter of fact that the senior subordinates of Adolf Hitler enjoyed a much better prospect of survival than those of Joseph Stalin, until military defeat overtook Germany.

Such a man as Zhukov could scarcely be less than utterly ruthless. Yet he inspired enthusiasm among his soldiers, for the reason common to other great commanders throughout history: he was a winner. “Zhukov was very popular, much more popular than Stalin,” said Corporal Anatoly Osminov. The marshal’s stern, unbending presence utterly dominated his headquarters. “He was a hard case,” said one of his artillery staff officers. “He was slow, stubborn, and never said much. It was difficult, if not impossible, to change his mind.” The marshal’s office was studiedly austere—a metal table, maps, a thermos water container with the painted words “drinking water” misspelt on it, and a tin mug chained to the urn. In his operations room in the midst of a battle, Zhukov savagely reprimanded an officer whom he noticed working in a black fur coat, for being improperly dressed. Lieutenant Vasily Filimonenko trembled when Zhukov appeared in his artillery forward observation post, and spent ninety minutes studying the German line through his periscope. “I must see for myself,” said the marshal, and quizzed the young officer closely about his living conditions and the gunfire support plan. There was no warmth there, but a steely, uncompromising professionalism of the highest order. “Everyone was terrified of him,” said Lieutenant Evsei Igolnik. “We knew that he was not above using a cane on his own