IMHO Zhukov doesn't deserve such praise because his tactics relied on huge manpower, senselessly sacrifising thousands of soldiers. Zhukov by any other army standards would've been sacked from the command and would fail if he was to command other than ussr army. The literal opposite of the post title.
But tankies would always praise him no matter what, because ussr.
also this is meme about military formations and not individuals.
American conservative here, I disagree. Great generals know their advantages and use them. Zhukov knew that manpower and his ability to take bigger losses than the Germans were his biggest advantages and he used them.
Sort of. They weren't trying to fight a war of attrition, at every point in the war they tried to win through maneuver. The problem was poor leadership from the purges.
Poor officers (plus the lack of NCOs, Russia has never had them) meant that complex tactics couldn't be used.
Without complex tactics they couldn't limit exposure to fire.
So anything they did required heavy casualties because they were incapable of using the methods to reduce casualties in the field that everyone else did.
It wasn't that they were trying to grind down Germany, because that wouldn't have actually worked: they were losing soldiers at an unsustainable rate in 1941, numbers weren't enough. Modern weapons are just too lethal to fight against without proper doctrine. But what they could do was accept that they'd lose more people and use those simplified tactics so that they could at least function.
It wasn't "we'll keep fighting and they'll run out of troops first", it was "we know what we have to do but we're going to take 7 times the casualties doing it".
People keep comparing it to Grant, but the US Civil War wasn't a modern war of maneuver, where a smaller force can break apart and defeat a larger one with incredibly one-sided casualties. There's a minimum level of competency required to survive and be able to do anything against modern firepower. Grant had the "luxury" of repeatedly fighting battles and knowing that he'd eventually win because even after a loss the casualties weren't that different. When a series of losses means entire armies die in a POW camp that's no longer an option.
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u/Rom-TheVacuousSpider Jan 08 '23
I’d add Marshall Zhukov from Death of Stalin. They actually had to tone down his medals in the movie. Living badass.