Stalin's General

Product Description

Marshal Georgy Zhukov is one of military history's legendary names. He played a decisive role in the battles of Moscow Stalingrad & Kursk that brought down the Nazi regime. He was the first of the Allied generals to enter Berlin & it was he who took the German surrender. He led the huge victory parade in Red Square riding a white horse & in doing so dangerously provoking Stalin's envy. His post-war career was equally eventful
- Zhukov found himself sacked & banished twice & wrongfully accused of disloyalty. However he remains one of the most decorated officers in the history of both Russia & the Soviet Union. Since his death in 1974 Zhukov has increasingly been seen as the indispensable military leader of the Second World War surpassing Eisenhower Patton Montgomery & Mac Arthur in his military brilliance & ferocity. Making use of hundreds of documents from Russian military archives as well as unpublished versions of Zhukov's memoirs Geoffrey Roberts fashions a remarkably intimate portrait of a man whose personality was as fascinating as it was contradictory. Tough decisive strong-willed & brutal as a soldier in his private life he was charming & gentle. Zhukov's relations with Stalin's other generals were often prickly & fraught with rivalry but he was the only one among them to stand up to the Soviet dictator. Piercing the hyperbole of the Zhukov personality cult Roberts debunks many of the myths that have sprung up around Zhukov's life to deliver fresh insights into the marshal's relations with Stalin Khrushchev & Eisenhower. A highly regarded historian of Soviet Russia Roberts has fashioned the definitive biography of this seminal 20th-century figure.