Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Waffen SS General Felix Steiner’s WWII Legacy

“Where is Steiner?” Adolf Hitler demanded as his Thousand Year Reich crumbled around him in April 1945. “Is he attacking yet?” Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Russo-Japanese Clash at the Battle of Nomonhan

In May 1939, Mongolian herdsmen and part-time militia cavalry crossed the Khalkhin Gol, or Halha, River near the village of Nomonhan in Manchurian-claimed territory. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Russian Commanders: Marshal Semyon M. Budenny

At 8 am on the cold, blustery morning of November 7, 1941, the 24th anniversary of the Russian Communist Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, a dashing lone horseman galloped out of the Spassky Gate of the Kremlin onto snow-covered Red Square. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Leningrad & Tikhvin: Nazi Winter Repulse During Operation Barbarossa

The men of Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb’s Heeresgruppe Nord (Army Group North) had little sleep during the night of June 21, 1941. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Battle of Berlin Prelude: Küstrin, and Death on the Oder

 “We felt that we were already dead men,” wrote former Captain Albrecht Wüstenhagen in a May 1988 letter to the author of his time in the fortress garrison of Küstrin. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

The Soviet Winter Offensive: From the Vistula to the Oder

The area between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains had been relatively quiet since the end of Operation Bagration late in the summer of 1944. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

The Demyansk Pocket: Disaster For Germany’s Scandinavian Volunteers

On the surface it may seem odd that men of conquered nations would eagerly sign up to fight for their masters, but that is exactly what happened in Scandinavia in the 1940s. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Operation Bagration: Soviet Triumph in the East

Operation Bagration, the largest operation of World War II, has never been adequately acknowledged in the West to the same extent as a number of smaller campaigns. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Armored Strike at Nomonhan

General Georgi Zhukov had arrived at the Mongolia-Manchuria border in the early morning hours of June 5, 1939, after a grueling three-day trip from Moscow. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Fighting on the Volkhov Front: The First Soviet Counteroffensive at Leningrad

The great city of Leningrad was being strangled, its people dying by the thousands.

Death came in many ways. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

A Masterful German Defense at the Battle of Seelow Heights

The officers huddled in a candlelit cellar in an abandoned farmhouse midway between the Oder River and Berlin. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Leningrad & Operation Spark: Breaking the Nazi Stranglehold

With the German Sixth Army in its death throes at Stalingrad in January 1943, Stavka, the Soviet High Command, sought to capitalize on the disaster by unleashing massive offensives along the entire German-Soviet front. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Joseph Stalin’s Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov: A Soviet Survivor

In the summer of 1941, as the Nazi German blitzkrieg rolled over the Russian Red Army defenses at the embattled city of Leningrad, today once more St. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Soviet Partisans: The Rag-Tag Scourge Along WWII’s Eastern Front

The concept of Soviet partisans participating in Russia’s wars was nothing new in 1941. During Napoleon’s invasion of the country in 1812, small bands of civilians harassed the French and their allies both before and after the retreat from Moscow. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Soviet Soldiers by Sea: The Soviet Naval Infantry

The year 1943 began badly for the German Army on the Eastern Front. After a great struggle at Stalingrad, German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered himself and his Sixth Army on January 31. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Battle of Berlin: Why it Became the Death Knell for Hitler’s Third Reich

The Battle of Berlin began with what a German colonel called “a dull, continuous roar of thunder from the east.” Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Tula: Hero City of the Soviet Union

In 1976, the Soviet city of Tula joined an elite group of nine other Soviet communities designated as “Hero Cities.”  Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

The Russo-Finnish War: Why Stalin Tried to Invade Finland

Prior to the Russo-Finnish War, problems were already setting in for Russia and Germany. The hugely cynical German-Soviet nonaggression pact, concluded in August 1939, assigned the Baltic region of eastern Europe to the exclusive sphere of influence of Communist Russia. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Operation Spring Awakening: Adolf Hitler’s Last WWII Offensive

In January 12, 1945, Adolf Hitler received the news he had been dreading—the Soviet Red Army had launched its winter offensive. Read more

Marshal Georgi Zhukov

Romania’s Disaster at Stalingrad

World War II involved some of the most complex alliance systems in the history of warfare. Read more