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The few foreigners who have seen him remember him best for his "lion's face," his broad and rocky mouth. Like all successful Red Army commanders, he is a professing Communist and (unlike some) he is also a devout one. Said he after the Finnish War: "We would not be Bolsheviks if we allowed the glamor of victory to blind us to the shortcomings that have been revealed in the training of our men. These shortcomings were the result of conventionalism and routine."
Well before the U.S. Army learned the same lesson, General Zhukov began to apply it to the Red Army. Along with Timoshenko and Shaposhnikov, he braced up Red Army training, brought it as closely as possible to actual conditions of modern warfare. After the Germans suddenly brought war in earnest to the Russians, Stalin entrusted Zhukov with the outer defenses of Moscow, and with the winter offensive which pushed the Germans back to their present line at Rzhev. Last summer, when the Germans launched their 1942 campaign, Zhukov still had the central front, and he was responsible for holding the Russians' all-important pivot at Voronezh.
Last August Stalin designated Zhukov First Vice Commissar for Defense, but left him in command of the central front. For reasons known only at the Kremlin, he also left him with his title of Army General, one degree below Marshals Shaposhnikov, Timoshenko, Voroshilov, et al. Marshal Shaposhnikov lately has been ill, and in the months when Stalin was planning his winter offensives he turned more & more to his Liubimets.
General Zhukov shares with most Russians the conviction that the German armies are not yet beaten, that they can be defeated only by a prodigious effort. He also knows that the Red Army, to win this winter, must show more offensive capacity than it has ever shown before.
The Red Army is well equipped—superbly equipped considering Russia's wartime poverty—chiefly because its leaders, General Zhukov included, had the wit and, courage to retain and build up great reserves of munitions when the richest lands and cities of Russia were falling to the Germans. The true extent of those reserves, known only to the Red Army command, is one of the factors which will determine the course and outcome of the winter's battles. And if worse comes to worst and the winter offensives fail, Joseph Stalin, Georgy Zhukov and the rest of the Red Army command will save enough of their reserves to try again.