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The real acid test came months later, when Germany sent the whole weight of the powerful, cocky, victorious Wehrmacht charging into Russia. Zhukov fought a battle at Yelnia, near Smolensk, which drove the invaders back 20 miles. It was one of the few successful delaying actions. Stalin's first act of war was to reinstate the army commissars, but commissars were unable to prevent hundreds of Red army commanders, thinking they preferred Nazi to Communist tyranny, from surrendering their arms and their men. Quite a few commissars went over, too. Others, like Old Irregular Budenny, defeated in the Ukraine, beat it back to Moscow. Within four months the Wehrmacht was at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad, and 4,000,000 Red army men were prisoners. Stalin was paying for his policy of purge-and-be-damned.
Moscow Saved. In the deep, bombproof shelters of the Kremlin, the dictator faced up to a frightened group of party sycophants. Outside in the streets of Moscow the angry, dismayed mob was ready to tear them limb from limb. Stalin was forced to yield all military decisions to the man with the highest professional qualifications in Russia: Georgy Zhukov. Zhukov's first decision: save Moscow.
When Hitler bellowed, "Moscow must be finished off at any price," Zhukov answered in the Biblically inspired words of Russia's famed 13th century hero Alexander Nevsky: "Whosoever comes against us with the sword shall perish by the sword. Such is the law of the Russian land, and such it will always be." Following the tactics of General Gallieni, who defended Paris against the Germans in 1914, Zhukov requisitioned every automotive vehicle he could find in Moscow, including the Kremlin limousines, and put a scratch army of volunteers on the Moscow-Mozhaisk road. He brought the Siberian army across on the trans-Siberian railroad and deployed them in five columns around Moscow. The fresh, well-officered Siberians pushed Von Bock's columns back out of artillery range of the capital. Then the Russian winter, the severest in 50 years, halted all but patrol activity. In the six months of snow and thaw, Zhukov, using methods like those employed by Trotsky in the civil war, created and equipped vast new armies.
Plans and Practice. Zhukov's driving force and professional skill were needed in both planning and field operations. A staff organization called the Stavka was created, which allowed him to rough out tactical plans for Chief of Staff Vasilevsky to complete, leaving Zhukov time, as the need arose, to go out to take over a battle that was not going well. One of his first field commands after Moscow was to relieve Old Irregular Timoshenko, whose spring drive towards Kharkov had run into trouble. During this period Zhukov's field headquarters were near Kaluga, not far from Strelkovka, the village of his birth. As the Germans were driven from Strelkovka, they prepared to destroy the village and in the course of doing so, they rounded up the Zhukov family, locked them in a cottage and set fire to it. The story goes that Zhukov's men dashed into Strelkovka just in time to rescue their commander's family.