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Incidents of this kind were the stuff of the new propaganda funneling out of Moscow. The old Communist slogans were dropped and the Russians were urged to fight the "patriotic war" for the liberation of "the motherland" from the "fascist beasts." The propaganda was immensely effective. But not yet so effective that it prevented General Vlasov, one of Zhukov's top men in the defense of Moscow, from going over to the Germans and organizing Red army prisoners and defectors into an anti-Communist army. Morale was still wobbly.
The turning point was the tough, bitter, bloody battle of Stalingrad (September 1942 to February 1943). Zhukov masterminded Stalingrad, but was not there to take the German surrender, because he had to fly to besieged Leningrad to get Old Irregular Voroshilov out of a mess. During the Stalingrad campaign Zhukov told Stalin that his young, upcoming commanders could be trusted, and got Stalin to abolish the commissars. The crafty old dictator, however, instituted a system of Zampolits who, while they were not supposed to interfere with command decisions, were still the army's political directors. But Stalin promoted Zhukov to the rank of marshal.
"Our next step in the war." says Zhukov, "was to prevent Hitler maneuvering." This Zhukov did in a series of masterly battles, the sweep and magnitude of which have never been equaled. Over a front that stretched from far inside the Arctic Circle down to subtropical Sukhumi, he manipulated some 300 divisions. Every man or woman who could walk was either in the army or in a war factory. Factories in the Urals were pouring out tanks and guns. Vital supplies of ammunition, aircraft, gasoline and trucks were arriving from the Allies. Zhukov began to knock the stuffing out of the Wehrmacht.
His strategy and tactics were orthodox: there was no time for trickery. He would hit a 20-mile sector of the German line with successive waves of infantry, each wave 20 to 30 divisions strong. Sometimes the German gunners would run out of ammunition. When he had punched a hole in the line, Red army tanks with infantry riding on their backs would drive through, sweep around and encircle the enemy flanks. Sometimes Zhukov trapped as many as ten German divisions this way. He would then stand off and pound them to pieces with his artillery. Writes German General Guderian: "Whenever the German army fell into a dangerous, disorganized or shilly-shally state, we always looked for the skillful hand of . . . Zhu-kov." Eisenhower once asked Zhukov how his men negotiated minefields. Zhukov's answer chilled Ike: "When we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks as if it were not there. The losses we get from personnel mines we consider equal to those we would have gotten from machine guns and artillery if the Germans had chosen to defend that particular area." Mass attack was Zhukov's master weapon: massive casualties his expectation.