Posted on 05/05/2010 7:01:27 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Soviet commander admits USSR came close to defeat by Nazis
An interview in which a Soviet commander admitted how close Moscow came to defeat by Germany during the Second World War has been broadcast in Russia for the first time.
Published: 11:58AM BST 05 May 2010
The Soviet Union nearly lost the war in 1941 and suffered from poor planning, according to Marshal Georgy Zhukov in the frank television interview that has been banned since it was recorded in 1966.
Zhukov, the most decorated general in the history of both Russia and the Soviet Union, admitted that Soviet generals were not confident that they could hold the German forces at the Mozhaisk defence line outside Moscow.
"Did the commanders have confidence we would hold that line of defence and be able to halt the enemy? I have to say frankly that we did not have complete certainty.
"It would have been possible to contain the initial units of the opponent but if he quickly sent in his main group, he would have been difficult to stop," he told the interviewer, the Soviet writer Konstantin Simonov.
Zhukov also revealed details of his exchanges with Joseph Stalin, the wartime leader, in the interview broadcast on state-run Channel One.
In giving the reasons for the Soviet victory, Zhukov made no mention of Stalin, who was taken unawares by the Nazi invasion of Russia.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Dodge? They were Studebakers!
I forgot which historian said it best, but paraphrasing:
The Americans and British destroyed their steel, the Russians destroyed the flesh.
And the Red Army was almost defeated by the White Army in 1918. How the Red Army pulled that one off I have no idea.
“If Hitler had beaten Stalin then we beat Hitler we would not be havng such a communist problem right here now.” YOU are breathtakingly ignorant of BOTH history and geography. If Hitler would have defeated Stalin then Hitler would have had access to almost unlimited Caucusus(sp?) oil supplies and would have cut the Brits off from the Middle East and would have linked up with the Japanese in China. WOW read some history!
Let’s not forget the ultimate Soviet defense....Russian Winters.
The headline assumes that if Moscow had fallen the Soviets had “lost” the war. Not sure if Zhukov regarded it that way but based upon what appears in the article it seems that Z. was referring to the desperate need to stop the German advance short of Moscow. However, it is also at least debatable whether the loss of Moscow would have been tantamount to losing the war or not. It would have been a further disaster of course, and something of major symbolic impact, but the vast and bloody war may have continued on to the same conclusion in 1945 or so, even had Moscow fallen.
I said ‘if’.
The Red Army arrived in Berlin on Dodge trucks. ..................... Studebakers????
You’re correct. The US wasn’t in the war, Britain did not have the capability to invade France, Spain was friendly to the Nazis. Europe was, at that point, basically secure for Hitler. The only land fronts the Reich had active in summer 1941, after they smashed Greece and Yugoslavia, were the USSR and North Africa.
The Ostfront was always the “big” war front to the Germans up to the very end.
}:-)4
I don’t care how much oil the nazi war machine could have extracted from the Caucasus, or whether the Soviets were defeated or not, Patton would have still ended up in Berlin, VICTORIOUS.
Patton would of ended up in Berlin flattened by atomic weapons.
You are CLUELESS!
A very enlightened post there sailor.
You had better look at what happened in late 1917 and 1918 when Czarist(Communist) Russia dropped out of WW I with the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Latovsk. It enable the Kaiser to re-deploy his army from the East to the West and we had mega trouble until late 1918. Hitler would have done the same thing in WW II.
Good thing Hitler ordered his forces to turn away from Moscow and head to Stalingrad.
{donning tinfoil hat} Considering the extensive penetration of the FDR govt by Soviet agents, perhaps that's the reason why he died an untimely death in Dec. 1945 ...
Sorry to everyone. There should have been ‘/snip’ sign before the last sentence “In giving the reasons for the Soviet victory, Zhukov made no mention of Stalin, who was taken unawares by the Nazi invasion of Russia.”
Lots of errors in hindsight. Another major one was declaring war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor in the mistaken assumption that their “ally” Japan would return the favor and declare war on Russia in the east. Had that not happened, Roosevelt would have been hard pressed to get a war declaration against Germany.
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