Born to a peasant family in Strelkova, Russia, Zhukov quickly became a military man, entering Russia’s army in 1915. By the time he joined the Red Army in 1918, he was a decorated veteran of World War I; he later fought in the Russian Civil War . Zhukov rose through the military ranks and studied his trade at Frunze Military Academy, graduating in 1931. Not only did he escape Joseph Stalin’s purge of the Red Army leadership in the 1930s, that “ Great Terror ”allowed Zhukov to further advance.
By 1939, Zhukov commanded the Soviet forces in Mongolia where he oversaw the fighting during the Nomonhan Incident (Khalkhin Gol). In this border dispute between a Soviet-Mongolian force and Japanese troops, Zhukov’s army crushed the Japanese. He soon became a general and in January 1941, he was appointed as the Red Army’s chief of staff. Stalin removed him from this position in July, but Zhukov remained a member of the Stavka, or military strategic planning committee.
During World War II, Zhukov became one of Stalin’s most trusted and dependable generals. He organized the defense of Leningrad (September 1941), after which he became the commander in chief on the Soviet Union’s western front. Zhukov had a hand in directing the successful defense of Moscow (1941–1942), the Battle of Stalingrad (1942–1943), the Battle of Kursk (1943), and the Battle for Berlin (1945). He accepted the German surrender for the Soviet Union in his Berlin headquarters on May 9, 1945. The following month, he led the Soviet victory parade in Moscow after an injury prevented Stalin from doing so.
Zhukov finished the war highly decorated and extremely popular—he was seen as a hero by the Soviet people—and this began to worry Stalin, who quickly began relegating him to less prominent positions. For a time, Zhukov stayed in Germany to oversee the Soviet occupation zone and represented the USSR on the Allied Control Commission . Beginning in 1946, Stalin assigned him to command posts in remote districts (Odessa and the Urals) in a semi-exile. He did not regain power until after Stalin’s death in 1953, when he worked his way up to minister of defense under Nikita Khrushchev . But he soon had a falling out with Khrushchev and was stripped of his positions in the government and party late in 1957. His career at an end, Zhukov took to writing personal and military memoirs; he died in 1974.