The following essay is the third endnote to the updated first chapter of the forthcoming book, The Decisive Battle of the Ukraine War. The essay will be uploaded shortly.

Zhukov as the Earliest Progenitor of Blitzkrieg in WWII

In perhaps the most well known professional biography of Field Marshal Gregory Konstantinovich Zhukov, the supreme commander of Russian forces during the latter years of Russia’s defense against the Nazis on the Eastern Front, Zhukov, the biographer, Otto Chaney, makes a number of references to so-called ‘witnesses’ regarding Zhukov’s relation to Germany. In particular, Chaney disputes directly the idea that Zhukov attended Germany’s famous War Academy. He states: “.”

Chaney’s remarks are apparently directed at undermining a critically important claim about the Russian general that is fundamental to an understanding of Russia’s adaptation of strategy on the Eastern Front. At the outset of his study of the battles at Moscow and Stalingrad and in his penetrating and perceptive analysis of the Russian Army, Walter Broadman Kerr makes a stunning assertion about Zhukov. He says: “Zhukov was the first man to wage “lightning war” or blitzkrieg.” A brief examination of the literature confirms Kerr’s remark that Zhukov is the first practitioner of “lightening war” in World War II.

Kerr wrote: “But trouble was brewing with the Japanese in the Far East, Zhukov was sent to Siberia, and in August 1939 he led the Soviet forces that surrounded and destroyed the Japanese Sixth Army at Khalkin-Gol on the frontier of Outer Mongolia and Manchukuo. This was only a few weeks before Germany invaded Poland, so starting the second world war. The world therefore paid little attention to Zhukov, and little more to the campaign he had won, though out there in the Far East he had become the first officer to command large tank forces and use them the way they should be used. I think he was the first man to wage “lightening war,” or blitzkrieg. (Kerr, 1944 : pg. 22)

If it is the case that Zhukov is the earliest progenitor of Blitzkrieg from WWII, then Chaney’s commentary on Zhukov, in the bibliography of which Kerr’s work is mentioned, must have been directed at providing a basis for the elimination of Kerr’s critical claim on Zhukov’s role and his mastery of what is apparently or traditionally acknowledged as a thoroughly German concept. It is worth mentioning that Kerr is not the only major military and intelligence commentator to make just such an assertion about Zhukov. In his famous biography of Bock’s Disaster at Moscow, Turney appears to lend supports to this point of view but only implicitly and by way of German influence. In his description of the major turning point during Operation Typhoon, Turney asserts the following: “By the evening of 7 December,” one day after Zhukov’s famed December 6th counteroffensive, “it was apparent that Marshal Zhukov’s counterattack had made serious ruptures all along the front and that the Russians were advancing at will. The Russians had waited until the exact moment when Bock’s men had expended their last ounce of energy and had fired practically their last round of ammunition. Now they poured through grease gaps in the German positions, fighting their own blitzkrieg operation of encirclement and destruction and threatening to cut off the overextended Germans.” (Turney, 1970: pg. 152) Turney, who spent years in Germany as fluent German intelligence officer in post-WWII Germany could not have been making a gaffe, engaging in a slip of the tongue, or simply exaggerating the importance of Zhukov’s ability to time his ‘own blitzkrieg operation.’ It must be that Turney sought to chose the word carefully. Although Turney’s attribution of Blitzkrieg to Zhukov comes within the context of the Diaster at Moscow rather than Zhukov’s earlier performance and strategy during Khalkin-Gol, the point is, nonetheless, well taken. It does not need to support Kerr’s chronology for its undermine meaning. 

Given the fact that more than two major military and intelligence officers have attributed Blitzkrieg to Zhukov and at least of them believes Zhukov to have been the primary progenitor of Blitzkrieg, there is reason to case suspicion over Chaney’s invitation to doubt his reservations against the “witnesses” he refuses to name or whose testimony for the historical record he completely silences. 

There are more three reasons to cast suspicion upon Otto Chaney’s claim that Zhukov did not attend the German War Academy from 1924 to 1925. The three reasons are the following. 1) Much of Chaney’s understanding of Germano-Soviet relations rests on the treaty of Rapallo from 1922. The Soviets, however, established cooperation with Germans much earlier through a Russo-German commercial agreement.  On May 6th, 1921 after Lenin “secretly but officially sought German help in reorganizing the Red Army” following its defeat in the Russo-Polish War (a part of the Russian civil war) through a Russo-German commercial agreement. Dupoy writes: “The military significance of the nonmilitary agreement was that there was soon thereafter established in Berlin the Gesellschaft zur Förderung gewerblicher Unternehmungen, or Company for the Promotion of Industrial Enterprises.” It is therefore more appropriate to adjudicate claims regarding Zhukov’s attendance at the German War Academy not from the perspective of the Treaty of Rapallo but through Lenin’s much earlier Russo-German commercial agreement. 

Secondly, there are “witnesses,” as Chaney states, that testify to Zhukov’s attendance at the German War Academy. Although Chaney makes no mention of these witnesses, recently recently disclosed documents from the archives of the CIA provide an alternative account. In a document numbered RDP82—0047R0003002300006-6 the Central Intelligence Agency distributed on August 10th, 1953 as a report on Zhukov, Georgi Konstantinovich, Marshal, the author states that the aforementioned “went through general staff training in Germany in 1924 or 1925.”  In addition, Hilger and Meyer (pp. 92—99) support this idea generally when the two write describe how Lenin’s decision to establish relations with Germany led to an exchange—widely implemented from 1921 to 1937—by which “[the] Soviets, in turn, sent their officers to the War Academy in Berlin, where the Germans trained them in modern tactics and in the use of new weapons.” It is important to emphasize just bilateral these exchanges truly were. Field Marshal Fedor von Boch, the man whom Hitler appointed to command Army Group Centre in Operation Barbarossa, the primary spearhead for the implementation of Nazi’s Directive 21, became a direct beneficiary of Lenin’s commercial agreement in a surprising reversal of fates. Shortly after the Treaty of Rapallo was signed, “Bock received a promotion to lieutenant colonel and went secretly to Soviet Russia.” (Turney, 1970; pg. 8) While Turney provides few, if any, details at all about his stay there, the fact that the man whom Hitler would make the most significant, highest commanding officer for his assault against Jewish Bolshevism attend military studies in Soviet Russia makes believable the prospect that the man whom Stalin would make the make the most significant, highest command officer in his defense of Soviet Russia, would study in Germany. Furthermore, Chaney’s account of Zhukov’s whereabouts in 1924 and 1925 in Belarus place Zhukov close to Germany.  

3) Thirdly, Zhukov’s knowledge of “lightening war,” as Kerr claims, would come most appropriately from the horse’s mouth than from anywhere else. Moreover, Chaney remarks how “Red Army students were exposed to the teachings of General Hans von Seeckt, a foremost theorist of the new German Army, who stressed the use of armor in breakthrough operations. Seeckt’s Blitzkrieg tactics, based on a fast moving mechanized army, made an indelible impression on the Soviets,” no less so than on Zhukov himself. 

Based on these three reasons, there is sufficient evidence to proceed from the point of view that Zhukov attended the German War Academy. There is an additional reason to believe that a Russian rather than a German could be in a better position to advance substantially the concept of Blitzkrieg. 

It is often stated without qualification or reference to source material that the components of Blitzkrieg are 1) closed air support for 2) mechanized, armed spearheads penetrating deep into enemy lines for encirclement facilitated by 3) radio communication. Two additional components of Blitzkrieg are the internal supply column and its varying dependency upon railways. The dependency varies in intensity. Railways are significant for their role in transport or for manufacture. If tanks are not produced in a tractor factory, then they are produced in locomotive ones, establishing a critical link with trains in the production process for the revitalization of tank divisions to pre-war levels. 

 An examination of the tank factories from Russia in World War II indicates just how significant a role railways played in Blitzkrieg. An often cited example of the technical difficulties the Nazis encountered during its Operation Barbarossa is the difference in gauge separating German from Russian railways, the requirements for whose use Bock, the man in charge of Operation Typhoon (September 30th, 1941—December 6th, 1941), bemoaned as a pre-ponderous task for his Blitzkrieg campaign on Moscow. (Turney, 1970: pg. 129) In his study of railways in Russia, Dunn emphasizes how railways provided a key component for the vertical but not the lateral deployment of reserves from the rear, remarking how Russia’s railways condemned a deployment to a specific area for lack of a lateral network of pathways within Russian railways. (Dunn, 2006: pg. viii) “The Soviets,” Dunn writes, “could not move large numbers of divisions laterally as did the German Army.” Despite the lack of lateral movements, the Russians, nonetheless, managed to mass large deployments of manpower and material at the most opportune moment, such as before Zhukov’s December 6th counteroffensive that brought Bock’s Operation Typhoon to a definitive terminus. 

In addition, Operation Typhoon depended almost entirely upon railways for its execution. Prior to its launch, Bock communicated the need for a completely rejuvenated supply and transportation system and his preliminary estimates for that of Army Group Center. Bock calculated that “once the attack was underway,” Army Group Center would require “daily thirty trainloads of supplies and 1500 tons of fuel.” Considering the fact that the Nazis reversed the premature announcements of Moscow’s fall only after the members of Bock’s army group sealed the pockets in Bryansk and Vyasma, any objection that railways may not play a role in encirclement operations cannot proceed on their account. It is almost as intuitive to argue for a lack of supply and fuel, as it is for the immobility snow and mud caused that Bock fell short of Moscow. 

Russia’s tank factories in World War II being at the time formerly locomotive production industries and Russia’s expanded railways and its effective use of these railways, especially later during Vasilevsky’s attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria at the end of World War II, indicate just how significant a role railways and locomotives played in the successful execution of Blitzkrieg. Given the circumstances in which Zhukov came of age in Russia, Russia was a perfect breeding ground for Zhukov to realize his role as the progenitor and most successful executioner of Blitzkrieg. After all to the victor and Zhukov goes the spoils. 

Notes

Contemporaries with Zhukov such as Red Army officer Ruslanov attributed a world historical significance to the battle at Khalkin-Gol in 1939. He wrote: “The significance of the Khalkhin-Gol River battles must not be underestimated. The whole world followed their outcome; the matter involved the international prestige of the USSR, and, primarily, it was a rare opportunity to test new material and tactics under actual combat conditions.” (Ruslanov, 1956: 124)

The force Zhukov assembled contains nearly all of the elements of an armored spearhead. In response to his appointment to Khalkin-Gol in 1939, “Zhukov requested additional aviation, not less than three infantry divisions, artillery reinforcements, and one tank brigade. These proposals were accepted and Zhukov was given command of the force, which was to be called the 1st Army Group.” (Goncharov, 1999: 4) Both the elements of the Army Group, as wells its formation, can be attributed to Germanic military thought.

At 05:45 on 20 August 1939, Soviet artillery under the cover of 557 aircraft attacked Japanese positions, the first fighter-bomber offensive in Soviet Air Force history. Zhukov’s decision to attack the Japanese on its army’s flanks with infantry following tanks corresponds with German thoughts Blitzkrieg. (Coox 1985: 590, 663) Communicating with such tanks as the Soviet T-26 over radio, Zhukov led the Russian strike force directly into the Japanese army’s flanks rather than directly into an enemy center of resistance. (Kolomiets 2007, p. 14.)

These elements of Zhukov’s attack—an a radio controlled, armored spearhead with closed air support—constitute the primary elements of Blitzkrieg. Coupled with the fact that Zhukov’s attack focused on the Japanese army’s flanks further underscores a departure from the so-called ‘mass frontal assault’ from Tukhachevsky’s ‘Deep Battle’ theory towards the German solution to trench warfare, ‘no man’s land’ or major obstacles, geographic or otherwise.

What is also significant for Zhukov’s attack on the Japanese at Khalkin-Gol is how the battle “followed the classic pattern of Soviet encirclement.” It established “an outer front of mobile force to fend of attempt to relieve the encircled force” together with “an inner front” that “worked to destroy the trapped enemy.” (Bellamy & Lahnstein, 1990: 27) These elements of Zhukov’s double envelopment of the Japanese’s flanks recommends comparison with later descriptions of the latter aspects of Blitzkrieg in which a breakthrough formation in an encirclement separates into two layers, an internal layer surrounded by an external layer. Since Khalkin-Gol occurred before the outbreak of WWII, the concept of Blitzkrieg materialized well after the battle, making comparisons practically anachronistic.

Skeptics, who dispute the evolution of combined arms warfare (which the Soviets rejected earnestly (Svechin, 1928)) or seek to dissipate the combination of different elements of warfare into different directions like water hitting the ground, have sought to portray the advent of lightening warfare in the interwar period as a myth and in particular to the battle for France in 1940. (Doughty, 1998: pg. 57) Despite the difficulties of disassociation, the examples military historians have enumerated in classic works such as the Toward Combined Arms Warfare: A Survey of 20th-Century Tactics, Doctrine and Organization defy dissipation on a historical level, extolling the abandonment of the phalanx or Napoleonic grenadiers as key moments in the development of integrated arms from the first page. (House, 1984: pg. 5) These separation theorists are akin to those who believe a rifle is dangerous in the absence of ammunition. It is absurd to exclude one factor from the myriad.

Throughout his essay, Doughty himself does not dispute the combination of “closely coordinated tank and air forces” under radio (an aspect Doughty does not explore) but seeks to attribute a greater role to infantry than mechanized armor or the Luftwaffe for a specific battle. To reduce Blitzkrieg to a myth, Doughty’s essay falls short; while he discusses France in 1940, he mentions but does not analyze the Nazi’s application of Blitzkrieg in Yugoslavia, Greece, and Crete, not to mention Romania or any of the other countries the Nazis invaded after France. His discussion of ‘logistics,’ for instance, aligns with those who claim that the Nazis failed to assess the demands Russia’s strategic depth place on Blitzkrieg, despite his lack of any mention of railways. (Doughty, 1998: pg. 70) The fact that Doughty, whose aim is to dispel the myth of Blitzkrieg, discusses ‘logistics’ rather than strategy, tactics or operations germane to Blitzkrieg suggests fact that supply rather than anything even remotely close to the concentration of one element of Blitzkrieg over another is the determinant factor in the Nazi’s failure on the Ostflanke. Doughty actually attributes to the Nazi’s disproportionally inept pre-operational assessments on logistics their collapse in Russia. Doughty, however, does not identify which of the many important battles (four of which Zhukov himself identifies as the most significant starting with Moscow) became the straw that broke the Nazi’s back and caused it to collapse. Whatever the ultimate concerns for which concentration of these integrated arms weighs the most on the only battle Doughty’s skepticism seeks to exploit, an emphasis on infantry over any other element in his conception, nonetheless, supports Kerr’s claim; no matter what differences in the idea of Blitzkrieg there might be, a heavier concentration on infantry to the exclusion of a decisive role to armor or air support accords with some descriptions of the course of Zhukov’s leadership during Khalkin-Gol in 1939. In combined arms warfare, identifying a decisive role for any aspect of the integration is often without precedent; in the balance of concerns on the battlefield, the ability to leverage one aspect over another is certainly one of the sources of power a commander measures to breakthrough enemy defenses.

While the concept’s association with the word is a tense etymology fraught with difficulties, the fact that Kerr utilizes the term ‘lightening’ warfare to attribute Blitzkrieg to Zhukov’s success at Khalkin-Gol in 1939 cannot be attributed to a malapropism or a lack of linguistic erudition. It is certainly not a misnomer. By 1944, the idea of ‘lightening’ warfare became so unmistakably associated with the Nazi way of warfare that Kerr, an American correspondent residing in Moscow with a knowledge of Russian, decided upon its use in his book, a first hand account of warfare on the Ostflanke during Operation Barbarossa, one of the few American witnesses in the history of WWII. It could be that Kerr’s use of the terms for ‘lightening war’ and Blitzkrieg were merely terminological expedients for a brief transgression he figured could cover a broad claim. Kerr could have meant that Zhukov not only knew German military doctrine from the interwar period; He better implemented the German ideas with greater success earlier than the Germans. Understandably, such an interpretation corresponds with Zhukov’s education; according to certain ‘witnesses’, Zhukov was a student in Germany from 1924 to 1925, the heyday of Germany’s military academy under von Seekt.

References

Bellamy, C. D., Lahnstein, J.S., 1990. The New Soviet Defensive Policy: Khalkhin Gol 1939 As Case Study. Parameters, September.

Doughty, Robert A. “The Myth of Blitzkrieg.” CHALLENGING THE UNITED STATES SYMMETRICALLY AND ASYMMETRICALLY: CAN AMERICA BE DEFEATED? Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College (1998).

Goncharov, V. A. 1999. MARSHAL ZHUKOV – WARRIOR, COMMANDER, CITIZEN, Strategy Research Project. ADA382914

Kolomiets, Maxim (2007). T-26. Tyazhelaya sud’ba legkogo tanka (T-26. The Heavy Fate of the Light Tank) (in Russian). Moscow: Yauza, Strategiya KM, EKSMO

Ruslanov, P. 1956. Marshal Zhukov, Moscow: Russian Review, Vol.XV, April.

Свечин Александр Андреевич. 1928. Эволюция военного искусства с древнейших времен до наших дней. Гос. издательство : М.-Л.