World: Stalin’s Choice

Concentrated in the hands of Joseph Stalin is more wartime authority, both political and military, than is wielded by any of his allies—President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill or Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. As Premier, Defense Commissar and Secretary of the Communist Party, Stalin is shouldered with domestic and international responsibilities which grow with each German step into Russia. Last week Stalin sought someone to share his burdens. As First Deputy Defense Commissar he chose a man who, until two years ago, was an unknown quantity to a non-Russian world: General Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.

Of peasant origin, solemn, brooding Georgy Zhukov joined the Red Army in 1915. His military career was unpublicized abroad until 1939, when he won recognition for effective use of tanks against the Jap on the Khalka River. In quick succession he became commander of the Kiev military district (1940), Chief of Staff of the Red Army (1941) then commander of the Moscow Front in October 1941, the hour of Moscow’s greatest peril.

Zhukov acquitted himself well, wearing down the Germans as he retreated until winter and reinforcements enabled him to counterattack and drive the enemy back. A poor mixer socially, Zhukov is about 46, bursting with energy, a strict disciplinarian and a firm believer in the importance of a high degree of troop mechanization backed by well-integrated communications, the latter a traditional Russian weakness.

Stalin picked him for his new post at a moment when Russia’s needs on a nationwide scale were as great as those of Moscow when Zhukov held that front.