Georgy Zhukov Quotes

The beginning of October, 1941, I was in Leningrad, commanding the troops of the Leningrad Front. Those days were difficult for all of us who had been through the September fighting for Leningrad. But our forces were succeeding in thwarting the enemy's plans. Because of the unparalleled steadfastness and mass heroism of the Soviet soldiers, sailors and noncommissioned officers and the endurance of commanders and political officers, the enemy was encountering an unsurmountable defense on the approaches to the city.
By the end of September pressure was noticeably relaxed on all sectors and the front line had become stabilized. But this is not the place to tell the story of the Leningrad fighting nor of the attempted seizure of the city named for the great Lenin. I mention it only to emphasize that all of us, from the Military Council of the front down to the city's ordinary defenders, in those days lived with but a single thought: to stop the enemy no matter what. Everyone did all he could in his assigned post.

And now German generals find it hard to explain away their retreat.

With the technological revolution in the military field and the enormous organizational reconstruction of the army and navy, and now that their prime shock force is made up of rocketry, voices may quite frequently be heard asserting that this is an era of "push-button warfare" where man plays nothing but an auxiliary role. This view is wrong. Without arguing the great importance of rocketry and nuclear weapons, it is a fact that regardless of the scale, nature or method of warfare, man always played, and will go on playing, a major role in it. War will still require the participation of large masses of manpower- in one case directly in the armed struggle, in another, in war production and the comprehensive material backing of armed struggle.

The mere existence of atomic weapons implies the possibility of their use.

The second woman had to hurry; her home had also been destroyed and she could not find her shoes and clothes in the rubble. Tears rolled down her cheeks. When asked whether any of our troops had passed through the town, she said that during the night several trucks had driven through toward Maloyaroslavets, followed by horse-drawn carts bearing the wounded. There had been nothing since then. I said good-bye and drove on toward Yukhnov, deeply regretting that there was nothing I could say to console this woman or any of the other Soviet people to whom the war had brought such terrible grief.

Many indeed were the thoughts that whirled through my head in those minutes of rejoicing! The fearsome battle at Moscow where our troops had made a stand to the death without letting the enemy through to the capital, and Stalingrad lying in ruins but unvanquished, and the glorious Leningrad which had repelled the furious onslaught of the enemy and which had withstood a terrible blockade, and Sevastapol which had fought so heroically against hand-picked Nazi troops, and the triumph of victory at the Kursk Salient, and the thousands of devastated villages and towns, the many millions of human lives sacrificed by the Soviet people who had heroically stuck it out during those grim years.
And here at last was the most cherished goal, for the sake of which our people had borne such immense suffering- the complete rout of Fascist Germany, the rout of the monstrous Fascism, and the triumph of our just cause.

Brilliant episodes in the chronicle of those hard days were recorded by the heroic defenders of the city of Tula. Unfortunately, this aspect of the defense has not yet been adequately covered in the Soviet histories of the war. And yet it would be difficult to exaggerate the role that the defense of Tula played in the Battle for Moscow. The city was defended by armed workers detachments and units of the Fiftieth Army that had pulled back to Tula. Particular steadfastness and courage were demonstrated by the Tula workers regiment under A. P. Gorshkov, commander, and G. A. Ageyev, political commissar. That regiment suffered heavy losses, but did not allow the enemy to enter the city. Nor did the workers of Tula lose their nerve when the enemy virtually closed the ring around the city. Together with the troops of the Fiftieth Army they continued to fight until the end, showing a high degree of organization, steadiness and courage. And they did hold out.

The greatness of heroic victory over Fascist Germany is in the fact that the Soviet Union did not defend the socialist state alone, but that it selflessly fought to defend the internationalist proletarian goal- defeat the bulk of the Nazi armed forces and deliver the peoples of Europe from occupation. The Soviet people have not forgotten other peoples' contribution to the victory over the common enemy. Our army and people remember and value the courage of the Resistance fighters.

Nazis did not expect Soviet resistance to be so strong. The deeper they moved into this country's territory, the more fierce it became. When Hitler's armies approached Moscow, every man and woman here thought it imperative to resist the enemy. And that resistance grew by the day. The enemy was sustaining heavy losses, one after another. In fact, Hitler's best troops perished here. Nazis believed the Red Army was not capable of defending Moscow, but their schemes failed.