Quote:
Originally Posted by Za Rodinu
Hey what are a few hundred thousand troops more or less between friends, eh? 
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Well, by this way ok
But I tried to bring some serious information here.
You know, I believed for long time, that Zhukov was the best army-leader of all times. He was presented this way and still is. Some stuff like: the only commander, who never lost but a one battle, allways won everything, wow, thats something! He save Soviet Union (SU) many many times, he has been "as infallible as a Pope", he was genius, etc. etc. etc.
You cannot even imagine, what kind of information was avaiable here only a few years ago, behind the "Iron Curtain" (I was only 13, when it falls, but I remember this times very good).
And now? I started some serious searching only some months ago, and results? Realy some kind of the Mythbusters, as was mentioned above.
I realized, to my disillusion, something stinks here. Not only Zhukov lost some battles, even some major battles, but he had quite serious part in the greatest defeat ever (which will never be overcome, I hope). This defeat is, of course the time of first months of "the Great Patriotic War", because to lose about 17,000 tanks in such a short period is indeed somehow unusual.
I know, the greatest part of this played Stalin, but not as big, as a most of people believes. Interesting is, that especialy Zhukov was very busy with blemishing of Stalin, maybe he just tried to hide something about his own actions?
There are troubles with such a searching, because most of all data avaiable are coming out of his memories and those memories realy are not very trustworthy. I.e. on Wikipedia is, that Zhukov was in Leningrad in September 9th and this is realy not possible, as he was in Moscow at least to September 11th, if not 12th, and arrived to Leningrad 13th or 12th late.
Well, you can say again, what are 3 or 4 days between friends, but in this case even a single day matters, like in some police investigation

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Btw., 150,000 and 500,000 is rather a big difference, I think.