You give Evil an entire new meaning
Back on topic, that "
Zhukov's Greatest Defeat" certainly was nothing to write home about. Operation Mars was an disguised failure (see the Glantz paper here
http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/doc...t/countrpt.htm ), a paralell to Op. Saturn that did not run so well.
Later on in 1945, with all the means he had available then at the Seelowe-Berlin Offensive Operation (better known in the west as the Battle of Seelow Heights), 1st Belorussian Front (G. Zhukov) took an inordinate amount of casualties precisely due to blundering prompted by intense pressure from Above (read the appropriate chapter in Erickson's Road to Berlin). Z. did not exactly come shining out of this one but once you build a myth you can't dismantle it in the middle of an offensive.
Myths are dangerous for historians or wannabe historians like us here. Just look at how many times we have to bash Rommel's ghost inthe head.
Anyway, an interesting
article I found.