May 1st 2005, marked the 60th anniversary of Marshal Georgi Zhukov’s victory in the Battle of Berlin, and in the Second World War. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1990 led to a total rehabilitation of Zhukov’s memory in Russia.

But while Montgomery, Eisenhower and Patton are celebrated icons of WWII in the West, Zhukov, an international hero in 1944/45, featuring on the front page of Life magazine and the New York Times, is now a neglected figure in the West.

As Hitler’s armies advanced on Moscow in Autumn 1941 western observers thought the capital would fall and be followed by a quick collapse of Soviet Russia. It was Zhukov who ground the German offensive down and then on December 6th 1941 he launched a counter attack in the bitter cold and snow which threw the Germans back more than 130 kilometres. It was a great victory. Zhukov said this success cost Hitler and the Nazi’s their reputation for “invincibility” before world opinion.

His five great campaigns included organising the defence of Leningrad – the Germans never took the city – He was a key architect of the entrapment of Marshal Paulus and Hitler’s Sixth Army at Stalingrad. He was the master strategist of Kursk, the greatest tank battle in history, which finally broke the spine of the Wehrmacht, and he was the victor of the battle of Berlin.

Zhukov’s eldest daughters Era and Ella have turned the family home in Moscow into a virtual shrine to the memory of their father. In an address in 1945, Eisenhower said “To no one man does the United Nations owe a greater debt than to Marshal Zhukov…One Day…there is certain to be another Order of the Soviet Union. It will be the Order of Zhukov, and that order will be prized by every man who admires courage, vision, fortitude, and determination in a soldier.”

Four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union Eisenhower’s prophetic words finally came to pass in the new Russia. But among people throughout the rest of the world, Zhukov’s dominant role in the defeat of Hitler, is still largely unknown, or forgotten.

This documentary on tells the personal story of Marshal Zhukov in the context of the tumultuous times of the Russian Revolution, the Second World War, and the Cold War.

Presented and produced by Shane Kenny

An Irish radio documentary from RTÉ Radio 1, Ireland - Documentary on One - the home of Irish radio documentaries