Rokossovsky zhukov biography

By Blaine Taylor

The year was 1944, and the embattled Soviet Union’s top-level field commanders were meeting in conclave to discuss Operation Bagration, an upcoming offensive against the retreating German Army.

Presiding over the affair was Communist Party General Secretary Josef Stalin himself, and the boss was at odds with his “Polish” cavalry hero from the Russian Civil War days, Konstantin K. Rokossovsky.

At issue was whether the Red Army should stick with Stalin’s longstanding military policy of making a sole breakthrough of the enemy front—in keeping with Red Army combat doctrine—or go with the fractious Rokossovsky’s demand for a dual-penetration approach instead.

Rokossovsky, was on thin ice, as Stalin wasn’t used to being contradicted in front of his own commanders, especially by one who had already narrowly missed being executed during an earlier three-year imprisonment after being falsely char