Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov was a famous Soviet military, strategist, and marshal of the Soviet Union. On 18 January 1943, he was awarded the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union, the first Soviet commander to receive this honor in the Soviet-German War, and he was recognized as one of the best generals in World War II for his outstanding merits in the Soviet-German War.
On June 22, 1941, the German fascists tore up the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact and dispatched 5.5 million troops to invade the Soviet Union in three ways, quickly occupying soviet territory with the famous "blitzkrieg" tactic. Due to differences in combat equipment and the lack of soviet defenses, the Red Army's defenses soon collapsed, with countless casualties and heavy losses. In late July, Stalin did not accept Zhukov's proposal to abandon Kiev and removed him from his post as chief of the General Staff. Two months later, the Soviet Southwestern Front had been annihilated by 660,000 men, and Stalin knew that Zhukov was right. In September, Zhukov returned to the front.
When the German army was only 300 kilometers to 400 kilometers away from Moscow, it formulated a "typhoon" plan, trying to divide and annihilate the main force of the Soviet army from the north, west and south, and then detoured to Moscow from the north and south sides to capture Moscow before entering the winter. The Germans assembled 3 armies and 3 tank groups under the "Center" Army Group, as well as the 2nd Air Force, with a total of 78 divisions and 1.8 million men. The Soviet High Command established three lines of defense west of Moscow with a depth of 300 kilometers, defended by 15 armies and 1 campaign cluster of 1.25 million men under the jurisdiction of the Western Front, the Bryansk Front, and the Reserve Front.
Despite the stubborn resistance of the Red Army, the Germans still broke through the Red Army's defenses. The German 2nd Army broke through the defensive lines of the 50th Army of the Soviet Red Army, captured Bryansk in late September 1941, and on October 3, Oryol fell, with the Germans advancing along the Oryol-Tula road. On 7 October, the Germans reached the area of Viazima, where most of the troops of the Soviet Western Front and the Reserve Front were encircled and resisted until 12-13 October. The Germans captured 580,000 Red Army soldiers in the Battle of Vyazma-Bryansk. Only 85,000 Soviet troops protruded from the German lines. In mid-October, the German Army Group Center ended the encirclement of the Red Army on Vyazma's front line. At this time Zhukov sent a new group of troops to Moscow, and the Soviet army once surpassed the German army.
Under the guidance of Zhukov and others, after many confrontations between the Soviet Union and Germany, in April of the following year, the Soviet Union liberated a series of regions and cities such as Rogachevo and Belev, and successfully defended Moscow, but the Soviet Union paid a heavy price. Germany lost 500,000 troops at the Battle of Moscow. In this battle, the Soviet Union suffered more than 700,000 casualties and captured, far more than Germany.
This data does not show that Zhukov's "hundred battles and hundred victories" general is a waste of time. You know, at that time, the German army was prepared, the Soviet army was unprepared, and the German army was also very good in momentum. Coupled with the military gap between the two countries, it was not easy for the Soviet Union to win the war against Germany by relying on the "man-sea tactics".
Zhukov also used this tactic in the subsequent World War II to defeat the fascist forces. For example, in the Battle of the Dnieper in September 1943, Zhukov commanded General Vatutin's Voronezh Front and General Konev's Steppe Front, totaling 2.63 million men, fighting the Germans. The Germans had a strength of about 1.24 million, and the Soviets were 2.1 times as numerous. In the end, the Soviets won the war, with casualties ranging from 1.7 million to 2.7 million, one of the largest military operations of World War II.