After the end of the Second World War, the world generally rewarded the generals who participated in the war in their own countries, and Stalin, the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, also wrote a list of awards and gave it to Marshal Zhukov, the "god of war" of the Soviet Union, to help him refer to it.
Zhukov originally had no opinion on this list of titles, but when he saw a familiar name, he took the initiative to say: "Your Excellency Stalin, this man's marshal cannot be given!" ”
So who was the general who was blocked by Zhukov from becoming a marshal? What kind of contradiction is there between him and Zhukov?
Katukov
A genius general, he became famous in World War I
Mikhail Yefimovich Katukov, the name of the general who was prevented from conferring the title of marshal.
Judging from the first half of his life, this General Katukov was unremarkable, without any outstanding place. In 1919, he joined the Russian Red Army (the Soviet Union had not yet been established), and after more than three years of bitter fighting, the Red Army defeated the capitalist-backed White Army and established the powerful Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, referred to as the "Soviet Union".
After the end of the war, Katukov first went to the Mogilev infantry training class for further study, and then entered the advanced infantry school, but in that school, the teacher gave him only four words, that is, "positive" and "hard".
Soviet infantry
Some people may think that this evaluation is not bad, but once these four words are expressed in a different way, we can understand the real meaning.
The so-called "positive" means that this person is more optimistic in his thinking and will always look forward to a good direction, as for "hard", it means that this person has no talent, nor is he particularly smart, and can only rely on repeated efforts to achieve a little meager results.
So, under the influence of this evaluation, it took Katukov 21 years to be promoted to the division commander of a reserve tank division.
The Great Patriotic War
After the outbreak of the Soviet-German War (the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union), Katukov was seriously ill, had just completed surgery, cut off one of his kidneys, and had a high fever of 40 degrees, so he forcibly discharged himself from the hospital and led his troops to the front line battlefield.
In the early days of the war between the two sides, the Soviet army suffered one defeat after another, and Kotukov led the tank troops used to attack, and was forced to fight a defensive battle, although it achieved certain results, it was still difficult to save the overall situation.
In October 1941, Katukov was transferred to command of the 16th Army of the Western Front and was demoted to brigade commander of the 4th Tank Brigade.
war
At that time, the Soviet government had entered a critical situation, and after only three months of war, the German army pushed thousands of kilometers, the Soviet Southwest Front (the strongest military region in the Soviet Union) was completely annihilated, the Western Front and the Southern Front were severely damaged, the Soviet industrial town of Leningrad was surrounded, and the capital Moscow was in a hurry.
During this period, General Guderian, one of the three famous German generals, personally led 560 tanks to Moscow, and Katukov was ordered to block the other side in the Oryol (oblast) region to prevent the other side from breaking through Moscow's Symonsk (city), but he only had 45 broken training tanks in his hands, not even many tank shells.
The soldiers took obedience to orders as their duty, and Katukov did not hesitate at all, and rushed to Mzenszynsk for defense as soon as he received the order.
Guderian
Before the battle began, Katukov knew that if he faced Guderian head-on, he would have to accept a fiasco, after all, Guderian was known as the "father of german armored soldiers", and he was best at tank warfare and armored warfare.
So he asked the soldiers to work day and night, built a large number of false bunkers, and made a bunch of fake tanks out of iron plates for camouflage, while the real tank troops were placed several kilometers away.
At that time, the soldiers did not sleep for several days and nights, every day they did some work that was not related to the battle, and many people scolded Katukov behind their backs as spies sent by Germany, otherwise how could they toss their group of soldiers who were about to prepare for battle?
Katukov
However, after the outbreak of the real war, everyone realized The cleverness of Katukov, the two sides engaged for the first time, the German army concentrated a hundred tanks and an infantry regiment to launch an attack, the Soviet army launched an artillery attack several kilometers away, and the German army began to passively respond.
But in this process, there will be a problem, the Soviet army is shelling the German army from the farthest distance, and if the German army counterattacks, the priority is to see the "fake tank" nearby, so this battle presents that the Soviet army is fighting the German army, and the German army is fighting iron plate.
By this point, at the end of the day's fighting, eleven German tanks had been destroyed, while the Soviets had no tank damage.
Tank battles
Of course, Katukov also knew that Guderian was definitely not a fool, after the first day of fighting, the other side will definitely invest a lot of troops, and compete with themselves, so in order to intimidate the German army, ButTukov asked all tanks, must be in the next day's battle, two guns to change places, creating the illusion of a large number of Soviet tanks.
The next morning, the Germans used two hundred tanks at a time to fight, while the Soviets changed places with two guns and two guns, so that the Germans could not figure out how many Soviet troops there were, and the specific location was there.
Tank battles
After a day of fighting, the Germans again suffered casualties of more than a dozen tanks, while the Soviets suffered damage to three tanks, but the Soviets fought on their own turf, and after the damage during the day, they were completely repaired overnight.
Guderian was furious after two consecutive days of defeat, but just as he was about to attack with all his tank troops, he was unexpectedly frightened by a Soviet radio report.
At that time, the Soviet announcer Leviathan, in the release of the war report, claimed: "The Soviet and German armies engaged in a fierce tank battle in the city of Mzenschensk in the Oryol Oblast, and the number of tanks dispatched was as high as 1200 or so. ”
Katyusha rockets
After listening to this war report, Guderian was instantly blinded, he knew that he only had 560 tanks, but as of now the actual number of troops invested was only 200, and now the announcer said that the number of dispatches was about 1200, that is to say, the Soviet army opposite today suddenly dispatched 1000 tanks.
The huge difference in strength between the two sides made Guderian dare not act rashly, after all, if the Soviet army really had so many troops, then his troops would definitely suffer huge losses if they forcibly attacked.
At the same time, that night, the Soviet troops were also reinforced by a Katyusha rocket artillery battalion, which was originally intended to be put on the orders of the superior commander to attack the Germans during the day. But Katukov was so desperate that he had to give the Germans a shot at night.
war
As a result, after a baptism of rocket artillery, Guderian was more convinced that the opposing force was higher than himself, otherwise he would never dare to provoke himself so much.
After that, Guderian also tried to use the air force to attack the other side, but under the deterrence of the Katyusha rockets, the Luftwaffe did not gain any advantage, but also damaged two fighters.
After eight days of fierce fighting, Katukov completed the blockade task at the cost of destroying 133 German tanks and 2 fighters, at the cost of 0.
Later, Katukov also led his army to participate in the Moscow Counteroffensive Campaign, and with excellent combat results, he led the Fourth Tank Brigade to obtain the first unit of the tank unit to be given the title of "Guard".
Katukov
Bloody Obo, Tank Battle
Influenced by Katukov's battle at Mzenszynsk, he was promoted to commander of the First Tank Army only six months later, and then when Katukov defeated the German offensive on the outskirts of Kursk, Stalin also took notice of the general and appointed him commander of the 1st Army of the Northwestern Front.
The First Group at that time had been crippled, and Katukov could only fight while forming new troops, but even so, he participated in the Battle of Jamyansk, defeated the German Infantry Second Army, and forced the German Sixteenth Army to withdraw from the Jamyansk area.
Tank battles
After this battle, Katukov was supposed to lead his troops to break the German encirclement of Leningrad, but due to the counterattack of Marshal Manstein of Germany (one of the three famous German generals with Guderian), the Red Army in the south was in danger, and Katukov was urgently transferred to the Soviet First Ukrainian Front and participated in the famous Battle of Kursk.
This battle was the largest tank battle in World War II, with nearly 8,000 tanks invested by both sides, about 1.5 million troops and more than 5,000 aircraft, and the largest tank battle and the largest single-day air battle in human history.
Tank battles
To be precise, if in this battle, the Soviet army has failed, it is estimated that the entire history of World War II will change, so in order to win this battle, both sides have exerted all their strength, the German army desperately attacked, the Soviet army desperately defended.
Katukov led the 1st Tank Army to disperse the operations, using his best ambush methods, so that the German Fourth Tank Army suffered heavy losses, of which the two sides were at the most intense, Katukov destroyed more than 140 German tanks or armored vehicles in one day.
Tank battles
It was precisely because of the constant counterattack of excellent generals like Katukov that the German troops could not break through the second line of defense of the Soviet army, and the German Fourth Army was forced to shift its offensive target and march towards the Prokhorokav area on the right, only to be repelled by the other Soviet troops that had been prepared in one fell swoop, reversing the offensive and defensive situation between the two sides.
After the end of the war, the German eastern front forces were no longer able to turn the tide of the war, and finally the Soviet army blew the clarion call of counter-offensive as planned.
tank
Stick to principles and miss marshals
Since the end of the Battle of Kursk, Katukov's forces have been on the offensive, and he participated in the Battle of Kharkov and in the liberation of the Ukrainian regions on the right bank. In the Battle of Berdychev, more than 300 kilometers were pushed across in seventeen days, and in the Battle of Chernowice, 150 kilometers were pushed day and night, pulling the front directly to the rear of the German army and cutting off all the retreat routes of the German army to western Ukraine.
Because of his outstanding performance, the tank Army he led was labeled "Guards", and even he himself was openly regarded as "the first man of the Tank Corps of the Guards in wartime".
Zhukov
At the end of 1944, Katukov and his troops were transferred to the command of zhukov, the "god of war" of the Soviet Union, and in the counter-offensive against the German mainland commanded by Zhukov, Katukov's figure could be seen every time, and his army group was always at the forefront, and he had penetrated the seven lines of defense of the German army in 18 days and nights, advancing more than 600 kilometers, liberating a large number of Polish people.
Half a year later, the Soviet Union besieged Berlin with a million troops, and the situation between the two sides was so familiar, but this time it was the German capital that was surrounded.
Zhukov
At that time, Zhukov was keen to be the first to liberate Berlin, and Stalin was happy to be the "victorious" marshal. But Zhukov's army was certainly not alone in attacking Berlin.
In addition to Zhukov (the First Belorussian Front), there was actually Rokossovsky's Second Belorussian Front and Konev's Ukrainian First Front.
Rokossovsky's task was to crush the only German army group and secure the attack of the other two forces on Berlin.
tank
In this way, only The two marshals Zhukov and Konev had the opportunity to win the title of "the first man to liberate Berlin", and from the perspective of the quality of the troops, Zhukov was actually more promising, and everyone was generally more optimistic about him.
At that time, in order to compete for the final victory, Zhukov selected Katukov's Tank First Army as the vanguard force, and Katukov did not disappoint him, first strengthening the river outside Berlin, and then crushing the 502nd Heavy Panzer Battalion of the Wehrmacht, one of germany's three aces.
Tanks are mired in the mud
By this time, Zhukov was much ahead of Konev, but he was still not satisfied, and without understanding the geography of the front, he forced Katukov's tank troops to drive into the swamp at night, causing confusion in the vanguard, completely blocking the road, and directly stopping in place for two days.
Two days later, Katukov reluctantly commanded his troops to open a path, and then pulled out the tanks that had sunk into the swamp one by one, clearing the last line of defense outside Berlin and preparing to march towards the interior of the city.
Katukov
But it was at this time that Katukov was surprised to find that Marshal Konev's troops had actually run ahead of him, and he hastened to report the news to Marshal Zhukov.
Zhukov was furious when he learned of this and demanded that Katukov, by all means, must stop Konev's troops.
After all, both Zhukov and Konev were marshals, and their troops were all Soviet troops.
Zhukov
Faced that Katukov did not carry out his orders, Zhukov angrily said: "I will take off all your medals and then kill you like a dog!" ”
Hearing this, Katukov also responded angrily: "Marshal, I want you to know that my honor is the state, and the army is also the state, and you have no right to deprive me of my honor." ”
Afterwards, Katukov forced his tanks onto Berlin's Ring Railway, unexpectedly bypassing German positions and rendezvousing with Konev's forces, who had already entered the city.
Soviets stormed the Reichstag
On April 30 of the same year, Katukov's troops stormed the Reichstag building, and he personally wrote the words "Russian tanks in Berlin" to declare the Soviet Union's victory in the war.
Since Zhukov's troops were not the first Soviet army to invade Berlin, Zhukov also missed the title of "the first man to liberate Berlin".
Since then, Zhukov has constantly targeted Katukov, and on Stalin's list of generals of the post-war troops, there were originally three tank marshals, of which Katukov was one of them, but Zhukov deliberately crossed out Katukov's name and said: "This man's marshal cannot be given!" ”
Stalin
At that time, Stalin did not know what was going on between the two, and seeing that Katukov's direct superiors did not approve of his exploits, he gave up his plan to award Katukov a marshal.
In August 1945, Zhukov forcibly ordered Katukov to leave the army and go to study at the Military Academy of the General Staff, and when Stalin found out, he loudly rebuked: "Damn, what do you think, after transferring Katukov away, who will defend the western region?" ”
Later, in a festival commemorating the meritorious service of tank soldiers in the Soviet-German War (Great Patriotic War), Katukov did not participate.
Zhukov
The reason is that as a major contributor to the two-time honor of heroism of the Soviet Union and the defense of the capital Moscow, his position was actually arranged to the 42nd row, even further behind some ordinary spectators, which made him feel that he was not accepted by Moscow.
The reality is that Zhukov is a ghost, and he wants this former subordinate to know that if he offends him, he should be retaliated against.
Years later, Zhukov was suspicious, and many people fell into him, and it was only then that he remembered that only Katukov had not said anything bad about him, so he sent someone to Katukov's house to make a sincere apology.
Katukov
But Katukov's wife refused to accept the apology because Katukov had suffered so much injustice over the years that he had been seriously ill and was treated in the hospital.
Afterwards, his wife told Katukov about the incident, and Katukov sighed: "If you knew today, why did you know it in the first place?" ”
In the middle of the same year, Khrushchev, then the leader of the Soviet Union, remembered this "Hero of the Soviet Union" and personally ordered that Katukov be awarded the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Tank Corps. Filled the glorious life of this Soviet general!.