Zhukov, Stalingrad
July 20 1942
Everyone was eager to either start a counter offensive or a preemptive strike on the Germans. The entire Defense Committee including myself were fixated on two realities; we weren't going to wait till the Germans attack us first again and we will not be on the defensive this time. Everyone agreed on the expediency of offensives when Stalin spoke about it.
However everyone else went about it too rashly. No calculations nor attention paid to the maps and strategy. We were wasting far too many reserve forces and accomplishing too little. The Stakva's impotence has left the Soviet Union reeling from its grave miscalculations.
We need to engage the enemy with air strikes , inflict a defeat by a steadfast defense and then go onto the offensive. No one listened. Stalin made an ambivalent decision to simply engage in a major offensive. We did not achieve anything in the end and suffered heavy losses, leaving us where we started off at the start of May. In addition, we have had abandon two more areas. The Nazis have broke into the Soviet rear due to the failure of the Kharkov offensive on May 19. It seems like we are in a worse position than we were in after Moscow.
Hitler is coming into Stalingrad. We've done this to ourselves. We have to retreat and defend, again.
Zhukov, Stalingrad
