I have a lot of interest in reading about the history of the Soviet Union and World War 2, and one person from that time period I've always admired was Georgy K Zhukov. I've always felt he was the best "high level" general of the war, and deserved to be ranked up in history with other great generals. I also thought of him as a decent human being, at least for the standards of his time - some of the stuff I read says that he would often get in hot water for not toadying to Stalin and that he disliked the NKVD.
But when I was a kid learning about history, our classes would only mentioned him in passing as a random russian general. Alot of times when I read clickbait articles on the internet they claim his reputation is overblown and that he was evil incarnate and prop up some german generals or something as better than him (I'm always suspicious of this because Zhukov beat them in the end, plus they're propping up literal nazis).
So what's the deal? Is my opinion of Zhukov as a "master of mobile warfare on an operational and strategic level who also managed to be a decent human being in a tough time" wrong? Were my textbooks right to only mention him in passing? Can someone give me a rundown of the man and point to some good biographies of him? (Preferably in english or spanish)
Oh, there's also a minor question I have about him regarding submachine guns. I always thought he was a supporter of them and that the PPSh became a well loved weapon ( I don't know where I got the idea that he supported submachine guns though). But I recently saw a post on social media that claimed that he was opposed to the introduction of the PPZh. The post tried to frame it as him being a cheapskate and not caring enough about his troops to give them a newer model of submachine guns. This seemed ridiculous to me for a lot of reasons but when I tried to look up information on the PPZh I couldn't find any gun called that being introduced as an upgrade to the PPSh other than from an unsourced wiki. Was that story fabricated or did he really oppose an upgrade to the PPSh?
Thank you in advance! I know this post might have been rambling but I'm very curious about Mr Zhukov.
I've written on various aspects of his legacy which you can find here.
Specifically for the last claim, I've never encountered it, but I think you are just misunderstanding what you read (or rather, the article seems to have made the wrong assumption). The PPSh was a submachine gun; PPZh was derisive slang for female soldiers who entered into relationships with Red Army officers. It stood for "pokhodno-polevye zheny", which translates roughly to "mobile field wife". Zhukov had very harsh words for this, despite, of course, the fact that he himself kept a mistress during the war as well. For more on this, see here.