Stalin's radio broadcast to the Soviet people (3 July 1941) [Subtitled]

In the pre-dawn hours of 22 June 1941, German army and aviation detachments numbering more than 3.8 million men-in-arms crossed the frontier of occupied Poland to initiate “Operation Barbarossa,” Adolf Hitler’s master plan to vanquish the USSR and secure total mastery over the European continent.

The invasion could not have come at a worse time for Stalin’s Russia. Caught in a period of institutional transition and still reeling from the bloodletting unleashed by the 1937-38 purge of the officer corps, the Soviet military was disastrously unprepared for war. The attack caught the country’s military commanders, citizens, and political leaders by complete surprise.

In the days and weeks that followed the launch of the invasion, Red Army and Red Air Force units melted away. Chaos reigned along a front stretching for more than 1,000 miles between the Baltic States and the shores of the Black Sea. Within less than two weeks, advance units of the German Wehrmacht had occupied the territories of Lithuania and Latvia, captured the city of Minsk, moved into central Russia, and made rapid progress toward the key agricultural and industrial centers of Ukraine. In the process, they killed or captured hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers.

Worse yet, the USSR’s military collapse was accompanied by political paralysis. The country’s “Great Leader,” Josef Stalin, had disappeared…

Historical accounts of Stalin’s activities from 22 June until the first days of July differ. Some have claimed the Soviet dictator was seized by panic and fled to his suburban summer home (dacha / дача) where he took comfort in a drunken binge – while awaiting arrest and summary execution at the hands of his underlings. Others have argued that the “Boss” (vozhd’ / вождь), though shocked by events, continued working diligently in an effort to undo unfolding disaster. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.

One thing is certain. Soviet citizens would not hear from the “Father of Peoples” until the USSR’s war with Hitler’s Germany was eleven days old.

On 3 July 1941, Josef Stalin re-emerged to deliver a radio address that was broadcast to the entire nation.

This is what Soviet citizens heard that day…

[christone]

"History shows that there are no invincible armies nor have there ever been"- Iosif Stalin

[ijsmikasa]

"History show that there are no invicible army"

Joseph Stalin 1941

[zglg]

I'm always fascinated by just how thick Stalin's Georgian accent was.

[hamzak]

Imagine hearing this as a civilian or a young man of fighting age? Scary....

[K.I.A]

Stalin was surprisingly humble about past conflicts. He did not brag about Russia's victory over napoleon, or grumble about Russian performance in ww1. He even included the French, English, and even Germans when he spoke about napoleons invincible army.

[SysKeyJS]

Stalin tells it to them like it is. "We are loosing horribly, and our Army is suffering tremendously. but there is still hope and resistance if you rise up and defend the homeland" Could put it briefly

[ethanbarnett]

To give such optimism, reason and motivation in the face of extreme adversity is not only historic but timeless. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. How we need that in this day and age.

[ZOGGYDOGGY]

I like the way he identifies the enemy as the fascists, not the Germans in general. The USSR needed to buy an extra year and half, that;s why it signed the Non-Aggression Treaty. It had signed one with fascist Italy earlier in the 30s. It would sign a neutrality pact with Japan which allowed them to move troops to the front to blow the fascists away from the walls of Moscow at the close of '41.

[dnickaroo]

Anna Louise Strong, an American journalist who lived in the USSR from 1927, described this speech:
The words with which he began were very significant.
“Comrades! Citizens!” he said, as he has said often. Then he added, “Brothers and Sisters!” It was the first time Stalin ever used in public those close family words. To everyone who heard them, those words meant that the situation was very serious, that they must now face the ultimate test together and that they must all be closer and dearer to each other than they had ever been before. It meant that Stalin wanted to put a supporting arm across their shoulders, giving them strength for the task they had to do. This task was nothing less than to accept in their own bodies the shock of the most hellish assault of history, to withstand it, to break it, and by breaking it save the world. They knew they had to do it, and Stalin knew they would.

For several minutes after Stalin had finished the silence continued. Then a motherly-looking woman said, “He works so hard, I wonder when he finds time to sleep. I am worried about his health.”

That was the way that Stalin took the Soviet people into the test of war.

[Vahe]

It's amazing how frank he is talking to his people. It's hard to imagine another leader being so straightforward with the facts during a war they are losing. And still it is a very inspiring speech.

[kazohinia]

This is no typical inspirational speech, it's a call to action to people whose lives and livelihoods are about to be destroyed, for some in a matter of days and others in a matter of weeks, until the collapse of the central government; after all, in France it only took one month for the entire country to be subjugated by Germany. By the time of this speech, millions of Soviet citizens had already been absorbed by Nazi Germany's advance. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of planes had been lost by this point, and if the country failed to fully mobilize now, they wouldn't survive Blitzkrieg. The world's first workers' state would have been swiftly relegated to the dustbin of history and the bulwark against fascism in the world would disappear. The heroism and self-sacrifice of the Soviet people in response to this dire threat against themselves and the world is almost unparalleled in world history. There are few times in history that a whole nation so fully mobilized itself, reorienting all aspects of everyday life for defense against an invader. Their contributions to the defense of the progress of human history should be recognized and commended by everyone alive today.

[ComradeBenjamin]

I didn’t expect his voice to sound like that. He was direct, clear, and straightforward and in doing so he was able to led his people to victory against fascist imperialism. Gives me a lot to think about.

[nikolapetrovic]

just look at the dictate. he is the leader. he forms questions, and then answering them, he creates a standing point of view for all individuals. he also justifies his tesses, including not only himself as a judge, but also as a matter of historical means and also as a logical proove. he first cracks on all possible arguments which could have overrun his theory, then explains why and tells the message. very much based. i strongly admire him

[unicornpearlz]

Wow. Thank you for sharing. I think it's time for people to learn, to know, what has happened. To identify trends in human behavior.

[stalker]

so many people hate him or love him, but dont know how his voice was.

[parsil]

Still sounds better than the kid in cs:go

[phillipellis]

Thank you for this surprising (to me) and critical piece of history. Stalin roused the entire country, and he also was exactly right in his forecast of the defeat of the Nazi armies. If I were a citizen hearing this at the time, I believe I would have been roused into action

[jacknd]

"This army, (Wehrmacht) has not yet encountered serious resistance on the continent of Europe". Totally true. No one but the red army could fight them till then. This and the analogy of Napoleon's army failure was like a premonition of what would happen to the germans.

[haldir]

Probably the most important speech in history of man kind. Imagine how the world would look if the Eastern people just gave up like the rest

[rexfrommn]

Stalin skillfully used patriotic themes of defending Mother Russia and defending the Motherland. Most importantly Stalin prepared his people for a long hard bitter fight. The appeal to partisan attacks in the occupied territories became harsh realities for German rear arrea troops. Stalin made appeals to the major ethnic groups in the Soviet Union. People's militia's played big roles in most battles. Stalin was quite humble in his speech admitting the German Army was strong with tanks, warplanes bombing Rusian cities while occupying large areas of the western frontier.. The thing Stalin got right in this speech was his appeal for national mobilization and national resistance. Stalin plainly said the Germans wanted to reintroduce slavery for the Russian people in a new form of tsarism.

Soviet Army political officers did an excellent job of making newspaper articles about Nazi atrocities in the occupied territories. Photographs in newspapers of German atrocities from liberated areas after the battle of Moscow of mass graves, mass hangings, raped women and girls and burned out towns and villages showed no mercy was to be expected from the Nazis. Interviews of survivors in these newspaper articles spoke of harrowing terrible German mass executions, sadistic rape of little girls and old women, and the burning and slaughter of entire villages of people by German troops. These newspaper articles were spread far and wide across thhe Soviet Union and in all the Soviet military units, farms and factory floors. These newspapers just showed the truth of the bestial cruelty of the Nazi's across the entire nation. These political officers with their newspapers did much to unite the Soviet people in their resolve to fight the Germans until the bitter end if need be. Workers in factories typically worked 12 hour shifts. Small boys and women worked many of those shifts to free men to fight at the front. The only thing that mattered to a Soviet citizen was national resistance to the bestial fascist hordes.

Life under communism, while at times harsh, for the most part had improved most of the people's lives. The Russians were better fed, much better educated and literate, had improved medical care, better clothing and housing than under Tsarist times. The Soviet Union was an industrial power in its own right. Hitler changed his opinions about the Soviet soldier during the heavy fighting around Smolensk. Many Soviet soldiers when encircled under the harshest conditions just kept fighting, charged German positions at night fighting with hand to hand combat with sharpened spades, bayonets, grenades and any ammunition they had left. Many Soviet soldiers broke out of these encirclements or becamme partisans. German infantry casualties soared from this ferocious resistance in the summer and autumn of 1941. The Russian mud and winter slowed down the Wehrmacht but the Soviet soldier did all the killing all the way back to Berlin.