Russia at war 1941-1945

Finally, the Germans had expected the Soviet armed forces to break down; after which they would, without further hindrance, push right on to the Urals. True, the German army was a more experienced army than the Soviet Army, but the Russians had the moral

advantage of fighting a just war; moreover, the Germans were now fighting in enemy

territory, far from their supply bases and with communications constantly threatened by the Partisans.

[This also was said more for effect. In 1941 partisan activity was still very weak and unorganised.]

Our army, as against this, is fighting in its own surroundings, constantly supported by its rear, and supplied with manpower, ammunitions and food... The defence of

Moscow and Leningrad show... that in the fire of the Great Patriotic War new

soldiers, officers, airmen, gunners, tank-crews, infantry men, sailors, are being forged—men who will tomorrow become the terror of the German army. {Stormy

applause.)

For all that, said Stalin, there were also unfavourable factors, which could not be denied.

One was the absence of a Second Front in Europe; whereas the Germans were fighting

the Red Army with the help of numerous allies—Finns, Rumanians, Italians, Hungarians

—there were no British or American armies on the European mainland to help Russia.

But there can be no doubt that the formation of a Second Front on the European mainland

—and it unquestionably must come within a very short time {stormy applause}— will greatly facilitate the position of our army, and make things more difficult for the

Germans.

The other unfavourable factor was the German superiority in tanks and aircraft. The Red Army had only a fraction of the tanks that the Germans had, even though the new

Russian tanks were superior to those of the Germans. It was essential not only to produce far more tanks, but also far more anti-tank planes, guns, rifles, mortars and grenades, and to devise and make every kind of antitank obstacle.

After demonstrating that, far from being either "nationalists" or "socialists", the Nazis were imperialists of the worst kind, determined, in the first place to annihilate or enslave the Slav peoples, and after quoting some particularly revealing German "Untermensch"

utterances, Stalin made his supremely significant appeal to the Russians' national pride—

And it is these people without honour or conscience, these people with the morality of animals, who have the effrontery to call for the extermination of the great

Russian nation—the nation of Plekhanov and Lenin, of Belinsky and

Chernyshevsky, of Pushkin and Tolstoy, of Gorki and Chekhov, of Glinka and

Tchaikovsky, of Sechenov and Pavlov, of Suvorov and Kutuzov! The German

invaders want a war of extermination against the peoples of the Soviet Union. Very well then! If they want a war of extermination they shall have it! {Prolonged, stormy

applause.) Our task now... will be to destroy every German, to the very last man, who had come to occupy our country. No mercy for the German invaders! Death to

the German invaders!" {Stormy applause.)

There were not only moral reasons why these wild beasts would perish, Stalin went on.

The "New Order" in Europe was not something that the Germans could rely on. Secondly

—and here was still a faint echo of Stalin's previous distinction between the "Nazi clique"

and the "German people"—the German rear itself was unreliable. The German people were tired of the war of conquest, which had brought them millions of casualties, hunger, impoverishment and epidemics.

Only the Hitlerite halfwits have failed to understand that not only the European