Russia at war 1941-1945

These were the passages that made a particularly strong impression on the Russians. He admitted that: "No one has been a more consistent opponent of communism than I have in the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it." But then he went on, as only he could do:

I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land... I see them guarding their homes where their mothers and wives pray—ah, yes, for there are

times when all pray—for the safety of their loved ones... I see the ten thousand

villages of Russia where the means of existence is wrung so hardly from the soil, but where there are still primordial joys, where maidens laugh and children play. I see advancing on all this in hideous onslaught the Nazi war machine... I see the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of

crawling locusts. I see the German bombers and fighters in the sky, still smarting from many a British whipping, delighted to find what they believe is an easier and safer prey...

And then—the assurance that there would never be a deal with Hitler, and the promise that Britain would support Russia, and finally, the conviction that: "He [Hitler] wishes to destroy the Russian power because he hopes that if he succeeds in this, he will be able to bring back the main strength of his Army and Air Force from the East and hurl it upon this Island... "

The comments I heard from Russians were almost all along these lines: "We had heard about Hess; we suspected that there might well be a deal between Britain and Germany.

We remembered Munich and those Anglo-Franco-Soviet talks in the summer of 1939.

We had felt deeply about the bombing of London, but had, all along, been taught to

distrust England. One of our first thoughts, when Germany invaded us, was that it had perhaps been done by agreement with England. That England should be an Ally—yes, an

Ally—was more than we had ever hoped for..."

At last Stalin spoke. It was an extraordinary performance, and not the least impressive thing about it were these opening words: "Comrades, citizens, brothers and sisters, fighters of our Army and Navy! I am speaking to you, my friends!" This was something new. Stalin had never spoken like this before. But the words fitted perfectly into the atmosphere of those days.

Stalin began by saying that the Nazi invasion was continuing, despite the heroic defence of the Red Army, and although "the best German divisions and air force units had already been smashed and had found their grave on the field of battle". Understating the territorial losses already suffered, Stalin then said that the Nazi troops had succeeded in capturing Lithuania, a large part of Latvia, the western part of Belorussia and parts of the western Ukraine. German planes had bombed Murmansk, Orsha, Mogilev, Smolensk,

Kiev, Odessa and Sebastopol. "A serious threat hangs over our country."

Did this mean, Stalin asked, that the German-Fascist troops were invincible? Of course not! The armies of Napoleon and of William II also used to be considered invincible; yet they were smashed in the end. And the same would happen to Hitler's army. "Only on our territory has it, for the first time, met with serious resistance." That a "part of our territory" had, nevertheless, been occupied, was chiefly due to the fact that the war had begun in conditions favourable to the Germans and unfavourable to the Red Army:

At the time of the attack, the German troops, 170 divisions in all, had been fully mobilised and were in a state of military preparedness along the Soviet frontier, merely waiting for the signal to advance. The Soviet troops had not been fully