Stalingrad at the days of defence.
Defenders of the city are counterattacking the German-fascist army.
* * *
WITNESSES:
D. Shostakovich, V. Kornev, G. Zhukov, V. Molotov, V. Mishin, Charles de Gaulle, Enver Muratov, K. Simonov. Isakov
* * *
"I warmly welcome valiant defenders of Sevastopol - the Red Army, Red Navy, commanders and political commissars who courageously defend every inch of Soviet land and parry blows of German invaders and their henchmen Romanian.
Selfless struggle of Sevastopol is an example of heroism for the entire Red Army and the Soviet people. "
(J. Stalin)
'Not only friends, but enemies are forced to admit that our country is united and rallied around their government is now more than it has ever been.
The rear and the front of our country are united in a single fighting camp, beating to one goal.
That the Soviet people in the rear give our front more rifles and machine guns, mortars and guns, tanks and aircraft food and ammunition.'
(J. Stalin)
'You have enough strength to destroy the enemy that broke through.
Assemble aircraft of both fronts and attack the enemy that brok through...
Mobilize armored trains and let them on a circular rail of Stalingrad to confuse the enemy...
Fight to the enemy that broke through not only at the day but at night. Use artillery force to your utmost.
Most importantly, do not panic, do not be afraid of the impudent enemy and keep confidence in our success.'
(J. Stalin. From the directive of the Supreme Commander, August 23,1943)
* * *
To Comrade Stalin from soldiers, commanders and political workers of the Stalingrad front:
'Before our battle flags, in front of the whole Soviet nation, we swear that we will not shame the glory of Russian arms and fight to the last.
Under your leadership our fathers won Tsaritsyn battle. Under your leadership we will now win in the great battle of Stalingrad!'
* * *
To the kolkhoz member Golovaty:
'Thank you, Ferapont Petrovich, for your concern for the Red Army and its Air Force. The Red Army will not forget what you gave all your savings to build a combat aircraft.
Accept my greetings.'
J. Stalin.
* * *
'August 9, 1942 at the siege of Leningrad Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was first performed. It was finished already in the days of the siege and that fact gave the strength and hardness to it.
'To our struggle against fascism, our coming victory over the enemy, my native Leningrad I dedicate my Seventh Symphony,' wrote Shostakovich.
When one of the German officers heard on the radio broadcast of the Seventh Symphony, he wrote in his diary:
'We will not win them.'
(V. Kornev)
* * *
"When people ask me what have I most remember from the last war, I always say: the battle for Moscow.
Stalin was all this time in Moscow, organizing power and means to defeat the enemy.
To his credit, as head of the State Defense Committee, and based on the management team Commissariats, he has done tremendous work in organizing the necessary strategic reserves and logistical resources to provide a counter-offensive near Moscow.
By his tough insistence he achieved, we can say, almost impossible things.'
(G. Zhukov)
* * *
Molotov in a conversation with Chuev:
'Stalin repeatedly said that Russia won wars, but could not enjoy the fruits of victory.
The Russians fight great, but cannot make peace; they are deceived and given short.
And what we have done in this war, I think, we did it very well: we have strengthened the Soviet state...
As for the Polish borders in Potsdam Stalin spoke of the 'Curzon line':
'What do you want us to be less Russian than Curzon and Clemenceau?
What will Ukrainians say, if we accept your proposal?
They might say that Stalin and Molotov were less reliable defenders of Russian and Ukrainians than Curzon and Clemenceau.
We had hoped for no one else - only on our own strengths.
As for the power of powers, increase its defense power, Stalin sought to not only keep pace but to be ahead. Although he understood that we came to the forefront with the most colossal internal backwardness because the country was peasant!
But we began to seriously engage in missiles during the war.
Could we run the world's first satellite in 1957 and the first man into space in 1961, if we were not engaged in it much earlier?
'The academician Vasily Mishin told me about it,' I say, 'for a long time he was first deputy of Korolev and then his successor as chief designer.
F'uture-Soviet space,' he said, 'started at the end of the war with an exchange of letters between Stalin and Churchill.'
I read this two-volume set of correspondence...
I read and did not pay attention to a telegram of Churchill, as always, a top secret one, which states that in the nearest time Soviet troops would take Polish town Debice where Germans make the test of cruise missile V-2...
'I would be grateful, Marshal Stalin, Churchill wrote, if you could give appropriate guidance on maintaining the equipment and devices in Debice that your troops will take after capture of this area. If then you have given us the opportunity to study this Experimental Station by our experts.
July 13, 1944.
Stalin replied that he did not know what Debice was in question, 'because in Poland, they say, there are several items under that name.'
British Prime Minister immediately sends a new impatient message, which gives a detailed coordinates of the desired him Debice.
Stalin replied briefly that he gave necessary instructions on this issue.
'... I promise you that I will take this matter under my personal control, so that everything possible can be done according to your wishes.'
And, indeed, he took it under his personal control.
' At the same day,' said Vasily Mishin, myself, Sergey and S. Korolev were on the carpet at Stalin's office.
He gave us instructions to immediately fly to s Debice that was just liberated from German, gather there the materials on cruise missiles and bring them all to Moscow.
And that nothing got for the British - their intelligence agents had worked there for a long time.
And we did so.
According to the detected fragments of drawings we painted a cruise missile and carried it in metal in Czechoslovakia.
Our intelligence agents had discovered a Kozak, Deputy Chief of German rocketeer Wernher von Braun, a Czech by nationality. He began to help us.
And just before the October holidays we have sent a ready cruise missile, a car of Tatra, a box of Czech beer to Moscow on a railway platform and wrote:
'The Gift to Stalin'.
Thus the Soviet space began.'
* * *
'Stalin was very attentive to such matters,' said Molotov. They write that he did not recognize cybernetics...
'I was honored when I was a student to listen Aksel Ivanovich Berg in the audience. This was an authority in the science of management!' I said.
'That Berg has been appointed deputy chairman of the State Committee on these matters by Stalin. That was the level at which the case was solved!
Of course, we were not shouting about it all over the world.
Stalin was the greatest conspirator.'
* * *
'Since that time Stalin saw Russia in a mysterious way and thought its system to be stronger and more durable than any regime.
He loved his own way. It also took him as king in the terrible period of time and supported Bolshevism to serve as his instrument.
To unite the Slavs, to destroy the Germans. To spread itself in Asia, gain access to the free sea - these were dreams of the Homeland; it was the goal of the despot.
Two conditions were needed to achieve success: make the state a powerful, i.e., an industrial one, and win a world war.
The first task was accomplished at the cost of untold suffering and human lives.
Stalin, when I saw him, finished the accomplishment of the second problem among the graves and ruins.'
(Charles de Gaulle)
* * *
'As a result of two-month offensive fighting the Red Army broke through the defense of German troops on a broad front, broke one hundred and two enemy's divisions, captured more than 20,000 captives, 13,000 guns and many other vehicles and advanced up to 400 kilometers
Our troops won a major victory. The advance of our troops continues.
Congratulations to soldiers, commanders and political workers in South-Western, Southern, Don, of the North Caucasus, Voronezh, Kalinin, Volkhov and Leningrad fronts on the victory over the Nazis and their allies the Romanians, Italians and Hungarians at Stalingrad, the Don, in the North Caucasus, near Voronezh, the Great Bow, south of the Lake of Ladoga.
(J. Stalin)
* * *
PAGES OF JOSEPH'S LIFE:
1943. The order 'On the introduction of new shoulder marks and the change in the uniforms of the Red Army'.
The order to the South-Western, Southern, Don, of the North Caucasus, Voronezh, Kalinin, Leningrad and Volkhov fronts.
The order in connection with the completion of the liquidation of the enemy troops surrounded near Leningrad by the troops of the Don front.
The assignment of Stalin Marshal of the Soviet Union.
The warning given to troops on the Orel-Kursk direction about the possibility of the Germans attacks. The order in connection with the completion of the liquidation of the German summer offensive by the Soviet troops.
The order in connection with the liberation of the Donbas from the German invaders by the troops of the Southern and Southwestern fronts.
The participation in the Tehran Conference.
The signing of the Declaration of the 'three powers' on joint action in the war against Germany and the postwar cooperation and 'the Declaration of the three powers on Iran'.
* * *
'An army can be strong only when it enjoy exceptional care and love of people and government.
This is the greatest moral force of the army, a pledge of its invincibility.'
(J.. Stalin)
* * *
Enver Muratov witnesses (1937):
'In the hall General Sivkov stood up, and said in aloud bass voice:
'Comrades! I propose a toast for peace, for Stalin's policy of peace, for the creator of this policy. For our leader and teacher Joseph Stalin.
Stalin waved his hand in protest. The guests were confused.
Stalin said something to Tymoshenko who declared:
Comrade Stalin asks for the floor.
The applause broke out. Stalin motioned everyone to sit down.
When the hall became quiet, he began his speech.
He was very angry, a little stuttered, a strong Georgian accent appeared in his speech.
'This general has not understood anything. He did not understood anything.
We, Communists, are not pacifists.
We have always been against unjust wars, imperialist wars for the redistribution of the world for the enslavement and exploitation of workers.
We have always supported just wars for freedom and independence of peoples.
For revolutionary war for liberation of peoples from the yoke of colonialism, for liberation of workers from capitalist exploitation.
For the most just war in defense of the socialist fatherland.
Germany wants to destroy our socialist state, won by the workers under the leadership of the Communist Party of Lenin.
Germany wants to destroy our great Homeland, Homeland of Lenin, the gains of October and exterminate millions of Soviet people and turned survivors into slaves.
Only a war with Nazi Germany and a victory in this war can save our country.
I propose a toast for the war.
For the offensive in the war.
For our victory in this war.
Stalin drained his wine glass; everybody in the hall did the same thing.
There was silence. The concert Continued.
'Stalin proposed a toast for the tankmen.
Further, while the banquet continued, toasts were proclaimed only by Stalin: for pilots, sailors, communications and motorcyclists, engineers, cavalry...
Every time when Stalin proposed toasts, he briefly defined what tasks would be to carried out by one or another branch of service during the war.'
* * *
Simonov witnesses (His conversations with Admiral Isakov):
'In all these passages, at every turn not sentries stood but duty officers of the NKVD.
I remember after the meeting we came into this room, and still not sitting at the table, Stalin suddenly said:
'Have you notice how many of them standing there?'
Every time I walk down the hall and think, who of them?
If this one, he will shoot at my back. And if I turn into the corner, the next will shoot in my face.
That's how I walk past them down the hallway and think...'
* * *
'Then I asked to speak and, hot, said about the railroad. The fact that it does not climb into any doors, so that we do not build businesses.
That, in general, this overlay tracks on the highway, the only - neither more nor less than sabotage.
Then the "wrecking" relates to the terminology, we can provide, design, fashion, the former run, and I used just this expression.
Stalin was waiting to hear until the end, then said quietly:
'You are pretty convincingly, comrade (he called my name) analyzed the state of affairs.
Indeed, objectively speaking, this road in such a form, in which it is now, is nothing like sabotage.
But first of all, it should be found out who a saboteur is?
I'm a saboteur.
I ordered to build this road.
They reported to me that there was no alternative, that it would accelerate the pace, the details were not reported, only in general terms.
I agreed to accelerate the pace.
So I'm a saboteur in this case. Let's establish the truth.
Now let's decide what to do in the future...'
I must say that he was meeting on the principle of the classic military councils. Very carefully, slowly, without stopping, without interrupting, he histened to everyone.
And he tried to give a word in the order of seniority, so that a view expressed earlier should not constrain a next one.
Only at the end, catching all the essential of what was being said, marking extremes, taking useful from various points of view, he summed up.
So it was in when he did not get on very specific point of view from the very beginning.'
* * *
'I was just drawn to him, I approached him and said:
'Comrade Stalin! Our Pacific navy in a mousetrap. It's not good. He is in a mousetrap. We must solve the problem differently.
And he took him by the arm and led him to a huge map that hung just opposite the place where I was sitting at the table.
Apparently, this map of the Far Eastern theater led me to that drunk idea: to prove to Stalin need to address some problems associated with the construction of the Pacific Fleet right now.
I led him to the map and began to show him, in which a trap our fleet gets because of the fact that we do not regain Sakhalin.
I told him:
'Without the South Sakhalin there in the Far East it is impossible and senseless to build a large navy.
While we will not regain this southern Sakhalin, until then we still will have an access to the ocean.
He listened to me very quietly and then said:
'Wait, you will have the southern Sakhalin!'
I started to say something else.
Then he summoned the people; though it was not necessary to call them; all crowded around us, and said:
'Here, you see, Isakov requires from me that we posessed the South Sakhalin.
I answered him that we will possess it but he did not believe me...
This conversation I remembered then, in 1945 year... it was impossible not remember it...
* * *
'Stalin in wrath was terrible, rather dangerous, it was hard to look at him at this time and it was difficult to be present at such scenes.
I was present at several of those powerful bursts of anger...
When I said that he saw Stalin in anger, only a few times, we must bear in mind that he could hide his feelings and he could do it very well.
To do this he had spent long skills.
He walked, turned away, staring at the floor, smoking a pipe, was busy with it ...
All of those were means to restrain himself, not to his their feelings, not to betray them.
And it was needed to know in order to take into account what his seeming calm meant in certain moments.
... In the Arctic, in the wardroom of a torpedo boat, looking into a porthole and seemingly talking to himself, Stalin suddenly said:
'What is the Black Sea? It is a washtub.
What is the Baltic Sea? It is a bottle but cork does not belong to us.
Here is the sea, here is the window! There should be a big navy here!
From here we can take the quick, if needed, England and America. We have no other places for it!
This was said at the time when the idea of creating a large navy in the North did not yet ripe even in heads of the most advanced marine figures...
...And now after all these speeches, Stalin, however reluctantly, took the floor and said:
'What has been said here: we will take, win, conquer ...
War, war...
It's still unknown when there will be a war.
When it will be then it will be!
This is the North! And he repeated:
'It's the North, it is necessary to know, one must study, learn, get used to it, master it and then say everything else.
I also liked it then. I liked his serious and deep attitude to a complex subject, which we had just started to deal with.'