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Description
On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union is a collection of speeches, interviews and orders by the Supreme Commander, Marshal and Generalissimo of the Soviet Union, J.V. Stalin, on the war that the Soviet peoples waged against the German nazi invaders. From the moment that Hitler invaded, Stalin gave the people hope that, although the invaders took a large section of land almost immediately, there have been no invincible armies in history, and that the German invaders would find their defeat in Russia just as Napoleon had. In this, Stalin distinguished between just wars and unjust wars and proved that the success of the former is a general law of history. One of the material keys to this optimism lay in that the Soviet Red Army, even in their forced retreats, took every possible means of production with them to ensure nothing remained in the occupiers’ hands, that they would not gain any military advantage from conquered land, and indeed that the Soviets would still be able to use these implements in the new industrial base in the Urals. This optimism further advanced when Stalin, staying at the front in defence of Moscow in November 1941, proclaimed that the nazi “blitzkrieg,” which had been proclaimed invincible by the Western powers, had failed in Russia and that the tide had turned. Under his leadership, Moscow never fell. The book also sheds light on the tremendous struggle of the hero cities of Leningrad and Stalingrad, and their ultimate liberation, which dealt a death blow to Hitlerite Germany.
As any student of the Great Patriotic War knows, it had immense significance for the Slavic peoples, who the German occupiers ruthlessly slaughtered. The Supreme Commander famously declared at the beginning of the war “If the Germans want a war of extermination, they will get it.” There was not even a hint of national chauvinism in this statement when added to Stalin’s other conviction that “Hitlers come and go, but the German people and the German state live on.” This was combined without any contradiction due to the lofty spirit of Soviet socialist patriotism, to the love of the Motherland and all working peoples, and against all those who endanger them. Thus, the misanthropic racial theories of the so-called “chosen German race” became the object of universal hatred of all mankind. At the war’s conclusion, Stalin said “The age-long struggle of the Slavic peoples for their existence and independence has ended in victory over the German aggressors and German tyranny.” Through tremendous struggle, through the death of 27 million people, defenders of the Motherland, including women, the elderly and children, this was attained. Particular note in this war belongs to the leading Soviet and Slavic people, the Russian people, which through its leadership attained universal respect as the guiding force of these peoples. As Stalin noted, when the invaders had occupied Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Riga and Vilnius, the Russian people did not demand a new leadership, they did not demand the signing of a separate peace plan with the Germans to preserve their own nation and limit their own dead. They fought valiantly, with all the key battles of the war on their territory, and a million dead in Leningrad alone, until the liberation of all the Soviet and Slavic peoples, even all the European peoples, in an heroic act of internationalism and self-sacrifice. As 2025 marks the 80th Anniversary of the Great Victory, the publication of this book serves to underline the historical importance of the Anglo-Soviet-American anti-Hitler coalition and educate on the outstanding service to mankind demonstrated by the Soviet peoples, and especially the Russian people.