Office of the Historian

800.00B International Red Day/257½: Telegram

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Standley) to the Secretary of State

Moscow, May 2, 1943—11 a.m.

388. Stalin issued his May First order of the day as Commander in Chief and Marshal of the Soviet Union.61 The order goes considerably further than any previous official statement by Stalin or other Soviet leaders in acknowledging the contribution made by England and America to the joint struggle against Hitlerism.

In the order Stalin:

1.
Greets the armed forces, the partisans, workers, peasants, intellectuals in the name of the Soviet Government and the Bolshevik Party.
2.
Assesses the military situation in the light of the Soviet winter campaign and the Allied military operations. The winter campaign demonstrated the growth of the Red army’s offensive power relative to that of the Germans who failed at Kharkov despite the transfer of some 30 new divisions from Western Europe, to gain revenge for Stalingrad.

“Simultaneously, the victorious troops of our Allies smashed the Italo-German troops in the area of Libya and Tripoli, cleared those [Page 520] regions of the enemy and now continue to destroy them in the Tunis area, while the valiant Anglo-American air forces strike crushing blows at the military-industrial centers of Germany and Italy, presaging the establishment of a second front in Europe against the Italo-German Fascists.

“Thus, the blow at the enemy from the East by the Red army has for the first time during the war been merged with a blow from the West—by the troops of our Allies—into a single stroke.”

3.
States that the results of the military operations has been creation of the necessary conditions for victory over Hitlerite Germany, which has been plunged into a serious crisis.
  • Firstly, the Fascists acknowledge this crisis by admitting that Blitzkrieg tactics are no longer possible, that the war has assumed a protracted character. The Fascists now boast of escaping encirclement in North Africa or at Demyansk, instead of flaunting their lightning offensives.
  • Secondly, the Fascists admit their plight by peace feelers.62 Their hopes of making a separate peace either with England and America or with the Soviet Union are doomed, however, to failure. Peace can come to Europe only after the unconditional surrender of Hitlerite Germany.
4.
Warns that although Hitlerite Germany thus faces a catastrophe, that catastrophe is not yet at hand, and will be effected only after stern trials and great efforts by the armies both of the Soviet Union and “our Allies.”
5.
Calls therefore for redoubled effort from both front and rear. He cites as an example of the contribution of the rear the donation drive of last winter, yielding more than 7 billion rubles. He praises the army for its successes, but reminds it that it is inadmissible to rest on previous achievement.
6.
Issues orders to troops and commanders as groups and as members of the Red army as a whole, and to the Partisans, to observe strictest discipline, work ceaselessly to master the military arts, consolidate and extend the winter gains, and to allow the enemy no rest.
7.
Concludes with slogans hailing the Fatherland, the Army, the Fleet and the Partisans and again demanding “death to the German usurpers.”

Standley
  1. To compare the May Day order for 1942, see telegram No. 351, May 2, 1942, from the Ambassador in the Soviet Union, Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. iii, p. 439.↩
  2. For correspondence concerning reports of attempts by the Axis Powers to make a separate peace with an opponent, see pp. 613–736, passim, and vol. i, pp. 484 ff.↩