Office of the Historian

861.415/98: Telegram

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

Moscow, February 21, 1944.
[Received February 22—12:50 p.m.]

573. Moscow papers to [of] February 20 publish 47 slogans of the Central Committee of the Party for the celebration of the 26th anniversary of the Red Army.77 The slogans for the most part are addressed to the various branches of the services who are urged to continue the battle with vigor and to drive the enemy from Soviet territory and to the workers and population of the rear who are asked to put forth every effort toward continuing the flow of supplies to the front and effecting the rapid reconstruction of the devastated areas.

The following slogans are of special interest:

5.
Long live the victory of the Anglo-Soviet-American military alliance over the evil enemies of humanity, the German Fascist enslavers! All the strength and combat force of the freedom loving nations for the speediest defeat of Hitlerite Germany!
6.
Courageous patriots of Yugoslavia! Your struggle for the freedom and independence of your country serves as an inspiring example for all the enslaved peoples of Europe.
Long live the heroic people of Yugoslavia and its valiant People’s Army of Liberation which is fighting self-sacrificingly against the Fascist invaders!
Greetings to the peoples of Europe who are fighting against Hitlerite imperialism! Patriots of Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Denmark! Arise in armed struggle for your liberation from the Fascist yoke. Overthrow the Hitlerite tyranny!
8.
Oppressed Slav brothers! Fan more widely the flame of the people’s struggle against the Germans—the mortal enemies and oppressors of Slavdom! Long live the armed struggle of the Slavic peoples against the Hitlerite imperialists! Long live the unity in battle of the Slavic peoples!
9.
Greetings to the valiant airmen of the Anglo-American Air Forces who are dealing blows at the vital centers of Fascist Germany! Greetings to the brave sailors of Great Britain and the United States of America who are battling against Fascist pirates!
10.
Battle greetings to the soldiers and officers of the first Polish corps, the Czechoslovak military units, the Yugoslav military unit in the USSR, the airmen of the French “Normandy” aviation squadron who are heroically battling on the Soviet-German front against our common enemy, the Fascists enslavers!
13.
Infantrymen of the Red Army! Persistently follow up the success of the offensive, relentlessly pursue and destroy enemy troops, give them no opportunity to entrench themselves on new lines, steadily break through toward our western borders! Surround the German invaders, destroy and capture the personnel and equipment of the enemy! Long live the Soviet infantrymen.

Harriman

  1. To compare with the slogans of the previous year and Stalin’s order of the day, see telegrams 192 of February 22, and 203 of February 24, from Kuibyshev and the memorandum of February 23 by Charles E. Bohlen of the Division of European Affairs, Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. iii, pp. 506, 507, and 506, respectively. In Stalin’s order of the day for 1944, not printed, he extolled the Red Army’s victorious offensive operations of more than 3 years and claimed that only the steadily increasing force of the blows of the Red Army could break enemy resistance and bring final victory. He went on to concede that “the position of Hitlerite Germany will be still more hopeless when the main forces of our Allies go into action and a powerful and increasing offensive of the armies of all the Allied states develops against Hitlerite Germany.” (861.415/100)

    A message from President Roosevelt to Stalin on February 22 is printed in Department of State Bulletin, February 26, 1944, p. 204. Stalin acknowledged the President’s felicitations on February 29, ibid., March 4, 1944, p. 224.

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