Office of the Historian

711.62114/7–2844

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

No. 740
Moscow, July 28, 1944.
[Received August 9.]

Sir: I have the honor to refer to the Embassy’s telegram No. 2683 of July 20, 1944, 6 p.m.21 reporting the march of 57,600 German prisoners through Moscow on July 17, 1944, and to transmit herewith an illustrated article22 describing the march which appeared in the Moscow News for July 19, 1944.

The statements in the enclosed article concerning the reaction of the Russian spectators to the march of the German prisoners are typical of similar articles which have appeared in the Russian press. Few of the members of the Embassy’s staff who witnessed the march, however, heard the expressions of scorn and indignation from the crowd which the Soviet press reports.

There has been considerable speculation in foreign circles in Moscow as to the purpose of the Soviet authorities in staging this demonstration. In the opinion of the Embassy the Soviet authorities were motivated by some or all of the following considerations:

1)
A desire to give effect to Stalin’s promise early in the war that the Germans would march through the streets of Moscow, but not as conquerers; 2) a desire to strengthen the morale of the population of Moscow, and to give them a greater consciousness of the actuality of the war by displaying concrete results of the smashing victories of the Red Army; 3) expressing a desire to demonstrate to skeptics in the diplomatic corps and among foreign military attachés in Moscow that the huge numbers of prisoners claimed in Soviet communiqués have a basis in fact; 4) an attempt to demonstrate to the prisoners themselves the falsity of German propaganda claims that Moscow has been largely destroyed by bombing, to impress them with the size and impressiveness of the Soviet capital, and the relative normalcy of life here, and thus to condition them for the process of denazification which will inevitably begin immediately upon their arrival in the prisoner of war camps.

Respectfully yours,

For the Ambassador:
George F. Kennan

Counselor of Embassy
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Not reprinted.↩