Stalin's speech on May 5, 1941 in the Kremlin to the graduates of the Soviet military academies

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The Stalin speech on May 5, 1941 in the Kremlin to the graduates of the Soviet military academies is considered to be historically guaranteed. However, there is no original transcript from her.

The graduates of the 16 military academies of the Soviet Union and nine corresponding faculties of the civil universities of the USSR were invited to a special reception in the Kremlin on May 5, 1941. The members of the Politburo were gathered in the hall of the large Kremlin Palace , along with other military and political leaders, Tymoshenko , Budyonny , Mechlis and Vyshinsky . After a welcoming address by the formal head of the Soviet state, Mikhail Kalinin , the graduates heard a speech of about 40 minutes from Stalin . He spoke about the level of development and training of the Red Army , its military-political challenges and objectives.

Versions and content of the speech

An authentic text of the speech is not known. There are different traditions with partly contradicting statements. The following day Pravda reported in a nutshell:

“In his speech, Comrade Stalin spoke of a profound change that had taken place in the Red Army in recent years, and emphasized that the Red Army had been restructured and re-armed on the basis of modern warfare. Comrade Stalin greeted the commanders who have graduated from the military academies and wished them success in their work. Comrade Stalin's speech lasted about 40 minutes and was listened to with great attention. "

Attempts at reconstruction were first made by the British correspondent in Moscow, Alexander Werth ("Russia at War"), and by the German embassy counselor, Gustav Hilger ("We and the Kremlin"). According to his own statements, Hilger received "from three senior Russian officers who were taken prisoner in Germany", whom he does not name by name, but of whom he says they did not have the opportunity to talk to each other, information about the Stalin speech of May 5, 1941, which he reproduced in his memoirs published in 1955 as follows:

"After these reports, the head of the USSR Military Academy, Lieutenant General Chosin , wanted to make a toast to the peace policy of the Soviet Union, to which Stalin reacted sharply and negatively by saying that this defensive slogan must now be put to an end because it was out of date. Under this slogan, the Soviet Union had succeeded in pushing the borders of the Soviet Union far forward in the north and west and increasing its population by 13 million. But with that one could no longer gain a foot's width of ground. The Red Army had to get used to the idea that the era of peace policy had ended and the era of the violent expansion of the socialist front had dawned. Anyone who does not recognize the need for an offensive approach is a philistine and a fool. The praises of the German army must finally be stopped. "

The Eastern European historian Bernd Bonwetsch points out that authors such as Viktor Suvorov and Joachim Hoffmann , who claim that Stalin expressed specific intentions to attack Germany in this speech, refer exclusively to statements made by captured Soviet officers.

The journalist and British Moscow correspondent Alexander Werth circulated the following version of the speech after the war:

“After the war broke out, I received fairly detailed reports on this reception, which at the time had been given considerable importance in Moscow. I learned that the main points of Stalin's speech on May 5, 1941 were:
1. The situation is extremely serious. One must expect a German attack in the near future. Therefore: be ready to meet any possible surprise.
2. The Red Army is not yet strong enough to be able to defeat the Germans without further ado. Your equipment is far from satisfactory; there is still a serious shortage of modern tanks, modern aircraft, and much more. The training of large numbers of soldiers is far from over. The defenses in the new border areas are inadequate.
3. The Soviet Government will try with all diplomatic means at its disposal to postpone an armed conflict with Germany at least until autumn because it will be too late for a German attack at this time of year. This attempt can succeed, but it can also fail.
4. If it succeeds, the war with Germany will almost inevitably take place in 1942, and under much more favorable conditions, since the Red Army will then be better trained and better equipped. Depending on the international situation, the Red Army will wait for a German attack or it will take the initiative itself, since a permanent predominance of Nazi Germany in Europe is 'not normal'. "

As early as June 1941, the German ambassador in Moscow, von der Schulenburg , received a version of this speech via an informant directed by the Soviet side, according to which Stalin devoted not only two thirds of his speech to a factual comparison of the German and Soviet military potential, but even I spoke of a "new compromise" that had to be found with Germany.

Lev A. Bezymenskij documented and analyzed the various versions of the Stalin speech in 1992 in the specialist journal Osteuropa, both in the original Russian and in German translation. He documented for the first time a typewritten short version of the speech that an employee of the People's Commissariat for Defense forwarded to the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1948. Stalin then spoke in detail about the state of the Red Army, the problem of the discrepancy in advanced weapons technology and the lack of training at the Soviet military establishments, as well as the reasons for the Wehrmacht's successes to date. At the end of his speech he added after this version, which is also available online in the document edition for which the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek is responsible in connection with the Chair of Eastern European History at the University of Erlangen , as the third address after the toast of a major general of the armored forces:

“Peaceful politics is a good thing. Up to a certain time we have taken the line of defense, until we have not yet equipped our army with modern weapons. But now that we have redesigned our army, equipped it with plenty of technology for modern combat, now that we have become strong, now we have to move from defense to attack. In realizing the defense of our country, we are obliged to act aggressively. We must move from defense to a military policy of offensive action. We have to rebuild our education, our propaganda, agitation, our press in an offensive spirit. The Red Army is a modern army, but a modern army is an offensive army. "

According to Bezymensky, Stalin's speech contains “not much new”. The Soviet military doctrine basically provided for the transition from the defensive to the offensive in the event of a specific threat, and the thesis of the “modern attack army” was “almost banal” at the time. Bernd Bonwetsch emphasizes that the speech should be seen in connection with the German deployment. It does not contain concrete threats of attack from Stalin, but the "whole tenor of his statements undoubtedly signaled a change in the Soviet attitude towards Germany", which also included the option of becoming militarily active "against the deployment of the Wehrmacht in the east".

literature

  • Gustav Hilger : We and the Kremlin. German-Soviet relations 1918–1941. Memories of a German diplomat. Metzner, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1955.
  • Alexander Werth : Russia at war. 1941-1945. Droemer, Knaur, Munich / et al. 1965.
  • Lev A. Bezymenskij : Stalin's speech on May 5, 1941 - documented and interpreted . In: Osteuropa 42nd Vol. (1992), Heft 3, pp. 242-264.
  • Lev A. Bezymenskij: Stalin's speech of May 1941 - newly documented. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär , Lev A. Bezymenskij (ed.): The German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. The controversy about the preventive war thesis . Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-89678-084-0 , pp. 131-144. (= abridged version of a documentation of this speech from Eastern Europe, 42nd volume, issue 3/1992, pp. 242–264)
  • Bernd Bonwetsch : Stalin's statements on the policy towards Germany 1939–1941. Critical comments on the source . In: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Lev A. Bezymenskij (ed.): The German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. The controversy about the preventive war thesis . Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 1998, pp. 145-154.
  • Bernd Bonwetsch: The research controversy about the Red Army's preparations for war in 1941 . In: Bianka Pietrow-Ennker (Ed.): Preventive War? The German attack on the Soviet Union . Frankfurt / Main 2000, ISBN 3-596-14497-3 , pp. 170-189.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lev A. Bezymenskij: Stalin's speech of May 1941 - newly documented. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Lev A. Bezymenskij (ed.): The German attack on the Soviet Union 1941, Darmstadt 1998, p. 131f .; Vladimir Nevežin: Introduction to the short version of Stalin's speech IV to the graduates of the Academy of the Red Army in the Kremlin, May 5, 1941 . In: 1000dokumente.de .
  2. ↑ Bernd Bonwetsch: The research controversy about the Red Army's preparations for war in 1941 . In: Bianka Pietrow-Ennker (Ed.): Preventive War? The German attack on the Soviet Union . Frankfurt / Main 2000, p. 174.
  3. ↑ Lev A. Bezymenskij: Stalin's speech of May 1941 - newly documented. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Lev A. Bezymenskij (Ed.): The German attack on the Soviet Union 1941, Darmstadt 1998, p. 132.
  4. ↑ Gustav Hilger: We and the Kremlin. German-Soviet relations 1918–1941. Memories of a German diplomat. Alfred Metzner, Frankfurt / M. 1955, pp. 307f.
  5. ↑ Bernd Bonwetsch: Stalin's statements on the policy towards Germany 1939–1941. Critical comments on the source . In: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Lev A. Bezymenskij (Hrsg.): The German attack on the Soviet Union 1941 , Darmstadt 1998, p. 150 u. P. 153, footnote 19.
  6. ↑ Alexander Werth: Russia at War 1941-1945 . Complete paperback edition in two volumes. Tape. 1. Knaur, Munich 1967 (first edition 1965), p. 112.
  7. ↑ Lev A. Bezymenskij: Stalin's speech of May 1941 - newly documented. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Lev A. Bezymenskij (ed.): The German attack on the Soviet Union 1941, Darmstadt 1998, p. 132 f.
  8. ↑ Lev A. Bezymenskij: The speech of Stalin on 5 May 1941 - documented and interpreted . In: Osteuropa 42nd Vol. (1992), Heft 3, pp. 242-264.
  9. ↑ See also Bernd Bonwetsch: Stalin's Statements on Policy Towards Germany 1939–1941. Critical comments on the source . In: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Lev A. Bezymenskij (ed.): The German attack on the Soviet Union 1941 , Darmstadt 1998, p. 151.
  10. ↑ Abridged version of IV Stalin's speech to the graduates of the Academy of the Red Army in the Kremlin, May 5, 1941 . In: 1000dokumente.de
  11. ↑ Lev A. Bezymenskij: The speech of Stalin on 5 May 1941 - documented and interpreted . In: Osteuropa 42nd Vol. (1992), Heft 3, pp. 248-252; as a duplicate copy with the same text also by Lev A. Bezymenskij: Stalin's speech from May 1941 - newly documented. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Lev A. Bezymenskij (ed.): The German attack on the Soviet Union 1941 , Darmstadt 1998, pp. 136-140 and online at 1000dokumente de .
  12. ↑ Lev A. Bezymenskij: Stalin's speech of May 1941 - newly documented. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Lev A. Bezymenskij (Ed.): The German attack on the Soviet Union 1941 , p. 142.
  13. ↑ Bernd Bonwetsch: Stalin's statements on the policy towards Germany 1939–1941. Critical comments on the source . In: Gerd R. Ueberschär, Lev A. Bezymenskij (ed.): The German attack on the Soviet Union 1941 , p. 150 f.