1941 Stalin's radio address to the Soviet people

75 years ago, on July 3, 1941, for the first time since the beginning of the war, Stalin spoke on the radio with an appeal to the Soviet people. He stated: "Despite the heroic resistance of the Red Army, despite the fact that the best divisions of the enemy and the best parts of his aviation have already been defeated and found their grave on the battlefields, the enemy continues to push forward, throwing new forces to the front. Hitler's troops managed to capture Lithuania , a significant part of Latvia, the western part of Belarus, part of Western Ukraine ... A serious danger looms over our Motherland ...

First of all, it is necessary that our people, the Soviet people, understand the full depth of the danger that threatens our country, and renounce complacency, carelessness, and moods of peaceful construction, which were quite understandable in pre-war times, but pernicious at the present time, when the war is fundamentally changed position. The enemy is cruel and relentless. He sets as his goal the seizure of our lands, watered with our sweat, the seizure of our bread and our oil, extracted by our labor. He sets as his goal the restoration of the power of the landlords, the restoration of tsarism ... It is necessary that the Soviet people understand this and stop being carefree, that they mobilize themselves and reorganize all their work in a new, military way, which knows no mercy to the enemy.