July 3, 1941

Stalin's radio address of 3 July 1941

Stalin broadcasts his first public address after Germany’s invasion

He opened not with “Comrades” alone but with “citizens, brothers and sisters … my friends” — then admitted on air that Lithuania, much of Latvia and swathes of Belarus and Ukraine were gone.

The first time the country heard him

Joseph Stalin addressed the Soviet public by radio on 3 July 1941, for the first time since Germany invaded on 22 June. The Soviet government had not been silent — Vyacheslav Molotov had announced the attack on 22 June — but this was Stalin in his own voice.

He acknowledged that German forces had captured Lithuania, much of Latvia, western Belarus and part of western Ukraine, and said the Soviet state faced grave danger.

He spoke as chairman of the State Defense Committee, created three days earlier on 30 June.

Leave them nothing

Stalin ordered that a forced retreat leave the enemy no railway rolling stock, no grain, no fuel, no livestock and no other valuable property. Anything that could not be evacuated was to be destroyed.

He called for mounted and foot partisan units and sabotage groups in occupied territory to destroy bridges, roads and communications and attack German forces.

The speech publicized and amplified policies already appearing in a party-government directive of 29 June.

A political argument as much as a report

He framed the conflict as a war of the entire Soviet people and appealed to prospective allies in Europe and America, shifting Soviet rhetoric toward a patriotic people's war and an anti-Hitler coalition.

The address also defended the 1939 nonaggression pact with Germany as having bought time. Its claims about Soviet preparedness and already-destroyed German formations were political arguments, not neutral reporting.

Scorched earth summarizes one section of a much wider speech that also covered production, discipline, partisan warfare and alliances.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

“First address since the invasion” means Stalin’s first public address. Molotov had already announced the German attack in a radio broadcast at 12:15 on June 22.
The speech publicized and amplified policies already appearing in a June 29 party-government directive; it did not create every wartime measure from nothing.