Background: In October 1941 the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union seemed to be going well. Otto Dietrich, the press secretary ordered newspapers to proclaim that the USSR had been defeated. Goebbels, who lacked control over the press, was unhappy. He wrote in his diary: “Dr. Dietrich returns from the Führer’s headquarters and speaks to the press: He gives a picture of the military situation that is extraordinarily positive and optimistic, almost too positive and too optimistic. The slogan given to the press to use in headlines is surely too much: ‘The War is Over!’ Even if the Soviet Union will have to cease military resistance soon, there are doubtless hard days ahead and it is not right to promise the people an outcome of which one for the moment is uncertain. Such an announcement can only come in the OKW report. It is obvious that such an announcement will have an enormous impact both on domestic and foreign opinion. I hope to God that military operations develop such that we suffer no psychological backlash.” Goebbels’s fears were justified, although it was still more than a year before Stalingrad marked the war’s turning point.
The source: “Die große Student ist da: Der Feldzug im Osten entschieden!,” Völkischer Beobachter (Vienna Edition), 10 October 1941. The issue is available on ANNO, the Austrian program of digitizing newspapers.
A week ago on the evening of 1 October the Führer issued a proclamation to German soldiers on the Eastern Front, the text of which we carry at the bottom of this page. He ordered them “to give the final powerful blow that will shatter this enemy before the onset of winter,” calling for “the final decisive battle of this year.” There is hardly an order of such greatness and brilliance ever before in the history of war. Today, only one week later, the Front reports to the Führer and people that the order has been essentially obeyed, that the goal of this order has been achieved strategically. If ever there was an example of the idea of a Blitzkrieg, — here it is! Seven short fall days have sufficed to give the death blow to the largest war machine of all times, one from which it will never be able to recover.
This is the situation today:
The Reich Press Secretary, just returned from the Führer’s headquarters in Berlin, informed the men of the German press that on the basis of the latest information, it is absolutely clear that the Eastern war has been finished; it is not simply a matter of a series of major victories. The Führer’s order to the soldiers on the Eastern Front made it clear that this time it was all or nothing. The new major operations that began on 2 October were the product of long-term comprehensive planning and preparation, not just the exploitation of the situation on the various sections of the front.
In many major battles — the most recent and largest was the encirclement east of Kiev — the Bolshevist army suffered enormous losses of men and matériel and was seriously hurt. However, two of their three army groups still had significant fighting power and the center force, Army Group Timoschenko, was preparing an offensive with the last fully capable Soviet armies. Here is should be noted that the claims of Bolshevist-plutocratic propaganda that Army Group Timoschenko had been engaged in a successful offensive for three weeks near Gromel was a total lie; aside from stupid attacks by individual companies and battalions, Timoschenko had made no attack at all!
The task now was to eliminate these two army groups, just as Army Group Voroshilo had been surrounded in Leningrad. Budyonny had already lost over half of his forces in the fiery pocket at Kiev. The goal was to destroy his southern flank, which was achieved by a frontal attack Melitopel and a blow at his flank near Dnipropetrovsk. Timoschenko, however, had lost only a part of his forces at Kiev. He had established very strong positions over many weeks along his southern flank that had to be attacked frontally, with the goal of tieing down his forces to allow flanking maneuvers. The situation in the central front was similar to that of 22 June when the Greater German Wehrmacht first began its trial of strength with Bolshevism. Again, there was a breakthrough!
The attack succeeded after three-and-a-half months of long marches and enormous effort, thousands of kilometers from the homeland, whereas the enemy in this section of the front was near his major supply and reinforcement base of Moscow! After the successful breakthrough, wide-ranging pincer operations were immediately implemented, compelling proof of the Führer’s military genius and the fighting and attacking spirit of his soldiers. Timoschenko was so surprised that he was unable to save any of his remaining battle-ready armies from deadly encirclement.
Moscow, London, and Washington claimed that the “great general” Timoschenko was not surprised by the German attack. We have no reason to doubt that, for even the miserable Bolshevist intelligence service must have noticed some of the comprehensive German preparations. How Timoschenko planned his defense against this attack and what he did, however, remains puzzling — as puzzling as all Soviet strategy and tactics in this war. Apparently Stalin’s military idiots again did us the favor of stupidly putting their whole army masses at the front rather than using the famed “broad Russian plains” to conduct flexible and evasive battles.
Timoschenko repeated the cardinal error of Bolshevist military leadership — an innate characteristic of Bolshevism — and can no longer repair the damage. This time his last remaining reserves for a major Bolshevist attack have been sacrificed. With the defeat of Army Group Timoschenko, Stalin’s last military pillar has been shattered and eliminated. The victorious and fully battle-ready German Eastern Front now faces only Red units that are no longer capable of major operations. Stalin has permanently lost his freedom of action and has not the least prospect of rebuilding a significant army over the winter. All of Germany knows the enormous effort and time it takes to build and equip an effective army even with National Socialist methods. The Bolshevist Soviet Union that has already lost its most important armaments centers is completely unable to heal its deadly wounds. Judgment has already fallen on them
Not only the Kremlin’s murderous bands have lost the decisive battle! What their defeat means to those who are the real guilty parties in London and their friends in Washington one can easily see when reading the messages that Churchill and Roosevelt have recently sent to Stalin. With the fall of the Soviet Union, England’s last and greatest “continental dagger” has shattered. Europe is free of the worst danger in a thousand years, the Bolshevist threat. Never again will filthy and sordid Anglo-American brains be able to carry out their business on the backs of the European peoples. That is the historic meaning of the victories of October 1941.
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