“Victory will be ours!”

Moscow

At noon the whole country gathered around loudspeakers as Vyacheslav Molotov spoke on the radio. He ended with words people repeated for four years: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours!”

People listened in silence; many wept. That same day queues of volunteers formed outside the recruiting offices. Some were not yet eighteen and tried to add a year or two to their age so they could go to the front.

Loudspeakers (round black “plates”) hung in squares and flats. Neighbours gathered around them, and for four years the radio was how the country heard both its most bitter and its most joyful news.

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The morning that changed everything

Sunday 22 June 1941 began like any summer day: school-leavers had just danced at their graduation balls. At dawn bombs and shells rained down on the country as the enemy advanced from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Minsk fell on 28 June, but the border guards and the defenders of Brest fought to the last.