Order of the Day, No. 371, July 22, 1945

Issued by Marshal Stalin and addressed to the troops of the Red Army and the Red Navy

During the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people against fascist Germany, our Red Navy has been a faithful helper of the Red Army.

In the war against the U.S.S.R.,fascist Germany, relying on the suddenness of their attack and the strength of their well practised army, tried to beat our army and our navy in a shorter time. It was by combining her army with her air-force and her navy, that Germany wanted to realise her domination over the seas.

It is well known that the strategy of the Germans on land and at sea went hopelessly wrong. The Red Army, together with our Allies, routed the Hitlerites and forced them to capitulate.

In both the defensive and offensive fighting of our Red Army, our Navy was a dependable cover for the flanks of our Red Army pushing through to the sea,blocking the enemy’s merchant shipping and strategically important navigation routes, securing the uninterrupted functioning of our lines of communication. The fighting action of the Soviet Navy is illustrated through its self-sacrificing steadfastness and valour, its intense combat activity and military skill. The submarine men, the sailors, the naval airmen, artillerymen and infantry have taken over and further developed everything that was so valuable in the hun~ dreds of years of tradition of the Russian Navy.

The Soviet sailors have in the four years of war, on the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Barents Sea, on the Voly, , the Danube a’nd the Dnieper, added new pages to the glorious history of the Russian Navy. The Navy has more than fulfilled its duty to the Soviet Motherland.

Comrades sailors, commanders and officers!

The Soviet people want to see their Navy even stronger and more powerful.Our people will produce more warships and bases for the Navy. The task of the Navy is to educate inexperienced marine cadres, to perfect them, to help them to make the fighting experience of the Patriotic War, and maritime, their own, and to increase even more the discipline and organization within their ranks.

I congratulate you on this Day of the Red Navy of the U.S.S.R.

Long live the Red Navy of the U.S.S.R. and its heroic men. J. Stalin

Supreme Commander-in-Chief

Marshal of the Soviet Union

("On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union," German Edition)