The past twenty-seventh year of Soviet power in our country will go down in history as the year of the decisive victories of the socialist power over its fierce enemy—Nazi Germany. The military-political results of this year, brilliantly summarized in the jubilee report of Comrade Stalin, Chairman of the State Defense Committee, on November 6, 1944, open before the Motherland a majestic prospect of our struggle, inspiring the peoples of the USSR and the Red Army to the last battle for a complete and final victory.

It is enough to list the combat operations carried out by the Red Army this year to paint a grandiose picture of the battle and the great significance of our victories. Near Leningrad and on the Bug, in the Crimea and near Vitebsk, in Karelia, Western Ukraine and the Baltic states, near Chisinau and on the Tisza, on the Neman and the Vistula - everywhere the soldiers of the Red Army won glorious victories in the name of the freedom of the Motherland. In these unprecedented battles, our troops defeated and disabled about 120 enemy divisions, destroyed a huge amount of his military equipment, and captured colossal trophies.

During these operations, the enemy was thrown back far to the west along the entire front, in places more than 900 km. From Chisinau to Belgrade, from Zhlobin to Warsaw, from Vitebsk to Tilsit, the Red Army carried its battle flags. A year ago, on the eve of the twenty-sixth anniversary of October, Kyiv was liberated. Now our troops are beating the fascist evil spirits near Budapest. During this year, the Red Army completely cleared the territories of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldavia and the Karelian-Finnish SSR from the enemy, returning freedom to millions of Soviet people.

With mighty offensive strikes, our ground troops, supported by aviation and the Navy, drove the Nazi invaders out of our Motherland. The Soviet state border, treacherously violated by the Nazi hordes on June 22, 1941, has been restored along its entire length from the Black Sea to the Barents Sea. The threat of enslavement of the peoples of the USSR by fascist monsters has been finally eliminated. The vile attempts of the Nazis to seize our wealth, to profit from our good, have been put to an end forever. From now on, and forever, the Soviet land is free from Hitler's trash.

Having cleared the Soviet land, the Red Army is now beating the enemy on the territory of Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, helping the peoples of these countries to break the chains of fascist slavery and restore their freedom and independence. She launched an offensive between the Tisza and the Danube, with the aim of putting out of action the last Hitlerite ally in Europe - Hungary.

Along with this, units of the Red Army, having broken through the long-term defense of the Germans in East Prussia, broke into the fascist lair with a powerful offensive blow. The fighting is thus transferred to German territory. From now on, the Germans experience in their own skin what war is.

The summer operations of the Red Army, having chained up to 200 German divisions, created an opportunity for our allies to invade France and launch a powerful offensive, which ended in the expulsion of the enemy from Central Italy, France, and Belgium. Allied troops also broke into German territory.

Thus, Germany, having suffered a severe defeat under the blows of the Red Army and the troops of our allies, now found herself in a vice between two fronts.

These are the results of our victories in the past year on the fronts of the Patriotic War.

These victories of the Red Army became possible because it was selflessly supported by all the peoples of the Soviet Union in the rear of the country. The endless stream of weapons, military equipment, equipment and food heading to the front testifies to the fact that Soviet workers, collective farmers, intelligentsia, our glorious women and youth - all Soviet people in the rear of the country are working under the slogan "Everything for the front!" Thanks to this, in the fourth year of the war our factories produce 4 times more aircraft, 6-7 times more tanks, 7-8 times more artillery and mortar weapons than at the beginning of the war. As a result, the Red Army now has not less tanks, guns, aircraft, but more than the German army. To this it must be added that Soviet military equipment is much better in quality than German.

Along with the growth of production, the construction of new military-industrial enterprises in the east of the country was rapidly deployed. During the war years, two blast furnaces were launched in Magnitogorsk - the largest furnaces in Europe. In Chelyabinsk, the largest high-quality steel plant in Europe was built, and the Ural Automobile Plant named after Stalin was put into operation. A large tractor plant was built in Altai.

The national economy destroyed by the German barbarians is being restored at an accelerated pace.

The workers of the USSR accomplished a great labor feat in the Patriotic War.

Our Soviet intelligentsia, including designers, boldly following the path of innovation in the creation of new military equipment, creatively apply the achievements of modern science in the production of weapons for the Red Army, in particular for the Air Force.

"The Soviet intelligentsia, through their creative work, made an invaluable contribution to the defeat of the enemy" (Stalin).

The railway transport workers and the collective farm peasantry marked the past year with no less striking victories.

All this indicates that along with the military victories of the Red Army at the front, the workers of the Soviet rear in single combat with Nazi Germany and its accomplices won an economic victory over the enemy.

In the light of these victories, the historical role of our country in the war against Germany becomes obvious. The Soviet people, by their selfless struggle, saved the civilization of Europe from fascist cannibals.

Now our country, together with its allies, is facing the victorious end of the war. The days of Hitler's bloody regime are numbered. The complete encirclement of Nazi Germany is being completed. The Red Army and the allied troops took up their starting positions for the decisive assault on the main stronghold of reaction and obscurantism in Europe.

It is necessary to destroy the Nazi state and its army in order to secure the future of freedom-loving peoples from a repetition of aggression. We must punish the fascist monsters for the blood they shed, for the suffering and torment of our people, for the destroyed Soviet cities and villages. We must destroy the hard labor prison - Hitler's "3rd Empire" - in order to rescue the Soviet people who were taken there from fascist slavery.

We know that the fascist beast will snarl cruelly and viciously. The enemy will cling to advantageous lines of defense. He will try to maneuver the remnants of his "reserves" inside the increasingly shrinking ring of Allied fronts.

But no tricks of the enemy will save him from complete defeat. Before the onslaught of the Red Army, the so-called "impregnable" fascist ramparts more than once shattered to smithereens. The Volkssturm will not help the enemy either.

Suffice it to recall that already as a result of the operations described above, the enemy, after all the "total" and "super" total mobilizations, has only 204 divisions against our front instead of the 257 divisions that opposed us last year. In the present war Germany had the productive forces of almost all of Europe in its service. She was assisted by significant armies of vassal states. Despite this, she now faces an inevitable catastrophe. This means that the Soviet Union was stronger than Nazi Germany. Now it has forever lost the help of most of its "allies", as well as irretrievably lost most of the economic resources that it had in the past.

We can and must make the German lair a grave for the fascist army.

“The Red Army has adequately fulfilled its patriotic duty and liberated our homeland from the enemy... Now the Red Army is left with its last final mission: to complete, together with the armies of our allies, the task of defeating the German fascist army, to finish off the fascist beast in its own lair and hoist the banner of victory over Berlin" (Stalin).

We have all the conditions for this: truth is behind us, power is behind us.

In the winter and summer battles of the past year, the Red Army showed increased military skill. Soviet soldiers were tempered in battles, learned to smash and defeat the enemy. The Red Army has grown into a formidable force and surpasses the enemy in its military skill and military equipment.

Soviet aviation also wrote bright pages in the history of our victories this year.

The Supreme Commander-in-Chief Marshal of the Soviet Union, Comrade Stalin, in his order No. 220 of November 7, 1944, demanded that we mobilize all our forces in order to crush Nazi Germany with the swift onslaught of the united nations in the shortest possible time. It is the sacred duty of the aviators to carry out this order with honor and valor.

In the upcoming final battle, the Air Force must interact even more clearly and more closely with ground forces and between types of aircraft. Remember: interaction is the law of modern combat. Aviation commanders and chiefs must apply all their experience of combat in the past to organize massive strikes against the enemy. In all headquarters, questions of aviation control in combat must be worked out to the smallest detail. Particular attention must be paid to ensuring airfield maneuver in autumn and winter conditions so that air support for the advancing ground forces is absolutely uninterrupted and unrelenting. To this end, work must be launched in advance to study the conditions for the forthcoming basing on enemy territory. When preparing an operation, it is necessary to carefully consider the time of the year, which creates a specific situation for aviation operations. The material part of the aircraft, all aviation combat equipment must be prepared for operations at low temperatures. For various cases of meteorological conditions, appropriate options for the use of aviation should be developed.

In the course of operations, the entire rich arsenal of operational-tactical art of aviation should be applied. We have the ability and duty to use our formidable weapons to the maximum effect. Every bomb, every projectile and machine-gun burst fired from an aircraft must overtake the enemy and bring devastation to his ranks. Each new air sortie should be a step forward on the road to complete and final victory.

Let's make our air offensive all-destroying!

Let's finish off the fascist beast in its lair!

• Bulletin of the Air Fleet # 19-20. October 1944