Stalin's Order For The Observance of The Parade
The parade itself was ordered by Marshal of the Soviet Union Joseph (Iosif) Stalin on June 22, 1945, by virtue of Order 370 of the Office of the Supreme Commander in Chief, Armed Forces of the USSR. This order is at follows:
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Order of the Supreme Commander in Chief, Armed Forces of the USSR and concurrent People's Commissar of State for National Defense To mark the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War, I order a parade of troops of the Army, Navy and the Moscow Garrison, the Victory Parade, on June 24, 1945, at Moscow's Red Square. Marching on parade shall be the combined regiments of all the fronts, a People's Commissariat of National Defense combined regiment, the Soviet Navy, military academies and schools, and troops of the Moscow Garrison and Military District. My deputy, Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov will be the parade inspector. Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky will command the Victory Parade itself. I entrust to Col. Gen. Pavel Artemyev, the preparations and the supervision of the parade organization, due to his concurrent capacities as the Commanding General of the Moscow Military District and Commanding Officer in charge of the Moscow City Garrison.
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This was preceded by another letter by General of the Army Aleksei Antonov, Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces to all the participant fronts in attendance on the 24th of the previous month which is as follows:
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Order to the Fronts who will participate in the Victory Parade The Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces has ordered that: 1. In order for the front to participate in the Moscow City parade in honor of the victory over Germany, each front will be represented by a combined regiment which is to be raised among them.
All in all the regiment will be composed of 1,059 male active personnel and 10 additional reserve personnel.
4. The companies in attendance will be manned so as to have the middle-ranked officers commanding the squads, which are then composed of privates and sergeants.
6. The Front Commanders and all commanders including air and tank army commanders will arrive in Moscow for the Parade.
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Marshals Georgy Zhukov, who had formally accepted the German surrender to the Soviet Union, and Konstantin Rokossovsky, rode through the parade ground on white and black stallions, respectively. The fact is commemorated by the equestrian statue of Zhukov in front of the State Historical Museum, on Manege Square. The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, stood atop of Lenin's Mausoleum and watched the parade alongside other dignitaries present.
However, this story is disputed by former Soviet spy Viktor Suvorov. He claims that the story was inserted into Zhukov's memoirs later, as a counterargument to his theory, (although it apparently was in circulation earlier) that Stalin didn't lead the parade because he considered the war's results not worthy of the effort invested. He points out several inconsistencies in the story. For example, there is plenty of evidence that Zhukov was intended for his role of leading the parade to begin with, for example, in the memoirs of Sergei Shtemenko, the man responsible at the time for the preparation of the parade, who says the roles were decided from the start, as well as Igor Bobylev (who took part in the preparations) who claims the story never happened and Stalin never visited the Manege at that time.
Displays of the Red Army vehicles were some of the focal points of the ceremony. One of the most famous moments at the end of the troops parade took place when various Red Army soldiers carried the banners of Nazi Germany and threw them down next to the mausoleum. One of the standards that was tossed down belonged to the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, Hitler's personal bodyguard raised to divisional size. Due to the bad weather that day the flypast segment and the planned civil parade was cancelled, if the weather had improved the flypast would have been led by Chief Marshals of Aviation Alexander Novikov and Alexander Golovanov.
Read more about this topic: Moscow Victory Parade Of 1945
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