Your messages of March 6 and 13, informing me of successful air raids on Essen, Stuttgart, Munich and Nuremberg, have reached me. With all my heart I salute the British Air Force, which is stepping up its bombing of German industrial centres.

Your wish that paragraphs 8, 9 and 10 of your message of March 11 be treated as special military information shall be complied with. Thanks for your congratulations on the capture of Vyazma. I regret to say that we have had to withdraw from Kharkov today. As soon as we receive your film of the Eighth Army, of which you advised me in a special message of March 11, I shall see it and we shall arrange for our Army and population to see it. I realise how valuable it will be for our fighting alliance. Allow me to send our Soviet film Stalingrad to you personally.

March 15, 1943