Tuesday October 7, 1941. Stalin relents on religion.

Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, the de facto head of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1941.

On this day in 1941, former Russian Orthodox seminarian, later revolutionary and mass murderer, Joseph Stalin lifted the prohibitions on religious worship in the Soviet Union in order to, the story is usually told, boost morale in his besieged nation.

Today in World War II History—October 7, 1941

It's also inescapably true that in spite of the brutality of the German invasion, large numbers of Russians and Ukrainians welcomed the Germans as they advanced.  Much of this was prior to their becoming aware of the virulent racial hatred of the Germans, but large numbers of Soviet citizens would aid the Germans, and even fight with them, right up until the end of the war.

Indeed, while I'm not putting it up, as I'm uncertain of its rights' status, a well-known photo of a smiling German tanker with smiling Ukrainian women and slices of bread was taken on this day in 1941.

Religious loyalty had remained strong in the Russian people in spite of Communism's brutal efforts to stamp it out.  To at least some degree, Stalin's actions may have been calculated to acknowledge that and to attempt to arrest defections to the Germans, or even forestall a potential coup.  As for Stalin himself, there's reason to doubt that he was actually an atheist, and he made at least one recorded statement that would strongly suggest that he was not.

On the Eastern Front, Army Group Center was dealing with snowfall that had come down the night prior, the first time it had to do so.  The 7th and 10th Panzer Divisions completed their encirclement of Vyazma.

John Curtin.

In Australia, John Curtin became Prime Minister.  The change in leadership which brought the Labor Party's Curtin to power was due to a parliamentary move, rather than an election.  Curtin would remain the Prime Minister for the remainder of his life, dying just before the end of the war in 1945.  He was 60 at the time.

Curtin had started off as a Socialist politician and was part of Australia's strong Socialist movement in the 20th Century.  The son of an Irish immigrant policeman who had a troubled career, Curtin had left school at age 13 and become in left wing politics and unions thereafter.  Indeed, while not really recalled outside Australia, the country had a very strong left wing movement that teetered on the edge of Communism throughout this period, although Curtin himself was a Labor Party figure in his later years, and at the time of his leading the country.   This perhaps makes him an odd figure in that he brought the country close to the United States during the war, pulling way from the United Kingdom, while also building a welfare state during the war.  Left wing parties were strongly anti-Catholic in Australia, a legacy which remains there and which has figured in recent news from the country, and even though Curtin was raised as a Catholic and educated in Catholic schools, he personally became anti-Catholic in his adult years to a rather pronounced degree.  While a Socialist, he also strongly reflected the Australia if his age, and was a strong backer of its "white's only" immigration policy.

He did survive an election that was called in 1943, and  therefore at that point he was Prime Minister in an elected fashion.  Lest it seem odd that he came to power in a parliamentary move, it was also the case that Winston Churchill did as well.  Cutin then overplayed his hand and sought a referendum to give his government control of the Australian economy for a five-year period following the end of the war, which failed.

Curtin's health, like Franklin Roosevelt's, was declining rapidly in the later stages of the war and like Roosevelt's his passing was not a surprise to those who knew him well.