Stalin chose to let secretary of State Molotov announce the German invasion to the citizens of the USSR. According to Molotov's own words: "[Stalin] didn't want to be the first to speak. He needed a clear picture. He couldn't respond like an automaton to everything. He was a human being after all." During the first couple of days Stalin was simply swamped in work, formulating a military answer to the situation at the front which was quite disastrous.

After a couple of days though, Stalin seems to have suffered some sort of mental breakdown. After a meeting with, amongst others, NKVD-chief Beria and Molotov in Stalin's dacha he supposedly uttered these words: "Everything's lost. I give up. Lenin left us a proletarian state and now we've been caught with our pants down and let the whole thing go to shit." After that meeting Stalin remained in his dacha and went incommunicado. According to Molotov 'Stalin shut himself away from everybody, was receiving nobody and wasn't answering the phone'.

Because conducting a war without the leader of the country in office is quite difficult seven members of the Politburo decided to go check on Stalin themselves. They found him 'thinner, haggard, gloomy'. He asked the Politburo-members if he would still be able to lead the country to victory. They responded favourably and Stalin was appointed head of the State Defence Committee. The next day Stalin returned to Moscow and on July 3rd he held his first radio speech since the German invasion.

So did Stalin really have a breakdown? According to Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar (the main source for this answer) the breakdown 'was real enough: he was depressed and exhausted'. But Montefiore also points to quotes from Molotov and Politburo-member Anastas Mikoyan who said it was also 'for effect'. Stalin used his breakdown to see if he still had the trust of the Politburo.

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