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Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
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The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, colloquially named after Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and signed in Moscow in the early hours of August 24, 1939, but dated August 23. The agreement renounced warfare between the two countries and pledged neutrality by either party if the other were attacked by a third party.
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The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, colloquially named after Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and signed in Moscow in the early hours of August 24, 1939, but dated August 23. The agreement renounced warfare between the two countries and pledged neutrality by either party if the other were attacked by a third party. Each signatory promised not to join any grouping of powers that was "directly or indirectly aimed at the other party." The Pact is known by a number of different titles. These include the Nazi–Soviet Pact, Hitler–Stalin Pact, German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact and sometimes the Nazi–Soviet Alliance. It remained in effect until June 22, 1941 when Germany executed Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union.
In addition to stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included a secret protocol dividing the independent countries of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence, anticipating "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries' territories. All of these states were subsequently invaded, occupied, or forced to cede territory by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or both. Only Finland was able to resist and remained an independent democracy.
Background
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Bolshevist Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ceding sovereignty and influence over parts of several eastern European countries. The treaty lasted only eight and a half months, and the countries subsequently entered the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922, pursuant to which, they renounced territorial and financial claims against each other. They pledged neutrality in the event of an attack against one another with the 1926 Treaty of Berlin.
Before World War I, Germany and Russia had a long trading relationship. Germany lacked raw materials, and had relied heavily upon Russian imports of raw materials since the late nineteenth century. Russian raw material imports to Germany totaled 1.5 billion Reichsmarks annually before the war. While the imports fell sharply after World War I, trade agreements signed between the two countries in the mid-1920s helped to increase the imports to 433 million Reichsmarks per year by 1927. While imports of Soviet goods to Germany later fell to 223 million Reichsmarks in 1934 as the more isolationist Stalinist regime asserted power and the abandonment of post-World War I Treaty of Versailles military controls decreased Germany's reliance on Soviet imports.
The rise to power of the Nazi Party increased tensions between Germany, the Soviet Union and other countries with ethnic Slavs, which were considered "untermenschen" according to Nazi racial ideology. Moreover, the anti-semitic Nazis associated ethnic Jews with both communism and capitalism, both of which they opposed. Consequently, Nazis believed that Soviet untermenschen Slavs were being ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik" masters. In 1934, Hitler himself had spoken of an inescapable battle against "pan-Slav ideals", the victory in which would lead to "permanent mastery of the world", though he stated that they would "walk part of the road with the Russians, if that will help us."
In 1936, Germany and Fascist Italy supported the Fascist Spanish Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, while the Soviets supported the partially socialist-led Spanish Republic opposition. That same year, Germany and Japan entered the Anti-Comintern Pact, and were joined a year later by Italy.
The Soviets were not invited to the 1938 Munich Conference regarding Czechoslovakia. The Munich Agreement that followed marked the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1938 through a partial German annexation in 1939, which is seen as part of an appeasement of Germany. Thereafter, some Soviet concern existed about the possibility that France and Britain might stay neutral in a war initiated by Germany, hoping that the warring states would wear each other out and put an end to both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
For Germany, because an autarkic economic approach or an alliance with England were impossible, closer relations with the Soviet Union became necessary, if not just for economic reasons alone. Moreover, an expected British blockade in the event of war would create massive shortages for Germany for a number of key raw materials. After the Munich agreement, the resulting increase for German military supply needs and Soviet demand for military machinery, talks between the two countries occurred from late 1938 to March 1939. The Soviet Third Five Year Plan required massive new infusions of technology and industrial equipment.
In March 1939, Hitler denounced the 1934 German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact. Britain and France responded by guaranteeing the sovereignty of Poland. On April 25, Britain signed the Common Defense Pact with Poland, when that country refused to be associated with a four-power guarantee involving the USSR.
Soviet-Anglo-Franco and Soviet-German negotiations
Initial talks
Starting in mid-March 1939, the Soviet Union, Britain and France (the "Tripartite" group) traded a flurry of suggestions and counterplans regarding a potential political and military agreement. Although informal consultations started in April, the main negotiations began in May. The Soviet Union feared Western powers and the possibility of a "capitalist encirclements." The Soviets had little faith that war could be avoided or that the Polish army could withstand German attack and wanted guaranteed support for a two-pronged attack on Germany. Britain and France believed that war could still be avoided and that the Soviet Union, weakened by the Great Purge, could not be a main military participant. France, as a continental power, was more anxious for an agreement with the USSR than Britain, which was more willing to make concessions and more aware of the dangers of an agreement between the USSR and Germany.
Germany and the Soviet Union had discussed entering into an economic deal throughout early 1939. For months, Germany had secretly hinted to Soviet diplomats that it could offer better terms for a political agreement than Britain and France.
In May, the Soviet Union replaced Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, who was pro-western and Jewish, with Vyacheslav Molotov, permitting the Soviets more latitude in discussions with all parties. The Tripartite discussions progressed with offers and counteroffers. German war planners estimated massive raw materials shortfalls if Germany entered a war without Soviet supply. From April to July, German and Soviet officials made statements regarding the potential for the beginning of political negotiations, while no such negotiations took place during that time period. Ensuing discussion of any potential political deal between Germany and the Soviet had to be channeled through the countries' economic negotiations, because close military and diplomatic connections had been largely severed in the mid-1930s.
"Indirect aggression" and German-Soviet political talks
In June and July, the Tripartite negotiations involved more trading of proposals and counterprosals. Those negotiations reached a sticking point over whether a political turn to Germany by the Baltic states constituted "indirect aggression", which Britain feared might justify Soviet intervention in Finland and the Baltic states or push those countries to seek closer relations with Germany (while France was less resistant to the supplement). The parties scheduled military talks to be held in Moscow in August specifying the reactions to a German attack under any agreement.
In late July and early August, Soviet and German officials agreed on most of the details for a planned economic agreement, and specifically addressed a potential political agreement, which the Soviets stated could only come after an economic agreement. Meanwhile, political discussions in the Tripartite negotiations were suspended, and were to be resumed only after progress was made in the planned military talks.
Final negotiations and addressing prior hostilities
In early August, Germany and the Soviet Union worked out the last details of their economic deal, and started to discuss a political alliance and explained to each other the reasons for foreign policy hostility in the 1930s, finding common ground in the countries' anti-capitalism. Tripartite military talks started in mid-August, but hit a sticking point over the Soviet Union's wish to place troops in Poland, and the parties waited as British and French officials overseas pressured Polish officials to agree to such terms.
On August 19, the 1939 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement was finally signed by Soviet officials, while Polish officials refused to allow Soviet troops to be stationed in Poland. On August 21, the Soviets suspended Tripartite military talks, citing other reasons. That same day, Stalin received assurance that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would grant the Soviets land in Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and Romania. That night, Stalin replied that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on August 23.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocol
On August 22, one day after the talks broke down with France and Britain, Moscow revealed that Ribbentrop would be visiting Stalin the next day. This happened while the Soviets were still negotiating with the British and French missions in Moscow. With the Western nations unwilling to accede to Soviet demands, Stalin instead entered a secret Nazi–Soviet alliance. On August 24, a 10-year non-aggression pact was signed with provisions that included: consultation; arbitration if either party disagreed; neutrality if either went to war against a third power; no membership of a group "which is directly or indirectly aimed at the other."
Most notably, there was also a secret protocol to the pact, revealed only after Germany's defeat in 1945, according to which the states of Northern and Eastern Europe were divided into German and Soviet "spheres of influence". In the North, Finland, Estonia and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its "political rearrangement"—the areas east of the Narev, Vistula and San Rivers going to the Soviet Union while Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, adjacent to East Prussia, would be in the German sphere of influence, although a second secret protocol agreed in September 1939 assigned majority of Lithuania to the USSR. According to the secret protocol, Lithuania would retrieve its historical capital Vilnius, occupied during the inter-war period by Poland. Another clause of the treaty was that Bessarabia, then part of Romania, was to be joined to the Moldovan ASSR, and become the Moldovan SSR under control of Moscow.
At the signing, Ribbentrop and Stalin enjoyed warm conversations, exchanged toasts and further addressed the prior hostilities between the countries in the 1930s. They characterized Britain as always attempting to disrupt Soviet-German relations, stated that the Anti-Comintern pact was not aimed at the Soviet Union, but actually aimed at Western democracies and "frightened principally the City of London [i.e., the British financiers] and the English shopkeepers."
On 24 August, Pravda and Izvestia carried news of the non-secret portions of the Pact, complete with the now infamous front-page picture of Molotov signing the treaty, with a smiling Stalin looking on (located at the top of this article). The news was met with utter shock and surprise by government leaders and media worldwide, most of whom were aware only of the British-French-Soviet negotiations that had taken place for months. That day, German diplomat Hans von Herwarth informed U.S. colleague Charles Bohlen of part of the secret protocols regarding vital interests in the countries' allotted "spheres of influence", without revealing the annexation rights for "territorial and political rearrangement". Time Magazine repeatedly referred to the Pact as the "Communazi Pact" and its participants as "communazis" until April 1941.
Soviet propaganda and representatives went to great lengths to minimize the importance of the fact that they had opposed and fought against the Nazis in various ways for a decade prior to signing the Pact. However, the Party line never went as far as to take a pro-German stance. Still, it is said that upon signing the pact, Molotov tried to reassure the Germans of his good intentions by commenting to journalists that "fascism is a matter of taste". For its part, Nazi Germany also did a public volte-face regarding its virulent opposition to the Soviet Union, though Hitler still viewed an attack on the Soviet Union as "inevitable".
Concerns over the possible existence of a secret protocol were first expressed by the intelligence organizations of the Baltic states scant days after the pact was signed. Speculation grew stronger when Soviet negotiators referred to its content during negotiations for military bases in those countries (see occupation of the Baltic States).
The day after the Pact was signed, the French and British military negotiation delegation urgently requested a meeting with Soviet military negotiation Kliment Voroshilov. On August 25, Voroshilov told them "[i]n view of the changed political situation, no useful purpose can be served in continuing the conversation." That day, Hitler told the British ambassador to Berlin that the pact with the Soviets prevented Germany from facing a two front war, changing the strategic situation from that in World War I, and that Britain should accept his demands regarding Poland. Surprising Hitler, Britain signed a mutual-assistance treaty with Poland that day, causing Hitler to delay the planned August 26 invasion of western Poland.
Implementing the division of Eastern Europe
Initial invasions
On September 1, barely a week after the pact had been signed, the partition of Poland commenced with Germany attacking from the west. Within the first few days of the invasion, Germany began conducting massacres of Polish civilians and POWs. These executions took place in over 30 towns and villages in the first month of German occupation alone. The Luftwaffe also took part by strafing fleeing civilian refugees on roads and carrying out an aerial bombing campaign . The Soviet Union assisted German forces by allowing them to use a radio station at Minsk to guide Luftwaffe planes.
On September 17, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland, violating the 1932 Soviet–Polish Non-Aggression Pact, and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This was followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland.
Polish troops already fighting much stronger German forces on its western side desperately tried to delay the capture of Warsaw. Consequently, Polish forces were not able to mount significant resistance against the Soviets. The Soviet Union marshaled 466,516 soldiers, 3,739 tanks, 380 armored cars, and approximately 1,200 fighters, 600 bombers, and 200 other aircraft against Poland. The Polish armed forces in the East consisted mostly of lightly-armed border guard units of the Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza (KOP), the 'border protection corps'. In the Northeast of Poland, only a few cities were defended and after a heavy but short struggle Polish forces withdrew to Lithuania where they were interned. Some of the Polish forces which were fighting the Soviets in the far South of the nation withdrew to Romania.
On September 21, the Soviets and Germans signed a formal agreement coordinating military movements in Poland, including the "purging" of saboteurs. A joint German-Soviet parade was held in L'vov and Brest-Litovsk, while the countries commanders met in the latter location. Stalin had decided in August that he was going to liquidate the Polish state, and a German-Soviet meeting in September addressed the future structure of the "Polish region." Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly-acquired areas. The Soviets organized staged elections, the result of which was to become a legitimization of Soviet annexation of eastern Poland. Soviet authorities attempted to erase Polish history and culture,, withdrew the Polish currency without exchanging roubles, collectivized agriculture, and nationalized and redistributed private and state-owned Polish property. Soviet authorities regarded service for the pre-war Polish state as a "crime against revolution" and "counter-revolutionary activity", and subsequently started arresting large numbers of Polish citizens.
Modifying the secret protocols
Eleven days after the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland, the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was modified by the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty,) allotting Germany a larger part of Poland and transferring Lithuania's territory (with the exception of left bank of river Scheschupe, the "Lithuanian Strip") from the envisioned German sphere to the Soviets. On September 28, 1939 the Soviet Union and German Reich issued a joint declaration in which they declared:
After the Government of the German Reich and the Government of the U.S.S.R. have, by means of the treaty signed today, definitively settled the problems arising from the collapse of the Polish state and have thereby created a sure foundation for a lasting peace in Eastern Europe, they mutually express their conviction that it would serve the true interest of all peoples to put an end to the state of war existing at present between Germany on the one side and England and France on the other. Both Governments will therefore direct their common efforts, jointly with other friendly powers if occasion arises, toward attaining this goal as soon as possible.
Should, however, the efforts of the two Governments remain fruitless, this would demonstrate the fact that England and France are responsible for the continuation of the war, whereupon, in case of the continuation of the war, the Governments of Germany and of the U.S.S.R. shall engage in mutual consultations with regard to necessary measures. Three Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, were given no choice but to sign a so-called Pact of defence and mutual assistance which permitted the Soviet Union to station troops in them.
The Soviet war with Finland and Katyn Massacre
After unsuccessfully attempting to install a communist puppet government in Finland, in November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland. After more than three months of heavy fighting, the Finnish defense defied Soviet expectations, and after stiff losses, Stalin settled for an interim peace granting the Soviet Union less than total domination by annexing only the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory) and a lease on the Baltic port of Hanko, although the "Terijoki Government" episode suggests that occupation of the entire country was among Stalin's goals in the war. Soviet official casualty counts in the war exceeded 200,000, while Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev later claimed the casualties may have been one million. About 400,000 Finnish inhabitants of the occupied territories were evacuated and resettled in Western parts of Finland.
At around this time, Soviet NKVD officers also conducted lengthy interrogations of 300,000 Polish POWs in camps that were, in effect, a selection process to determine who would be killed. On March 5, 1940, in what would later be known as the Katyn massacre, orders were signed to execute 25,700 Polish POWs, labeled "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries", kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus.
Soviets take the Baltics and Bessarabia
In mid-June 1940, when international attention was focused on the German invasion of France, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. State administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, in which 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians were deported or killed. Elections were held with single pro-Soviet candidates listed for many positions, with resulting peoples assemblies immediately requested admission into the USSR, which was granted by the Soviet Union. The USSR annexed the whole of Lithuania, including the Scheschupe area, which was to be given to Germany.
Finally, on June 26, four days after France sued for an armistice with the Third Reich, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum demanding Bessarabia, Bukovina, and the Hertza region from Romania. Two days later, the Romanians caved to the Soviet demands and the Soviets occupied the territory. Actually Hertza region was not requested by the USSR and was occupied by force.
Holocaust beginnings, Operation Tannenberg and other Nazi atrocities
At the end of October 1939, Germany enacted the death penalty for disobedience to the German occupation. Germany began a campaign of "Germanization", which meant to assimilate the occupied territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. 50,000 to 200,000 Polish children were kidnapped to be Germanized.
In May 1940, Germany launched AB-Aktion, a plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia and leadership class. More than 16,000 members of the intelligentsia were murdered in Operation Tannenberg alone.
Germany also planned to incorporate all land into the Third Reich. This effort resulted in the forced resettlement of 2 million Poles. Families were forced to travel in the severe winter of 1939-40, leaving behind almost all of their possessions without recompense. As part of Operation Tannenberg alone, 750,000 Polish peasants were forced and their property given to Germans. A further 330,000 were murdered. Germany eventually planned to move ethnic Poles to Siberia.
Although Germany used forced labourers in most occupied countries, Poles and other Eastern Europeans viewed as inferior and, thus, better suited for such duties. Between 1 and 2.5 million Polish citizens were transported to the Reich for forced labour, against their will. All Polish males were required to perform forced labor.
While ethnic Poles were subject to selective persecution, all ethnic Jews were targeted by the Reich. In the winter of 1939-40, about 100,000 Jews were thus deported to Poland. They were initially gathered into massive urban ghettos, such as 380,000 held in the Warsaw Ghetto, where large numbers died under the harsh conditions therein, including 43,000 in the Warsaw Ghetto alone. Poles and ethnic Jews were imprisoned in nearly every camp of the extensive concentration camp system in German-occupied Poland and the Reich. In Auschwitz, which began operating on June 14, 1940, 1.1 million people died.
Romania and Soviet republics
In August 1940, fear of the Soviet Union, in conjunction with German support for the territorial demands of Romania's neighbors and the Romanian government's own miscalculations, resulted in more territorial losses for Romania. In August 1940, Ribbentrop and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano issued the Second Vienna Award giving Transylvania to Hungary, followed a few days later by Romania ceding territory to Bulgaria. After various events in Romania, over the next few months, it increasing took on the aspect of a German-occupied country.
The Soviet-occupied territories were converted into republics of the Soviet Union. During the two years following the annexation, the Soviets arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 250,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians. Forced re-settlements into Gulag labour camps and exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union occurred. According to Norman Davies, almost half of them were dead by July 1940.
Further secret protocol modifications, settling borders and immigration issues
On January 10, 1941, Germany and the Soviet Union signed an agreement settling several ongoing issues. Secret protocols in the new agreement modified the "Secret Additional Protocols" of the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, ceding the Lithuanian Strip to the Soviet Union in exchange for 7.5 million dollars (31.5 million Reichsmark). The agreement formally set the border between Germany and the Soviet Union between the Igorka river and the Baltic Sea. It also extended trade regulation of the 1940 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement until August 1, 1942, increased deliveries above the levels of year one of that agreement, settled trading rights in the Baltics and Bessarabia, calculated the compensation for German property interests in the Baltic States now occupied by the Soviets and other issues. It also covered the migration to Germany within two and a half months of ethnic Germans and German citizens in Soviet-held Baltic territories, and the migration to the Soviet Union of Baltic and "White Russian" "nationals" in German-held territories.
Soviet-German relations during the Pact's operation
Early political issues
Beginning in September 1939, the Soviet Comintern suspended all anti-Nazi and anti-fascist propaganda, explaining that the war in Europe was a matter of capitalist states attacking each other for imperialist purposes. When anti-German demonstrations erupted in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the Comintern ordered the Czech Communist Party to employ all of its strength to paralyze "chauvinist elements." Moscow soon forced the Communist Parties of France and Great Britain to adopt an anti-war position. On September 7, Stalin called Georgi Dimitrov, and the latter sketched a new Comintern line on the war. The new line – which stated that the war was unjust and imperialist – was approved by the secretariat of the Communist International on September 9. Thus, the various western Communist parties now had to oppose the war, and to vote against war credits. A number of French communists (including Maurice Thorez, who fled to Moscow), deserted from the French Army, owing to a 'revolutionary defeatist' attitude taken by Western Communist leaders.
Despite a warming by the Comintern, German tensions were raised when the Soviets stated in September that they must enter Poland to "protect" their ethnic Ukrainian and Belorussian brethren therein from Germany, though Molotov later admitted to German officials that this excuse was necessary because the Soviets could find no other pretext for the Soviet invasion.
While active collaboration between Nazi Germany and Soviet Union caused great shock in western Europe and amongst communists opposed to Germany, on October 1, 1939, Winston Churchill declared that the Russian armies acted for the safety of Russia against "the Nazi menace."
Expansion of raw materials and military trading
Germany and the Soviet Union entered an intricate trade pact on February 11, 1940 that was over four times larger than the one the two countries had signed in August of 1939. The trade pact helped Germany to surmount a British blockade of Germany. In the first year, Germany received one million tons of cereals, half a million tons of wheat, 900,000 tons of oil, 100,000 tons of cotton, 500,000 tons of phosphates and considerable amounts of other vital raw materials, along with the transit of one million tons of soybeans from Manchuria. These and other supplies were being transported through Soviet and occupied Polish territories. The Soviets were to receive a naval cruiser, the plans to the battleship Bismarck, heavy naval guns, other naval gear and thirty of Germany's latest warplanes, including the Me-109 and Me-110 fighters and Ju-88 bomber. The Soviets would also receive oil and electric equipment, locomotives, turbines, generators, diesel engines, ships, machine tools and samples of Germany artillery, tanks, explosives, chemical-warfare equipment and other items.
The Soviets also helped Germany to avoid British naval blockades by providing a submarine base, Basis Nord, in the in the northern Soviet Union near Murmansk. This also provided a refueling and maintenance location, and a takeoff point for raids and attacks on shipping. In addition, the Soviets provided Germany with access to the Northern Sea Route for both cargo ships and raiders (though only the raider Komet used the route before the German invasion), which forced Britain to protect sea lanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Summer deterioration of relations
The Finnish and Baltic invasions began a deterioration of relations between the Soviets and Germany. Stalin's invasions were, however (as the intent to accomplish these was not communicated to the Nazis beforehand), a severe irritant to Berlin and prompted concern that Stalin was seeking to form an anti-Nazi bloc. Molotov's reassurances to the Nazis, and the Nazis' mistrust, intensified. On June 16, 1940, as the Soviets invaded Lithuania, but before they had invaded Latvia and Estonia, Ribbentrop instructed his staff "to submit a report as soon as possible as to whether in the Baltic States a tendency to seek support from the Reich can be observed or whether an attempt was made to form a bloc."
In August 1940, the Soviet Union briefly suspended its deliveries under their commercial agreement after their relations were strained following disagreement over policy in Romania, the Soviets war with Finland, Germany falling behind in its deliveries of goods under the pact and with Stalin worried that Hitler's war with the West might end quickly after France signed an armistice. The suspension created significant resource problems for Germany. By the end of August, relations improved again as the countries had redrawn the Hungarian and Romanian borders, settled some Bulgarian claims and Stalin was again convinced that Germany would face a long war in the west with Britain's improvement in its air battle with Germany and the execution of an agreement between the United States and Britain regarding destroyers and bases. However, in late August, Germany arranged its own annexation of part of Romania, targeting oil fields. The move raised tensions with the Soviets, who responded that Germany was supposed to have consulted with the Soviet Union under Article III of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Soviet negotiations to become an Axis Power
After Germany entered a Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy, in October of 1940, Ribbentrop wrote to Stalin about "the historical mission of the Four Powers -- the Soviet Union, Italy, Japan and Germany -- to adopt a long range-policy and to direct the future development of their peoples into the right channels by delimitation of their interests in a worldwide scale." Stalin replied, referencing entering an agreement regarding a "permanent basis" for their "mutual interests." Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to negotiate the terms for the Soviet Union to join the Axis and potentially enjoy the spoils of the pact.
Ribbentrop asked Molotov to sign another secret protocol with the statement: "The focal point of the territorial aspirations of the Soviet Union would presumably be centered south of the territory of the Soviet Union in the direction of the Indian Ocean." Molotov took the position that he could not take a "definite stand" on this without Stalin's agreement. Stalin did not agree with the suggested protocol. Stalin countered with a separate proposal in a letter later in November that contained several secret protocols, including that "the area south of Batum and Baku in the general direction of the Persian Gulf is recognized as the center of aspirations of the Soviet Union", referring to an area approximating present day Iraq and Iran, and a Soviet claim to Bulgaria. Hitler never returned Stalin's letter. Shortly thereafter, Hitler issued a secret directive on the eventual attempts to invade the Soviet Union.
Late relations
In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on April 13, 1941, the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Axis power Japan. While Stalin had little faith in Japan's commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism, to reinforce a public affection for Germany. Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union. Stalin did not know that Hitler had been secretly discussing an invasion of the Soviet Union since summer 1940, and that Hitler had ordered his military in late 1940 to prepare for war in the east regardless of the parties talks of a potential Soviet entry as a fourth Axis Power.
Hitler breaks the Pact
Nazi Germany terminated the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with its invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941. Hitler issued a proclamation at 5:30am dissolving the non-aggression Pact. At the same time a note indicating a state of war now existed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was delivered to Molotov. However, the Pact had already been annulled nearly two hours earlier with the commencement of military operations at 3:15am.
Before the invasion, Soviet officials warned Stalin that Germany was likely to attack, including surveillance showing that it had concentrated forces on its borders, on high placed spies in Germany and Japan. Further warnings came from Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy in Tokyo working under cover as a German journalist. Although the Soviets increased western border forces to 2.7 million men and ordered them to expect a possible German invasion, no full-scale mobilization of forces was ordered. Stalin felt that a mobilization might provoke Hitler to prematurely begin to wage war against the Soviet Union, which Stalin wanted to delay until 1942 in order to further strengthen Soviet forces.
After the launch of the invasion, the territories gained by the Soviet Union due to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact were lost in a matter of weeks. In the three weeks following the Pact's breaking, attempting to defend against large German advances, the Soviet Union suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft. Germany incorporated the Baltic countries into Reichskommissariat Ostland and conscripted the native population for either labour or military service. Within six months, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties and Germany had captured three million Soviet prisoners, two million of which would die in German captivity by February 1942. German forces had advanced , and maintained a linearly-measured front of .
The Soviet imports of raw materials into Germany over the duration of the countries' economic relationship proved vital to Barbarossa. Without Soviet imports, German stocks would have run out in several key products by October 1941. Germany would have already run through their stocks of rubber and grain before the first day of the invasion were it not for Soviet imports:
| | Tot USSR
imports | June 1941
German Stocks | June 1941 (w/o
USSR imports) | Oct 1941
German Stocks | Oct 1941 (w/o
USSR imports) |
|---|
| Oil Products | 912 | 1350 | 438 | 905 | -7 | | Rubber | 18.8 | 13.8 | -4.9 | 12.1 | -6.7 | | Manganese | 189.5 | 205 | 15.5 | 170 | -19.5 | | Grain | 1637.1 | 1381 | -256.1 | 761 | -876.1 | | *German stocks in thousands of tons (with and without USSR imports-Oct 1941 aggregate) |
Without Soviet deliveries of these four major items, Germany could barely have attacked the Soviet Union, let alone come close to victory, even with more intense rationing. During British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden's first visit in the Soviet Union months after the 1941 German invasion, the Soviet side proposed to include into the planned treaty with Great Britain a secret protocol stipulating that parts of Eastern Poland in future post-war Europe will be given to the Soviet Union. Anthony Eden refused to enter in this agreement as the one which can by only decided by the Prime Minister.
Aftermath
Denial of the Secret Protocol's existence by the Soviet Union
The German original of the secret protocols was presumably destroyed in the bombing of Germany, but a microfilmed copy was kept in the documents archive of the German Foreign Office. In May 1945, Karl von Loesch, a civil servant in Foreign Office, gave this copy to British Lt. Col. R.C. Thomson.
Despite publication of the recovered copy in western media, for decades, it was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of the secret protocol. On August 23, 1986, tens of thousands of demonstrators in 21 western cities including New York, London, Stockholm, Toronto, Seattle, and Perth participated in Black Ribbon Day Rallies to draw attention to the secret protocols.
It was only after the Baltic Way demonstrations of August 23, 1989, where two million people created a human chain set on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Pact, that a special Soviet commission under Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev examining the Pact admitted its existence. In December 1989, the commission concluded that the protocol had existed and revealed its findings to the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies. As a result, the first democratically elected Congress passed a declaration in December 1989 admitting the existence of the secret protocols, condemning and denouncing them.
In 1992, the document itself was declassified only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Falsifiers of History and Axis negotiations
After the publication of the secret protocols and other secret German-Soviet relations documents, in 1948, Stalin published Falsifiers of History, which included the claim that, during the Pact's operation, Stalin rejected Hitler's claim to share in a division of the world, without mentioning the Soviet offers to join the Axis. That version persisted, without exception, in historical studies, official accounts, memoirs and textbooks published in the Soviet Union until the Soviet Union's dissolution.
The book also claimed that the Munich agreement was a "secret agreement" between Germany and "the west" and a "highly important phase in their policy aimed at goading the Hitlerite aggressors against the Soviet Union."
Post-war commentary regarding the motives of Stalin and Hitler
After the war, defenders of the Soviet position argued that it was necessary to enter into a non-aggression pact to buy time, since the Soviet Union was not in a position to fight a war in 1939, and needed at least three years to prepare. Edward Hallett Carr stated: "In return for non-intervention Stalin secured a breathing space of immunity from German attack." According to Carr, the "bastion" created by means of the Pact, "was and could only be, a line of defense against potential German attack." An important advantage (projected by Carr) was that "if Soviet Russia had eventually to fight Hitler, the Western Powers would already be involved." However, during the last decades, this view has been disputed. Historian Werner Maser stated that "the claim that the Soviet Union was at the time threatened by Hitler, as Stalin supposed,...is a legend, to whose creators Stalin himself belonged." (Maser 1994: 64). In Maser's view (1994: 42), "neither Germany nor Japan were in a situation [of] invading the USSR even with the least perspective [sic] of success," and this could not have been unknown to Stalin.
Some critics, such as Viktor Suvorov, claim that Stalin's primary motive for signing the Soviet–German non-aggression treaty was Stalin's calculation that such a pact could result in a conflict between the capitalist countries of Western Europe. This idea is supported by Albert L. Weeks. It must be noted, however, that other claims by Suvorov, such as the Stalin's planning to invade Germany in 1941, have remained under debate among historians, with some like David Glantz opposing, and others like Mikhail Meltyukhov supporting it.
Stalin, who had feared that the Western nations were encouraging Hitler to attack the Soviet Union, must have been aware that the secret clause made a European war more likely, because it freed Hitler from the prospect of a war against the USSR while fighting France and the United Kingdom. For a long time, the primary motive of Stalin's sudden change of course was assumed to be the fear of German aggressive intentions.
The extent to which the Soviet Union's post-Pact territorial acquisitions may have contributed to preventing its fall (and thus a Nazi victory in the war) remains a factor in evaluating the Pact. Soviet sources point out that the German advance eventually stopped just a few kilometers away from Moscow, so the role of the extra territory might have been crucial in such a close call. Others postulate that Poland and the Baltic countries played the important role of buffer states between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and that the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a precondition not only for Germany's invasion of Western Europe, but also for the Third Reich's invasion of the Soviet Union. The military aspect of moving from established fortified positions on the Stalin Line into undefended Polish territory could also be seen as one of the causes of rapid disintegration of Soviet armed forces in the border area during the German 1941 campaign, as the newly constructed Molotov Line was unfinished and unable to provide Soviet troops with the necessary defense capabilities.
Regrading the timing of German rapprochement, many historians agree that the dismissal of Litvinov, whose Jewish ethnicity was viewed disfavorably by Nazi Germany, removed an obstacle to negotiations with Germany. Stalin immediately directed Molotov to "purge the ministry of Jews." Given Litvinov's prior attempts to create of an anti-fascist coalition, association with the doctrine of collective security with France and Britain, and pro-Western orientation by the standards of the Kremlin, his dismissal indicated the existence of a Soviet option of rapprochement with Germany. Likewise, Molotov's appointment served as a signal to Germany that the USSR was open to offers. The dismissal also signaled to France and Britain the existence of a potential negotiation option with Germany. One British official wrote that Litvinov's disappearance also meant the loss of an admirable technician or shock-absorber, while Molotov's "modus operandi" was "more truly Bolshevik than diplomatic or cosmopolitan." Carr argued that the Soviet Union's replacement of Foreign Minister Litvinov with Molotov on May 3, 1939 indicated not an irrevocable shift towards alignment with Germany, but rather Stalin’s way of engaging in hard bargaining with the British and the French by appointing a proverbial hard man, namely Molotov to the Foreign Commissariat. Historian Albert Resis stated that the Litvinov dismissal gave the Soviets freedom to pursue quickened German negotiations, but that they did not abandon British-French talks. Derek Watson argued that non-Jewish Molotov could get the best deal with Britain and France because he was not encumbered with the baggage of collective security and could negotiation with Germany. Geoffrey Roberts argued that Litvinov's dismisall helped the Soviets with British-French talks, because Litvinov doubted or maybe even opposed such discussions.
Regarding the timing of Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union, some historians argue that Stalin's strike in Finland and occupation of the Baltics was a factor in prompting Hitler to turn East when he did. Two weeks after Soviet armies had entered the Baltics, Berlin requested Finland to permit the transit of Nazi troops. Five weeks after, Hitler had issued a secret directive "to take up the Russian problem, to think about war preparations," a war whose objective would include establishment of a Baltic confederation. According to historian E. H. Carr, Stalin was convinced that no German leader would be so foolish as to engage in hostilities on two fronts. He therefore considered it to be a foregone conclusion that, if Germany was at war with the West, it would have to be friendly with, or at least neutral towards, the Soviet Union.
Post-war commentary regarding the effects of purges
Critics of Stalin question his determination to oppose Germany's growing military aggressiveness, as the Soviet Union began commercial and military cooperation with Germany in 1936 and upheld this relationship until the German invasion began. After the British and French declaration of war on Germany, these economic relationships allowed Germany to partially circumvent the Allied naval blockade, allowing it to avoid the disastrous situation it faced in World War I. However, Soviet industry also benefited from cooperation with Germany, so such cooperation itself provides no argumentation for or against Stalin's motives.
The Soviet Union's and Stalin's critics maintain that one reason why the Soviet Union was not in a position to fight a war was Stalin's Great Purge of 1936 to 1938 which, among other things, eliminated much of the military's most experienced leadership. One result of this was that, when German forces did attack the Soviet Union, the Red Army was completely unprepared for the assault, despite multiple advanced warnings from foreign, as well as Soviet, intelligence. At this point, defenders of Stalin's policies reply that these military leaders (e.g., Marshal Tukhachevsky) were actually poorly experienced, had no good military record outside of the Soviet Union, and that their elimination made possible the emergence of the next generation of Soviet military leaders (e.g., Marshal Zhukov) who eventually played a central role in the subsequent defeat of Germany. Some historians, however, believe that most of the succeeding generation was reactionary, dissolving the most modern part of the Red Army, and that one of the critical problems for the Soviets during the war was a shortage of commanders. The retention by Stalin of a number of inept ultraconservative 'old-guard' military leaders such as Budenny, Grigory Kulik, and Voroshilov argues against the first part of this argument having any merit.
See also
In chronological order:
Bibliography
- Carr, Edward H., German–Soviet Relations between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939, Oxford 1952
- Maser, Werner Der Wortbruch: Hitler, Stalin und der Zweite Weltkrieg. München: Olzog 1994.
- Taylor, A.J.P., The Origins of the Second World War, London 1961**Fisher, David. Read, Anthony. The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin, and the Nazi–Soviet Pact 1939–1941. W. W. Norton & Company 1999.
External links
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