Soviet-German Treaty on Non-Aggression
The Moscow talks stalled when Poland refused to let the Red Army pass via its territory to engage Wehrmacht further from the border of the USSR in the case of Nazi aggression. On August 20 French military mission head Gen. Doumenc reported from Moscow to Paris that the failure of the talks would be imminent unless Poland softened its position. Relying on the British guarantees, the same day Polish Foreign Minister Beck sent a message to Polish envoy to France Likasiewitz saying there were no military treaties between Poland and the USSR and the former had no intention of signing any such treaties with the latter.
British author L. Rees concluded in his Behind Closed Doors (London, 2008) on the basis of an analysis of the pertinent documents that the British delegation at the Moscow talks led by Admiral R. Drakes (ret.) pursued the suicidal tactic of altogether ignoring the questions concerning Poland. According to Drakes when Marshal K. Voroshilov asked directly about allowing the Red Army to cross the Polish territory to fight the Nazis, the delegation of the allies left the question unanswered.
The end of the story was drawing closer. In the evening of August 21 Doumenc received a message by which the French government authorized him to sign a military convention in the common interests provided that the French ambassador had no objections. Doumenc told Voroshilov about it on August 22, but in the meantime London continued to keep silence.
The British side seemed to enjoy an unexplainable peace of mind: at the moment Chamberlain was fishing and Halifax was hunting ducks. It became known from British sources later that H. Gorring was to visit Great Britain to meet Chamberlain on August 23 to overcome the disagreements at the talks between Great Britain and Germany. The materials left from the talks in the British archives have not been declassified yet.
Describing the dramatic situation at the 1939 talks US historians A. Reed and D. Fisher wrote that at the last moment Great Britain and France could still revert to a more rational position, Poland could still wake up to reality, and Germany's bid could correspondingly collapse. Stalin left both doors open. Yet, the priorities gradually shifted in Germany's favor, leaving the allies lower down the list.
Just as in the epoch directly preceding World War I, the key decisions were made at the last moment. Having secured Stalin's consent to a non-aggression treaty, Hitler sent his foreign minister to Moscow by the date suggested by the Soviet side, that is, August 23. The treaty on non-aggression known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed by the Soviet Russia and Germany in the Kremlin, Moscow in the early morning of August 24, 1939. The corresponding political decision bred by the failure of the Moscow talks gave the USSR temporary guarantees against a war with Germany and its current and potential allies.
The treaty included as its important parts secret protocol and agreements with Germany defined a division of “spheres of interests” between Germany and the USSR. The USSR sphere of interests encompassed Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the east of Poland (West Belarus and West Ukraine), and Bessarabia, namely the territories of the former Russian Empire which were extracted from it in the framework of the Treaty of Versailles or directly annexed by other countries. De facto Germany recognized the border of the Soviet sphere of interests as the easternmost frontier limiting the deployment of its military forces.
Countless allegations have been leveled at Russia for the secret agreements with Germany. It should be realized in the context that secret protocols to treaties used to be routine practice in the epoch. For example, the deal of the Anglo-Polish military alliance signed by Great Britain and Poland in London on August 25, which said that the latter would be given help immediately if needed, also defined the parties' spheres of interests, namely Belgium, Holland, Danzig, and Lithuania. Latvia, Romania, and Hungary were mentioned as well.
One should keep in mind the following when assessing the benefits and drawbacks of the agreements with Germany for the USSR. The military scince attaches great importance to the concept of the geostrategic space. In 1939-1940 the extension of the Soviet Union's geostrategic space 150-300 km east seriously strengthened the country's defense. Otherwise, the Finnish army could launch an attack from positions located just 32 km from Leningrad, the German army – from positions located 35 km from Minsk and 260 km from Kiev, the German and Romanian forces – from positions located 45 km from Odessa, etc. The additional buffer gained as the result of the heavily criticized pact helped the Soviet Union endure the extreme hardships of 1941 and largely contributed to the success of the Leningrad and Moscow defense campaigns.
The 1989 USSR Supreme Soviet's rushed and unwarranted condemnation of the secret protocols to the non-aggression treaty between the Soviet Union and Germany was based on an inadequate assessment of the document and continues to be used to reinforce the West's concept of the “shared responsibility” of the USSR and Germany for World War II.
In that epoch, Moscow's foreign politics priority was to prevent a parallel aggression of Germany and Japan against the USSR. The Red Army met with no organized armed resistance when its forces were dispatched to West Belarus, West Ukraine, and the Baltic Republics in the fall of 1939 and to Bessarabia (which had been annexed by Romania in 1918) and Northern Bukovina in June 1940. The conflict with Finland did translate into a short but intense war after which the new Soviet border was moved much further from Leningrad.
It was a serious success of the Soviet foreign politics (made possible by the military triumph over the Japanese army at the Khalkhyn gol river) that on April 13, 1941 the USSR and Japan signed the Neutrality Pact. During the talks preceding the agreement the Soviet diplomacy managed to skillfully exploit the escalating conflict between Japan and the US in the security sphere. The neutrality pact allowed the USSR to avoid fighting simultaneously in the west and in the east.
Nevertheless, Moscow was fully aware that in the long run the German aggression was imminent despite the agreements reached and sought additional time to build up the USSR defense potential.
Uniting the Efforts
Generally, the Soviet foreign politics in what concerned putting together a coalition of nations to fight the German aggression was persistent and continuous, as the events of September 1, 1939 also showed. Talks with Great Britain were revived just one week after the signing of the German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Demarcation.
On October 1, 1939 W. Churchill who at the time served as Fist Lord of the Admiralty (the naval minister) said in a radio interview that the Red Army's presence at the line set by the agreement was crucial to Russia's security and that, in any case, the positions had been taken and an eastern front had been created which Germany did not dare to attack. On October 6 he invited Soviet ambassador I.M. Maisky and, when the latter asked what Churchill thought of Germany's peace offers, the reply was that some of the conservative friends recommended peace, fearing that Germany would grow Bolshevist during the war, but Churchill himself advocated a war till the logical end aimed at irreversibly destroying Nazism.
He also explained the position of the British government as follows:
1. The key interests of Great Britain and the USSR did not conflict;
2. The USSR had to have the east coast of the Baltic Sea and Churchill was glad that the Baltic republics were incorporated into the Soviet statehood system, not in Germany’s one;
3. It was necessary to jointly block Germany's access to the Baltic Sea;
4. The British government hoped that the neutrality of the Soviet Union would be friendly to Great Britain.
On February 21, 1940 USSR Foreign Minister V.M. Molotov instructed I.M. Maisky (the instructions seem to be equally addressed to the present-day falsifiers of history) to explain the Soviet politics with respect to Germany to the British government in the following regards:
1. We deem it ridiculous and offensive when it is said or even simply supposed that the Soviet Union has forged a military alliance with Germany.
2. An economic treaty with Germany is nothing more than a treaty on trade turnover by which the USSR export to Germany is to reach 500 mln marks. The USSR will benefit from the treaty as it will get from Germany massive quantities of machinery and weapons which we invariably could not get from Great Britain and France.
3. The USSR has been and remains neutral unless Great Britain and France attack the Soviet Union and make it fight. Persistent rumors about a military alliance between the USSR and Germany are spread not only by those in Germany seeking to intimidate Great Britain and France but also by some agents of the two countries who resort to the allegations for the sake of their own particular domestic politics objectives.
The public atmosphere in Great Britain tilted considerably in the favor of the USSR as a potential ally after the defeat of France in 1940. Maisky reported to Moscow on June 19, 1940: “Yesterday labourist J. Morgan delivered a brief speech in the concluding section of the debates on Churchill's address to the parliament. In it, he praised the appointment of Cripps as the ambassador to Moscow and called the parliament to wish him success in his work in the great country. The speech was welcomed both by labourists and conservatives, and everybody turned to the diplomatic gallery where I sat among other ambassadors. Churchill half-rose from the government bench, also turned to me, and waved at me in a friendly manner. Other ministers who sat by did the same”.
Talks between the Soviet Union and the US opened in April, 1940. The main negotiators were US Undersecretary of State S. Welles and Soviet ambassador K.A. Umansky.
Serious difficulties arose in connection with the Baltic problem as its Soviet resolution drew the ire of the US. Nevertheless, in 1941 the relations between the two countries slowly but steadily grew warmer. On January 21 S. Welles made an important statement during a conversation with Umansky (it was their 15th meeting). He said that the US would help the USSR in case it found itself having to resist aggression.
The positive results during the talks were produced at the cost of tremendous efforts as the negotiating process was burdened with exchanges of charges, at times quite groundless. The relations between the US and the USSR remained fairly tense, but the rapprochement tendency at the face of the escalating threat of an aggression against both countries was gaining momentum. The progress can to a great extent be credited to F. Roosevelt. US historian W. Kimball wrote that by then already for quite some time Roosevelt had been inclined to regard the politics of the Soviet Union as more nationalist than communist in character and as pragmatic rather than ideologically driven. In his view, the Soviet-German Pact and the Soviet attack against Finland (of which he strongly disapproved) were interpreted in the White House as results of concerns over the possibility of German aggression rather than as communist expansion.
The most important fact is that by the time of the German invasion of the USSR both Roosevelt and Churchill concluded that their countries should support the Soviet Union in its struggle against the Nazi aggression, though there still was no clarity as to what the support would materialize in.
