Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow on 23 August 1939, and Germany invaded Poland nine days later. The two states had spent six years denouncing each other as the ultimate enemy, and the announcement stunned communists and anti-communists everywhere. The public text was a conventional undertaking not to attack each other or assist a third party attacking the other. The secret protocol partitioned eastern Europe: Finland, Estonia, Latvia and eastern Poland to the Soviet sphere, Lithuania and western Poland to the German, with Bessarabia noted as of Soviet interest. Stalin's calculation was that Britain and France had shown at Munich that they would not fight for eastern Europe, that the negotiations he was conducting with them in Moscow were unserious — the British delegation had arrived by slow steamer without authority to sign — and that a pact would buy time and territory while Germany fought in the west. Hitler's calculation was that he could not repeat 1914 and fight on two fronts, and that Poland could be destroyed in weeks if the Soviets took the other half. The Soviet Union invaded Poland on 17 September, the two armies met on an agreed line, and a further agreement adjusted the border and exchanged Lithuania for more of Poland. The Soviet Union then annexed the Baltic states in 1940 and attacked Finland. The existence of the protocol was denied by Moscow until 1989. Germany invaded in June 1941. Ribbentrop and Molotov are photographed signing it with Stalin standing behind them looking pleased. Ribbentrop was hanged at Nuremberg, and Molotov lived until 1986 denying to the end that any secret protocol had ever existed.
- Year: 1939 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
