Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
On 23 August 1939, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop flew to Moscow and signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, stunning the world. The public treaty pledged neutrality if either power were attacked by a third party; the secret protocol, not revealed until 1989, divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence: Germany would take western Poland and Lithuania, the USSR would take eastern Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Bessarabia. For Hitler, the pact eliminated the nightmare of a two-front war and freed Germany to invade Poland without Soviet interference. For Stalin, it bought time to rearm and recover from the military purges that had devastated the Red Army's officer corps. For Poland, the Baltic states, and Finland, the pact was a death sentence. It demonstrated that ideological enemies could cooperate in the cynical partition of smaller nations, removing the last political obstacle to the Second World War.
- Year: 1939 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
