The Russo-German Alliance: August 1939 – June 1941, by A. Rossi (Angelo Tasca) 1949
As he told his generals on 22 August 1939, Hitler had at first contemplated a campaign in the West, and with this in mind had intended temporarily to neutralise Poland. Although he favoured this plan, it could not be carried out because he was confronted with the Poles’ refusal to come to terms over Danzig and the Corridor. [1]
Towards the end of March, after an interview in Berlin on the 21st between von Ribbentrop and M Lipski, the Polish Ambassador, Hitler realised that his plan for an amicable arrangement with Poland could not be achieved. The question had to be settled, therefore, by force of arms. From that moment the problem of reaching an understanding with Russia became a practical issue and was linked in the minds of the German leaders with that of a fourth partition of Poland. In fact, at the beginning of April, Hitler is said to have confided to General von Brauchitsch, whom he had summoned to Berchtesgaden, that he was getting ready ‘to pay an official visit to Moscow’. [2] At all events, it was on this occasion that he ordered him ‘to start military preparations for a possible campaign against Poland’, [3] and von Brauchitsch circulated these instructions in a memorandum dated 3 April. The preparations were to be made in such a way that the operation could begin ‘at any time from 1 September 1939’. [4]
Hitler was resolved to discover what lay at the back of Stalin’s mind, and to go about it with all the necessary determination and caution. Moscow was equally cautious. On 4 April Pravda reverted to the theme previously expounded by Stalin on 10 May, and once more France and Great Britain were accused of encouraging Germany to seize the Ukraine. On the same day, after the publication in the French newspapers of a Moscow dispatch alleging that in the event of war the USSR had undertaken to provide Poland with military equipment and to withhold raw materials from Germany, the Tass agency ‘was authorised to state that such a report did not correspond with the true facts and that the Soviet Union had neither given such promises to anybody nor assumed such obligations’.
Britain and France Burn Their Boats: Two days later, on 6 April, Mr Chamberlain announced in the House of Commons the conclusion of a bilateral pact of mutual assistance with Poland. This decision came after the Anglo – French declaration of 31 March and preceded the Anglo – French unilateral guarantee to Rumania and Greece by barely a week.
These moves, which were primarily intended to warn Hitler against being tempted into new adventures, had a decisive effect on Soviet policy and on the relations between Berlin and Moscow. Both Hitler and Stalin knew that war was inevitable. Hitler’s own aim was now to isolate Poland as much as possible and to crush her before Britain and France could throw their weight into the scales. As these two countries had strengthened their ties with Poland, what he had to do now was to separate Poland from Russia. This plan had been maturing in Hitler’s mind, particularly since the beginning of April, [5] and he threw out hints of its main outline at the secret conference with his General Staff on 23 May 1939: ‘It is not impossible’, he told his generals, ‘that Russia may be induced to take no further interest in the destruction of Poland.’ [6] The only way of ‘buying out’ Russia’s interest in the fate of Poland was to make her ‘buy herself in’ as an accomplice. In the instructions of 26 May [7] already quoted, Ribbentrop wrote in paragraph VII:
If, against our wishes, complications should arise leading to war with Poland, we are firmly convinced that this would not necessarily lead to a conflict of interests with Soviet Russia. We can say even now that a settlement of the German – Polish question – whatever the method employed – would as far as possible take Russian interests into account.
The German Foreign Minister added a little further on in the ninth paragraph that he did not see what Russia could gain by associating with Britain since Britain was not in a condition to offer her ‘anything in return which would make it worth her while’.
The Anglo – French decisions gave Stalin an unhoped-for advantage. First, they confirmed his view that this time war was certain. Next, and most important, they placed the two Western powers in a position of inferiority towards Russia since, while they had now got caught up in the machinery and were therefore fully committed, Russia retained intact all her available resources and her full freedom of action. Britain and France were henceforth at the mercy of the first incident in Danzig or the Balkans, whereas Russia could defend her own interests, as Stalin conceived them, without being hampered by any mortgages or international obligations.
This was the underlying reason for the failure of the negotiations initiated by the British government halfway through April between London, Paris and Moscow. They could not lead to anything, first of all because Stalin wanted at all costs to keep out of war – unless forced into it – and then because the British and the French no longer had any freedom of manoeuvre or of choice and because, as their hands were tied by their commitments, they had nothing to bargain with when they came to negotiate. All they could offer Stalin was a fight against Hitler ‘for freedom’, with the risks which this entailed. Stalin, on the other hand, was no longer interested in ‘collective security’ since there was a chance of his being able to ‘pull the chestnuts out of the fire’ by reaching agreement with Hitler.
As the situation was developing into war, Stalin tossed over to the German side a bombshell of a different kind. During an interview which he had arranged with Weizsäcker, the Secretary of State, Merekalov, the Soviet Ambassador, informed him that:
Soviet policy had always moved in a straight line. Ideological differences had hardly influenced Russian – Italian relations, and they did not have to prove a stumbling block with Germany either. Soviet Russia had not exploited the present friction between Germany and the Western democracies against Germany, nor did she desire to do so. There existed for Russia no reason why she should not live with Germany on a normal footing. And from normal, relations might become better and better. [8]
Litvinov is Sacked: To show Berlin that he had decided to make a clean break with the past and start afresh, on 3 May Stalin sacked Litvinov, the choir-leader and commercial traveller of collective security. On 1 May he had already suppressed the Journal de Moscou, a French-language publication which acted as the mouthpiece of the policy of the Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
Hitler and his associates were greatly impressed by Litvinov’s dismissal. [9] It was the second resounding blow struck by Stalin, and it was at the same time his way of carrying on an odd sort of dialogue with the German leaders – odd because it consisted of cautious probings and spectacular demonstrations at one and the same time. The documents prove that Berlin grasped the significance of this move, and it strengthened and crystallised the tendency there towards collaboration with the USSR. Hitler himself later told his generals on 22 August, just before the Polish campaign, that ‘the replacing of Litvinov was decisive’, [10] and in a letter of 25 August he told Mussolini that ‘the readiness on the part of the Kremlin to arrive at a reorientation of its relations with Germany became apparent after the departure of Litvinov’. [11] Astakhov also called on Schnurre as early as the evening of 5 May and tried to find out if the blow had struck home, that is, if ‘this event would cause a change in Germany’s attitude towards the Soviet Union’. [12]
On 6 May, one of Hitler’s intimates was said to have stated that Hitler ‘would in future no longer consider settling the differences between Germany and Poland without Russia, and that we shall witness a fourth partition of Poland’. [13] This information reached the French Embassy in Berlin and was from there passed on to Paris, but neither that nor any other of the numerous indications of what was in the wind were sufficient to make the French government see the light. The same day Ribbentrop explained to Ciano, whom he met in Milan for the conclusion of the ‘Pact of Steel’, that ‘any favourable occasion which presents itself must be seized to prevent the adhesion of Russia to the anti-totalitarian block’. [14]
Molotov Seeks a Political Agreement With Hitler: In the favourable atmosphere thus created by Stalin’s gesture, the secret contacts between Berlin and Moscow were intensified.
On 17 May, Astakhov, the Russian Chargé d'Affaires in Berlin, told Schnurre that there was no reason to fear a conflict with Russia, and that they could therefore conclude the German – Soviet trade negotiations. [15] Three days later von Schulenburg, the German Ambassador in Moscow, had a long talk with the new Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Molotov, who put the question in its real form for the first time: to have a successful outcome, economic relations between the two countries must be put on a political basis. ‘The Soviet government’, he said, ‘could only agree to a resumption of the negotiations if the necessary “political bases” for them had been constructed.’ [16] In a dispatch sent the same day Schulenburg summed up the conversation in these terms: ‘The result of the interview with Molotov has been that the Soviet government considers economic negotiations untimely so long as they have not been placed on a political basis’. [17]
Berlin received Molotov’s ‘condition’ with lively satisfaction, for it opened up some very tempting prospects to Hitler and his chiefs, and Ribbentrop noted it in his instructions of 26 May. After a reminder in paragraph I that in the recent interview Molotov had insisted on settling the political relations between Germany and Soviet Russia before going into the question of closer economic cooperation, and that ‘the Russian Chargé d'Affaires in Berlin (Astakhov) had at various times expressed the same view’, he went on to declare that the German government saw no objection to Berlin and Moscow having a ‘frank discussion’ on the subject.
This condition was the key to the Soviet leaders’ attitude, which remained the same until the agreement was concluded on 23 August. For the benefit of public opinion, the two governments continued to discuss ‘economics’, but on 20 May Molotov determined the course which the negotiations were to take. When, in his speech to the Supreme Soviet on 31 May, he claimed for Russia the right to discuss ‘trade’ with Germany and to sign economic agreements with her, we know that behind these economic agreements and arising out of them was a political agreement which the two parties were trying to arrange and which they had every intention of clinching.
On 30 May, Weizsäcker, the Secretary of State, made a definite statement to Astakhov that Germany was ready to begin conversations with the USSR. [18] Then on 15 June, Astakhov took a decisive step, the first, in fact, leading to definite negotiations. He informed Draganov, the Bulgarian Minister in Berlin, that the Soviet Union was trying to make up its mind which of three courses to follow: ‘the conclusion of the pact with England and France: a further dilatory treatment of the pact negotiations: or a rapprochement with Germany’. In so far as the choice lay with Russia ‘this last possibility, with which ideological considerations would not have to become involved, was closest to her desires’. Astakhov added that ‘if Germany would declare that she would not attack the Soviet Union, or better still, conclude a non-aggression pact with her, the Soviet Union will probably refrain from concluding a treaty with England’. [19]
This was the first time that a pact of non-aggression had been mentioned, and it was the Russians who mentioned it. The Wilhelmstrasse considered it ‘important that the Soviets, through Astakhov, had taken the initiative for the rapprochement’. [20]
On the same day Molotov saw the French and British Ambassadors in Moscow, as well as Mr Strang, the special representative of the Foreign Office who had just arrived. Urged by Paris to include the Baltic states in its scheme of guarantees, the British government had at last decided to do so. The interview of 15 June was as fruitless as the succeeding interviews were to be, for what Russia had in mind was a pact of non-aggression with Germany from which she would derive substantial advantages. Thus it was really Germany who, by accepting or refusing this, held the scales in the negotiations undertaken by London and Paris.
Count Ciano’s Mission: Germany accepted. The day after Astakhov’s talk with Draganov, which was reported to the Wilhelmstrasse immediately, Ribbentrop told M Shiratori, the Japanese Ambassador in Rome, that ‘Germany intended to sign a pact of non-aggression with the USSR’. [21] A few days later Count Ciano revealed to the Soviet Chargé d'Affaires in Rome Germany’s first concrete proposals, based on three main points:
i: Germany would help to improve relations between Russia and Japan.
ii: Germany would sign a non-aggression pact with Russia, which would include a guarantee for the Baltic states.
iii: There would be a large-scale commercial agreement.
There is proof that these proposals did in fact reach Moscow, since Molotov mentioned them in his talk with von Schulenburg on 15 August. [22]
A Halt in the Negotiations: On 15 June Astakhov forwarded to the German leaders the proposal for a non-aggression pact between the two countries. Two days later Hilger, back in Moscow after a trip to Berlin, discussed economic questions with Mikoyan, the Commissar for Foreign Trade, but without any appreciable result, which rather annoyed Hitler. [23] The Ambassador, von Schulenburg, who was greatly in favour of a rapprochement between Germany and Russia, called on Molotov on 25 June and was received ‘in a friendly manner’. He did his best to find out what might be the ‘political basis’ which, as Molotov had asserted more than a month before, would permit such an understanding, but he did not succeed in solving the mystery. Molotov ‘thawed’ a little, however, when suggesting that ‘it was both desirable and possible that normal relations should be resumed with Germany’. [24]
At the end of June, Germany suddenly broke off the negotiations. The Wilhelmstrasse ordered von Schulenburg to discontinue the talks, which had already gone very far. [25] This interruption, whatever its cause, did not last long as the negotiations on the economic proposals were resumed soon after in Berlin. They were officially announced on 22 July in a communiqué from the department of the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Trade.
Hitler Decides to Attack on 26 August: Two events of unequal importance, but both having some bearing on the bargaining which was to follow, occurred at the end of July.
At the end of this month the Army General Staff submitted to Hitler its plans for the Polish campaign. Hitler demanded a few adjustments and soon after fixed 26 August as the date of the attack. [26] For him the consequences of this decision were similar to those in which Britain and France were involved when they guaranteed Poland, Rumania and Greece. Hitler too had placed himself in a position of inferiority to Stalin. Since he had decided on war and the date of hostilities was settled, he needed Russia’s collusion and he had to get it by a definite date or the whole of his plans would be jeopardised.
By the end of July he was beginning to be impatient, and Stalin and Molotov had him nicely hooked. Hitler would have to pay the top price for Soviet aid.
The Stakes: Poland and the Baltic: The second event was the decision, announced by Chamberlain in the House of Commons on 31 July, but reached by the government a week before, to send a military mission to Moscow. It should not be forgotten that the Moscow negotiations had now reached a deadlock. Each time Molotov’s demands were met, he asked for more. They had thus gone from a simple joint declaration to a pact of mutual assistance; when Britain had agreed to guarantee the Baltic states, Molotov refused to guarantee Switzerland and Holland; he then asked for a pact of special assistance between Russia, Poland and Turkey; then raised the question of ‘indirect aggression’ and finally, on 20 July, when everything seemed settled, he demanded the immediate opening of military talks before the final conclusion of the political agreement. [27]
These ludicrous proceedings, with their endless prevarications, were entirely due to the fact that the agreement with Germany was nearly concluded and all they had to do was to temporise for a few weeks longer.
But by inviting the British and French governments to send military missions to Moscow, Stalin secured another advantage. It allowed him to exert stronger pressure on the German leaders, or, to put it bluntly, to ‘blackmail’ them the more effectively. Stalin could thus raise the price of his cooperation even higher. On the other hand, he knew he could start military conversations with the Allies without endangering his policy, which had cut loose from ‘collective security’ and was inspired solely by the interests of the USSR, as he conceived them. For he knew perfectly well that the Allies could not force Poland’s hand and obtain the right of passage for Soviet troops which Voroshilov demanded in the Moscow talks.
In Berlin they were soon fairly reassured about the real nature of the military talks in Moscow, but they would have liked to be completely reassured because of the imminence of the war against Poland.
A Success for Secret Diplomacy: Towards the end of July ‘secret diplomacy’ made a contribution of the first importance. On the evening of the 26th Schnurre invited Astakhov and Barbarin, chief of the Soviet commercial mission, to dinner with him on ‘neutral’ ground in a Berlin hotel. He did this with the entire approval of Ribbentrop, and the conversation was conducted with complete candour, if one can use the word. Astakhov reminded them of ‘the close collaboration and community of interests in foreign policy which formerly existed between Germany and Russia’. Schnurre thought it would be possible, by progressive stages, to revive the Treaty of Berlin of 1926, or even to go further, thanks to ‘a new arrangement which would take into account the political interests vital to both parties’. The interests of Germany and Russia, he said, nowhere came into conflict ‘in the whole area from the Baltic to the Black Sea’, and on the other hand both countries had in common ‘their opposition to the capitalist democracies’. Astakhov agreed ‘the way to an understanding with Germany was through that which corresponded with the vital interests of both countries’, but a certain lapse of time would be necessary to dissipate the unfortunate consequences of the anti-Comintern Pact and of Munich.
Schnurre was in rather more of a hurry than Astakhov. He thought it was possible to reach a ‘far-reaching compromise on their mutual interests’ and to prepare the way for it gradually, but on condition that Moscow would sign nothing beforehand with the Western powers. ‘Now was the right moment’, he said, ‘but it would not be so after the conclusion of a pact with London.’ Moscow had to choose. What, in fact, ‘could England offer to Russia'? At best ‘participation in a European war’, with not a single concrete advantage. [28] While Germany could not only allow Russia to remain neutral, to remain ‘outside a possible European conflict’, but also offer her ‘if Moscow wished, a German – Russian understanding on mutual interests, an understanding which, as in former times, would work out to the advantage of both countries’.
What Schnurre put forward on Ribbentrop’s behalf was what Stalin had been actively and patiently pursuing since 10 March. But Astakhov evaded the questions he was asked about the Anglo – French negotiations, or rather, he answered them by outlining in greater detail than before the conditions on which Russia was prepared to make an agreement. He mentioned the Baltic states, Rumania and Poland. On this last point Astakhov declared ‘that Danzig would in one way or another return to the Reich, and the Corridor question would have to be solved somehow in favour of the Reich’. But Germany must give up all her designs on ‘the Galician and Ukrainian territories’ of Poland... The partition of Eastern Europe which was to bring the two partners into agreement was thus sketched out. [29]
This exchange of ideas and proposals set the diplomats to work. On 29 July Weizsäcker asked Schulenburg to inform the Soviet leaders that, in the Polish question, Germany was prepared ‘to safeguard all Soviet interests and to reach an understanding with the Moscow government’ as well as ‘to respect the vital Soviet interests in the Baltic’. [30] On 2 August Ribbentrop saw Astakhov himself and told him that there was room for both countries in the Baltic, and that at the first provocation Poland would be annihilated ‘in a week’: Germany was quite ready ‘for an agreement with Russia on the fate of this country’. [31]
That was the basis for the pact of 23 August and for the secret protocol signed on the same day. The last lap to complete agreement was to be covered in three weeks.
1. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume 3 (Washington, 1946), pp 581-82.
2. HC Deutsch (head of the Intelligence branch of OSS in Germany) in an article published in La Bataille on 30 April 1947.
3. Written affidavit by Marshal von Brauchitsch, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Volume 4 (Nuremberg, 1947), p 404.
4. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Volume 3 (Nuremberg, 1947), p 217.
5. Hitler’s secret instructions of 11 April 1939 had already raised the problem of the isolation of Poland (Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Volume 1 (Nuremberg, 1947), pp 199-200, and Volume 3 (Nuremberg, 1947), pp 217-18).
6. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume 1 (Washington, 1946), p 393.
7. See Chapter I, note 7.
8. Report by Weizsäcker on his conversation with Merekalov, Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 2.
9. ‘Litvinov’s resignation as Foreign Minister struck Hitler like a cannonball.’ (Raeder documents, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Supplement A (Washington, 1946), p 1012)
10. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume 3 (Washington, 1946), p 585.
11. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 81.
12. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 3.
13. Coulondre’s dispatch of 7 May 1939, The French Yellow Book (London, 1940).
14. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers (London, 1948), p 286.
15. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 5.
16. Von Schulenburg’s memorandum of 20 May 1939, Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 6.
17. Von Schulenburg’s telegram of 20 May (unpublished).
18. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 12.
19. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), pp 20-21. Astakhov raised the question of Bessarabia in the same conversation.
20. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 31. Ribbentrop later confirmed at Nuremberg that ‘the first move was made by the Russians’. See GM Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (London, 1948), p 103.
21. This fact was reported by M Shiratori himself a little later in a conversation in Rome with von Plessen, who incorporated the gist of it in a note which he sent to Berlin on 4 September 1939 (not published in Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948)).
22. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 54.
23. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), pp 25-26.
24. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 27.
25. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), pp 27-28.
26. R Cartier, Les Secrets de la Guerre devoilés par Nuremberg (Paris, 1946), pp 108-09; see below, Chapter IV, note 5.
27. As early as 8-9 July Molotov demanded that the military and political agreements should be concluded simultaneously. See M Jacques Bardoux’s report of 1 December 1939 to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate on the Anglo – French – Russian negotiations, roneoed copy, pp 11-12. The text of the political agreement which, according to Molotov himself, contained only a few ‘unimportant differences over details’, has been published by M Georges Bonnet in his book Fin d'une Europe: De Munich à la guerre (Geneva, 1948), pp 401-03.
28. The same argument was already contained in Ribbentrop’s instructions of 26 May. See above, this chapter, section ‘Britain and France Burn Their Boats’.
29. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), pp 32-36.
30. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 36.
31. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), pp 37-39.