“For
many years now we have been pouring buckets of shit on each other’s heads, and
our propaganda boys could not do enough in that direction. And now, all of a
sudden, are we to make our peoples believe all is forgiven? Things don’t work
that fast”.
Josef
Stalin, 24 August 1939
The Pact
Alphen, Netherlands, 23
August 2019. Eighty-years ago today the bloody fate of millions of Central and
Eastern Europeans was sealed with the stroke of a pen. The signing of the Treaty of non-Aggression between Germany and
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by German Foreign Minister, Joachim
von Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart Vyacheslav Molotov, came as a shock
to the world. Even Germany’s Axis partner Japan, which had been in conflict
with Moscow, was taken completely by surprise by the announcement. A British
delegation was at sea en route to Moscow in the vain hope that Britain, France
and the Soviet Union could conclude an anti-Hitlerian Tripartite Military Pact.
With the signing of what became known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact, war in Europe
became inevitable.
The Pact also marked the
final and definitive end of the 1919 Versailles Treaty, with its provision that
all secret treaties were to be banned. Indeed, Hitler stated, “Poland will never
rise again in the form of the Versailles Treaty. That is guaranteed not only by
Germany…but also Russia”. The secret protocol was an exercise Machtpolitik at its most cynical and
enshrined the idea of great power spheres of influence in Europe. Under the protocol,
which was confirmed by the September 1939 German-Soviet Frontier Treaty, the
Baltic States were to be fully occupied by Soviet forces, together with parts of
Finland. Poland was to be divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union,
whilst Soviet border was extended to include parts of Poland.
Why the Pact?
The Pact emerged in the
aftermath of Hitler’s March 1939 occupation of Prague, and in direct
contravention of the September 1938 “peace in our time” Munich Agreement with
Neville Chamberlain’s Britain. With the collapse of Munich, war between
Germany, Britain and France became nigh on inevitable. Britain and France sought
to surround Germany and force it to confront the prospect of a renewed zweifrontenskrieg (two-front war) that
it had faced in World War One. In spite of London’s profound distaste for the
Soviet regime it began putting out diplomatic feelers to Moscow. The Pact
destroyed any such hopes. On August 25, 1939 Britain signed a Mutual Defence
Pact with Poland. This came as a shock to Hitler, who postponed his planned
August 26 invasion.
Perhaps the most
significant reason why Stalin supported the Pact was the state of the Red Army.
In 1938 he had conducted a bloody purge of the senior ranks of the Red Army and
decimated its leadership. The consequences of Stalin's actions were demonstrated by the superb fighting abilities of the Finns
during the so-called Winter War of 1939-40. The Finns inflicted what later
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev claimed were up to one million casualties on a poorly-led and equipped Red Army.
Stalin knew a future war between Bolshevism and Nazism was inevitable, but in
1939 the Soviet Union was in no fit state to fight it.
Implementing the Pact
On 1 September 1939, the
Nazis invaded Poland and, in spite of heroic Polish resistance, made steady
progress. Stalin waited until 17 September to be sure Hitler halted his forces
at the agreed demarcation line stipulated by the secret protocol before
ordering the Red Army to seize the Baltic States and parts of Poland. On 22
September 1939, the Red Army and the Wehrmacht even held a joint victory parade
in the seized Polish fortress town of Brest-Litovsk.
The consequences for Poles
and the peoples of the Baltic States was terrifying. Hitler had secured what he regarded as Lebensraum (living space) and began the
forced removal of people he regarded as untermenschen
(under-people) and the resettlement of Germans. It also led to the deportation
and murder of millions of Jews. After a series of conferences between the Nazi
secret police, the Gestapo, and their Soviet counterparts, the NKVD, hard
interrogations began of some 300,000 Polish prisoners of war. On March 5 1940, at
Katyn, the Soviets executed 22,000 Polish military officers and intellectuals
in an effort to decapitate any opposition to their rule on the grounds that they
were ‘counter-revolutionaries’. It was not until the 1980s that then Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev admitted the massacre and apologised. President Putin
has called Katyn a ‘necessary evil’.
The Pact today
The Pact still leaves its
bloody fingerprint on Europe. Parts of Poland (and even Romania) seized under
the terms of the Pact now form parts of Belarus and Ukraine. Moreover, it was
not just World War Two that began on 23 August, 1939, it also led to the Soviet
occupation of much of Central and Eastern Europe and the Cold War. It was not
until 1991 that the ugly blanket of oppression laid down by the Pact was
finally thrown off by the heroic actions of Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians,
Poles and others.
To hear contemporary
Russian leaders talk again of ‘spheres of influence’ and ‘buffer zones’ is to
hear the language of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. It is also the language of
secret protocols to treaties, of a Europe governed by power, diktat and fear.
It was to stop that ever happening again that both the EU and NATO were
created. The mission is not yet done.
The Pact collapsed on
June 22 1941, with the commencement of Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi invasion
of the Soviet Union, which actually took Stalin by surprise. Stalin immediately
switched sides and sought the support of the Western Allies. Churchill
described the 1941 Anglo-Soviet Agreement as a necessary ‘deal with the devil’.
He went on, “If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable mention
of the devil in the House of Commons”.
Julian Lindley-French
