Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - 39-8-23 to 41-6-22

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 1939-8-23 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact = Hitler-Stalin Pact | Kotkin | Hoover > .
1939-8-23 Molotov & Ribbentrop sign Nazi-Soviet Pact (USSR, Germany) - HiPo > .

1943-5-15 Stalin dissolves the Comintern: promoter of worldwide communism > .

Molotov-Ribbentrop & Special Military Operation to "liberate" Poland - Researcher > .

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> History of Poland >>

23-10-23 Poland Must Defend Ukraine against Historical Rival: Russia - GeoP > .

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24-3-14 German-Polish Tensions - Modern > .

 

On August 23 1939, two bitter rivals sign a non-aggression pact. But the treaty is something more than just a simple pledge of neutrality. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union have also secretly agreed on how they will carve up Eastern Europe between them. 

The Soviet Union had largely withdrawn from international affairs in the 1920s and early 1930s, but German hostility and the growing threat of Japan drove it to rethink its foreign policy and renew its relationship with Britain and France. But this relationship was marked by scepticism and distrust on both sides. Britain and France began talks with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939, but the three powers struggled to reach an agreement and negotiations collapsed.

1939-8-23: Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Stalin and the USSR deeply distrusted Nazi Germany, suspecting [correctly] that Hitler ultimately intended to invade and annex Russia. Similarly, Britain distrusted Stalin due a fear of communism. Although talks took place between Britain and the Soviet Union in early August 1939 regarding a possible alliance against Hitler, they were never taken seriously by the British who sent their representative by a slow boat and did not grant him authority to make any decisions or sign any agreements on behalf of the government.

Frustrated by Britain’s reluctance to agree to a deal, Stalin’s government received Ribbentrop later that month. He proposed the Nazi-Soviet agreement which, in the face of continued British reluctance to form an alliance, was accepted.

Officially called the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, on the surface the pact guaranteed that neither side would fight against the other in war. However a ‘secret protocol’ also outlined how Eastern Europe would be divided between the two countries in the future. This ensured that the USSR would not intervene in the Nazi invasion of Poland that began just nine days later.

The Soviet government almost certainly knew that Hitler would break the non-aggression pact at some point by invading Russia, but the pact delayed that and gave time to prepare. Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941. All the territory gained by the USSR under terms of the ‘secret protocol’ was lost in just a matter of weeks.
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The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to divide-up Poland between them.

It was signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939, by Foreign Ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, and was officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The Pact's clauses provided a written guarantee of peace by each party towards the other and a declared commitment that neither government would ally itself to or aid an enemy of the other. In addition to the publicly-announced stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included a secret protocol, which defined the borders of Soviet and German spheres of influence across Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. The secret protocol also recognised the interest of Lithuania in the Vilno region, and Germany declared its complete disinterest in Bessarabia. The Secret Protocol was just a rumour until it was made public at the Nuremberg trials.

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The pact was terminated on 22 June 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union (thus also executing the ideological goal of Lebensraum). After the war, Ribbentrop was convicted of war crimes and executed. Molotov died at 96 in 1986, five years before the Soviet Union's dissolution.

Soon after World War 2, the German copy of the secret protocol was found in Nazi archives and published in the West, but [in accordance with its tradition of dishonesty] the Soviet government denied its existence until 1989, when it was finally acknowledged and denounced. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, condemned the pact. Vladimir Putin has condemned the pact as "immoral" but also defended it as a "necessary evil". On 19 December 2019 Putin went further and at press conference announced that signing of the pact was 'no worse than the 1938 Munich agreement, which led to partition of Czechoslovakia'.

1939-5-22 Pact of Steel ..