The Nazi Soviet pact of August 1939

The NaziSoviet pact of August 1939 was not Stalins first foray into the field
of foreign affairs but it was by far his most significant and dramatic since
coming to power in the 1920s. On the very eve of the Second World War the
enmity that had bedevilled relations between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany
since Hitler came to power in 1933 was declared dissolved as the two states
signed a treaty pledging non-aggression, neutrality, consultation and the
friendly resolution of disputes.
The first public inkling of this extraordinary turn of events was the
announcement on 21 August 1939 that Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi
Foreign Minister, was to fly to Moscow for negotiations about a
GermanSoviet non-aggression treaty. Ribbentrop arrived in the Soviet
capital on 23 August and the deal was struck later that day. On 24 August
Pravda and Izvestiya carried news of the pact, complete with the now infamous front-page picture of Soviet foreign commissar, Vyacheslav Molotov,
signing the treaty with a smiling Stalin looking on.
The sinister news broke upon the world like an explosion, wrote Winston
Churchill. There is no doubt that the Germans have struck a master blow, the
Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, recorded in his diary; the European
situation is upset. The Berlin-based American journalist William L. Shirer
spoke for millions when he recalled that he could scarcely believe it and had
the feeling that war was now inevitable.1
The reason for the shock and surprise was that for the previous six months
Stalin had been negotiating an anti-Hitler alliance with the British and
French. These negotiations had begun after the Nazi occupation of
Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and were prompted by the German threat to
Poland, Romania and other East European states. In April the Soviets
proposed a full-blown triple alliance between Britain, France and the USSR
a military coalition that would guarantee European security against further
German expansion and, if necessary, go to war with Hitler. By the end of July
2
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agreement had been reached on the political terms of the alliance and the
negotiations moved into their final phase with the opening of military talks in
Moscow.
The triple alliance negotiations were conducted in private, but there was
little of their content that did not leak to the press. When the Anglo-French
military delegation arrived in Moscow on 10 August it was greeted with suitable public fanfare and the talks were conducted in the sumptuous splendour
of the Tsarist Spiridonovka Palace. Hopes were high that a triple alliance
would be formed and that Hitler would be deterred from turning the dispute
with Poland over Danzig and the Polish Corridor into a new European war.
But after a few days the military negotiations broke down and on 21 August
were adjourned indefinitely, destined never to be resumed.2
The ostensible reason for the breakdown was the Soviet demand that the
British and French guarantee that Poland and Romania would allow the Red
Army passage through their territory upon the outbreak of war with
Germany. The problem was that Poland and Romania two authoritarian,
anti-communist states, both with territorial disputes with the USSR dreaded
Soviet intervention almost as much as they feared German invasion and were
unwilling to concede the Red Army an automatic right of passage in the event
of war. The Soviets insisted, however, that their military plans depended on
advancing through Poland and Romania to repulse a German attack and that
they had to know now where they stood. For the Soviets a triple alliance with
Britain and France meant, above all, a co-ordinated military plan to fight a
common war against Germany. Without such a military agreement there was
no point to a political front against Hitler, who would not be deterred from
war by any diplomatic agreement, or so the Soviets believed.
Beyond the issue of Soviet right of military passage across Romania and
Poland, there was a deeper reason for Moscows decision to halt the triple
alliance negotiations: Stalin did not believe that the British and French were
serious about fighting Hitler; he feared, indeed, that they were manoeuvring
to get him to do their fighting for them. As Stalin later told Churchill, he had
the impression that the talks were insincere and only for the purpose of intimidating Hitler, with whom the Western Powers would later come to terms.3 On
another occasion Stalin complained that Neville Chamberlain, the British
Prime Minister, fundamentally disliked and distrusted the Russians and
stressed that if [I] could not get an alliance with England, then [I] must not
be left alone isolated only to be the victim of the victors when the war
was over.4
When Stalin ended the triple alliance negotiations he was not certain what
would happen next, notwithstanding the pact with Hitler he concluded a few
days later. For months the Germans had been hinting that they could offer
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better terms than the British and French. In early August these overtures
reached a crescendo when Ribbentrop told the Soviet diplomatic representative in Berlin, Georgii Astakhov, that there was no problem from the Baltic to
the Black Sea that could not be solved between the two of us.5 Until now Stalin
had not given Ribbentrop any encouragement and Astakhov remained uninstructed about how to respond to the increasingly extravagant promises made
by his German contacts. The Germans were obviously trying to disrupt the
triple alliance negotiations and while Stalin did not trust the British and
French, he trusted Hitler even less. As an ideologue himself Stalin took Hitlers
fervent anti-communism seriously and did not doubt the Nazi dictator
intended, if he could, to implement the programme of German expansion
into Russia he had advocated in Mein Kampf. Stalin feared, too, that the
vacuum left by a failed triple alliance would be filled by an Anglo-German
understanding directed against the Soviet Union. By the end of July, however,
the triple alliance negotiations had dragged on for months and the dilatory
approach of the British and French to the forthcoming military talks indicated
that London and Paris intended to spin them out even longer, in the hope that
Hitler would be deterred from attacking Poland by just the possibility of an
Anglo-SovietFrench alliance. So, instead of flying to Moscow the AngloFrench military delegation sailed to Leningrad on a slow steamer and arrived
with no detailed strategic plans for a joint war against Germany.
While the British and French thought Hitler could be deterred by talks,
Stalin had no such confidence and believed instead his intelligence reports
that Hitler would soon attack Poland. In these circumstances the disintegration of the triple alliance project and the coming Polish war the German
offer of negotiations demanded more serious consideration and Astakhov was
authorised to sound out exactly what was being proposed. The turning point
in these soundings came when the Germans agreed to sign a special protocol
delineating Soviet and German foreign policy interests. In an urgent, personal
message to Stalin on 20 August Hitler pressed for Ribbentrop to be allowed to
go to Moscow to negotiate the protocol, pointing out that the tension
between Germany and Poland has become intolerable and that there was no
time to lose. Stalin replied the next day, agreeing to Ribbentrops visit:
I hope that the GermanSoviet non-aggression pact will mark a decided
turn for the better in political relations between our countries. The
people of our countries need peaceful relations with each other. The
assent of the German Government to the conclusion of a non-aggression
pact provides the foundation for eliminating the political tension and for
the establishment of peace and collaboration between our countries.6
32 STALINS WARS
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Stalin personally received Ribbentrop in the Kremlin and displayed all the
acumen, charm and intelligence for which he was to become famous in diplomatic circles. To Ribbentrops offer to mediate problems in SovietJapanese
relations, Stalin responded that he was not afraid of the Japanese and that they
could have war if they liked, although peace would be so much better! He
probed Ribbentrop about Mussolinis attitude to the GermanSoviet pact and
wanted to know what the Turks were up to. Stalin opined that while Britain
was weak militarily it would wage war craftily and that the French army was
still worthy of consideration. He proposed a toast to Hitlers health, telling
Ribbentrop that he knew how much the German nation loves its Fhrer. As
Ribbentrop was leaving Stalin told him that the Soviet Government takes the
new Pact very seriously. He could guarantee on his word of honor that the
Soviet Union would not betray its partner.7
But what had Stalin agreed with Ribbentrop and what was the nature of the
new SovietGerman partnership? The published text of the non-aggression
treaty was the same as the many other non-aggression pacts the Soviet Union
had concluded in the 1920s and 1930s, apart from the notable absence of a
provision for the denunciation of the agreement in the event of aggression by
Germany or the USSR against a third party. As this omission indicated, the
pact was fundamentally a pledge of Soviet neutrality during the coming
GermanPolish war. In return, Stalin received Hitlers promises of friendship
and non-aggression and, more importantly, the provisions of a secret additional protocol attached to the published pact. The first clause of this secret
protocol specified that the Baltic States of Finland, Estonia and Latvia fell
within the Soviet sphere of influence. The second clause divided Poland into
Soviet and German spheres of influence along the line of the rivers Narew,
Vistula and San and stated that the question of whether the interests of both
parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish state and
how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the
course of further political developments. The third and final clause of this
short protocol drew attention to the Soviet interest in Bessarabia, a piece of
Romanian territory, which Moscow claimed had been stolen from Russia in
1918, while the German side disclaimed any interest in this dispute.8
In relation to the Baltic States, the Germans had conceded what the Soviets
had demanded of the British and French during the triple alliance negotiations a free hand in the Baltic to secure their strategic position in an area
considered vital to the security of Leningrad. In the context of the triple
alliance negotiations a free hand meant Moscows right to take pre-emptive
action to avert Nazi subversion of the Baltic States and the flexibility to
counter a German invasion of the Baltic States as it saw fit, irrespective of
what the Balts themselves might want. But it was not so clear how Stalin
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would choose to exercise his freedom of manoeuvre in the Baltic sphere of
influence he had just acquired from the Germans. Would he occupy the Baltic
States or seek some other means of securing Soviet interests in the area? A
similar uncertainty hung over Stalins policy in relation to Poland. The
Germans had agreed to stay out of a Soviet sphere of influence in the east of
the country, but what would be the meaning and consequences of that
promise in practice? The answer to that question depended on a great
unknown: the course of the GermanPolish war and the response of Britain
and France to Hitlers attack on Poland. In August 1939 it was not obvious
that Poland would succumb as easily as it did to German invasion. Britain and
France were pledged to defend Poland but a new Munich an appeasement
deal betraying the Poles to Hitler was not ruled out, at least not by Stalin.
What, then, would be the fate of the Soviet sphere of influence in eastern
Poland? Until the situation became clearer Stalin decided to tread carefully,
maintaining Soviet neutrality in the developing international crisis over
Poland and refraining from the active pursuit of Soviet interests in relation
to Poland and the Baltic States, even keeping the door open to a revival of
negotiations with Britain and France.
Stalins prevaricating position was articulated by his foreign commissar,
Molotov, who in a speech to the Supreme Soviet on 31 August 1939 proposed
formal ratification of the GermanSoviet pact. The most significant point of
Molotovs speech was that while he announced the dealignment of the Soviet
Union in European politics the USSR would not now participate in an
alliance against Hitler there was no realignment alongside Germany. Indeed,
Molotov was at particular pains to argue that the GermanSoviet nonaggression treaty was the consequence not the cause of the failure of the triple
alliance negotiations, implying that the deal with Hitler was a second-best
alternative to coalition with Britain and France. He defended the nonaggression pact on grounds that it had narrowed the zone of possible hostilities in Europe and thwarted the designs of those who wanted to set the Soviet
Union and Germany against each other in order to provoke a grand new
slaughter, a new holocaust of nations.9 Here Molotov was echoing Stalins
critique of British and French foreign policy at the 18th Congress of the Soviet
Communist Party in March 1939. According to Stalin,
the policy of non-intervention means conniving at aggression, giving free
rein to war . . . The policy of non-intervention reveals an eagerness, a desire,
not to hinder the aggressors in their nefarious work: not to hinder Japan,
say, from embroiling herself in a war with China, or, better still, the Soviet
Union; not to hinder Germany, say, from . . . embroiling herself in a war with
the Soviet Union; to encourage them surreptitiously in this; to allow them
34 STALINS WARS
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to weaken and exhaust one another; and then, when they have become
weak enough, to appear on the scene with fresh strength, to appear, of
course, in the interests of peace, and to dictate conditions to the enfeebled
belligerents.10
Did Stalin take a leaf out of the western appeasers handbook when he
concluded the NaziSoviet pact? Was Stalin an adherent of thewarrevolution
nexus the idea that provoking a new world war would precipitate the kind
of revolutionary upheavals that had engulfed Europe at the end of the First
World War? Many anti-communist commentators thought so at the time and
it is a view of Stalins aims echoed by those historians seeking to establish that
the main cause of the Second World War was not Hitlers designs, but Stalins.
One of the key texts in this oeuvre is a speech Stalin supposedly made to the
Politburo on 19 August 1939 in which he reviewed the prospects for the sovietisation of Europe as a result of a war that he intended to provoke and then
prolong by signing the NaziSoviet pact.11 The problem is that the speech is
a forgery. Not only was there no such speech, but it is doubtful that the
Politburo even met on that day (it rarely met at all by the late 1930s). It is, as
the Russian historian Sergei Sluch has termed it, the speech of Stalins that
never was.12
Stalins so-called speech made its first appearance at the end of November
1939 in the French press. Its publication was plainly a piece of black propaganda designed to discredit Stalin and to sow discord in SovietGerman relations. The texts content marked it out as obviously false. Stalin was reported
as saying, for example, that already on 19 August he had an agreement with
Hitler giving him a Soviet sphere of influence in Romania, Bulgaria and
Hungary. It was not taken very seriously outside France, although Stalin
himself was moved to issue a statement denouncing the reported speech as
a lie.13
Far from plotting war in 1939, Stalin feared that he and his regime would
become the chief victims of a major military conflict. Ultimately, that is why
he gambled on a pact with Hitler; it was no guarantee of peace and security,
but it did offer the best chance of keeping the Soviet Union out of the coming
war. No doubt like everyone else Stalin expected that if Britain and France did
declare war on Germany there would be a prolonged conflict, a war of
attrition one which would provide some time and space for the Soviet
Union to strengthen its defences. But he was far too cautious to gamble
everything on a simple repeat of the First World War.
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The Partition of Poland
From Stalins point of view the most important question after the signing of
the NaziSoviet pact was: what would happen to Poland? That question was
answered by the stunning success of the German blitzkrieg invasion of
Poland. As early as 3 September Ribbentrop was telling the Soviets that the
Polish army would be beaten in a few weeks and urging them to send their
forces into the Russian sphere of influence in eastern Poland.14 That same day,
however, Britain and France declared war on Germany. On 5 September
Molotov replied evasively to Ribbentrops request, agreeing that Soviet action
was necessary but saying that premature intervention might injure our cause
and promote unity among our opponents.15 It was not until 9 September that
Molotov informed the Germans that Soviet forces would move into Poland in
the next few days.
Stalins own thinking on the war and on the Polish question was revealed at
a meeting with Georgi Dimitrov, the leader of the Communist International,
on 7 September 1939:
A war is on between two groups of capitalist countries . . . for the redivision
of the world, for the domination of the world! We see nothing wrong in their
having a good hard fight and weakening each other. It would be fine if at the
hands of Germany the position of the richest capitalist countries (especially
England) were shaken. Hitler, without understanding it or desiring it, is
shaking and undermining the capitalist system . . . We can maneuver, pit one
side against the other to set them fighting with each other as fiercely as
possible. The non-aggression pact is to a certain degree helping Germany.
Next time well urge on the other side . . . Formerly . . . the Polish state was a
national state. Therefore, revolutionaries defended it against partition and
enslavement. Now [Poland] is a fascist state, oppressing the Ukrainians,
Belorussians and so forth. The annihilation of that state under current
conditions would mean one fewer bourgeois fascist state to contend with!
What would be the harm if as a result of the rout of Poland we were to
extend the socialist system onto new territories and populations?16
These statements derive from Dimitrovs diary the most important source
on Stalins private thinking during the war years and require some comment
since they can be interpreted as evidence for the warrevolution nexus
hypothesis. The occasion for the meeting was the announcement by Stalin of
a change in the Cominterns political line, which since its 7th World Congress
in 1935 had been based on an anti-fascist popular front, including support for
an alliance between the Soviet Union and the western bourgeois democracies.
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After the NaziSoviet pact the Comintern and its member parties continued
with the popular front policy, supporting Moscows diplomatic manoeuvre in
signing the non-aggression treaty with Germany but continuing to advocate a
war of national defence against fascist aggression. Stalin did not retrospectively repudiate the popular front policy, indeed Dimitrov also records him
saying that we preferred agreements with the so-called democratic countries
and therefore conducted negotiations. But the English and the French wanted
us for farmhands and at no cost! Circumstances had changed, however, and
the war that had actually broken out was an inter-imperialist conflict and the
division of capitalist states into fascist and democratic no longer makes sense.
Stalin spoke, too, of the prospect of the annihilation of slavery during the war
but he did not advocate, as Lenin had done during the First World War,
turning the imperialist war into a revolutionary civil war. Stalins immediate
purpose was to present an ideological rationale for the Red Armys forthcoming invasion of Poland the first such act of military expansion in the
history of the Soviet state and his main message to Dimitrov was that
communists had to oppose war, not wage one.
The Red Army crossed into Poland on 17 September 1939. In announcing
the action Molotov declared on the radio that the GermanPolish war had
demonstrated the bankruptcy of the Polish state. In these circumstances, said
Molotov, the Soviet armed forces were entering the country to aid and protect
Ukrainians and Belorussians living on Polish territory. This patriotic rationale
was reinforced by Soviet newspaper reports of Polish repression of Ukrainians
and Belorussians and of the cheering welcome given to their Red Army
liberators from the east.17
The Polish territories occupied by the Red Army broadly those allocated
to Stalin under the NaziSoviet pact were, in fact, the western regions of the
Ukraine and Belorussia. They lay east of the so-called Curzon Line the
ethnographical frontier between Russia and Poland drawn up by a commission of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and named after the British
Foreign Secretary who chaired it. The commissions aim was to provide a basis
for a ceasefire in the Russo-Polish war that had just broken out. The final
border, however, was determined by Polish military successes in the war and
the Soviet Union ceded Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia to Poland in
the Treaty of in March 1921. But the Soviets never reconciled
themselves to the loss of those territories, which contained only a minority of
Poles. Diplomatically the territorial dispute between the two states remained
dormant but it hovered in the background, particularly in the 1930s when
Stalins Russia began to adopt a more patriotic identity. There was also
constant concern in Moscow that non-Soviet Ukrainians and Belorussians
living in Poland could be used as a base for the subversion of their
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compatriots within the USSR. Indeed, in 1938, Nazi propagandists and
Ukrainian nationalists had waged a press and propaganda campaign for a
reunified and independent Ukraine. The Soviet invasion of eastern Poland
embodied, therefore, a peculiar nationalist logic as well as the obvious geostrategic rationale that the Red Armys move into the country had secured a
shift of the Soviet defence line westwards and established a definite limit on
German eastward expansion.
One person who welcomed the Soviet move into Poland was Churchill
the British politician had just returned from a long spell in the wilderness and
was back in the cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. In a famous radio
broadcast on 1 October 1939 he argued:
Russia had pursued a cold policy of self-interest. We could have wished that
the Russian armies should be standing on their present line as the friends
and allies of Poland instead of as invaders. But that the Russian armies
should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia
against the Nazi menace.
Churchill offered a further comfort to his listeners:
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a
mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian
national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest or the safety
of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea,
or that it should overrun the Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic
peoples of south-eastern Europe. That would be contrary to the historic
life-interests of Russia.18
Churchill was right. Russian national interest was one key to Stalins foreign
policy; the other was communist ideology. Although Stalins statement to
Dimitrov on 7 September contained a good deal of rhetoric designed to rationalise the Cominterns abandonment of its anti-Nazi policy it also embodied
much authentic belief. Underlying Stalins calculations about the NaziSoviet
pact was a fundamentalist vision of the inevitability of capitalist crises and
imperialist wars. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Stalin had warned that if
the imperialists attempted to resolve their internal difficulties by waging war
on the Soviet Union it would be their own downfall as they would be faced
with working-class revolt and revolution in their own countries. But Stalin
was too much of a realist to base Soviet security on the hope of revolution
abroad; experience had taught him that the revolutionary movement in the
advanced capitalist states was very weak and not to be relied upon. Hence
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Stalins political directives to Dimitrov after the outbreak of war were cautious
and conservative. At a meeting with Dimitrov on 25 October 1939 Stalin
observed that during the first imperialist war the Bolsheviks overestimated
the situation. We all got ahead of ourselves and made mistakes . . . there must
be no copying now of the positions the Bolsheviks held then . . . It should also
be remembered that the current situation is different: at that time there were
no Communists in power. Now there is the Soviet Union! On 7 November
Stalin told Dimitrov: I believe that the slogan of turning the imperialist war
into a civil war (during the first imperialist war) was appropriate only for
Russia . . . For the European countries that slogan was inappropriate . . .19
Stalins point that a major difference between the First and Second World
Wars was the existence of the Soviet Union would have required no emphasis
for Dimitrov, who like all communists of his era was schooled in the belief
that his first duty was action in defence of the USSR, not least in time of war
when the very existence of the socialist state could come under threat. What
Stalin required of his communist supporters in 1939 was not the waging of a
revolutionary war but a political campaign in favour of peace, including
support for Hitlers pleas to the British and French to end the conflict over
Poland.
The SovietGerman peace offensive had begun after a second round of
meetings between Stalin and Ribbentrop on 2728 September. Ribbentrop
had flown to Moscow to discuss Soviet proposals for changes to the
SovietGerman boundary in occupied Poland. Stalin told Ribbentrop that the
SovietGerman division of Poland should as far as possible be along ethnographic lines. That would entail the transfer of Polish territory from the Soviet
to the German sphere of influence; in exchange Lithuania would be transferred to the Soviet sphere of influence in the Baltic. In presenting this deal to
Ribbentrop, Stalin emphasised that a demarcation line that separated ethnic
Poland from the predominantly non-Polish ethnic areas bordering the USSR
would pre-empt possible future nationalist agitation for a united Poland.20
The upshot of these discussions was a new NaziSoviet pact in the form of the
GermanSoviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty of 28 September 1939 that
specified the new boundary in Poland and (in a secret protocol) transferred
Lithuania to the Soviet sphere of influence (see Map 1 on p. 40).21 That same
day the Soviet Union and Germany issued a joint statement calling for an end
to the European war now that the Polish state had been liquidated.22 This was
followed by calls from Hitler for a negotiated peace, a demand echoed by
Molotov in his speech to the Supreme Soviet at the end of October 1939 in
which he blamed the British and French for the continuation of the war,
arguing that the motive was the defence of their colonial possessions and the
ongoing inter-imperialist struggle for world supremacy.23
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40 STALINS WARS
Riga
Knigsberg
Danzig
Stettin
Torun
Poznan
Berlin
Vilno
Lida
Grodno
Minsk
Baranovichi
Bialystok
Brest-Litovsk
Pinsk
Lodz
Warsaw
Kovel
Lutsk
Rovno
Lwow
Lublin
Cracow Prague
Vienna
Budapest
Ternopol
Stanislav
Oder
Oder
Neisse
Danube
B a l t i c S e a
SWEDEN
ESTONIA
LITHUANIA
POLAND
AUSTRIA
H U N G A R Y
YUGOSLAVIA
EAST
PRUSSIA
LATVIA
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Annexed by USSR
Annexed by Germany
USSR
N
Annexed
by USSR
June 1940
Memel
Annexed by
Germany
April 1939
GERMANY
USSR
The NaziSoviet Pact, AugustSeptember 1939
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The New Rapallo
But did Stalin really want the European war to come to an end? Probably not,
but he had no idea how long it would last or what course it might take, and
there was no guarantee that any outcome would be favourable to the Soviet
Union. Britain and France had declared war on Germany in support of Poland
but had taken little action in support of the Poles and seemed content for the
moment to fight a war with Germany from behind the Maginot Line of
defensive fortifications along the Franco-German border. The German
conquest of Poland had changed fundamentally the balance of power in
Europe, but it was difficult to predict what the precise consequences of that
would be. In such circumstances Stalin had no option but to strengthen the
Soviet strategic position in whatever ways he could while avoiding involvement in the European war. For the moment that meant close co-operation
with the Germans, including support for Hitlers peace proposals. At the same
time Stalin did not want to burn his bridges with Britain and France and he
attempted to balance his commitments to Hitler by keeping open the door to
a reconstruction of Soviet relations with the western powers.24
How long the new relationship with Hitler would last was difficult to say
but Stalin did not, at this stage, rule out a long-term partnership. Indeed, there
was an important precedent for prolonged SovietGerman co-operation. In
1922 the Soviet Union and Germany had signed the Treaty of Rapallo, an
agreement that re-established diplomatic relations between the two states
(they had been severed in 1918) and led to a decade of intensive economic,
political and military co-operation. The Rapallo relationship, as it was called,
only broke down when Hitler came to power in 1933. Even so, throughout the
1930s there were intermittent efforts by both sides to restore a degree of cooperation, particularly in trade relations.25 In his discussions with Ribbentrop
on 27 September Stalin emphasised the Rapallo precedent:
Soviet foreign policy has always been based on belief in the possibility of
co-operation between Germany and the Soviet Union. When the
Bolsheviks came to power they were accused of being paid German agents.
It was the Bolsheviks who concluded the Rapallo agreement. It provided the
basis for the expansion and deepening of mutual relations. When the
National-Socialists came to power in Germany, relations worsened as the
German government deemed it necessary to give priority to internal political considerations. After a while this issue exhausted itself and the German
government displayed the will to improve relations with the Soviet Union .
. . Historically the Soviet Government never excluded the possibility of
good relations with Germany. Hence it is with a clear conscience that the
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Soviet Government begins the revival of collaboration with Germany. This
collaboration represents a power that all other combinations must give
way to.26
Of course, Nazi Germany was not the Weimar Republic and Hitler was no
ordinary German politician, but Stalin tended to view democratic and fascist
states as co-existing on a common capitalist continuum rather than as qualitatively different phenomena.27 In the 1930s Nazi Germany had posed a dire
threat to the Soviet Union and Stalin sought common cause with the western
democracies. Circumstances had changed and now Hitler represented not a
threat but an opportunity. The opportunity might become a threat in the
future but for the time being Stalin was content to make as many gains as
possible from the new Rapallo with Germany.
During the 1920s the Soviet Union and Germany had been very important
trading partners, a relationship that collapsed when Hitler came to power. But
with the NaziSoviet pact there was a significant revival of economic relations
between the two states. Under the aegis of economic agreements signed in
August 1939, February 1940 and January 1941 SovietGerman exports and
imports increased tenfold, reaching levels they had not attained since the early
1930s.28 The pattern of trade was the same as in that earlier period: the
Germans provided the Russians with credits to buy machinery and manufactured goods; in return the Soviets exported raw materials to Germany.
Between January 1940 and June 1941 the following raw materials were
supplied by the Soviet Union to Germany:
1.5 million tons of grain
100,000 tons of cotton
2 million tons of petroleum products
1.5 million tons of timber
140,000 tons of manganese
26,000 tons of chromium29
Particularly important were grain, petroleum, manganese and chromium
vital ingredients of the German war economy that now faced a British naval
blockade. The Soviets also signed a secret protocol with the Germans to act on
their behalf as a third-party buyer and ship goods to Germany via the USSR.
For their side of the deal the Soviets received an equivalent amount of
machine tools, finished metals, chemical products and military and other
equipment.30 In value terms the imports and exports balanced out at around
500 million marks each way, but the strategic gain to Hitler was far greater
than that to Stalin. As . Ericson commented:
42 STALINS WARS
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without Soviet deliveries . . . Germany could barely have attacked the
Soviet Union, let alone come close to victory. Germanys stockpiles of oil,
manganese, and grain would have been completely exhausted by the late
summer of 1941. And Germanys rubber supply would have run out half a
year earlier . . . In other words, Hitler had been almost completely
dependent on Stalin to provide him the resources he needed to attack the
Soviet Union. It was no wonder that Hitler repeatedly insisted Germany
fulfill the terms of the economic treaties. He could not conquer any Soviet
territory until he first received enough Soviet raw materials.31
Stalins co-operation with Hitler in the military sphere was more circumscribed but still valuable to the Germans. When German bombers attacked
Poland in September 1939 they were aided by directional signals from a Soviet
radio station. This was followed by co-ordination of the Soviet and German
armed forces after the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939. The
Soviets opened their ports in the Arctic Sea to German ships requiring refuge
and allowed the Germans to establish a on Soviet territory
near Murmansk a base that remained operational until it became redundant
after the German invasion of Norway in April 1940.32
On the ideological front the Soviet press stopped its attacks on fascism
and Nazism, while in the cultural sphere a number of steps were taken to reestablish and develop links between Germany and the USSR. But by far the
most important dimension of Stalins partnership with Hitler was geopolitical. While the war continued, and while Hitler needed friendship with Stalin
to protect his eastern flank, the Germans did not compete with the Soviets in
their designated sphere of influence in the Baltic.
Spheres of Influence
Even before the final settlement of the Polish question Stalin had begun to
make his move in the Baltic. On 24 September 1939 the Estonian Foreign
Minister, in Moscow to sign a trade agreement, was confronted with a demand
from Molotov for a mutual assistance pact that would provide for Soviet air
and naval bases in Estonia. On 27 September Stalin became involved in the
negotiations and reassured the Estonians about the proposed Soviet military
bases:
Do not be afraid of these garrisons. We have assured you that the Soviet
Union does not want in any way to affect Estonian sovereignty, her government, or her economic system, nor her internal life or foreign policy . . . the
UNHOLY ALLIANCE: STALINS PACT WITH HITLER 43
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Soviet troops will refrain from everything that is not in harmony with these
promises.33
Formally speaking, Stalin was as good as his word and the text of the
SovietEstonian Pact of Mutual Assistance signed on 28 September 1939
contained clauses forbidding Soviet interference in Estonias internal affairs.34
It was the Latvians turn next. Like all the Baltic governments they hoped
for German intercession on their behalf, but Stalin quickly dispelled that illusion. I tell you frankly a division into spheres of influence has taken place, he
informed the Latvian Foreign Minister on 2 October. As far as the Germans
are concerned we could occupy you. But we want no abuse.35 At a further
meeting the next day Stalin was even more explicit: The Germans might
attack. For six years German fascists and the communists cursed each other.
Now in spite of history there has been an unexpected turn, but one cannot rely
upon it. We must be prepared in time. Others, who were not prepared, paid
for it.36
The Latvians signed their mutual assistance treaty with the Soviet Union
on 5 October, as did the Lithuanians on 10 October. As in the Estonian
treaty, there were provisions for Soviet military bases and promises of noninterference. Stalin told the Lithuanians that the military bases were the most
precious element in the service of Lithuanian security37 and quipped that our
troops will help you put down a communist insurrection should one occur in
Lithuania.38
Actually, Stalin was only half joking. In line with its stated policy Moscow
issued strict instructions to its diplomatic representatives and military units in
the Baltic States to refrain from interference in local politics and not to do
anything that could fuel rumours of a future sovietisation of the area.39 As
Stalin explained to Dimitrov on 25 October:
We believe that in our pacts of mutual assistance [with the Baltic States] we
have found the right form to allow us to bring a number of countries into
the Soviet Unions sphere of influence. But for that we have to maintain a
consistent posture, strictly observing their internal regimes and independence. We are not going to seek their sovietisation. The time will come when
they will do that themselves!40
Stalins restraint in relation to the Baltic States was in sharp contrast to Soviet
policy in Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine. After the Red Armys occupation of these territories in September 1939 the Politburo ordered an election campaign under the slogans of the establishment of Soviet power and the
reunification of the eastern and western regions of Belorussia and the
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Ukraine. Instructions were also issued on the nationalisation of big business,
the takeover of the banking system and the collectivisation of agriculture.41
Needless to say, the elections were rigged and in November these peoples
assemblies voted unanimously for incorporation into the USSR. In pursuit of
total political control the Soviet authorities were ruthless in their use of terror
and in the encouragement of inter-ethnic communal violence and class war.42
A particularly repressive policy was pursued in relation to the Polish minority
in Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine, who were seen as the most likely
source of opposition to the new Soviet regime. Some 400,000 Poles (out of a
total population of 12 million) were imprisoned, deported or, in many cases,
executed. Among the victims were 20,000 Polish officer POWs and political
prisoners, shot in MarchApril 1940, most infamously in the Katyn forest near
Smolensk.43
Did Stalin intend to visit the same fate on the Baltic States? That is
certainly the conclusion that some have drawn from the fact that in summer
1940 the Baltic States were occupied by the Red Army, incorporated into the
USSR and, like Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine, subjected to forced
sovietisation. However, both Soviet behaviour and Stalins statements in
autumn 1939 were consistent with a commitment to a more restrained
policy, at least at that time. Moreover, the more radical policy pursued in
eastern Poland had very specific roots. As noted earlier, the Soviets had never
reconciled themselves to the loss of Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine
to the Poles and Stalin intended from the outset of the Red Army invasion
to incorporate these territories into the USSR. Sovietisation of eastern
Poland did not create a precedent for the Baltic States but it did provide a
model of how it could be done, including the deportation from Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania in JuneJuly 1940 of some 25,000 undesirables.44
The other area that greatly interested Stalin was the Balkans. Unlike Poland
and the Baltic States there was no agreement with the Germans on spheres of
influence in this region but that did not deter Stalin from pursuing one. At the
centre of Stalins design were two countries Bulgaria and Turkey both of
which were offered mutual assistance pacts with the Soviet Union. The
Bulgarians politely declined, pointing out that it was not clear what aid the
Soviets could offer them in the event of war and that such an agreement
would arouse suspicion in the already tense atmosphere in the Balkans in
autumn 1939.45 The Turkish position was more complex. They were prepared
to sign a mutual assistance pact with the Soviets but were intent as well on
concluding mutual assistance agreements with Britain and France. This was
unacceptable to Stalin, as he graphically explained to the Turkish Foreign
Minister on 1 October 1939:
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Events have their own logic: we say one thing, but events go another way.
With Germany we divided Poland. England and France did not declare war
on us, but they might. We dont have a pact of mutual assistance with
Germany but if the English and French declare war on us, we will have to
fight them. How would the [Anglo-FrenchTurkish] agreement look then?
. . . [You] might reply that you have made provision for such an outcome,
that the Turks will decide their own action or that Turkey will be neutral.
But we will have to make the provision that if Turkey does enter the war our
pact loses its force. We will never come out against Germany . . . Do we
want to conclude a pact with the Turks? We do. Do we want friendship with
Turkey? Yes. But in the circumstances I have spoken about the pact
[between the Soviet Union and Turkey] would be transformed into a piece
of paper. Who is to be blamed for the fact that things have turned out
unfavourably for the conclusion of such a pact with Turkey? Nobody. It is
circumstances, the development of events. The action in Poland played its
role. The English and French, especially the English, did not want an agreement with us, considering that they could manage without us. If we are
guilty of anything it is of not having foreseen all this.46
Despite Stalins plea the Turks went ahead and signed a mutual assistance
agreement with Britain and France on 19 October 1939. The treaty precluded
Turkeys involvement in a war with the Soviet Union, but this was small
compensation for the failure of Stalins grand vision of a Soviet-led neutral
Balkan bloc of Turkey, Bulgaria and the USSR.
Stalin was obviously trying to scare the Turks with his talk of unforeseen
circumstances and unintended consequences and he made plain his primary
commitment to the partnership with Germany. But his statement also
expressed Stalins sense that these early weeks of the European war were a
fluid, fast-moving scene and that it was difficult to anticipate the final alignment of states in the conflict. Stalin was being more prescient than he might
have imagined. Within a few weeks events in the Baltic had taken a turn that
brought the Soviet Union to the brink of war with Britain and France.
The Winter War
The SovietFinnish war of 19391940 was Stalins first real test as a military
leader since the Russian civil war. During the Spanish civil war Stalin had
supervised Moscows aid to the Republican side of the conflict, including the
dispatch of some 2,000 Soviet volunteers to fight Francos fascist forces.
Throughout the 1930s there had been intermittent military clashes with Japan
along the Sino-Soviet border, sometimes of divisional strength. But neither
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case bore any comparison with the full-scale invasion of a neighbouring
sovereign state. Poland was a more relevant example of Soviet military action
but by the time of the Red Army invasion the Polish armed forces had been
well and truly smashed by the Germans.
The Winter War with Finland was not of Stalins choosing. He would have
preferred a negotiated solution to the border and security issues that sparked
the conflict. But when political negotiations with Finland broke down he had
no hesitation in authorising military action.
The road to war began on 5 October 1939 when the Soviet Union invited
Finland to send a delegation to Moscow to discuss a SovietFinnish mutual
assistance pact. In Moscow the Finnish delegation was presented not only
with demands for a pact but with demands for the concession or leasing of
a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland for the construction of Soviet
naval fortifications. Most importantly, Stalin wanted to shift north-westwards the SovietFinnish border, which was only 20 miles from Leningrad.
In return the Finns were offered territorial compensation in Soviet Karelia in
the far north.
In preparation for the negotiations the Soviet Foreign Ministry formulated
a series of maximum and minimum demands. Among the maximum Soviet
demands were military bases in Finland, ceding of the nickel-mining area of
Petsamo in northern Finland, and veto rights over Finnish military fortifications in the Baltic.47 The Finnish delegation, however, was prepared to make
few, if any, concessions and the Soviets retreated to their minimum territorial
demands, even dropping the proposed SovietFinnish mutual assistance pact.
Negotiations dragged on throughout October but achieved no positive result.48
Indeed, in mid-October the Finns mobilised their army and, anticipating a
war, arrested a number of Finnish communists.49
It seems that Stalin decided quite early on that war with Finland might be
necessary. On 29 October the Leningrad military district presented the
defence commissar Kliment Voroshilov with a plan of operation for the
destruction of the land and naval forces of the Finnish army.50 In midNovember 1939 Stalin reportedly told his Military Council that we shall have
to fight Finland.51 Around the same time Voroshilov ordered that the concentration of Soviet forces in the Leningrad area be completed by 20 November
and local commanders prepared for action by 21 November.52 A casus belli was
found in border clashes between Soviet and Finnish forces and on 28
November Molotov renounced the 1932 non-aggression pact between the
USSR and Finland. The following day the Soviet Union severed diplomatic
relations with Finland.53 That night Stalin began an eight-hour meeting in his
Kremlin office with his closest associates, including Voroshilov.54 The Red
Army attacked Finland the next day.
UNHOLY ALLIANCE: STALINS PACT WITH HITLER 47
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According to Khrushchev the Soviet leadership did not expect a drawn-out
conflict with Finland and believed the Finns would back down in the face of
the threat of military action or, at worst, would surrender when the first shots
were fired.55 Moscows belief in an easy war and a quick victory was evident in
its political preparations for the conflict. On 30 November Molotov told the
German ambassador that the formation of another government in Finland
was not excluded one friendly to the Soviet Union and to Germany. This
government would not be Soviet but a democratic republic. Nobody will set
up soviets there, but we hope that it will be a government that we can reach
agreement with on safeguarding the security of Leningrad.56 What Molotov
meant was revealed the next day when the Soviets set up their own puppet
government the Peoples Government of Finland headed by the Finnish
communist Otto Kuusinen. On 2 December the Kuusinen government
solemnly concluded a mutual assistance pact with the USSR that conceded
Stalins main territorial and security demands in exchange for 70,000 square
kilometres of Soviet Karelia.57
To an extent the creation of the Kuusinen government was merely an ideological fig leaf for the Soviet attack on Finland. But setting up that government
also expressed the Soviets genuine belief or hope that the Red Armys
invasion would be hailed by a popular uprising against the bourgeois Helsinki
government.58 Stalins spin on the ideological dimension of the Finnish
conflict was expressed in a remark to Dimitrov in January 1940 in which he
linked the Soviet war with Finland to the worldwide political struggle for
socialism: World revolution as a single act is nonsense. It transpires at
different times in different countries. The Red Armys activities are also a
matter of world revolution.59 However, Stalin was blinkered by his ideology,
not blinded by it. As soon as it became clear that Finnish political developments were not moving according to the ideological blueprint the Kuusinen
government disappeared from view. Indeed, in the same conversation with
Dimitrov Stalin had indicated a retreat to a much more limited ambition for
Finland: we have no desire for Finlands territory. But Finland should be a
state that is friendly to the Soviet Union.60
On the military front the SovietFinnish war had two main phases (see Map
2 on p. 49). In December 1939 the Red Army launched a broad-front attack on
Finnish defences, employing five separate armies with about 1.2 million men
between them, supported by 1,500 tanks and 3,000 aircraft. The main attack
was against the Mannerheim Line on the Karelian isthmus. Named after the
Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish armed forces this was a belt of defences,
natural and constructed, that ran the width of the isthmus. The main assault
on the Mannerheim Line was by the 7th Army under the leadership of K.A.
Meretskov, who commanded the Leningrad military district. The Soviet aim
48 STALINS WARS
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UNHOLY ALLIANCE: STALINS PACT WITH HITLER 49
Kirur
Salla Kemijrvi
Kemi Lule
Oulu
Vaasa
Suomussalmi
Kuhmo
Kuopio
Lieska
Ilomantsi
Tolvajrvi
Kollaa
Kitela
Pitkaranta
Salmi
Taipale
Mikkeli
Tampere
Lahti
Turku
Helsinki
Hanko
To land Is.
Suojrvi
Mainila
Leningrad
Viipuri
Koivisto
Pori
II AC
III AC
7 ARMY
13 ARMY
155 DIV
139 DIV
75 DIV
56 DIV
18 DIV
168 DIV
122 DIV
163 DIV
44 DIV
54 DIV
9 ARMY
S W E D E N
R U S S I A
F I N L A N D
Lake
Ladoga
Gulf of Finland
WHITE
SEA
Gulf of
Bothnia
Saimaa
Lake Vuoski
MANNERHEIM
LINE
Karelian Isthmus
IV AC
Murmansk
Railway
SOVIET KARELIA
AC Army Corps
8 ARMY
The SovietFinnish War, 19391940
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was to breach the Mannerheim Line, occupy the town of Viipuri and then
turn west towards the Finnish capital, Helsinki. The initial Soviet attacks
failed. Defences were formidable, the Finns fought well, the weather was bad
and the Soviet offensives were clumsy and badly co-ordinated. In January
1940 the Soviets regrouped, reinforced their armies and Stalin appointed S.K.
Timoshenko to overall command of the Soviet assault on Finland. In midFebruary Timoshenko launched a well-prepared offensive, again concentrated
against the Mannerheim Line. This time the Soviets succeeded in breaching
Finnish defences and in driving back Mannerheims men along a broad
front.61
By March 1940 the Red Army was in a position to collapse the remnants of
the Finnish defence, advance on Helsinki and then overrun and occupy the
whole country. Stalin chose, however, to respond to Finnish peace feelers and
to negotiate and conclude a treaty ending the war. Under the terms of the
treaty, signed on 12 March 1940,62 the Finns conceded all the main Soviet
territorial demands but retained their independence and sovereignty and,
unlike the other Baltic States, were spared a mutual assistance pact and Soviet
military bases on their mainland territory. Stalins relative moderation
towards Finland was a response to the wider ramifications of the conflict
which, by spring 1940, threatened to drag the Soviet Union into full-scale
involvement in the European war.
The international response to the Soviet attack on Finland had been
extremely hostile. As Ivan Maiskii, the Soviet ambassador in London noted in
his memoirs, he had lived through quite a number of anti-Soviet storms, but
that which followed 30 November 1939 broke all records.63 In France the
atmosphere was even more tense and Ya. Z. Suritz, the Soviet ambassador in
Paris, reported to Moscow on 23 December that our embassy has become a
plague zone and is surrounded by a swarm of plainclothes cops.64 In Italy the
virulence of popular demonstrations against the USSR led Moscow to withdraw its ambassador from Rome in protest. In the United States a moral
embargo on the export of war-related goods to the Soviet Union was
announced by the government. On 14 December the League of Nations
expelled the USSR from its ranks the first and last time in its history the
organisation took such action against an aggressor state (Germany, Italy and
Japan had all left of their own accord). By this time the League had little
authority and respect left, but the Soviet Union had been the great champion
of collective security against aggression in the 1930s, and the expulsion
rankled in Moscow.
Stalin articulated his own irritation at this turn of events in a conversation
with the head of the Estonian armed forces in December 1939:
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In the world press there is unfolding an orchestrated campaign of attack
against the USSR, which is accused of carrying out an imperialist expansion
policy, especially in connection with the FinnishSoviet conflict.
Widespread rumours allege that the Soviet Union in its negotiations with
Britain and France required for itself the right to seize Finland, Estonia and
Latvia . . . It is typical that the English and French, who are spreading and
fabricating rumours about us, have decided not to publish confirmation of
these rumours in official documents. The reason is very simple . . . stenographic records show that the French and English had no serious desire to
achieve a fair and honest agreement with us, which could have averted war.
All the time they only dodged.65
The political fallout from the Winter War was bad enough, but far more
worrying were reports reaching Moscow of British and French preparations to
send an allied expeditionary force to aid the Finns. There were even reports in
early 1940 of allied plans to bomb the Baku oilfields to cut off Soviet oil
supplies to Germany.66
The Anglo-French aim in relation to Finland was to transport volunteers
to the war zone via Norway and Sweden. During the course of this operation
the Anglo-French force would seize control of Narvik in Norway and also
occupy the iron ore fields of northern Sweden a vital resource of the
German war economy. Churchill, who was interested in any action that
expanded the war against Germany, was an enthusiastic supporter of the
expedition and while he minimised the danger of a SovietWestern war over
Finland, he was evidently prepared to risk one.67 Churchills judgement is a
difficult one to justify in retrospect. The allied expedition would have entailed
significant violations of Norwegian and Swedish neutrality. The Germans
would have taken action to protect their iron ore supplies from Sweden, while
the Swedes told the Finns that they would defend their neutrality and resist an
allied expedition by force. Stalin did not want a conflict with Britain and
France but, faced with allied forces on his doorstep and the outbreak of a
major war in Scandinavia, he might well have felt he had no choice but to line
up militarily alongside Hitler.
In his English History, 19141945 A.J.P. Taylor concluded of the planned
expedition to Finland that the British and French governments had taken
leave of their senses,68 a sentiment that Stalin might well have shared, except
that he had another theory: Anglo-French manoeuvres in relation to Finland
fed his favourite fear that Britain and France were trying to turn the European
war against the Soviet Union. One possible scenario was sketched by Maiskii
in a dispatch to Moscow on 23 December 1939. In British ruling circles there
were two views of Anglo-Soviet relations, said Maiskii. One view supported
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the maintenance of Soviet neutrality in the war, in the hope that this
neutrality could become friendlier and might even develop into an alliance
against Germany. The other view was that Soviet neutrality was not working
to the British and French advantage and that the Finnish events presented an
opportunity to precipitate the entry of the USSR into the war on Germanys
side. Soviet participation in the war would exhaust the USSR and there was
the possibility of the United States siding with the western allies in such
circumstances. Moreover, in the context of a war-exhausted Soviet Union it
might be possible to form an international capitalist coalition, including even
Germany, to fight Bolshevik Russia.69
These fears and suspicions were given a public airing by Molotov on
29 March 1940, in a speech to the Supreme Soviet devoted to a blistering
attack on Britain and France. When war began in Finland, said Molotov, the
British and French imperialists were prepared to make it the starting point of
war against the USSR in which not only Finland itself but also the
Scandinavian countries Sweden and Norway were to be used. London and
Paris, Molotov argued, viewed Finland as a place darmes for a possible attack
on the Soviet Union. Pointing to the aid Finland had received from foreign
states, Molotov stated that what was going on in Finland was not merely our
collision with Finnish troops. It was a collision with the combined forces of a
number of imperialist states. Molotov also presented an overview of the
Winter War from the Soviet point of view. As might be expected, he lauded the
Red Army for breaching the Mannerheim Line and extolled the virtues of the
peace treaty which had thwarted imperialist designs, safeguarded Soviet
security, and maintained Finland as an independent state. Soviet casualties in
the war were stated by Molotov to be 48,745 dead and 158,863 wounded,
while Finnish fatalities were 60,000 and another 250,000 wounded.70
Notwithstanding Molotovs triumphalist gloss on the war, behind closed
doors the Soviets were undertaking a thorough and searching examination of
the results and lessons of the conflict. This process began with a lively discussion of a critical report by Voroshilov on the conduct of the war held at a
plenum of the central committee of the communist party on 28 March.71 This
was followed on 1417 April by a special conference of the High Command
on the experience of military operations against Finland. Stalin was present
throughout the proceedings, intervened frequently in the discussion, and
closed the conference with his own summation on the lessons of the war.
Stalin began his concluding remarks by defending the decision to go to war,
pointing out that the security of Leningrad was vital: it was the countrys
second city and the centre for 3035 per cent of the states defence industry.
On the timing of the war Stalin argued that rather than wait a few months
until preparations for invasion were more complete it had been better to take
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advantage of the propitious circumstances of the European war. To wait a
couple of months might have meant a delay of 20 years before Leningrads
position could be secured, if Britain, France and Germany suddenly made it
up with each other. On the duration of the war Stalin revealed that the Soviet
leadership thought it might have lasted until August or September 1940 and
pointed to a number of past Russian campaigns in Finland that went on for
years. However, the Soviet military had not taken the war with Finland seriously enough, expecting it to be a walkover like the invasion of eastern Poland.
Furthermore, the cult of the Russian civil war was still prevalent in the armed
forces, said Stalin, but the civil war was not a contemporary war because it
was a war without artillery, planes, tanks and rockets. Stalin criticised the
Finnish army for its defensive orientation, arguing that a passive army was not
a real, contemporary army, which had to be an army of attack. Stalin ended by
pointing out that the Soviet Union had defeated not only the Finns but their
European teachers: We beat not only the Finns that was not such a big
task. The main thing about our victory was that we beat the techniques,
tactics and strategies of the leading states of Europe. This was the main thing
about our victory.72
After the conference a commission was established to further distil the
experience of the Finnish war.73 The work of this commission and its
subsidiary bodies contributed to a series of reforms of the Soviet armed forces
over the next few months. These reforms were presided over by Timoshenko,
who had replaced Voroshilov as defence commissar in May. That same month
a government decree restored the titles of general and admiral at the higher
levels of command and in June announced the promotion to these ranks of
hundreds of experienced, combat-blooded officers. Among those promoted
were Timoshenko, who became a marshal, and Meretskov, who was made a
general of the army. Around the same time Stalin agreed to recall thousands
of purged and disgraced officers to the armed forces. Among the returnees
was Colonel K.K. Rokossovskii, promoted to general in June 1940 and
destined to become a famed marshal of the Soviet Union during the Great
Patriotic War. On 16 May 1940 the regulations governing the training of
Soviet troops were revised to provide for more realistic preparation for
combat. In July the armed forces disciplinary code was beefed up and in
August unitary command was restored at the tactical level. This meant that
field officers no longer had to agree their command decisions with a political
commissar. At the same time steps were taken to improve propaganda work in
the armed forces and to recruit more officers and men into the communist
party.74
The Winter War is often depicted as a great failure of Stalins leadership: it
was a costly campaign that greatly embarrassed the Red Army and encouraged
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Hitler to think that an invasion of Russia would be relatively easy; it isolated
the Soviet Union diplomatically and brought it to the brink of war with
Britain and France; it made an enemy of the Finns, who joined in the German
attack on the USSR in June 1941. But that was not how the war and its
outcome were seen by Stalin. The war had been won, after all, and it only took
three months, despite difficult terrain and weather conditions. The Soviet
Union had achieved its territorial goals and the timely conclusion of the war
had thwarted Anglo-French imperialist intrigues. The war had exposed some
flaws in the armed forces training, equipment, structure and doctrine but that
was a good thing, as long as steps were taken to correct them. If anything, the
Finnish war gave Stalin confidence that the Soviet Union was strong enough
to deal with the unpredictable ramifications of the wider European war.
The Finnish war was highly revealing of Stalins style of supreme command.
His decision to abandon the ideological project of a peoples democratic
Finland and his willingness to bring the war to a rapid conclusion demonstrated his ability to step away from dogmatic positions when reality
demanded. Similarly, Stalins removal of his long-time crony Voroshilov as
defence commissar, the rehabilitation of the purged officers, and the promotion to high rank of young, talented military commanders displayed his flexibility in crucial matters of personnel. The internal post-mortem on the war
showed that the assumption of Stalins infallibility a pervasive feature of all
Soviet decision-making did not preclude full and frank discussion of a range
of issues or the correction of mistakes and the implementation of radical
reforms. However, Stalins interventionist style and the deference paid to his
opinions during the various discussions meant that the Soviet command
structure was highly dependent on Stalin making the right decisions at the
strategic level. Fortunately, Stalins Bolshevik futuristic belief in the virtues of
modernity and technology happened to serve him well in many military
matters. His oft-expressed belief in the virtues of modern military technology
meant that he grasped quickly the significance of the German armoured
blitzkrieg conquest of France in MayJune 1940. In July 1940 Stalin reversed
an earlier decision to abolish the Red Armys tank corps and authorised the
formation of a number of large and heavily armoured mechanised corps.75
Around the same time decisions were taken on the procurement and production of the models of many of the tanks, guns and planes that were to be the
mainstay of the Soviet armed forces during the Great Patriotic War.76 In a
meeting with his senior commanders in January 1941 Stalin defended mechanisation against critics who thought that horses were more reliable than
tanks and that the latter were, anyway, highly vulnerable to artillery. Stalin
insisted that modern warfare will be a war of engines. Engines on land,
engines in the air, engines on water and under water. Under these conditions,
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the winning side will be the one with the greater number and the more
powerful engines.77
The Fall of France and the End of the NaziSoviet Pact
Until the fall of France in June 1940 the NaziSoviet pact served Stalin well.
The deal with Hitler had kept the USSR out of the war, averted the nightmare of a SovietGerman clash on the Eastern Front while Britain and
France stood on the sidelines, and provided more time to prepare the
countrys defences. Political and territorial gains had been made in Poland
and the Baltic States. The revival of the Rapallo relationship with Germany
offered many economic benefits and Hitlers neutrality during the Winter
War had been very welcome. It was by no means a one-sided balance sheet;
Hitler made many gains, too, notably the freedom to attack Poland without
fear of having to fight a major war on two fronts. The stunning success of
the German blitzkrieg in Western Europe upset that balance. When France
surrendered on 22 June 1940 Hitler dominated continental Europe. Britain
under the new Churchill leadership seemed determined to fight on but its
capacity to resist either Hitler or the siren voices of appeasement calling for
a peace deal seemed doubtful. Stalin now faced the prospect of an end to the
European war and a peace settlement whose terms would be dictated by the
victorious Germans.
Stalins response to this new situation was a series of initiatives to optimise
his strategic gains while the war continued. In mid-June 1940 Stalin moved to
strengthen his control of the Baltic States. Fearing Baltic nationalist intrigues
and German penetration of the region, Stalin demanded the establishment of
pro-Soviet governments in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and Red Army occupation of all three countries. He made renewed efforts to build a Soviet sphere
of influence in the Balkans. Responding to reports of Italys imminent entry
into the war, Molotov made overtures to Rome about a spheres of influence
deal in the Balkans with Italy and Germany. On 10 June Italy did enter the war
and Soviet soundings increased in intensity, culminating in a proposal on 25
June that Italy recognise the USSRs predominance in the Black Sea area in
return for Soviet recognition of Italian hegemony in the Mediterranean.78 On
26 June Molotov presented the Romanian ambassador with an ultimatum
demanding the return of Bessarabia (now part of modern-day Moldova). He
also demanded that the Romanians cede North Bukovina, a territory with a
Ukrainian population but which the Soviet Union had never claimed before.
Two days later, the Romanians caved in to the Soviet demands. The reacquisition of Bessarabia added depth to the defence of the Soviet navys Black Sea
bases in Odessa and Sebastopol, while the occupation of North Bukovina
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secured land links between Bessarabia and the Ukraine. The Soviet border
with Romania now ran along the north-eastern bank of the mouth of the
Danube and gave Moscow a claim to participate in the regime controlling
traffic on the river.79 Like Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine, Bessarabia
and North Bukovina were rapidly incorporated as territories of the USSR. A
similar process of incorporation began in the Baltic States in July 1940. While
opposed by the majority of the population, an urban-based, activist left-wing
minority welcomed the Red Army occupation and demanded Soviet power
and incorporation into the USSR. This radical mood among sections of the
population prompted Moscow to rethink its opposition to sovietisation and
by mid-August rigged elections had been held to new peoples assemblies in
the three Baltic States, which then duly voted for the incorporation into the
USSR.80
Stalin saw these moves as defensive and as preliminaries to a peace conference at which the next phase of the SovietGerman alliance would be negotiated. To Hitler, however, Stalins actions appeared provocative and
threatening. Stalins takeover of the Baltic States was interpreted as part of a
Soviet military build-up along Germanys eastern borders. Moscows attempt
to use Italy to broker a spheres of influence deal in the Balkans was seen as
expansionist. The Red Armys move into Bessarabia and Bukovina imperilled
German oil supplies from Romanias Ploesti fields.
Hitlers suspicions were further aroused by the appointment of a new
British ambassador to the Soviet Union. Stafford Cripps arrived in Moscow
in mid-June and brought with him a personal message from Churchill to
Stalin. Churchill warned Stalin of the threat represented by German hegemony in Europe and suggested discussions about the problems it posed to
Soviet and British interests. Stalin met Cripps on 1 July and rebuffed the
British overture. To Crippss point that Britain was fighting to maintain the
balance of power in Europe, Stalin replied that he wanted to change the old
equilibrium in Europe, which worked against the USSR. As negotiations
showed, the British and French did not want to meet us halfway on this
question. This served to bring about a rapprochement between Germany
and the USSR . . . If the issue is the restoration of equilibrium, including the
establishment of a balance in relation to the USSR, then we have to say that
we cannot agree with this. He further told Cripps that it was premature to
speak of German domination of Europe. The defeat of France did not signify
such domination. Such domination over Europe by Germany would require
German domination of the seas, and that was hardly possible . . . In all his
meetings with German representatives he had noted no desire for German
domination of the world . . . he did not deny that among the nationalsocialists there were those who spoke of German domination of the world.
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But . . . in Germany there are intelligent people who understand that
Germany does not have the power to dominate the world.81 Two weeks after
this meeting Molotov provided Count Friedrich von der Schulenburg, the
German ambassador, with a sanitised but not inaccurate report of the
exchanges between Stalin and Cripps.82 Stalins message to Hitler was clear:
he wanted to continue the NaziSoviet pact. That message was reinforced by
Molotov in his speech to the Supreme Soviet on 1 August 1940 when he
derided press speculation that the Soviet Union found Germanys new power
position in Europe disagreeable and intimidating. On the contrary, said
Molotov, the NaziSoviet pact was now more important than ever and was
based not on fortuitous considerations of a transient nature, but on the
fundamental political interests of both countries.83
Hitler believed, however, that something was brewing in Anglo-Soviet
relations and that Britain was taking heart from the USSRs newfound role
as a counterbalance to German power in Europe. On 31 July Hitler told his
High Command:
Englands hope lies in Russia and America . . . Russia this is the factor
which England is relying on most. Something must have happened in
London . . . But if Russia suffered defeat the last hope of England would be
gone. Domination of Europe and the Balkans would then be Germanys.
Decision: in this conflict Russia must be finished off. Spring 1941. The
sooner Russia is destroyed the better. The operation will only have meaning
if we destroy this state in one blow.84
As the quotation shows, Hitlers preoccupation at this time was with Britain,
not Russia, and he could not understand why the British had rejected yet
another offer of peace negotiations. While German military planners began
mapping out an invasion of Russia, Hitler gave the go-ahead to Ribbentrop to
try to involve the Soviet Union in a continental bloc of Germany, Italy, Japan
and the USSR that would range itself against the United States as well as
Britain.85 It is difficult to judge how seriously Hitler took this pet project of
the anti-British Ribbentrop, but he seems to have been prepared to give it a
chance. Certainly, it was only after the collapse of the proposed continental
bloc that Hitler issued a formal directive to prepare for an invasion of Russia.
Ribbentrops continental bloc required Russia to join the three-power pact
signed by Germany, Italy and Japan on 27 September 1940. Under the terms
of this tripartite pact the signatories pledged to assist one another should they
be attacked by a power then not involved in the war. In addition, Ribbentrop
envisaged the signing of a secret protocol in which each state would specify
the direction of their future expansion.86
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On 13 October Ribbentrop wrote to Stalin, inviting Molotov to Berlin for
negotiations:
I should like to state that in the opinion of the Fhrer . . . it appears to be
the historic mission of the four powers the Soviet Union, Italy, Japan
and Germany to adopt a long-range policy and to direct the future
development of their peoples into the right channels by delimitation of
their interests on a world-wide scale.87
Stalin replied positively on 22 October: I agree with you that a further
improvement in the relations between our two countries is entirely possible
on the permanent basis of a long-range delimitation of mutual interests.88
But behind the friendly tones the tension in SovietGerman relations was
rising. On 31 August Germany and Italy had arbitrated a long-standing
HungarianRomanian territorial dispute, awarding Transylvania to Hungary
but guaranteeing the territorial integrity of what was left of Romania pending
the settlement of some Bulgarian claims. Moscow was furious that it was not
consulted about this decision, which meant that Romania was now under
German domination, and in September a German military mission arrived in
the country. Later that month German military units appeared on Finnish soil
as well. Signs were also accumulating that Italy intended to attack Greece
(which it did on 28 October), thus spreading the European war to the Balkans.
In a directive to Molotov on 9 November 1940 Stalin set out his aims for the
negotiations with Ribbentrop and Hitler. Molotov was instructed to probe
German intentions and find out how the Soviet Union figured in Hitlers
plans. Soviet interests in relation to a whole series of international questions
were to be asserted, above all in relation to the incorporation of Bulgaria into
the USSRs sphere of interest, which Stalin designated the most important
question of the negotiations. 89
Stalins instructions to Molotov indicate that he was prepared to negotiate
a wide-ranging deal with the Germans and still thought a partnership with
Hitler was possible. Molotov arrived in Berlin on 12 November and attempted
to fulfil Stalins brief. But he found himself faced not with negotiations about
a new spheres of influence deal but with the offer of a junior partnership in a
German-led global alliance, in which Soviet expansion was to be directed
towards India and a clash with Britain. Stalin had no interest in such an
arrangement and an impasse was quickly reached. Molotov persisted in trying
to tie the Germans down to specific agreements on immediate issues but to no
avail. The log jam in the negotiations was summed up by this sharp exchange
between Molotov and Ribbentrop at their last meeting on 14 November:
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The questions which interested the Soviet Union in the Near East,
concerned not only Turkey, but Bulgaria . . . the fate of Rumania and
Hungary was also of interest to the Soviet Union and could not be immaterial to her under any circumstances. It would further interest the Soviet
Government to learn what the Axis contemplated with regard to Yugoslavia
. . . Greece . . . and Poland . . . (Molotov)
He could only repeat again and again that the decisive question was
whether the Soviet Union was prepared and in a position to co-operate
with us in the great liquidation of the British Empire. On all other questions we would easily reach an understanding if we could succeed in
extending our relations and in defining the spheres of influence. Where the
spheres of influence lay had been repeatedly stated. (Ribbentrop)90
According to Yakov Chadaev, a senior administrator in the Council of
Peoples Commissars, when Molotov gave his report to the Politburo on the
discussions in Berlin, Stalin was convinced that Hitler was intent on war.91
However, the formal Soviet response to the Berlin negotiations suggests that
Stalin had not given up completely on a deal with Hitler. On 25 November
Molotov presented Schulenburg with a memorandum setting out the
conditions of Soviet adherence to the tripartite pact: (1) the withdrawal of
German troops from Finland; (2) a SovietBulgarian mutual assistance
pact, including the establishment of Soviet military bases; (3) recognition
of Soviet aspirations in the direction of the Persian Gulf; (4) an agreement
with Turkey providing for Soviet military bases on the Black Sea Straits;
and (5) Japanese renunciation of rights to coal and oil concessions in
North Sakhalin.92 As John Erickson commented: Stalins response . . . was
in every sense a test of Hitlers intentions: the Soviet terms for joining a
four power pact amounted to giving Hitler full freedom in the west only at
the price of foreclosing his option to wage a successful war against the
Soviet Union.93 At the same meeting Molotov informed Schulenburg that
the new Soviet ambassador to Germany, Vladimir G. Dekanozov, was
leaving for Berlin the next day. Dekanozov met Hitler on 19 December. The
German dictator told him that the negotiations that had begun with
Molotov would be continued in an official fashion, but refused to be drawn
any further.94 In reality, Hitler had already decided on war. The previous
day, 18 December 1940, Hitler had issued his directive on Operation
Barbarossa the code name for the German invasion of Russia.95
In December 1939 Stalin had replied to Ribbentrops congratulatory
telegram on his 60th birthday with a dramatic public affirmation of the
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durability of the SovietGerman alliance: the friendship between the
peoples of the Soviet Union and Germany, cemented by blood, has every
reason to be solid and lasting.96 A year later, however, the two states had
begun the countdown to war.
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