The Nazi-Soviet Pact

I.  Munich Conference

At Munich in September 1938 Prime Minister Chamberlain of Britain and Premier Daladier of France consented to the partition of Czechoslovakia.  They also agreed to Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland.  They gave the Czechoslovaks nothing but a solemn guarantee of the integrity of the remnant.  Prague felt obliged to acquiesce.  The Czechs feared that accepting only Soviet aid would convert their country into another Spain, where a civil war had been raging throughout the 1930s.  They dared not fight alone if the British and French washed their hands of them, which they did. 

Chamberlain arrived home with the unfortunate phrase, "peace in our time," and the conviction that appeasement had succeeded.  Whatever his conviction, it was deadly true that Britain and France were in no military position either to fight or to bargain effectively.  Many in the West were ashamed of Munich.  Many Czechoslovaks never forgot the experience of being sacrificed to their enemies by their friends.  Hitler, who had received as a gift what he had been prepared to fight for, was jubilant. 

The deception of Munich was soon exposed.  In October and November the helpless Prague government had to cede Teschen as the result of a Polish ultimatum, yield a strip of territory holding a million people to Hungary, and grant full autonomy to Slovakia and Ruthenia, now renamed ''Carpatho-Ukraine.'' For a time Ruthenia was the scene of much real or alleged pan-Ukrainian agitation under Berlin sponsorship, which seemed to portend grave Nazi-Soviet tension. 

Nevertheless, Stalin, in his report to the 18th Party Congress on March 10, 1939, brushed aside Western forecasts of trouble over the Ukraine as designed "to provoke a conflict with Germany without any visible grounds.'' Declaring that the "non-aggressive" states were ''unquestionably stronger than the Fascist states,'' he argued that their failure to resist Hitler was motivated not by weakness, but by desire to embroil the Nazis with the Soviets.  He warned against "war-mongers who are accustomed to have others pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them.''

He then proclaimed the Soviet Union's intention to stay out of a "new imperialist war,'' which was ''already in its second year, as he saw it.  " The Soviet Political Dictionary of 1940 described Stalin's report as raising "the question of the good neighborly relations between the Soviet Union and Germany.  This declaration of Comrade Stalin," the article added, ''was properly understood in Germany."

It is now known not only that this assertion was true but also that Stalin's declaration fell on already receptive Nazi ears.  Until the end of 1938 Hitler hoped for a compact with Poland at Soviet expense, in which he would receive Danzig and the Corridor in exchange for supporting Polish gains in the Ukraine.  When Poland did not respond, he was turning to the idea of a partition of Poland in concert with the Soviet Union. 

II.  Occupation of Czechoslovakia

On March 15 Hitler sent German troops to occupy Bohemia and Moravia, set up Slovakia as an "independent'' state, but sacrificed his tiny Ukrainian ''Piedmont'' by giving it to Hungary.  Thus he made clear to the West that his ambitions exceeded the boundaries of German-speaking lands.  To the Soviet Union he made clear that his much-bruited ''designs on the Ukraine" might at least temporarily be laid aside for purposes of diplomatic discussion. 

Much British opinion was now clamoring for an end to ''appeasement,'' as well as an approach to the Soviet Union.  After the occupation of the core of Czechoslovakia, even Chamberlain lost his illusions about Hitler.  He asked the Soviets what their attitude would be if Rumania were attacked and thus launched a series of Anglo-Soviet exchanges which continued into the summer.  On March 31 he guaranteed Poland against attack.  After Mussolini seized Albania, on April 13, he guaranteed both Greece and Rumania.  Meanwhile, Hitler had extorted Memel from Lithuania by simple ultimatum.  But more important was the fact that he now began to demand Danzig and the Polish Corridor from Poland openly. 

In September 1938 the Soviet Union had been isolated and ignored.  Beginning in March 1939 she was ardently courted as a likely ally by both the Western powers and the Nazis.  On May 3 Stalin replaced Litvinov with Molotov as foreign commissar.  Thus departed the man publicly identified with the policy of ''collective security.''

Nevertheless, the British and French pushed on with negotiations for a pact to halt further Nazi aggression.  In the meantime discussions about a Nazi-Soviet trade pact were proceeding.  On June 15 the Soviet chargé d'affaires in Berlin passed on a message to the Nazis that the Soviet Union was trying to decide whether to conclude the pact with the British and French, drag out negotiations further, or undertake a rapprochement with Germany.  He added that ''this last possibility, with which ideological considerations would not have to become involved, was closest to Soviet desires."

Thenceforth the Soviet Union was negotiating secretly with the Nazis and openly with the British and French at the same time.  If it had chosen to take it, the West had ample warning of what was in store.  Molotov continually raised the Soviet price for a pact, but the plainest danger signal was an article by Zhdanov in Pravda on June 29, in which he said he could not agree with his friends who thought Britain and France were sincere in the negotiations which were taking place.  The British and French did not exhibit any hastiness, at any rate.  When they sent a military mission to Moscow in August, it went by leisurely boat. 

III.  Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact

However, Hitler was in a great hurry.  An attack on Poland was scheduled for late August.  By the end of July the Nazis realized that they must reach agreement with the Soviets very soon if these plans were to be safely implemented.  It seems fairly clear that on the night of August 3 Hitler agreed to pay the Soviet price for a pact.  Mussolini was left in the dark about his plans.  The Italians learned only on August 11 that Hitler was bent on war, and the news threw them into a panic. 

On the night of August 19 the Nazi-Soviet trade treaty was signed.  The next day Hitler telegraphed Stalin with a request that he see Ribbentrop on August 22 or 23.  When he received Stalin's assent, Hitler pounded on the wall with his fists and shouted, "I have the world in my pocket!" On the night of August 23, 1939, the pact was concluded.  It contained the provision which only totalitarians could insert, that it was to take effect as soon as it was signed. 

The public text of the Nazi-Soviet Pact was simply an agreement of nonaggression and neutrality, referring as a precedent to the German-Soviet neutrality pact of 1926 (Berlin Treaty).  The real agreement was in a secret protocol which in effect partitioned not only Poland (along the line of the Vistula), but much of Eastern Europe.  To the Soviets were allotted Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Bessarabia; to the Nazis, everything to the West of these regions, including Lithuania.  Each of the two signatories was to ask the other no questions about the disposition of its own ''sphere of interest." This nonaggression pact, coupled with the trade treaty and arrangements for large-scale exchange of raw materials and armaments, amounted to an alliance. 

IV.  Invasion of Poland

When confronted with the public text of the pact, the Western emissaries could only creep home quietly.  For the moment the Soviet obtained immunity from attack by Hitler, the opportunity for considerable expansion, and noninvolvement in the war which opened with Hitler's Blitzkrieg against Poland on September 1.  Britain and France entered this war on September 3.  On September 17 the Soviets announced they were entering eastern Poland. 

Actually the line of the secret protocol was now shifted by mutual consent.  The Nazi-Soviet boundary in Poland became the Bug River instead of the Vistula River.  In exchange the Soviets were allotted Lithuania.  The Polish state disappeared.  The Soviet Union handed Vilna to Lithuania and acquired an area whose western boundaries were roughly the same as the Russian frontier of 1795, plus eastern Galicia. 

For the moment World War II had no front, except for what was derisively called the Sitzkrieg or ''phoney war'' in the West, where neither the French nor the Germans attempted any serious offensive.  In September and October the Soviet Union forced the three Baltic states to sign mutual assistance pacts, but temporarily left them independent. 

The foreign reaction to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the annihilation of Poland was one of shock and rage.  The Communist parties abroad, which had no official warning of the Soviet switch, reacted with confusion.  On September 6 Thorez and other French Communists joined their regiments, calling for aid to Poland, only to desert at Moscow's behest a few days later.  Harry Pollitt, the British Communist leader, wrote a pamphlet unfortunately titled "How to Win the War," and after two weeks both he and his pamphlet had to drop from public gaze...