Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact negotiations
[11] In 1934, Hitler spoke of an inescapable battle against "pan-Slav ideals", the victory in which would lead to "permanent mastery of the world", but he stated that they would "walk part of the road with the Russians, if that will help us".
[20] In November 1936, Soviet-German relations sank further after Germany and Japan entered the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was purportedly directed against the Communist International, but it contained a secret agreement that either side would remain neutral if the other became involved with the Soviet Union.
[36][37] That same day, Stalin, in a speech to the Eighteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party, characterised the Western nations' actions regarding Hitler as moving away from "collective security" and toward "nonintervention" with the goal being to direct fascist aggression anywhere but against themselves.
[39] In the aftermath of the Great Terror, the maxim ugadat, ugodit, utselet ("sniff out, suck up, survive") dominated the Soviet regime, and the NKVD tended to provide Stalin with intelligence that fitted his preconceptions, which thus reinforced what he already believed.
[41] In his reports to Moscow, Scheliha made it clear that the Auswärtiges Amt had attempted to reduce Poland to a German satellite state during the winter of 1938-1939, but the Poles had refused to play that role.
[45] On April 7, a Soviet diplomat visited the German Foreign Ministry stating that there was no point in continuing the German-Soviet ideological struggle and that the countries could conduct a concerted policy.
[52] In fact, the cables that sent to the German embassy in London were the work of the NKVD, which had broken the British codes and was seeking to pressure the Reich to come to terms with the Soviet Union .
[31] The Soviet Union feared the West and the possibility of a "capitalist encirclements", had little faith either that war could be avoided or in the Polish Army and wanted guaranteed support for a two-pronged attack on Germany.
[62][66][67] Litvinov's prior attempts to create an anti-fascist coalition, association with the doctrine of collective security with France and Britain, and pro-Western orientation[68] by the standards of the Kremlin made his dismissal indicate the existence of a Soviet option of rapprochement with Germany.
[31][71] One British official wrote that Litvinov's disappearance also meant the loss of an admirable technician or shock-absorber, and Molotov's "modus operandi" was "more truly Bolshevik than diplomatic or cosmopolitan".
[73] Émile Naggiar, the French ambassador in Moscow, reported to Bonnet that Molotov wanted a full military alliance as "the new commissar now intends to obtain more extensive advantages".
"[77] Due to information provided by Scheliha, the Soviets knew that Germany did not want a diplomatic solution to the Danzig crisis and had decided to invade Poland in the summer of 1939.
[84] The same day, the Soviet Union also submitted a modification to a French and British proposal,[84] which specified the states that would be given aid in the event of "direct aggression"; they included Belgium, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Finland.
[89] Meanwhile, hoping to stop the German war machine, in July, Sir Horace Wilson, the British government's Chief Industrial Adviser and one of Chamberlain's closest friends, conducted talks in London with Ambassador Herbert von Dirksen and Helmuth Wohlthat, an economist of the Four-Year Plan Organisation who was in London as part of the German delegation to the International Whaling Conference for an economic agreement.
Acting on his own, Robert Hudson approached Wohlthat and Dirksen regarding a potential plan to bail out the debt-ridden German economy at the cost of 1 billion pounds in exchange for Germany ending its armaments program.
[92] After weeks of political talks that began after the arrival of Central Department Foreign Office head William Strang, on July 8, the British and French submitted a proposed agreement to which Molotov added a supplementary letter.
[97] On August 2, Soviet political discussions with France and Britain were suspended when Molotov stated they could not be restarted until progress was made in the scheduled military talks.
They were delayed until August 12 because the British military delegation, which did not include Strang, took six days to make the trip since it travelled in a slow merchant ship, The City of Exeter.
[112] Lord Halifax vetoed the idea of the mission travelling from London to Leningrad on a fast-moving destroyer or cruiser under the grounds that a British warship in the Baltic Sea would be too provocative to Germany during the Danzig crisis.
[121] When Tass published a report that the Soviet-British-French talks had become snarled over the Far East and "entirely different matters", Germany took that as a signal that there was still time and hope to reach a Soviet-German deal.
[124][126][127] Under the agreement, Germany also granted the Soviet Union a merchandise credit of 200 million Reichsmarks over seven years to buy German manufactured goods[128] at an extremely-favourable interest rate.
[129] That same day, August 21, Stalin has received assurance would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would grant the Soviets land in Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and Romania.
[132] On August 24, a ten-year non-aggression pact was signed with provisions that included consultation, arbitration if either party disagreed, neutrality if either went to war against a third power and no membership of a group "which is directly or indirectly aimed at the other."
[33][137] Eleven days later, the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was modified to allot Germany a larger part of Poland and cede most of Lithuania to the Soviet Union.[why?
[151] Edward Hallett Carr argued that it was necessary to join a non-aggression pact to buy time since the Soviet Union was not in a position to fight a war in 1939 and needed at least three years to prepare.
The extent to which the Soviet Union's territorial acquisitions may have contributed to preventing its fall and thus a German victory in the war remains a factor in evaluating the pact.
Soviet sources point out that the German advance eventually stopped just a few kilometres away from Moscow and so the role of the extra territory might have been crucial in such a close call.
A number of German historians such as Andreas Hillgruber, Rolf-Dieter Müller, and Christian Hartmann have debunked the claim that Operation Barbarossa was a pre-emptive strike, but they have also acknowledged the Soviets were aggressive to their neighbours.
[158][159][160] In 1948, the U.S. State Department published a collection of documents that had been recovered from the Foreign Office of Nazi Germany,[161] that formed a documentary base for studies of Nazi-Soviet relations.
[170] Many historians note that the dismissal of Foreign Minister Litvinov, whose Jewish ethnicity was viewed unfavourably by Nazi Germany, removed a major obstacle to negotiations between it and the Soviets.
