The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was an August 23, 1939, agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany colloquially named after Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The treaty renounced warfare between the two countries. In addition to stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included a secret protocol dividing several eastern European countries between the parties.
Before the treaty's signing, the Soviet Union conducted negotiations with the United Kingdom and France regarding a potential "Tripartite" alliance. Long-running talks between the Soviet Union and Germany over a potential economic pact expanded to include the military and political discussions, culminating in the pact, along with a commercial agreement signed four days earlier.
Background After World War I
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Soviet Russia ended its fight against the Central Powers, including Germany, in World War I by signing the Treaty of Brest-LitovskGeorge F. Kennan Soviet Foreign Policy 1917–1941, Kreiger Publishing Company, 1960. in which Russia agreed to cede sovereignty and influence over parts of several countries in Eastern Europe.Text of the 3 March, 1918 Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Most of those countries became ostensibly-democratic republics after Germany's defeat and its signing of an armistice in the autumn of 1918. With the exception of Belarus and Ukraine, those countries also became independent. However, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk lasted only eight-and-a-half months, when Germany renounced it and broke off diplomatic relations with Russia.
Before World War I, Germany and Russia had long shared a trading relationship. Germany. a relatively small country with few natural resources, lacks natural supplies of several key raw materials that are needed for economic and military operations. Since the late 19th century, it had relied heavily upon Russian imports of raw materials. Germany had imported 1.5 billion Reichsmarks of raw materials and other goods annually from Russia before the war.
In 1922, the countries signed the Treaty of Rapallo, renouncing territorial and financial claims against each other. Both countries pledged neutrality in the event of an attack against each other with the 1926 Treaty of Berlin. Imports of Soviet goods to Germany fell after World War I, but after trade agreements signed between the two countries in the mid-1920s, trade had increased to 433 million Reichsmarks per year by 1927.
In the early 1930s, that relationship fell as the more isolationist Stalinist regime asserted power and the abandonment of post-war military control decreased Germany's reliance on Soviet imports and so Soviet imports fell to 223 million Reichsmarks in 1934.
Mid-1930s
In the mid-1930s, the Soviet Union made repeated efforts to re-establish closer contacts with Germany. The Soviets sought chiefly to repay debts from earlier trade with raw materials, and Germany sought to rearm, and both countries signed a credit agreement in 1935. The rise to power of the Nazi Party increased tensions between Germany, the Soviet Union and other countries with ethnic Slavs, who were considered Untermenschen by Nazi racial ideology.Bendersky, Joseph W., A History of Nazi Germany: 1919–1945, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, , page 177 The Nazis were convinced that ethnic Slavs were incapable of forming their own state and accordingly had to be ruled by others.Wette, Wolfram, Deborah Lucas SchneiderThe Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality, Harvard University Press, 2006 , page 15 Moreover, the anti-semitic Nazis associated ethnic Jews with both communism and international capitalism, both of which they opposed.Lee, Stephen J. and Paul Shuter, Weimar and Nazi Germany, Heinemann, 1996, , page 33Bendersky, Joseph W., A History of Nazi Germany: 1919-1945, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, , page 159 Consequently, the Nazis believed that Soviet Slavic Untermenschen were being ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik" masters.Müller, Rolf-Dieter, Gerd R. Ueberschär, Hitler's War in the East, 1941-1945: A Critical Assessment, Berghahn Books, 2002, , page 244 Two primary goals of Nazism were to eliminate Jews and to seek Lebensraum ("living space") for ethnic Aryans to the east. 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".Rauschning, Hermann, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations With Adolf Hitler on His Real Aims, Kessinger Publishing, 2006, , pages 136-7
Despite the political rhetoric, the Soviets attempted in 1936 to seek closer political ties to Germany along with an additional credit agreement, but Hitler rebuffed the advances and did not want to seek closer political ties even though a 1936 raw material crisis prompted Hitler to decree a Four-Year Plan for rearmament "without regard to costs". In the 1930s, two Foreign Office cipher clerks, Ernest Holloway Oldham and John Herbert King, sold the British diplomatic codes to the NKVD, which allowed the Soviets to read British diplomatic traffic. However, the Soviet code-breakers were completely unable to break the German codes that were encrypted by the Enigma machine. The fact that Soviet intelligence-gathering activities in Germany were performed by the underground Communist Party of Germany, which was full of Gestapo informers, rendered most Soviet espionage in Germany ineffective. Stalin's decision to execute or imprison most of the German Communist emigres living in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge finished off almost all of the Soviet espionage in the Reich.
Tensions grew further after Germany and Fascist Italy supported the Spanish Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and the Soviets supported the Spanish Republic, which had many communists.Jurado, Carlos Caballero and Ramiro Bujeiro, The Condor Legion: German Troops in the Spanish Civil War, Osprey Publishing, 2006, , page 5–6 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.Gerhard Weinberg: The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe 1933-36, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970, pages 346. In November 1937, Italy also joined the Anti-Comintern Pact.Robert Melvin Spector. World Without Civilization: Mass Murder and the Holocaust, History, and Analysis, pg. 257
Late 1930s
The Moscow Trials of the mid-1930s seriously undermined Soviet prestige in the West.Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, The Soviet purges in 1937 and 1938 made a deal less likely by disrupting the already-confused Soviet administrative structure that was necessary for negotiations and gave Hitler the belief that the Soviets were militarily weak.
The Soviets were not invited to the Munich Conference on Czechoslovakia. The Munich Agreement, which followed,Text of the Agreement concluded at Munich, September 29, 1938, between Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy marked the start of the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1938 by a partial German annexation. That was part of the appeasement of Germany.Kershaw, Ian, Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, W. W. Norton & Company, 2001, , page 157-8
After the German need for military supplies after the Munich Agreement and the Soviet demand for military machinery increased, talks between both countries occurred from late 1938 to March 1939. The Soviet Third Five-Year Plan would require massive new infusions of technology and industrial equipment. An autarkic economic approach or an alliance with Britain were impossible for Germany and so closer relations with the Soviet Union were necessary if only for economic reasons. Germany could then supply only 25% of its petroleum needs, and without its primary petroleum source, in the United States, during a war, it would have to look to Russia and Romania. Germany suffered the same natural shortfall and supply problems for rubber and metal ores, needed to produce hardened steel for war equipment, and Germany relied on Soviet supplies or transit by using Soviet railways. Finally, Germany also imported 40% of its fat and oil food requirements, which would grow if Germany conquered nations that were also net food importers. Germany thus needed Soviet imports of Ukrainian grains or Soviet transshipments of Manchurian soybeans. Moreover, an anticipated British blockade in the event of war and the end of petroleum from the United States would create massive shortages for Germany in a number of key raw materials.
On 31 March 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the British House of Commons made the famous "guarantee" of Poland that Britain would go to war in the defense of Polish independence but its integrity. On 28 April 1939, Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag renounced the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact.Manipulating the Ether: The Power of Broadcast Radio in Thirties America Robert J. Brown Britain and France had made statements guaranteeing the sovereignty of Poland and on April 25 signed a military alliance with Poland, which refused to be associated with a four-power guarantee involving the Soviets.
Initial talks Potential for Soviet-German talk expansion Germany and the Soviet Union discussed an economic deal throughout early 1939. For months, Germany had secretly hinted to Soviet diplomats that it could offer better terms for a political agreement than could Britain and France."Natural Enemies: The United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War 1917–1991" by Robert C. Grogin 2001, Lexington Books page 28 On March 10, Hitler in his official speech proclaimed that directly.Zachary Shore. What Hitler Knew: The Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy. Published by Oxford University Press US, 2005 , , p. 109 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.Karski, J. The Great Powers and Poland, University Press, 1985, p.342 After the Congress concluded, the Soviet press mounted an attack on both France and Britain. Stalin believed that the British and the French governments were engaging in a conspiracy to direct Germany towards the east and to cause a German-Soviet war. 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.