The Russo-German Alliance: August 1939 – June 1941, by A. Rossi (Angelo Tasca) 1949
After the collapse of Germany, tons of archives fell into the hands of the Allies. Some of the documents thus found have been used in the Nuremberg trial, and the rest kept for publication in the future. The preparatory work of going through and classifying this material, or at least as much of it as was found by the American and British occupation authorities, has, however, been completed in Germany itself. It has all been photographed, and preliminary reports have been drawn up.
The documents concerning German – Soviet relations between March 1939 and June 1941 are now known, thanks to the enterprise of the American government. They allow historians to escape from the blind-alley where up to the present they have been caught between official reticence and party controversy.
To place the relations between Germany and Soviet Russia during this period in their proper perspective would involve going back to 1917 and tracing their evolution up to Munich. Such a task does not come within the scope of this study. We shall confine ourselves to a brief summary of some of the essential facts.
As far back as 1917 Germany was regarded by Lenin and the Bolsheviks as the keystone of their international strategy, and the whole foreign policy of the new regime at Moscow was dominated by this concept. The treaty signed at Rapallo between Germany and the Soviet Union on 16 April 1922 united the two countries in a common opposition to the Treaty of Versailles. Later, Germany began to evade the military clauses of this treaty by setting up factories on Soviet territory for the manufacture of war material, especially of aircraft parts.
The general line of Soviet foreign policy was not deflected by Hitler’s accession to power at the end of January 1933, and neither then nor later did Stalin cease to follow the ‘policy of Rapallo’, even with Hitler’s Germany. Hitler himself was still feeling his way and did not denounce the German – Soviet treaty of friendship and neutrality which had been signed in Berlin, under the Weimar Republic, on 24 April 1926.
It was Hitler, and Hitler alone, who showed the first signs of hostility towards his powerful partner in the East. Stalin did not abandon his efforts to preserve peace with Germany, but he was forced to take precautionary measures in the face of this growing menace. Hence the entry of the USSR into the League of Nations, the attempt to arrange regional agreements, and the pacts of mutual assistance with France and Czechoslovakia. The conclusion of the Anti-Comintern Pact, signed by Germany and Japan on 26 November 1936, initiated a phase of grave deterioration in German – Soviet relations, which were at their lowest at the time of Munich.
After Munich began those first ‘oscillations’ in the relations between the two countries which might have led either to a complete breach or to close collaboration. It was the second alternative which prevailed during the first six months of 1939, thanks to the prospect of a ‘fourth partition’ of Poland. According to M Augusto Rosso, Italian Ambassador in Moscow, this possibility was already being considered by Soviet government circles early in October 1938. [1]
Dazzling Light – Lingering Shadows: The documents which have been published and investigated make it possible to solve a whole set of problems in contemporary history which up to the present have either been a matter of guesswork or have been entirely overlooked. On certain points the light thus thrown is dazzling. On others there still lingers a faint area of shadow which later researches may dispel.
There will be gaps in the history of German – Soviet relations for a long time to come. Facts from now on accepted as indisputable in their essentials are still hazy in detail. The Soviet archives remain inaccessible to the ‘free’ historians. But even if they were thrown open they would be far from telling us everything.
Double Diplomacy: The reason for this is that in Stalin’s country as well as in Hitler’s, but especially in the former, at least two ‘diplomacies’ are apparent (and sometimes, in Russia, three or four). There is the official diplomacy, and the other – or others.
When one glances through the documents on German – Soviet relations one is struck by the fact that the Russian ambassadors who succeeded each other from 1939 to 1941 – Merekalov, Skvortzev and Dekanozov – all played a very minor role. They crossed the background of the stage like dim ghosts. On the other hand, numerous Soviet agents, certain of whom enjoyed the personal confidence of Stalin and were his direct envoys, were very much in evidence at the discussions, only to disappear suddenly when Stalin himself or his alter ego Molotov took in hand the conduct of affairs.
For a long time such agents as Astakhov, the Chargé d'Affaires, carried out Stalin’s orders, which were to make contact at all costs with Hitler’s leaders and to smooth the way for an understanding between the two governments. The activities of these agents are only partly recorded in the documents. Their orders were oral, and were performed with discretion, since they were groping about in the dark and were very much on their guard. If they succeeded, they were replaced by the official negotiators; if they failed, they could be repudiated.
The same method was followed on the German side, although to a more limited extent. Schnurre, the commercial delegate, and Gustav Hilger, the Counsellor of Embassy, who had been born in Russia of German parents, worked side by side to prepare the ground. Ribbentrop and Hitler told their Ambassador, von Schulenburg, only what they wanted him to know, and in 1941 they even left him in ignorance of their real plans up to the last moment.
Since the two suspicious partners – Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia – wished to avoid showing their cards and giving away the lead, they often made use of friendly or neutral diplomats through whom they could throw out feelers. Moscow made one of the first attempts to sound Germany’s intentions towards Russia, as well as the first offer of a non-aggression pact, through M Draganov, the Bulgarian Minister in Berlin. [2] And in June 1939, Ciano, then Italian Foreign Minister, passed on to the Soviet representative in Rome – by the method which might be called that of the ‘inspired leakage’ – certain German proposals for a pact of non-aggression. [3]
To all this were added the numerous contacts which industrial circles and the chiefs of the Wehrmacht kept up with the Soviet agents. These contacts were sometimes allowed to drop, but were never completely broken off. There was nothing official about them; they were a survival between the two regimes of a system of collaboration which had become precarious in the course of recent years, but which could at any moment be fished out again to act as bait.
When Did It Begin? In the documents which have been listed there are signs of an attempted rapprochement between Germany and the USSR immediately after Munich, and particularly after December 1938.
Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other of the two partners who made a move – but it was always a very slight move.
Hitler had a noticeably long conversation with the Soviet Ambassador at the reception of the Corps Diplomatique on 12 January 1939. Early in February, at a dinner party in the house of a prominent industrialist, General Keitel met the Soviet Military Attaché who, alluding to the condition of Poland, remarked that there was the threat of a revolution there. If this occurred Russia ‘could not remain indifferent'; she would have to intervene to ‘reorganise’ those parts of the country adjoining her frontiers. General Keitel took careful note of the Russian’s fears but abstained from expressing an opinion. He at once informed the Führer of the conversation. But Hitler, as always when taken by surprise, adopted a sphinx-like attitude and simply asked Keitel not to spread the story. [4]
Such moves were especially hesitant on the German side. The first trade mission to leave Berlin for Moscow stopped at Warsaw on 25 January, where it turned in its tracks and went back to the German capital without having reached the Russian frontier.
The sole reason for all this hesitation was that Hitler had still not decided on his policy. Until March his principal aim was to solve the problem of Danzig and the Corridor in agreement with the Poles by offering them a share in the coming struggle to partition the Ukraine. This offer was made and renewed to Poland in October 1938, and in January and March 1939. Since in the end she never gave a definite answer (although in January Hitler’s plans had appealed greatly to Colonel Beck), Hitler and his entourage, especially von Ribbentrop, began to think that if Poland did not wish to sacrifice Danzig and take a slice of the Ukraine at Russia’s expense, they might just as well come to terms with Russia at Poland’s expense.
There is not the slightest doubt that Germany did have designs on the Ukraine, and that such proposals were made to Poland. International Communism campaigned violently against the ‘criminal’ plans of the ‘Hitlerite fascists’.
Suddenly a voice with authority, the most authoritative of all, declared publicly that these were malicious rumours spread by the Anglo – French and American agents who wished to stir up trouble between Germany and the USSR. It was Stalin himself who acquitted Germany of such base designs, and he gave his assurance that Germany did not cherish any plans for seizing the Soviet Ukraine. He made this statement in a long speech on the foreign policy of the Soviet Union to the Eighteenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party on 10 March 1939.
What was the reason for Stalin’s sudden optimism? Why did he deny the existence of plans which he had had denounced for so long? Was he really so reassured about Germany’s intentions? Not at all. He knew them better than anyone else. But precisely because he recognised the danger, he intended to avert it; and in order to avert it, he began by denying that it existed. He could thus give Germany to understand that he was quite ready to seek an agreement with her, and that he had decided ‘not to allow our country to be drawn into conflicts by warmongers who are accustomed to get others to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them’. [5]
It was a direct appeal to Hitler and his leaders, and the whole speech was composed for their benefit. If they chose to understand it in Berlin, a big step forward would have been taken and a new situation created.
Berlin understood very well. Certain passages from Stalin’s speech were noted as a basis for a possible rapprochement with Russia. Hitler himself took up Stalin’s metaphor about not wishing ‘to pull the chestnuts out of the fire’ for the Western powers in his speech of 1 April at Wilhelmshafen, and Ribbentrop trumpeted it about in his memorandum of 12 April to the heads of the diplomatic missions in Europe. [6] In instructions drawn up on about 26 May 1939 for von Schulenburg, the German Ambassador in Moscow, he emphasised that in the field of foreign policy a ‘certain change’ seemed to have taken place ‘in the ideas of the Russians’. In fact, the German leaders believed they could ‘discern in Stalin’s speech of March certain signs of a new orientation’. [7]
When the non-aggression pact and the secret protocol were actually being signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939, Ribbentrop referred to Stalin’s speech of 10 March. It included, he told Stalin, a phrase which Hitler had interpreted as expressing Stalin’s desire for improved relations with Germany. To this remark Stalin replied: ‘That was precisely my intention.’ [8] And Molotov confirmed this in the toast which he proposed immediately after the ceremony. Raising his glass to Stalin, he emphasised that ‘it was Stalin himself who – by his speech of March, which was well understood in Germany – had brought about the reversal in political relations’. [9] In his speech before the Supreme Soviet on 21 August 1939 in support of the ratification of the pact concluded the previous week, Molotov also recalled that Stalin had wished to launch an appeal on 10 March for good-neighbourly relations with Germany, and he declared amidst the gratified laughter of the assembly (which was recorded in the official report): ‘We see now that Comrade Stalin’s declaration had on the whole been understood in Germany, and that it has produced practical results.’ [10] To Molotov’s testimony can be added Ribbentrop’s, at the Nuremberg trial:
Marshal Stalin made a speech in March 1939 in which he expressed a desire to foster better relations with Germany. I informed Adolf Hitler... I learned soon after through the negotiations of Minister Schnurre that Stalin had not used this phrase lightly. [11]
There can, therefore, be no possible doubt on this point. Stalin personally desired an understanding with Hitler, and his speech of 10 March was a decisive step towards achieving it. His appeal was heard, and March fixes the turning point. Its implications had hardly yet been considered in Germany when General Oshima, the Japanese Ambassador, is said to have noticed it and to have informed his government of its existence. [12] If Berlin seemed to hesitate it was because, towards the end of March, all hope of settling the Polish question without an open conflict had not been entirely lost. On the other hand, if Moscow, through the speech of 10 March, began to move unfalteringly on a course from which it was never to deviate, it was because Stalin had decided from that moment that Russia would not be involved in the coming war. And the whole of his policy was to be subordinated to this end.
1. A Rossi, Obbiettivi e metodi della politica estera sovietia (Florence, 1946), extract from the Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali, pp 9-10. M Rosso was quoting the People’s Vice-Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Vladimir Potemkin. His evidence can be compared with the forecast of a German – Soviet agreement, at Poland’s expense, by the Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiosseivanov in mid-December 1938 (Documents Diplomatiques français, 1938-39 (Paris, 1939), p 46).
2. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), pp 20-21.
3. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 54.
4. This information is taken from an article in the Daily Telegraph of 30 March 1940, in which a neutral just back from Germany published an account of a conversation with a person who had followed German – Soviet relations from the beginning. He was reported as having said that ‘the first suggestion came from the army, not the Wilhelmstrasse’. The army chiefs were the advocates of a rapprochement: ‘It was probably the Bismarck tradition and the threat of a war on two fronts which won them over.’ Admiral Raeder declared at Nuremberg: ‘I have always advocated Bismarck’s policy of an understanding with Russia.’ (Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Volume 14 (official English text, Nuremberg, 1947), p 220.
5. JV Stalin, Report on the Work of the Central Committee to the Eighteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (London, 1939), p 16.
6. Documents Concerning the History of the Origins of the War (Auswaertiges Ampt, no 2, Berlin, 1939), no 287, p 113.
7. These instructions were submitted to Hitler on 26 May. They bear the following directions: ‘Telegram of instructions for Ambassador Schulenburg at Moscow. Very secret.’ They were found in the Wilhelmstrasse but do not appear among the dispatches received by von Schulenburg in Moscow.
8. Report from Nuremberg, Le Monde, 27 March 1946.
9. Nazi – Soviet Relations 1939-41 (Washington, 1948), p 76.
10. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bulletin périodique de la presse russe (Paris), no 289, p 5.
11. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Volume 10 (Nuremberg, 1947), p 267.
12. In a report on the Anglo – French – Russian negotiations presented at the secret session of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate, M Jacques Bardoux quoted the following excerpt from the Japanese newspaper Kobe Shimbun: ‘Last March, Lieutenant-General Oshima informed his government that German – Soviet relations were constantly improving, so much so that the two countries were in a position to begin negotiations.’ It should be added, however, that up to the last moment Oshima believed a German – Russian pact to be impossible.