could hardly misunderstand. Stalin was representing as an unworthy intrigue of the western powers the suggestion that Germany might be interested in detaching the Ukraine from Russia—a charge which had been made in the treason and sabotage trials of the Trotskyites not very long before. A deal with Germany about Eastern Europe was being offered.
And on April 17, the very day when the Soviet Government was openly proposing a triple alliance with Great Britain and France,20 the Soviet Ambassador in Berlin, Merekalov, made a secret tentative overture for Soviet-Nazi rapprochement. Calling on the German Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, Merekalov let drop the following very broad hints:
Ideological differences of opinion had hardly influenced the Russian-Italian relationship, and they did not have to prove a stumbling block with regard to Germany either. Soviet Russia had not exploited the present friction between Germany and the Western democracies against us, nor did she desire to do so. There exists for Russia no reason why she should not live with us on a normal footing. And from normal the relations might become better and better.21
Three clear and positive impressions emerge from study of the tangled, complex, and still incomplete diplomatic record of the months before the war. There is the tragic futility of the British and French efforts to square the circle, to obtain Soviet co-operation against Germany without sacrificing the independence of Poland and the Baltic states. There is the curious combination in Hitler of flexibility with violence, reflected in his willingness to put aside temporarily his strongest emotion, anticommunism, in order to disrupt the coalition which was being formed against him.
Finally, there is the truly Machiavellian cunning of Stalin, carrying on two sets of negotiations at the same time, an open set with Great Britain and France, a secret set with Germany. Stalin gave the western powers just enough encouragement to put pressure on Hitler to complete the coveted deal which would give the Soviet Union a share in the spoils of Eastern Europe and leave it outside the impending war.
Stalin also included Poland in his web of deception. The Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Potemkin, paid a special visit to Warsaw on May 10 and assured the Polish Government that it had nothing to fear from Russia in case of a German attack. On the contrary, Poland could count on Russian friendliness and supplies of munitions and other war materials.22
In retrospect there is nothing “enigmatic” or “mysterious” in Stalin’s policy in 1939. It was plainly designed to achieve, and did achieve, a thoroughly logical goal from the Communist standpoint: war for the capitalist world; peace, with opportunities to expand territorially and build up militarily, for the Soviet Union.
Like Lenin, Stalin had always regarded war as a factor favorable to Communist revolution. He told the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist party, in 1934, that a new imperialist war “will surely turn loose revolution and place in jeopardy the very existence of capitalism in a number of countries, as happened in the case of the first imperialist war.”23 The inevitability of war and the close relation between war and social revolution are themes which recur over and over again in the writings and speeches of the Soviet dictator.24
This viewpoint does not imply that Stalin would gamble the existence of his own regime by precipitating a conflict in which the Soviet Union would be involved. But, from Stalin’s standpoint, war between the democracies and the fascist states was a most desirable development. The promotion of such a war is the key to the understanding of the tortuous Soviet policy in the spring and summer of 1939.
Neville Chamberlain was as eager to preserve capitalism as Stalin was to destroy it, but he had got into a vulnerable position by his hasty and ill-considered guarantee to Poland, which was followed in April by similar unilateral guarantees to Greece and Rumania. He was constantly being prodded by critics like Churchill and Lloyd George, who pointed out the importance of Soviet military co-operation apparently without appreciating the impossible moral and political price which would have to be paid for this co-operation.
Efforts to induce the Soviet Government to join in an anti-Hitler pact continued despite Chamberlain’s strong personal suspicions of Soviet motives and intentions. A Foreign Office official, Mr. William Strang, went to Moscow in June to reinforce the efforts of the British and French Ambassadors, Sir William Seeds and M. Paul Naggiar.
But Soviet methods of discussion were evasive and dilatory. The heart of the difficulty was in two Soviet demands: that the Red Army should enter Poland and that the Baltic states should be guaranteed against “direct or indirect aggression,” regardless of their own desires in the matter.
Whether the Soviet Union would have entered the war even if its demands had been granted is doubtful. But it was politically and morally impossible to accede to these demands. For this would have amounted to conceding to Stalin that very right of aggression against weaker neighbors which was the ostensible cause of fighting Hitler. Such glaring inconsistencies may be tolerated in war, as the records of the Teheran and Yalta conferences testify. But the coercion of friendly powers to part with sovereignty and territory was impossible in time of peace. As Chamberlain said in Parliament on June 7: “It is manifestly impossible to impose a guarantee on states which do not desire it.”
The showdown with Poland occurred after the Soviet Government, continuing its cat-and-mouse tactics, had consented to open military conversations with Great Britain and France. These conversations were admirably calculated to impress on Hitler the necessity of coming to a speedy and definite agreement with Russia.
The Soviet representative in the conversations, Marshal K. E. Voroshilov, raised the question of the passage of Soviet troops across Poland on August 14. He abruptly declared that unless this was agreed on, further military negotiations would be impossible. The French put pressure on Beck to yield, but without success. Beck flatly told the French Ambassador, Léon Noël: “This is a new Partition which we are asked to sign.” The Polish Premier expressed doubt whether the Soviet troops, once installed in eastern Poland, would take an effective part in the war. And on the night of August 19 Beck summed up his position with finality to Noël:
This is a question of principle for us. We neither have nor wish to have a military agreement with the Soviet Union. We concede to no one, under any form, the right to discuss the use of any part of our territory by foreign troops.25
On the same day, August 14, when Voroshilov presented his demand for the passage of Soviet troops across Polish territory, von Ribbentrop addressed to Molotov a suggestion for close German-Soviet co-operation. The nature of the imminent Soviet-German “nonaggression pact” was foreshadowed in the following sentences:
The Reich Government is of the opinion that there is no question between the Baltic and the Black Seas which cannot be settled to the complete satisfaction of both countries. Among these are such questions as: the Baltic Sea, the Baltic area, Poland, Southeastern questions, etc.
Ribbentrop also foreshadowed the character of Nazi and Soviet propaganda for the next two years. The “capitalistic Western democracies” were represented as “the unforgiving enemies both of National Socialist Germany and of the U.S.S.R.,” trying to drive the Soviet Union into war against Germany. Finally Ribbentrop proposed to come to Moscow “to set forth the Führer’s views to Herr Stalin.”26
Molotov’s general reaction to this proposal was favorable, but he showed a disposition to delay the final agreement. It was apparently after Stalin intervened to speed up the procedure that Molotov on August 19 handed to the German Ambassador in Moscow, von Schulenburg, the draft of a nonaggression pact. This was to be valid only after a special protocol, “covering the points in which the high contracting parties are interested in the field of foreign policy,” was signed.
Ribbentrop
