At Munich in September 1938 the British and French prime ministers
met Adolf Hitler and surrendered to his demands. Chamberlain and
Daladier consented to the partition of Czechoslovakia and Hitler's
annexation of the Sudetenland, and 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. They
dared not fight alone if the British and French washed their hands
of them.
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 Prance
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,'' and proclaimed
the Soviet Union's intention to stay out of a "new imperialist
war'' which was ''already in its second year." 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.
On March 15 Hitler sent German troops to occupy Bohemia and Moravia,
set up Slovkia as an "independent'' state, but sacrificed
his tiny Ukrainian ''Piedmont'' by giving it to Hungary. Thus
he simultaneously made clear to the West that his ambitions exceeded
the boundaries of German-speaking lands and to the Soviet Union
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 and, after Mussolini seized Albania, on
April 13 he guaranteed both Greece and Rumania. Meanwhile Hitler
had extorted Memel from Lithuania by simple ultimatum, and 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 addied
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.
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. 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.
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 for the
moment 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. The German Communists in exile made
strange noises suggesting that the Allies were worse than Hitler.
The general line was that already stated by Stalin in March, that
the war was an ''imperialist'' one for the redivision of the world.
The Communists said much more about Allied than about Nazi ''culpability,''
and demanded ''peace.''
The Soviets brought pressure on Finland for a pact comparable
to those signed by the Baltic states, but Finland refused and
on November 29 was invaded by the Red Army. Otto Kuusinen, a Finnish
Communist in Moscow's reserve for such emergencies, was brought
out and made head of a puppet government which conceded all Soviet
demands. The Soviets thereupon declared that they were not at
war with Finland at all. Western sympathy for the Finns mounted
as they successfully resisted the Reds.
In 1939 the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations.
Britain and France, observing the apparent weakness of the Red
Army, debated sending troops to aid the Finns, and actually decided
to do so a few days before a Soviet-Finnish peace was concluded
in March 1940. The Nazis also took note of Soviet military weakness
and filed it for future reference. The peace was an important
factor in Daladier's replacement by Paul Reynaud as French premier,
just in time to be faced with a new Nazi offensive in the West.
On April 9 Hitler occupied Denmark and invaded Norway, where British
forces landed and tried to resist. When they had been defeated
and withdrawn from southern Norway (although troops remained in
Narvik a month longer) , public opinion forced Chamberlain from
office and on May 10 Winston Churchill became British prime minister,
heading a coalition government including Labor.
On the day that Winston Churchill became prime minister, Hitler
attacked the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, and France. A break-through
at Sedan was followed by a Nazi advance which reached the Channel
on May 21, splitting Allied armies and compelling the British
evacuation of Dunkirk. The Dutch had already been overrun, and
the Belgian king surrendered on May 28. On June 10 Italy belatedly
declared war on Britain and France. The French army was already
shattered. On June 16 Reynaud yielded the premiership to Marshal
Petain, who sued for peace at once. Churchill's Britain was left
alone.
The Soviets reacted sharply to the fall of France even before
the signing of an armistice. Stalin ordered military occupation
of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and all three were ''admitted''
into the Soviet Union as constituent republics in July. In late
June the Soviets also annexed Bessarabia and northern Bukovina.
The annexation of Bukovina went beyond the line of the secret
protocol of the pact with Hitler, which was to create some problems
latter. All this was done by way of an ultimatum to Rumania. The
Russians then used most of the annexed territory to create a new
Moldavian SSR.
The Nazis as well seemed to be closing up to their side of the
protocol line. In August and September they began to occupy the
rest of Rumania, partitioned its Transylvanian province and gave
much of it to Hungary, and forced the Rumanians to cede the southern
Dobrudja to Bulgaria.
In July 1940 Hitler had secretly decided to prepare to attack
the Soviet Union. In September a German-Italian-Japanese Tripartite
Pact was signed, and although it stipulated that it would not
affect the relations of any of the three powers with the Soviets,
a certain deterioration in Berlin-Moscow amity had become apparent.
In November 1940 Molotov visited Berlin for further discussions
of a vague and grandiose kind, but Hitler did not cancel his plans
for attack. On December 18, 1940, he issued the directive for
operation Barbarossa, the code name for the invasion of the Soviet
Union, to be launched in the middle of May 1941.
Beginning in August the Nazis were launching large-scale air attacks
on Britain. They were also consolidating their influence in the
Balkans. The line of the secret protocol ended where Bessarabia
touched the Black Sea, and south of that point neither Nazis nor
Soviets could formally object to what their partners did. Hitler
now extended the Tripartite Pact, often called the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo
Axis, by obtaining the adhesion of Hungary, Rumania, and Slovakia
in November. After some tension with Moscow over Bulgaria, the
Bulgaria also signed the Axis pact. German troops went where the
pact did.
In late March 1941 Yugoslavia added its signature to the Axis
pact, but the government was promptly overthrown by a pro-Western
coup. Immediately Hitler attacked and overran Yugoslavia and Greece
as well. In doing so Hitler incidentally extricated Mussolini
from a gravely embarrassing position. After his declaration of
war in June Mussolini had attacked Greece from Albania, but had
been forced to retreat under a successful Greek counterattack.
The brief Balkan campaign compelled Hitler to postpone "Operation
Barbarossa" for a month, but its success left him in control
of the whole continent up to the Soviet border, either directly
or by way of his allies Mussolini and Franco, except for neutral
Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland. Even in Finland the government
had accepted his aid in joint preparations for attacking the Soviet
Union.
Western sources warned the Soviets that a Nazi attack was imminent.
It is till uncertain whether Stalin and his colleagues expected
the attack. Evidently the Soviets were still thinking in terms
of better relations with the Nazis, deliveries to whom were maintained
with scrupulous fidelity throughout the period of the pact, as
well as with Hitler's Japanese allies. In the spring Foreign Minister
Matsuoka came to Europe, and in April a Soviet-Japanese neutrality
pact was signed, acclaimed by Izvestiia as an ''historic reversal
in the relations between Russia and Japan.'' Stalin conducted
a remarkable public demonstration of affection for all Germans
and Japanese who were in sight as he was bidding farewell to Matsuoka
at the railway station. At that moment the Nazi attack was two
months away. The Soviets, of course, did not know that. For that
matter, neither did the Japanese.
The night before the attack, Mototov summoned Count Schulenburg,
Nazi ambassador in Moscow, told him that there were indications
that the Germans were dissatisfied with the Soviets, and begged
him to explain what had brought about the existing state of affairs.
Schulenburg professed himself unable to say, and departed. A few
hours later, however, he was back with all declaration of war
on the Soviet Union. The Nazi invasion occurred, with Finnish,
Rumanian, and other aid, all along the front from the Arctic Ocean
to the Black Sea, on June 22, 1941.