Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact#Initial invasions

{{Main|Soviet–German relations before 1941|Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact negotiations}}

{{Events leading to World War II}}

File:Map Europe 1923-en.svg and Northern Ireland is not shown.]]

File:Poland1937linguistic.jpg with major languages spoken, 1937]]

The outcome of World War I was disastrous for both the German and the Russian empires. The Russian Civil War broke out in late 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution and Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the new Soviet Russia, recognised the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Moreover, facing a German military advance, Lenin and Trotsky were forced to agree to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,{{cite web|url=http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Peace_Treaty_of_Brest-Litovsk|date=3 March 1918|title=Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk|publisher=BYU|access-date=21 January 2009|archive-date=5 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171205093104/https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Peace_Treaty_of_Brest-Litovsk|url-status=live}}. which ceded many western Russian territories to Germany. After the German collapse, a multinational Allied-led army intervened in the civil war (1917–1922).{{Sfn|Montefiore|2005|p=32}}

On 16 April 1922, the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union agreed to the Treaty of Rapallo in which they renounced territorial and financial claims against each other.{{cite web|url=http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/interwar/rapallo.htm|title=German–Russian agreement|place=Rapallo|date=16 April 1922|publisher=Mt Holyoke|access-date=7 February 2009|archive-date=15 January 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100115132135/http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/interwar/rapallo.htm|url-status=dead}}. Each party also pledged neutrality in the event of an attack against the other with the Treaty of Berlin (1926).{{cite web|url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/berlin_001.asp|title=Treaty of Berlin Between the Soviet Union and Germany|date=24 April 1926|publisher=Yale|access-date=7 February 2009|archive-date=31 March 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090331135149/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/berlin_001.asp|url-status=live}}. Trade between the two countries had fallen sharply after World War I, but trade agreements signed in the mid-1920s helped to increase trade to {{Reichsmark|433 million|link=yes}} per year by 1927.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=14–5}}

At the beginning of the 1930s, the Nazi Party's rise to power increased tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union, along with other countries with ethnic Slavs, who were considered "Untermenschen" (subhuman) according to Nazi racial ideology.{{Sfn|Bendersky|2000|p=177}} Moreover, the antisemitic Nazis associated ethnic Jews with both communism and financial capitalism, both of which they opposed.{{cite book |last1=Lee |first1=Stephen J |last2=Paul |first2=Shuter |title=Weimar and Nazi Germany |publisher=Heinemann|year=1996|isbn=0-435-30920-X|page=33}}.{{Sfn|Bendersky|2000|p=159}} Nazi theory held that Slavs in the Soviet Union were being ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik" masters.{{cite book|last1=Müller|first1=Rolf-Dieter|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IfHaDYVfGlgC |first2=Gerd R |last2=Ueberschär |title=Hitler's War in the East, 1941–1945: A Critical Assessment |publisher=Berghahn|year=2002|isbn=978-1-57181-293-3|page=244}}. Hitler had spoken of an inevitable battle for the acquisition of land for Germany in the east.{{Cite book|last=Kershaw|first=Ian|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TpVrCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT171 |title=Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris|date=17 April 2000|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0-393-25420-4|language=en}} The resulting manifestation of German anti-Bolshevism and an increase in Soviet foreign debts caused a dramatic decline in German–Soviet trade.{{Efn|To {{Reichsmark|53 million|link=yes}} in German imports (0.9% of Germany's total imports and 6.3% of Russia's total exports) and {{Reichsmark|34 million}} in German exports (0.6% of Germany's total exports and 4.6% of Russia's total imports) in 1938.{{cite journal|last=Ericson|first=Edward E III|title=Karl Schnurre and the Evolution of Nazi–Soviet Relations, 1936–1941|journal=German Studies Review|volume=21|date=May 1998|pages=263–83|issue=2|doi=10.2307/1432205|jstor=1432205}}}} Imports of Soviet goods to Germany fell to {{Reichsmark|223 million}} in 1934 by the more isolationist Stalinist regime asserting power and by the abandonment of postwar Treaty of Versailles military controls, both of which decreased Germany's reliance on Soviet imports.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=14–5}}{{Sfn|Hehn|2005|p=212}}{{clarify |reason=Hehn 2005 sfn ref missing citation |date=July 2014}}

In 1935 Germany, after a previous German–Polish declaration of non-aggression, Hermann Göring proposed a military alliance with Poland against the Soviet Union, but this was rejected.{{cite book |last1=Weinberg |first1=Gerhard L. |title=Hitler's Foreign Policy 1933-1939: The Road to World War II |date=1 March 2010 |publisher=Enigma Books |isbn=978-1-936274-84-0 |page=152 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o5FiQbU_nAkC&dq=goring+poland+alliance&pg=PA152 |access-date=25 July 2024 |language=en}}

In 1936, Germany and Fascist Italy supported the Spanish Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, but the Soviets supported the Spanish Republic.{{cite book|last1=Jurado|first1=Carlos Caballero|first2=Ramiro|last2=Bujeiro|title=The Condor Legion: German Troops in the Spanish Civil War|publisher=Osprey|year=2006 |isbn=1-84176-899-5|pages=5–6}} Thus, the Spanish Civil War became a proxy war between Germany and the Soviet Union.{{cite book|first=Michael|last=Lind|title=Vietnam, the Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict|publisher=Simon & Schuster|year=2002|isbn=978-0-684-87027-4|page=59}} In 1936, Germany and Japan entered the Anti-Comintern Pact.{{cite book|last=Gerhard|first=Weinberg |title=The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Diplomatic Revolution in Europe 1933–36|place=Chicago|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=1970|page=346}} and they were joined a year later by Italy,{{cite book|first=Robert Melvin|last=Spector |title=World Without Civilization: Mass Murder and the Holocaust, History, and Analysis|page=257}} despite Italy having previously signed the Italo-Soviet Pact.{{cite web |title=Italy and Soviet Sign Treaty |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1933/09/03/archives/italy-and-soviet-sign-amity-treaty-the-pact-of-nonaggression.html |website=The New York Times |date=3 September 1933 |access-date=15 October 2024}}

On 31 March 1939, Britain extended a guarantee to Poland that "if any action clearly threatened Polish independence, and if the Poles felt it vital to resist such action by force, Britain would come to their aid". Hitler was furious since that meant that the British were committed to political interests in Europe and that his land grabs such as the takeover of Czechoslovakia would no longer be taken lightly. His response to the political checkmate would later be heard at a rally in Wilhelmshaven: "No power on earth would be able to break German might, and if the Western Allies thought Germany would stand by while they marshalled their 'satellite states' to act in their interests, then they were sorely mistaken". Ultimately, Hitler's discontent with a British–Polish alliance led to a restructuring of strategy towards Moscow. Alfred Rosenberg wrote that he had spoken to Hermann Göring of the potential pact with the Soviet Union: "When Germany's life is at stake, even a temporary alliance with Moscow must be contemplated". Sometime in early May 1939 at Berghof, Ribbentrop showed Hitler a film of Stalin viewing his military in a recent parade. Hitler became intrigued with the idea of allying with the Soviets and Ribbentrop recalled Hitler saying that Stalin "looked like a man he could do business with". Ribbentrop was then given the nod to pursue negotiations with Moscow.{{Cite book|title=The devils' alliance: Hitler's pact with Stalin, 1939-41|last=Roger|first=Moorhouse|date=7 January 2016|isbn=9780099571896|location=London|oclc=934937192}}{{page needed|date=September 2019}}

Hitler's fierce anti-Soviet rhetoric was one of the reasons that Britain and France decided that Soviet participation in the 1938 Munich Conference on Czechoslovakia would be both dangerous and useless.{{cite news|title=Hitler and Russia|newspaper=The Times|date=24 June 1941|place=London}}. In the Munich Agreement that followed{{cite web|place=Munich|date=29 September 1938|publisher=Yale |url=http://avalon.law.yae.edu/imt/munich1.asp|title=Agreement concluded at between Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy}}{{dead link|date=February 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}} the conference agreed to a German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia in late 1938, but in early 1939 it had been completely dissolved.{{Sfn|Kershaw|2001|pp=157–8}} The policy of appeasement toward Germany was conducted by the governments of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier.{{Sfn|Kershaw|2001|p=124}} The policy immediately raised the question of whether the Soviet Union could avoid being next on Hitler's list.{{cite journal|first=Max|last=Beloff|title=Soviet Foreign Policy, 1929–41: Some Notes|journal=Soviet Studies|volume=2|date=Oct 1950|pages=123–137|issue=2|doi=10.1080/09668135008409773}} The Soviet leadership believed that the West wanted to encourage German aggression in the East{{Sfn|Kershaw|2001|p=194}} and to stay neutral in a war initiated by Germany in the hope that Germany and the Soviet Union would wear each other out and put an end to both regimes.{{harvs|nb|last=Carr|year1=1949a|year2=1949b}}

File:Münchner abkommen5 en.svg) and March 1939]]

For Germany, an autarkic economic approach and an alliance with Britain were impossible and so closer relations with the Soviet Union to obtain raw materials became necessary.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=1–2}} Besides economic reasons, an expected British blockade during a war would also create massive shortages for Germany in a number of key raw materials.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=3–4}} After the Munich Agreement, the resulting increase in German military supply needs and Soviet demands for military machinery made talks between the two countries occur from late 1938 to March 1939.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=29–35}} Also, the third Soviet five-year plan required new infusions of technology and industrial equipment.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=1–2}}{{Sfn|Hehn|2005|pp=42–43}}{{clarify |reason=Hehn 2005 sfn ref missing citation |date=July 2014}} German war planners had estimated serious shortfalls of raw materials if Germany entered a war without the Soviet supply.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|p=44}}

On 31 March 1939, in response to Germany's defiance of the Munich Agreement and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,{{cite book|first1=Martin|last1=Collier|first2=Philip |last2=Pedley|title=Germany, 1919–45}}. Britain pledged its support and that of France to guarantee the independence of Poland, Belgium, Romania, Greece and Turkey.{{cite book|first1=Hermann |last1=Kinder|first2=Werner|last2=Hilgemann|title=The Anchor Atlas of World History|volume=II|page=[https://archive.org/details/anchoratlasofwor00kind/page/165 165]|publisher=Anchor Press, Doubleday |place=New York|year=1978|isbn=0-385-13355-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/anchoratlasofwor00kind}} On 6 April, Poland and Britain agreed to formalise the guarantee as a military alliance, pending negotiations.{{cite book |first=Andrew J|last=Crozier|title=The Causes of the Second World War|page=151}}. On 28 April, Hitler denounced the 1934 German–Polish declaration of non-aggression and the 1935 Anglo–German Naval Agreement.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=12dk9bizqIAC&q=abrogated+hitler+reichstag&pg=PA173 |title=Manipulating the Ether: The Power of Broadcast Radio in Thirties America|first=Robert J |last=Brown|isbn=0-7864-2066-9|date=1 January 2004|publisher=McFarland }}.

In mid-March 1939, attempting to contain Hitler's expansionism, the Soviet Union, Britain and France started to trade a flurry of suggestions and counterplans on a potential political and military agreement.{{sfn|Carley|1993}}{{Sfn|Watson|2000|pp=696–8}} Informal consultations started in April, but the main negotiations began only in May.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|pp=696–8}} Meanwhile, throughout early 1939, Germany had secretly hinted to Soviet diplomats that it could offer better terms for a political agreement than could Britain and France.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=30}}{{cite web|url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/nazsov.asp|title=Tentative Efforts To Improve German–Soviet Relations, April 17 – August 14, 1939|publisher=Yale|access-date=26 October 2012|archive-date=11 February 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110211171826/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/nazsov.asp|url-status=live}}.{{cite book|title=Natural Enemies: The United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, 1917–1991|first=Robert C|last=Grogin|year=2001|publisher=Lexington|page=28}}.

The Soviet Union, which feared Western powers and the possibility of "capitalist encirclements", had little hope of preventing war and wanted nothing less than an ironclad military alliance with France and Britain{{sfn|Carley|1993|p =324}} to provide guaranteed support for a two-pronged attack on Germany.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|p=695}} Stalin's adherence to the collective security line was thus purely conditional.{{Cite journal|title=Review of Raack, R, Stalin's Drive to the West, 1938–1945: The Origins of the Cold War|journal=The Journal of Modern History|first=G|last=Roberts|volume=69|date=December 1997|page=787|issue=4}}. Britain and France believed that war could still be avoided and that since the Soviet Union was so weakened by the Great Purge{{sfn|Watt|1989|p=118}} that it could not be a main military participant.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|p=695}} Many military sources{{clarify|date=May 2017}} were at variance with the last point, especially after the Soviet victories over the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria.{{sfn|Carley|1993|pp=303–41}} France was more anxious to find an agreement with the Soviet Union than Britain was. As a continental power, France was more willing to make concessions and more fearful of the dangers of an agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|p=696}} The contrasting attitudes partly explain why the Soviets have often been charged with playing a double game in 1939 of carrying on open negotiations for an alliance with Britain and France but secretly considering propositions from Germany.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|p=696}}

By the end of May, drafts had been formally presented.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|pp=696–8}} In mid-June, the main tripartite negotiations started.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|p=704}} Discussions were focused on potential guarantees to Central and Eastern Europe in the case of German aggression.{{sfn|Carley|1993|pp=322–3}} The Soviets proposed to consider that a political turn towards Germany by the Baltic states would constitute an "indirect aggression" towards the Soviet Union.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|p=708}} Britain opposed such proposals because they feared the Soviets' proposed language would justify a Soviet intervention in Finland and the Baltic states or push those countries to seek closer relations with Germany.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=502}}{{cite book|last=Hiden|first=John|title=The Baltic and the Outbreak of the Second World War|url=https://archive.org/details/balticoutbreakse00hide|url-access=limited|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2003|isbn=0-521-53120-9|page=[https://archive.org/details/balticoutbreakse00hide/page/n59 46]}}. The discussion of a definition of "indirect aggression" became one of the sticking points between the parties, and by mid-July, the tripartite political negotiations effectively stalled while the parties agreed to start negotiations on a military agreement, which the Soviets insisted had to be reached at the same time as any political agreement.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|pp=710–1}} One day before the military negotiations began, the Soviet Politburo pessimistically expected the coming negotiations to go nowhere and formally decided to consider German proposals seriously.{{cite book|last1=Gromyko|first1=Andrei|url=https://www.alibris.com/Soviet-foreign-policy-1917-1980-Andrei-Andreevich-Gromyko/book/6233636?collectible=1&qsort=p&matches=1|first2=B. N. Ponomarev|last2=Ponomarev|title=Soviet foreign policy : 1917-1980 Collectible Soviet foreign policy : 1917-1980|publisher=Progressive Publishers|year=1981|page=89|access-date=18 January 2018|archive-date=21 March 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220321000120/https://www.alibris.com/Soviet-foreign-policy-1917-1980-Andrei-Andreevich-Gromyko/book/6233636?collectible=1&qsort=p&matches=1|url-status=live}}. The military negotiations began on 12 August in Moscow, with a British delegation headed by Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, French delegation headed by General Aimé Doumenc and the Soviet delegation headed by Kliment Voroshilov, the commissar of defence, and Boris Shaposhnikov, chief of the general staff. Without written credentials, Drax was not authorised to guarantee anything to the Soviet Union and had been instructed by the British government to prolong the discussions as long as possible and to avoid answering the question of whether Poland would agree to permit Soviet troops to enter the country if the Germans invaded.{{cite book|last1=Butler|first1=Susan | author-link = Susan Butler (American writer) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TwXTCwAAQBAJ&q=Reginald+Drax+Voroshilov&pg=PA173|title=Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership |publisher=Vintage Books|year=2016|isbn= 9780307741813|page=173}}.

{{Main|Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact negotiations}}

File:Molotov with Ribbentrop.jpg

File:Mucha 8 Wrzesien 1939 Warszawa.jpg in Moscow" in the Polish satirical newspaper Mucha of 8 September 1939]]

{{See also|Nazi–Soviet economic relations (1934–41)}}

From April to July, Soviet and German officials made statements on the potential for the beginning of political negotiations, but no actual negotiations took place.{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|pp=107–11}} "The Soviet Union had wanted good relations with Germany for years and was happy to see that feeling finally reciprocated", wrote the historian Gerhard L. Weinberg.{{cite book |author=Gerhard L. Weinberg |title=Hitler's Foreign Policy 1933-1939: The Road to World War II |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o5FiQbU_nAkC&pg=PA749 |year=2010 |page=749 |publisher=Enigma Books |isbn=9781936274840 |access-date=27 February 2018 |archive-date=29 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230729072258/https://books.google.com/books?id=o5FiQbU_nAkC&pg=PA749 |url-status=live }} The ensuing discussion of a potential political deal between Germany and the Soviet Union had to be channeled into the framework of economic negotiations between the two countries, since close military and diplomatic connections that existed before the mid-1930s had been largely severed.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|p=46}} In May, Stalin replaced his foreign minister from 1930 to 1939, Maxim Litvinov, who had advocated rapprochement with the West and was also Jewish,{{cite book |last1=P. Tsygankov |first1=Andrei |title=Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin: Honor in International Relations |date=2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1139537001 |page=260 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ya8gAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA260 |access-date=4 May 2019 |archive-date=29 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230729072258/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ya8gAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA260 |url-status=live }} with Vyacheslav Molotov to allow the Soviet Union more latitude in discussions with more parties, instead of only Britain and France.{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|pp=109–10}}

On 23 August 1939, two Focke-Wulf Condors, containing German diplomats, officials, and photographers (about 20 in each plane), headed by Ribbentrop, descended into Moscow. As the Nazi emissaries stepped off the plane, a Soviet military band played "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles". The Nazi arrival was well planned, with all aesthetics in order. The classic hammer and sickle was propped up next to the swastika of the Nazi flag that had been used in a local film studio for Soviet propaganda films. After stepping off the plane and shaking hands, Ribbentrop and Gustav Hilger along with German ambassador Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg and Stalin's chief bodyguard, Nikolai Vlasik, entered a limousine operated by the NKVD to travel to Red Square. The limousine arrived close to Stalin's office and was greeted by Alexander Poskrebyshev, the chief of Stalin's personal chancellery. The Germans were led up a flight of stairs to a room with lavish furnishings. Stalin and Molotov greeted the visitors, much to the Nazis' surprise. It was well known that Stalin avoided meeting foreign visitors, and so his presence at the meeting showed how seriously that the Soviets were taking the negotiations.{{Cite book |title=The devils' alliance: Hitler's pact with Stalin, 1939-41 |last=Roger |first=Moorhouse |date=7 January 2016 |isbn=9780099571896 |location=London |oclc=934937192}}

In late July and early August 1939, Soviet and German officials agreed on most of the details of a planned economic agreement{{Sfn|Fest|2002|p=588}} and specifically addressed a potential political agreement,{{Sfn|Ulam|1989|pp=509–10}}{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=503}}{{Sfn|Roberts|1992a|p=64}}{{Efn|On 28 July, Molotov sent a political instruction to the Soviet ambassador in Berlin that marked the start of secret Soviet–German political negotiations.{{Sfn|Roberts|1992a|pp=64–67}}}} which the Soviets stated could come only after an economic agreement.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=54–5}}

The German presence in the Soviet capital during negotiations can be regarded as rather tense. German pilot Hans Baur recalled that Soviet secret police followed every move. Their job was to inform authorities when he left his residence and where he was headed. Baur's guide informed him: "Another car would tack itself onto us and follow us fifty or so yards in the rear, and wherever we went and whatever we did, the secret police would be on our heels." Baur also recalled trying to tip his Russian driver, which led to a harsh exchange of words: "He was furious. He wanted to know whether this was the thanks he got for having done his best for us to get him into prison. We knew perfectly well it was forbidden to take tips."

{{See also|German–Soviet Credit Agreement (1939)}}

In early August, Germany and the Soviet Union worked out the last details of their economic deal{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|p=56}} and started to discuss a political agreement. Both countries' diplomats explained to each other the reasons for the hostility in their foreign policy in the 1930s and found common ground in both countries' anticapitalism with Karl Schnurre stating: "there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies" or that "it seems to us rather unnatural that a socialist state would stand on the side of the western democracies".{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|p=115}}{{Sfn|Fest|2002|pp=589–90}}{{cite book|last1=Bertriko|first1=Jean-Jacques|last2=Subrenat|first2=A|first3=David|last3=Cousins|title=Estonia: Identity and Independence|url=https://archive.org/details/estoniaidentityi00subr|url-access=limited|publisher=Rodopi|year=2004|isbn=90-420-0890-3|page=[https://archive.org/details/estoniaidentityi00subr/page/n141 131]}}.{{Cite web|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/hitler-and-stalin-werent-such-strange-bedfellows-11566512411?mod=searchresults&page=2&pos=2|title=Hitler and Stalin Weren't Such Strange Bedfellows|date=22 August 2019|website=The Wall Street Journal|access-date=18 October 2019|archive-date=21 March 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220321000120/https://www.wsj.com/articles/hitler-and-stalin-werent-such-strange-bedfellows-11566512411?mod=searchresults&page=2&pos=2|url-status=live}}

At the same time, British, French, and Soviet negotiators scheduled three-party talks on military matters to occur in Moscow in August 1939 that aimed to define what the agreement would specify on the reaction of the three powers to a German attack.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=502}} The tripartite military talks, started in mid-August, hit a sticking point on the passage of Soviet troops through Poland if Germans attacked, and the parties waited as British and French officials overseas pressured Polish officials to agree to such terms.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|p=713}}{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=536}} Polish officials refused to allow Soviet troops into Polish territory if Germany attacked; Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck pointed out that the Polish government feared that if the Red Army entered Polish territory, it would never leave.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=537}}{{Cite web|first=Anna M|last=Cienciala|author-link=Anna M. Cienciala|orig-year=2004|url=http://web.ku.edu/~eceurope/hist557/lect16.htm|title=The Coming of the War and Eastern Europe in World War II|type=lecture notes|publisher=University of Kansas|year=2006|access-date=16 July 2009|archive-date=1 August 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120801010755/http://web.ku.edu/~eceurope/hist557/lect16.htm|url-status=dead}}.

On 19 August, the 1939 German–Soviet Commercial Agreement was finally signed.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=525}} On 21 August, the Soviets suspended the tripartite military talks and cited other reasons.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=30}}{{Sfn|Watson|2000|p=715}} The same day, Stalin received assurances that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would place the half of Poland east of the Vistula River as well as Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in the Soviet sphere of influence.{{cite book|last=Murphy|first=David E|title=What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2006|isbn=0-300-11981-X|page=23}}. That night, Stalin replied that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on 23 August.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=528}}

File:Alfred Naujocks.jpg on 31 August 1939, led by Alfred Naujocks (pictured).]]

On 25 August 1939, the New York Times ran a front-page story by Otto D. Tolischus, "Nazi Talks Secret", whose subtitle included "Soviet and Reich Agree on East".{{cite news

| first = Otto D.

| last = Tolischus

| author-link = Otto D. Tolischus

| title = Nazi Talks Secret: Hitler Lays Plans with His Close Aides for the Partition of Poland

| newspaper = New York Times

| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/25/archives/nazi-talks-secret-hitler-lays-plans-with-his-close-aides-for-the.html

| page = 1

| date = 25 August 1939

| access-date = 2 January 2019

| archive-date = 21 March 2022

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220321000120/https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/25/archives/nazi-talks-secret-hitler-lays-plans-with-his-close-aides-for-the.html

| url-status = live

}} On 26 August 1939, the New York Times reported Japanese anger{{cite news

| first = Hugh

| last = Byas

| title = Japanese Protest Hitler-Stalin Pact

| newspaper = New York Times

| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/26/archives/japanese-protest-hitlerstalin-pact-envoy-to-berlin-told-to-allege.html

| page = 1

| date = 26 August 1939

| access-date = 2 January 2019

| archive-date = 21 March 2022

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220321000120/https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/26/archives/japanese-protest-hitlerstalin-pact-envoy-to-berlin-told-to-allege.html

| url-status = live

}} and French communist surprise{{cite news

| title = Paris Communists Stunned by Accord

| newspaper = New York Times

| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/26/archives/paris-communists-stunned-by-accord-meet-news-of-pact-by-calling.html

| page = 2

| date = 26 August 1939

| access-date = 2 January 2019

| archive-date = 3 June 2022

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220603181758/https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/26/archives/paris-communists-stunned-by-accord-meet-news-of-pact-by-calling.html

| url-status = live

}} over the pact. The same day, however, Tolischus filed a story that noted Nazi troops on the move near Gleiwitz (now Gliwice), which led to the false flag Gleiwitz incident on 31 August 1939.{{cite news

| first = Otto D.

| last = Tolischus

| author-link = Otto D. Tolischus

| title = Berlin Talks Held: Nazi Quarters Now Feel General European war Has Been Averted

| newspaper = New York Times

| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/26/archives/berlin-talks-held-nazi-quarters-now-feel-general-european-war-has.html

| page = 1

| date = 26 August 1939

| access-date = 2 January 2019

| archive-date = 24 March 2022

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220324014039/https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/26/archives/berlin-talks-held-nazi-quarters-now-feel-general-european-war-has.html

| url-status = live

}} On 28 August 1939, the New York Times was still reporting on fears of a Gleiwitz raid.{{cite news

| title = Polish Made Easy for Reich Troops: Booklet on Sale Has Phonetic Aid—'Good Day, Mr. Mayor' Is the Opening Phrase: Gleiwitz Fears Raids

| newspaper = New York Times

| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/28/archives/polish-made-easy-for-reich-troops-booklet-on-sale-has-phonetic.html

| page = 2

| date = 28 August 1939

| access-date = 2 January 2019

| archive-date = 24 March 2022

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220324013915/https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/28/archives/polish-made-easy-for-reich-troops-booklet-on-sale-has-phonetic.html

| url-status = live

}} On 29 August 1939, the New York Times reported that the Supreme Soviet had failed on its first day of convening to act on the pact.{{cite news

| title = Soviet Fails to Act on Pact With Reich

| newspaper = New York Times

| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/29/archives/soviet-fails-to-act-on-pact-with-reich-waits-to-see-what-the-lineup.html

| page = 1

| date = 28 August 1939

| access-date = 2 January 2019

| archive-date = 21 March 2022

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220321000129/https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/29/archives/soviet-fails-to-act-on-pact-with-reich-waits-to-see-what-the-lineup.html

| url-status = live

}} The same day, the New York Times also reported from Montreal, Canada, that American Professor Samuel N. Harper of the University of Chicago had stated publicly his belief that "the Russo-German non-aggression pact conceals an agreement whereby Russia and Germany may have planned spheres of influence for Eastern Europe".{{cite news

| title = See Secret in Accord: Dr. Harper Says Stalin-Hitler Pact May Prove an Alliance

| newspaper = New York Times

| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/29/archives/sees-secret-in-accord-dr-harper-says-stalinhitler-pact-may-prove-an.html

| page = 11

| date = 28 August 1939

| access-date = 2 January 2019

| archive-date = 22 September 2022

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220922022001/https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/29/archives/sees-secret-in-accord-dr-harper-says-stalinhitler-pact-may-prove-an.html

| url-status = live

}} On 30 August 1939, the New York Times reported a Soviet buildup on its Western frontiers by moving 200,000 troops from the Far East.{{cite news

| title = Russian Massing Soldiers in West

| newspaper = New York Times

| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/30/archives/russians-massing-soldiers-in-west-fear-of-anglogerman-move-against.html

| page = 1

| date = 30 August 1939

| access-date = 2 January 2019

| archive-date = 21 March 2022

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220321000120/https://www.nytimes.com/1939/08/30/archives/russians-massing-soldiers-in-west-fear-of-anglogerman-move-against.html

| url-status = live

}}

On 22 August, one day after talks broke down with France and Britain, Moscow revealed that Ribbentrop would visit Stalin the next day. The Soviets were still negotiating with the British and the French missions in Moscow. With the Western nations unwilling to accede to Soviet demands, Stalin instead entered a secret German–Soviet pact.{{sfn|Watt|1989|p=367}} On 23 August, 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". The article "On Soviet–German Relations" in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia of 21 August 1939, stated:

{{blockquote|Following completion of the Soviet–German trade and credit agreement, there has arisen the question of improving political links between Germany and the USSR.[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8216847.stm Media build up to World War II] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220321000125/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8216847.stm |date=21 March 2022 }}, BBC News, 24 August 2009}}

File:Hitler Stalin Pakt Geheimes Zusatzprotokoll.jpg

File:Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 2.gif

There was also a secret protocol to the pact, which was revealed only after Germany's defeat in 1945 although hints about its provisions had been leaked much earlier, so as to influence Lithuania.Ceslovas Laurinavicius, "The Lithuanian Reaction to the Loss of Klaipeda and the Combined Gift of Soviet "Security Assistance and Vilnius", in: Northern European Overture to War, 1939–1941: From Memel to Barbarossa, 2013, {{ISBN|90-04-24909-5}} According to the protocol, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland were divided into German and Soviet "spheres of influence".{{cite web|url=http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1939pact.html|title=Text of the Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact|date=August 23, 1939|publisher=Fordham|access-date=11 February 2003|archive-date=14 November 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141114231303/http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1939pact.html|url-status=dead}}. In the north, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its "political rearrangement": the areas east of the Pisa, Narew, Vistula, and San rivers would go to the Soviet Union, and Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, which was adjacent to East Prussia, was assigned to the German sphere of influence, but a second secret protocol, agreed to in September 1939, reassigned Lithuania to the Soviet Union.{{cite book |last=Christie |first=Kenneth |title=Historical Injustice and Democratic Transition in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe: Ghosts at the Table of Democracy |publisher=RoutledgeCurzon |year=2002 |isbn=0-7007-1599-1}}. According to the protocol, Lithuania would be granted its historical capital, Vilnius, which was part of Poland during the interwar period. Another clause stipulated that Germany would not interfere with the Soviet Union's actions towards Bessarabia, which was then part of Romania. As a result, Bessarabia as well as the Northern Bukovina and Hertsa regions were occupied by the Soviets and integrated into the Soviet Union.

At the signing, Ribbentrop and Stalin enjoyed warm conversations, exchanged toasts and further addressed the prior hostilities between the countries in the 1930s.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=539}} They characterised Britain as always attempting to disrupt Soviet–German relations and stated that the Anti-Comintern Pact was aimed not at the Soviet Union but actually at Western democracies and "frightened principally the City of London [British financiers] and the English shopkeepers."{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=540}}

The agreement stunned the world. John Gunther, in Moscow in August 1939, recalled how the news of the 19 August commercial agreement surprised journalists and diplomats, who hoped for world peace. They did not expect the 21 August announcement of the non-aggression pact: "Nothing more unbelievable could be imagined. Astonishment and skepticism turned quickly to consternation and alarm".{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.149663/2015.149663.Inside-Europe#page/n159/mode/2up | title=Inside Europe | publisher=Harper & Brothers | author=Gunther, John | author-link=John Gunther | location=New York | year=1940 | pages=137–138}} The news was met with utter shock and surprise by government leaders and media worldwide, most of whom were aware of only the British–French–Soviet negotiations, which had taken place for months;{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=30}}{{r|gunther1940}} by Germany's allies, notably Japan; by the Comintern and foreign Communist parties; and Jewish communities all around the world.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rUdmyzkw9q4C&pg=PA597 |publisher=Routledge |editor-first=Ruud |editor-last=van Dijk |title=Encyclopedia of the Cold War |place=London |year=2008 |page=597 |isbn=978-0-415-97515-5}}.

On 24 August, Pravda and Izvestia carried news of the pact's public portions, complete with the now-famous front-page picture of Molotov signing the treaty with a smiling Stalin looking on.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=30}} The same day, German diplomat Hans von Herwarth, whose grandmother was Jewish, informed Italian diplomat Guido Relli{{sfn|Wegner|1997|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=aESBIpIm6UcC&pg=PA507 507]}} and American chargé d'affaires Charles Bohlen of the secret protocol on the vital interests in the countries' allotted "spheres of influence" but failed to reveal the annexation rights for "territorial and political rearrangement".{{cite book |first=Sławomir |last=Dębski |title=Między Berlinem a Moskwą. Stosunki niemiecko-sowieckie 1939–1941 |place=Warszawa |year=2007 |publisher=Polski Instytut SprawMiędzynarodowych |isbn=978-83-89607-08-9}}.{{cite book |last=Dunn |first=Dennis J |title=Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin: America's Ambassadors to Moscow |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |year=1998 |isbn=0-8131-2023-3 |pages=124–5}}. The agreement's public terms so exceeded the terms of an ordinary non-aggression treaty—requiring that both parties consult with each other, and not aid a third party attacking either—that Gunther heard a joke that Stalin had joined the anti-Comintern pact.{{r|gunther1940}} Time Magazine repeatedly referred to the Pact as the "Communazi Pact" and its participants as "communazis" until April 1941.{{cite news|magazine=Time|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762664-2,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090331134125/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762664-2,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=31 March 2009|title=Moscow's Week|date=9 October 1939|access-date=11 January 2009}}.{{cite news |magazine=Time |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762675,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080308060755/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762675,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=8 March 2008 |title=Revival |date=9 October 1939 |access-date=11 January 2009 }}.{{cite news|magazine=Time|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,789816-2,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070228155801/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,789816-2,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=28 February 2007|title=Communazi Columnists|date=3 June 1940|access-date=11 January 2009}}.{{cite news|magazine=Time|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,765178,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071203032043/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,765178,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=3 December 2007|title=The Revolt of the Intellectuals|date=6 January 1941|first=Whittaker|last=Chambers|access-date=11 January 2009}}{{cite news |magazine=Time |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,765427,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090331134035/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,765427,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=31 March 2009 |title=In Again, Out Again |date=7 April 1941 |access-date=11 January 2009 }}.

Soviet propaganda and representatives went to great lengths to minimize the importance of the fact that they had opposed and fought the Germans in various ways for a decade prior to signing the pact. Molotov tried to reassure the Germans of his good intentions by commenting to journalists that "fascism is a matter of taste".{{cite book |first=Fulton John |last=Sheen |title=Communism and the Conscience of the West |publisher=Bobbs–Merrill |year=1948 |page=115}}. For its part, Germany also did a public volte-face regarding its virulent opposition to the Soviet Union, but Hitler still viewed an attack on the Soviet Union as "inevitable".{{Cite web |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-soviet-union-and-the-eastern-front |title=The Soviet Union and the Eastern Front |website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org |language=en |access-date=26 January 2019 |archive-date=10 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200710182752/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-soviet-union-and-the-eastern-front |url-status=live }}

Concerns over the possible existence of a secret protocol were expressed first by the intelligence organizations of the Baltic states{{citation needed|date=February 2009}} only days after the pact was signed. Speculation grew stronger when Soviet negotiators referred to its content during the negotiations for military bases in those countries (see occupation of the Baltic States).

The day after the pact was signed, the Franco-British military delegation urgently requested a meeting with Soviet military negotiator Kliment Voroshilov.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|pp=541–2}} On 25 August, Voroshilov told them that "in view of the changed political situation, no useful purpose can be served in continuing the conversation".{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|pp=541–2}} The same day, Hitler told the British ambassador to Berlin that the pact with the Soviets prevented Germany from facing a two-front war, which changed the strategic situation from that in World War I, and that Britain should accept his demands on Poland.{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|p=123}}

On 25 August, Hitler was surprised when Britain joined a defense pact with Poland.{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|p=123}} Hitler postponed his plans for an invasion of Poland on 26 August to 1 September.{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|p=123}}{{cite book |first=Frank |last=McDonough |title=Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War |page=86}}. In accordance with the defence pact, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September.{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ljAyEEiVG-sC&pg=PA250 | title=Avoiding Armageddon: From the Great War to the Fall of France, 1918–40 | publisher=A&C Black | author=Black, Jeremy | year=2012 | page=251 | isbn=978-1-4411-5713-3}}

File:Ribbentrop-Molotov.svg

File:Гитлеровцы уничтожают пограничные знаки.jpg

{{Main|Invasion of Poland|Soviet invasion of Poland}}

{{See also|German–Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk}}

On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland from the west. Within a few days, Germany began conducting massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians and POWs,{{Sfn|Datner|1962|p=11}}{{Cite book|first=JL|last=Garvin|title=German Atrocities in Poland|publisher=Free Europe|page=15}}. which took place in over 30 towns and villages in the first month of the German occupation.{{Sfn|Datner|Gumkowski|Leszczynski|1962|pp=127–34}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.um-swiecie.pl/index_en.php?cid=142&unroll=142|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090331194029/http://www.um-swiecie.pl/index_en.php?cid=142&unroll=142|url-status=dead|archive-date=31 March 2009|title=Um Swiecie|place=PL}}.{{cite book|first=Martin|last=Gilbert|title=The Holocaust|publisher=Fontana|year=1990|isbn=0-00-637194-9|pages=85–88}}. The Luftwaffe also took part by strafing fleeing civilian refugees on roads and by carrying out a bombing campaign.{{Sfn|Davies|1986|p=437}}{{Sfn|Cyprian|Sawicki|1961|p=65}}{{Sfn|Datner|Gumkowski|Leszczynski|1962|p=18}} The Soviet Union assisted German air forces by allowing them to use signals broadcast by the Soviet radio station at Minsk, allegedly "for urgent aeronautical experiments".АВП СССР, ф. 06, оп. 1, п. 8, д. 74, л. 20. л. 26. Item 4: "Hilger asked to pass the request of the German Air forces' Chief of Staff (the Germans wanted the radio station in Minsk, when it is idle, to start a continuous broadcast needed for urgent aeronautical experiments. This translation should contain the embedded call signs "Richard Wilhelm 1.0", and, in addition to that, to broadcast the word "Minsk" as frequent as possible. The Molotov's resolution on that document authorised broadcasting of the word "Minsk" only)."

Hitler declared at Danzig:

{{blockquote|Poland never will rise again in the form of the Versailles treaty. That is guaranteed not only by Germany, but also{{nbsp}}... Russia.{{cite news|url=https://time.com/vault/issue/1939-10-02/page/22/|title=Seven Years War?|work=Time|date=2 October 1939|access-date=26 January 2021|archive-date=18 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210918024831/https://time.com/vault/issue/1939-10-02/page/22/|url-status=live}}}}

File:Davidlowrendezvous.png depicting Hitler greeting Stalin after the invasion of Poland, with the words: "The scum of the earth, I believe?" To which Stalin replies: "The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?";The cartoon is a parody of "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", Henry Morton Stanley's supposed greeting to Livingstone in November 1871. Artistic reconstructions of that event (see relevant articles) showed them raising their hats to one another in greeting. 20 September 1939.]]

File:Armia Czerwona, Wehrmacht 22.09.1939 wspólna parada.jpg at the end of the invasion of Poland. At the centre are Major General Heinz Guderian and Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein.]]

In the opinion of Robert Service, Stalin did not move instantly but was waiting to see whether the Germans would halt within the agreed area, and the Soviet Union also needed to secure the frontier in the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts.{{Sfn|Service|2003|p=256}} On 17 September, the Red Army invaded Poland, violating the 1932 Soviet–Polish Non-Aggression Pact, and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. That was followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=43}} Polish troops already fighting much stronger German forces on its west desperately tried to delay the capture of Warsaw. Consequently, Polish forces could not mount significant resistance against the Soviets.{{cite book|last=Zaloga|first=Steven J|title=Poland 1939|url=https://archive.org/details/polandbirthblitz00zalo|url-access=limited|publisher=Osprey|place=Botley, UK|year=2002|page=[https://archive.org/details/polandbirthblitz00zalo/page/n72 80]|isbn=9781846035623}}. On 18 September, The New York Times published an editorial arguing that "Hitlerism is brown communism, Stalinism is red fascism...The world will now understand that the only real 'ideological' issue is one between democracy, liberty and peace on the one hand and despotism, terror and war on the other."{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1939/09/18/archives/the-russian-betrayal.html|title=The Russian Betrayal|date=18 September 1939|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=11 February 2020|issn=0362-4331|url-access=subscription|archive-date=21 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211021090823/https://www.nytimes.com/1939/09/18/archives/the-russian-betrayal.html|url-status=live}}

On 21 September, Marshal of the Soviet Union Voroshilov, German military attaché General Köstring, and other officers signed a formal agreement in Moscow co-ordinating military movements in Poland, including the "purging" of saboteurs and the Red Army assisting with destruction of the "enemy".{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|p=130}} Joint German–Soviet parades were held in Lviv and Brest-Litovsk, and the countries' military commanders met in the latter city.{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|p=131}} Stalin had decided in August that he was going to liquidate the Polish state, and a German–Soviet meeting in September addressed the future structure of the "Polish region".{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|p=131}} Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of Sovietisation{{cite book|language=pl|title=Sowietyzacja Kresów Wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej po 17 września 1939|year=1998|editor-first=Adam|editor-last=Sudoł|page=441|publisher=Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna|location=Bydgoszcz|isbn=83-7096-281-5}}{{cite book|title=Demography and National Security|year=2001|editor1-first=Myron|editor1-last=Weiner|editor2-first=Sharon Stanton|editor2-last=Russell|pages=308–15|chapter=Stalinist Forced Relocation Policies|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J9nuv7MGQ5MC&q=Sovietization&pg=PA309|publisher=Berghahn Books|isbn=1-57181-339-X}} of the newly acquired areas. The Soviets organised staged elections,{{cite web|language=pl|first=Bartłomiej|last=Kozłowski|title="Wybory" do Zgromadzeń Ludowych Zachodniej Ukrainy i Zachodniej Białorusi|publisher=NASK|year=2005|work=Polska|location=PL|url=http://wiadomosci.polska.pl/kalendarz/kalendarium/article.htm?id=132394|access-date=13 March 2006|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060628125314/http://wiadomosci.polska.pl/kalendarz/kalendarium/article.htm?id=132394|archive-date=28 June 2006}} the result of which was to become a legitimisation of the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland.{{cite book|first=Jan Tomasz|last=Gross|title=Revolution from Abroad|year=2003|page=396|publisher=Princeton University Press|location =Princeton|isbn=0-691-09603-1|author-link=Jan Tomasz Gross|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XKtOr4EXOWwC&q=October+22+1939&pg=PA71}}.

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-013-0068-18A, Polen, Treffen deutscher und sowjetischer Soldaten.jpg]]

File:Mapa 2 paktu Ribbentrop-Mołotow.gif" of 28 September 1939. Map of Poland signed by Stalin and Ribbentrop (focused on the Kresy) adjusting the German-Soviet border in the aftermath of German and Soviet invasion of Poland.]]

Eleven days after the Soviet invasion of the Polish Kresy, the secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was modified by the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty,{{cite web|url=http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/gsbound.htm|title=German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty|publisher=Yale|access-date=2 May 2006|archive-date=20 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160820083210/http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/gsbound.htm|url-status=dead}}. allotting Germany a larger part of Poland and transferring Lithuania, with the exception of the left bank of the River Scheschupe, the "Lithuanian Strip", from the envisioned German sphere to the Soviet sphere.{{cite book|last=Wettig|first=Gerhard|title=Stalin and the Cold War in Europe|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|place=Landham, MD, US|year=2008|isbn=978-0-7425-5542-6|pages=20–21}} On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union and German Reich issued a joint declaration in which they declared:

{{Blockquote|After the Government of the German Reich and the Government of the USSR have, by means of the treaty signed today, definitively settled the problems arising from the collapse of the Polish state and have thereby created a sure foundation for lasting peace in the region, they mutually express their conviction that it would serve the true interest of all peoples to put an end to the state of war existing at present between Germany on the one side and England and France on the other. Both Governments will, therefore, direct their common efforts, jointly with other friendly powers if the occasion arises, toward attaining this goal as soon as possible.

Should, however, the efforts of the two Governments remain fruitless, this would demonstrate the fact that England and France are responsible for the continuation of the war, whereupon, in case of the continuation of the war, the Governments of Germany and of the USSR shall engage in mutual consultations with regard to necessary measures.{{cite web|url=http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/dec939.htm|title=Declaration of the Government of the German Reich and the Government of the USSR of September 28, 1939|publisher=Yale|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051126055850/http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nazsov/dec939.htm|archive-date=November 26, 2005|access-date=3 February 2006}}.}}

On 3 October, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador in Moscow, informed Joachim Ribbentrop that the Soviet government was willing to cede the city of Vilnius and its environs. On 8 October 1939, a new German–Soviet agreement was reached by an exchange of letters between Vyacheslav Molotov and the German ambassador.{{cite journal|url=http://www.lituanus.org/1989/89_2_02.htm|last=Domas|first=Krivickas|title=The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939: Legal and Political Consequences|journal=Lituanus|volume=34|date=Summer 1989|issn=0024-5089|issue=2|access-date=30 August 2009|archive-date=3 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210303024606/http://www.lituanus.org/1989/89_2_02.htm|url-status=dead}}.

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were given no choice but to sign a so-called "Pact of Defence and Mutual Assistance", which permitted the Soviet Union to station troops in them.

{{Main|Winter War|Katyn massacre}}

File:Lithuania territory 1939-1940.svg

After the Baltic states had been forced to accept treaties,{{Sfn|Engle|Paananen|1985|p=6}} Stalin turned his sights on Finland and was confident that its capitulation could be attained without great effort.{{Sfn|Turtola|1999|pp =35–37}} The Soviets demanded territories on the Karelian Isthmus, the islands of the Gulf of Finland and a military base near the Finnish capital, Helsinki,{{Sfn|Turtola|1999|pp=32–33}}{{Sfn|Trotter|2002|pp=12–13}} which Finland rejected.{{Sfn|Edwards|2006|p=55}} The Soviets staged the shelling of Mainila on 26 November and used it as a pretext to withdraw from the Soviet–Finnish Non-Aggression Pact.{{Sfn|Turtola|1999|pp=44–45}} On 30 November, the Red Army invaded Finland, launching the Winter War with the aim of annexing Finland into the Soviet Union.Manninen (2008), pp. 37, 42, 43, 46, 49Rentola (2003) pp. 188–217Ravasz (2003) p. 3 The Soviets formed the Finnish Democratic Republic to govern Finland after Soviet conquest.{{cite book |last=Tanner|first=Väinö |title=The Winter War: Finland Against Russia, 1939-1940, Volume 312 |location=Palo Alto |publisher=Stanford University Press |year=1956| page= 114 }}{{cite book |last=Trotter|first=William|title=A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940 |publisher=Algonquin Books |year=2013| page=58,61 }}{{cite book |last=Kokoshin|first=Andrei|title=Soviet Strategic Thought, 1917-91 |publisher=MIT Press |year=1998| page=93 }}{{cite book |last=Killham|first=EdwardL|title=The Nordic Way: A Path to Baltic Equilibrium |publisher=Howells House |year=1993| page=78 }} The leader of the Leningrad Military District, Andrei Zhdanov, commissioned a celebratory piece from Dmitri Shostakovich, Suite on Finnish Themes, to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army would be parading through Helsinki.{{Sfn|Edwards|2006|p=98}} After Finnish defenses surprisingly held out for over three months and inflicted stiff losses on Soviet forces, under the command of Semyon Timoshenko, the Soviets settled for an interim peace. Finland ceded parts of Karelia, Kuusamo, and Salla together with Hanko leased as a naval base (9% of Finnish territory),{{cite book|last=Kennedy-Pipe|first=Caroline|title=Stalin's Cold War|place=New York|publisher=Manchester University Press|year=1995|isbn=0-7190-4201-1}}.{{page needed|date=August 2020}} which resulted in approximately 422,000 Finns (12% of Finland's population) losing their homes.{{Sfn|Engle|Paananen|1985|pp=142–3}} Soviet official casualty counts in the war exceeded 200,000{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=52}} although Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev later claimed that the casualties may have been one million.{{cite book|last=Mosier|first=John|title=The Blitzkrieg Myth: How Hitler and the Allies Misread the Strategic Realities of World War II|publisher=HarperCollins|year=2004|isbn=0-06-000977-2|page=88}}.

Around that time, after several Gestapo–NKVD conferences, Soviet NKVD officers also conducted lengthy interrogations of 300,000 Polish POWs in camps{{cite web|url=http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/haslo.php?id=3949396|language=pl|title=Obozy jenieckie żołnierzy polskich|trans-title=Prison camps for Polish soldiers|place=PL|publisher=Internetowa encyklopedia PWN|access-date=28 November 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131104032626/http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/haslo.php?id=3949396|archive-date=4 November 2013|url-status=dead}}.{{Cite book|url=http://www.dzp.wojsko.pl/dzial/wydawnictwa/zwarte/pdf/EHW_1_2005.pdf|contribution=Edukacja Humanistyczna w wojsku|year=2005|title=Dom wydawniczy Wojska Polskiego|issn=1734-6584|language=pl|trans-title=Official publication of the Polish Army|place=PL|issue=1|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080307151053/http://www.dzp.wojsko.pl/dzial/wydawnictwa/zwarte/pdf/EHW_1_2005.pdf|archive-date=7 March 2008|accessdate=23 January 2009}}.{{Cite book|title=Молотов на V сессии Верховного Совета 31 октября цифра "примерно 250 тыс."|language=ru}}{{Cite book|place=RU|title=USA truth|publisher=By|contribution=Отчёт Украинского и Белорусского фронтов Красной Армии Мельтюхов, с. 367.|url=http://www.usatruth.by.ru/c2.files/t05.html|language=ru}}{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}} that were a selection process to determine who would be killed.{{cite journal |publisher=CIA |author-link=Benjamin Fischer (historian) |last=Fischer |first=Benjamin B |url=https://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/winter99-00/art6.html |title=The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field |place=US |journal=Studies in Intelligence |date=Winter 1999–2000 |access-date=23 January 2009 |archive-date=9 May 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070509174522/https://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/winter99-00/art6.html |url-status=dead }} On 5 March 1940, in what would later be known as the Katyn massacre,{{cite book|author-link=George Sanford (scholar)|last=Sanford|first=George|title=Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory|isbn=978-0-415-33873-8|volume=20|series=BASEES – Russian and East European studies: British Association for Soviet, Slavonic and East European Studies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PZXvUuvfv-oC&q=Soviet+invasion+of+Poland+1939&pg=PA20|publisher=Routledge|year=2005|format=Google Books|pages=20–24}}.{{cite web|publisher=CIA|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/pdf/v43i3a06p.pdf|title=Stalin's Killing Field|access-date=19 July 2008|archive-date=9 July 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080709144143/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/pdf/v43i3a06p.pdf|url-status=dead}} 22,000 members of the military as well as intellectuals were executed, labelled "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" or kept at camps and prisons in western Ukraine and Belarus.{{citation needed|date=May 2019}}

{{Main|Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940)|Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina}}

File:WWII in Europe 1939-1941-en.svg

In mid-June 1940, while international attention focused on the German invasion of France, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.{{cite book|last= Senn|first= Alfred Erich|title= Lithuania 1940: Revolution from Above|place= Amsterdam, New York|publisher= Rodopi|year= 2007|isbn= 978-90-420-2225-6}}.

State administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, who deported or killed 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians.{{Sfn|Montefiore|2005|p =334}} Elections took place, with a single pro-Soviet candidate listed for many positions, and the resulting people's assemblies immediately requesting admission into the Soviet Union, which was granted. (The Soviets annexed the whole of Lithuania, including the Šešupė area, which had been earmarked for Germany.)

Finally, on 26 June, four days after the armistice between France and Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum that demanded Bessarabia and unexpectedly Northern Bukovina from Romania.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p= 55}} Two days later, the Romanians acceded to the Soviet demands, and the Soviets occupied the territories. The Hertsa region was initially not requested by the Soviets but was later occupied by force after the Romanians had agreed to the initial Soviet demands.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p= 55}} The subsequent waves of deportations began in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.

{{Main|Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland|Operation Tannenberg|Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles}}

At the end of October 1939, Germany enacted the death penalty for disobedience to the German occupation.{{cite book|first=Iwo|last=Pogonowski|title=Jews in Poland|url=https://archive.org/details/jewspolanddocume00pogo|url-access=limited|publisher=Hippocrene|year=1998|isbn=0-7818-0604-6|page=[https://archive.org/details/jewspolanddocume00pogo/page/n97 101]}}. Germany began a campaign of "Germanization", which meant assimilating the occupied territories politically, culturally, socially and economically into the German Reich.{{Sfn|Halecki|1983|p=312}}{{Sfn|Garlinski|1987|p=28}}{{cite web|url=http://www.remember.org/forgotten/|title=Forgotten|publisher=Remember|access-date=23 January 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180125075356/http://remember.org/forgotten|archive-date=25 January 2018|url-status=dead}}. 50,000–200,000 Polish children were kidnapped to be Germanised.{{Sfn|Cyprian|Sawicki|1961|pp=83–91}}

File:Polish Hostages preparing in Palmiry by Nazi-Germans for mass execution 2.jpg, 1940]]

The elimination of Polish elites and intelligentsia was part of Generalplan Ost. The Intelligenzaktion, a plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia, Poland's 'leadership class', took place soon after the German invasion of Poland and lasted from fall of 1939 to the spring of 1940. As the result of the operation, in ten regional actions, about 60,000 Polish nobles, teachers, social workers, priests, judges and political activists were killed.{{cite book|first=Maria|last=Wardzyńska|title=Był rok 1939 Operacja niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa w Polsce. Intelligenzaktion|publisher=IPN Instytut Pamięci Narodowej|year=2009|isbn=978-83-7629-063-8|language=pl}}.{{cite book|last=Meier|first=Anna|title=Die Intelligenzaktion: Die Vernichtung der polnischen Oberschicht im Gau Danzig-Westpreußen|publisher=VDM Verlag Dr. Müller|isbn=978-3-639-04721-9|year=2008}}. It was continued in May 1940, when Germany launched AB-Aktion,{{Cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005473|title=USHMM|access-date=23 January 2009|archive-date=29 March 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100329193633/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005473|url-status=live}}. More than 16,000 members of the intelligentsia were murdered in Operation Tannenberg alone.{{Sfn|Garlinski|1987|p=27}}

Germany also planned to incorporate all of the land into Nazi Germany.{{Sfn|Garlinski|1987|p=28}} That effort resulted in the forced resettlement of two million Poles. Families were forced to travel in the severe winter of 1939–1940, leaving behind almost all of their possessions without compensation.{{Sfn|Garlinski|1987|p=28}} As part of Operation Tannenberg alone, 750,000 Polish peasants were forced to leave, and their property was given to Germans.{{Sfn|Davies|1986|p=446}} A further 330,000 were murdered.{{cite book|first=Adam|last=Zamoyski|title=The Polish Way|publisher=John Murray|year=1989|isbn=0-7195-4674-5|page=358}}. Germany planned the eventual move of ethnic Poles to Siberia.{{Sfn|Cyprian|Sawicki|1961|p=73}}{{Sfn|Datner|Gumkowski|Leszczynski|1962|p=8}}

Although Germany used forced labourers in most other occupied countries, Poles and other Slavs were viewed as inferior by Nazi propaganda and thus better suited for such duties. Between 1 and 2.5 million Polish citizens{{cite web|publisher=MSZ|title=Nazi German Camps on Polish Soil During World War II|place=PL|url=http://www.msz.gov.pl/Nazi,German,Camps,on,Polish,Soil,,During,World,War,II,6465.html|access-date=23 January 2009|archive-date=7 September 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060907133748/http://www.msz.gov.pl/Nazi,German,Camps,on,Polish,Soil,,During,World,War,II,6465.html|url-status=live}}. were transported to the Reich for forced labour.{{Sfn|Piotrowski|2007|p=22}}{{Sfn|Cyprian|Sawicki|1961|p=139}} All Polish males were made to perform forced labour. While ethnic Poles were subject to selective persecution, all ethnic Jews were targeted by the Reich. In the winter of 1939–40, about 100,000 Jews were thus deported to Poland.{{Sfn|Garlinski|1987|p=29}} They were initially gathered into massive urban ghettos,{{Sfn|Halecki|1983|p=313}} such as the 380,000 held in the Warsaw Ghetto, where large numbers died of starvation and diseases under their harsh conditions, including 43,000 in the Warsaw Ghetto alone.{{Cite book|author-link=Michael Berenbaum|last=Berenbaum|first=Michael|title=The World Must Know|publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum|year=2006|page=114}}.{{cite web|url=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005413|title=Deportations to and from the Warsaw Ghetto|place=US|publisher=Holocaust Memorial Museum|access-date=23 January 2009|archive-date=9 July 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090709214900/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005413|url-status=live}}. Poles and ethnic Jews were imprisoned in nearly every camp of the extensive concentration camp system in German-occupied Poland and the Reich. In Auschwitz, which began operating on 14 June 1940, 1.1 million people perished.{{cite book|first1=Brian|last1=Harmon|first2=John|last2=Drobnicki|url=http://nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/appendix-2-01.html|title=Techniques of denial|contribution=Historical sources and the Auschwitz death toll estimates|publisher=The Nizkor Project|access-date=23 January 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090116020410/http://nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/appendix-2-01.html|archive-date=16 January 2009|url-status=dead}}.{{cite journal|last1=Piper|first1=Franciszek|last2=Meyer|first2=Fritjof|language=de|url=http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=334&Itemid=8|title=Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz. Neue Erkentnisse durch neue Archivfunde|journal=Osteuropa|volume=52, Jg|issue=5|year=2002|pages=631–41|type=review article|publisher=Auschwitz|place=PL|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110521083735/http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=334&Itemid=8|archive-date=21 May 2011|accessdate=22 March 2009}}.

File:PérdidasTerritorialesRumanas1940-ro.svg

{{Further|Second Vienna Award|Population transfer in the Soviet Union|Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union}}

In the summer of 1940, fear of the Soviet Union, in conjunction with German support for the territorial demands of Romania's neighbours and the Romanian government's own miscalculations, resulted in more territorial losses for Romania. Between 28 June and 4 July, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region of Romania.{{cite book|author=Vladimir Beshanov|title=Czerwony Blitzkrieg|publisher=Inicjał|place=PL|year=2008|pages=250–62|isbn=978-83-926205-2-5|language=pl}}.

On 30 August, Ribbentrop and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano issued the Second Vienna Award, giving Northern Transylvania to Hungary. On 7 September, Romania ceded Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria (Axis-sponsored Treaty of Craiova).{{cite book|last=Wasserstein|first=Bernard|title=Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time|place=Oxford University Press|year=2007|isbn=978-0-19-873074-3|page=[https://archive.org/details/barbarismciviliz00wass/page/305 305]|url=https://archive.org/details/barbarismciviliz00wass/page/305}}. After various events over the following months, Romania increasingly took on the aspect of a German-occupied country.

The Soviet-occupied territories were converted into republics of the Soviet Union. During the two years after the annexation, the Soviets arrested approximately 100,000 Polish citizens{{Cite web|url=http://www.indeks.karta.org.pl/represje_sowieckie_4.html|title=Represje 1939–41 Aresztowani na Kresach Wschodnich|trans-title=Repressions 1939–41. Arrested on the Eastern Borderlands|publisher=Ośrodek Karta|place=PL|language=pl|access-date=15 November 2006|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061210055006/http://www.indeks.karta.org.pl/represje_sowieckie_4.html|archive-date=10 December 2006}}. and deported between 350,000 and 1,500,000, of whom between 250,000 and 1,000,000 died, mostly civilians.{{sfn|Rieber|2000|pp=14, 32–37}}{{Efn|name="Number_of_deportees"|The actual number of deported in the period of 1939–1941 remains unknown and various estimates vary from 350,000{{cite book|title=Internetowa encyklopedia PWN|contribution-url=http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/53025_1.html|contribution=Okupacja Sowiecka w Polsce 1939–41|access-date=14 March 2006|language=pl|title-link=Internetowa encyklopedia PWN|archive-date=20 April 2005|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050420212451/http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/53025_1.html|url-status=dead}}. to over 2 million, mostly World War II estimates by the underground. The earlier number is based on records made by the NKVD and does not include roughly 180,000 prisoners of war, who were also in Soviet captivity. Most modern historians estimate the number of all people deported from areas taken by Soviet Union during that period at between 800,000 and 1,500,000;{{cite journal|first1=Marek|last1=Wierzbicki|first2=Tadeusz M|last2=Płużański |date=March 2001|title=Wybiórcze traktowanie źródeł|journal=Tygodnik Solidarność|issue=2}}{{cite conference|language=pl|first=Albin|last=Głowacki|date=September 2003|title=Formy, skala i konsekwencje sowieckich represji wobec Polaków w latach 1939–1941|conference=Okupacja sowiecka ziem polskich 1939–1941|editor-first=Piotr|editor-last=Chmielowiec|publisher=Instytut Pamięci Narodowej|location=Rzeszów-Warsaw|url=http://www.ipn.gov.pl/a_140803_przemysl_konf.html|isbn=83-89078-78-3|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031003093600/http://www.ipn.gov.pl/a_140803_przemysl_konf.html|archive-date=3 October 2003|accessdate=23 January 2009|url-status=dead}} for example, RJ Rummel gives the number of 1,200,000 million;{{cite book|last=Rummel |first=RJ|year=1990|title=Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sK5CJFpb2DAC&q=Soviet+genocide+Poland&pg=PA132|page=132|publisher=Transaction Publishers |isbn=978-1-4128-2750-8}}. Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox give 1,500,000.{{cite book|first1=Tony |last1=Kushner|first2=Katharine|last2=Knox|year=1999|title=Refugees in an Age of Genocide|isbn=978-0-7146-4783-8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4iehSAirzqQC&q=Soviet+genocide+Poland&pg=PA219|page=219|publisher=Psychology Press }}}} Forced re-settlements into gulag labour camps and exile settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union occurred. According to Norman Davies,{{cite book|first=Norman|last=Davies|title=God's Playground. A History of Poland|volume=2: 1795 to the Present|year=1982|publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford|isbn=0-19-925340-4|pages=449–55|author-link=Norman Davies}} almost half of them were dead by July 1940.{{sfn|Wegner|1997|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=7odfDAlO64UC&q=Davies+million+Sikorski&pg=PA78 78]}}

{{Main|German–Soviet Border and Commercial Agreement}}

On 10 January 1941, Germany and the Soviet Union signed an agreement settling several ongoing issues.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=150–3}} Secret protocols in the new agreement modified the "Secret Additional Protocols" of the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, ceding the Lithuanian Strip to the Soviet Union in exchange for US$7.5 million ({{Reichsmark|31.5 million|link=yes}}).{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=150–3}} The agreement formally set the border between Germany and the Soviet Union between the Igorka River and the Baltic Sea.{{cite book|last=Johari|first=JC|title=Soviet Diplomacy 1925–41|volume=1925–27|publisher=Anmol|year=2000|isbn=81-7488-491-2|pages=134–7}}. It also extended trade regulation of the 1940 German-Soviet Commercial Agreement until 1 August 1942, increased deliveries above the levels of the first year of that agreement, settled trading rights in the Baltics and Bessarabia, calculated the compensation for German property interests in the Baltic states that were now occupied by the Soviets and covered other issues.{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=150–3}} It also covered the migration to Germany within {{frac|2|1|2}} months of ethnic Germans and German citizens in Soviet-held Baltic territories and the migration to the Soviet Union of Baltic and "White Russian" "nationals" in the German-held territories.

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-121-0011-20, Polen, deutsch-sowjetische Siegesparade.jpg.]]

Before the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact was announced, Western communists denied that such a treaty would be signed. Herbert Biberman, a future member of the Hollywood Ten, denounced rumours as "Fascist propaganda". Earl Browder, the head of the Communist Party USA, stated that "there is as much chance of agreement as of Earl Browder being elected president of the Chamber of Commerce."{{cite book|title=City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s|publisher=University of California Press|last=Friedrich|first=Otto|year=1997 |location=Berkeley; Los Angeles|page=[https://archive.org/details/cityofnetsportra00frie/page/24 24]|isbn=0-520-20949-4|edition=reprint |url=https://archive.org/details/cityofnetsportra00frie/page/24}} Gunther wrote, however, that some knew "communism and Fascism were more closely allied than was normally understood", and Ernst von Weizsäcker had told Nevile Henderson on 16 August that the Soviet Union would "join in sharing in the Polish spoils".{{r|gunther1940}} In September 1939, the Comintern suspended all anti-Nazi and anti-fascist propaganda and explained that the war in Europe was a matter of capitalist states attacking one another for imperialist purposes.{{cite book|last=Cohen |first=Yohanon|title=Small Nations in Times of Crisis and Confrontation|publisher=SUNY Press|year=1989 |isbn=0-7914-0018-2|page=110}}. Western communists acted accordingly; although they had previously supported collective security, they now denounced Britain and France for going to war.{{r|friedrich1997}}

When anti-German demonstrations erupted in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the Comintern ordered the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to employ all of its strength to paralyse "chauvinist elements". Moscow soon forced the French Communist Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain to adopt anti-war positions. On 7 September, Stalin called Georgi Dimitrov,{{Clarify|date=February 2009}} who sketched a new Comintern line on the war that stated that the war was unjust and imperialist, which was approved by the secretariat of the Comintern on 9 September. Thus, western communist parties now had to oppose the war and to vote against war credits.{{Cite web|last=Flewers|first=Paul|work=What Next|quote=Stalin was publicly making the none-too-subtle implication that some form of deal between the Soviet Union and Germany could not be ruled out|url=http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Newint/Redflag.html|title=From the Red Flag to the Union Jack: The Rise of Domestic Patriotism in the Communist Party of Great Britain|year=1995|access-date=14 February 2006|url-status=dead|archive-date=23 February 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060223124354/http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Newint/Redflag.html}} Although the French communists had unanimously voted in Parliament for war credits on 2 September and declared their "unshakeable will" to defend the country on 19 September, the Comintern formally instructed the party to condemn the war as imperialist on 27 September. By 1 October, the French communists advocated listening to German peace proposals, and leader Maurice Thorez deserted from the French Army on 4 October and fled to Russia.{{r|jackson2001}} Other communists also deserted from the army.

The Communist Party of Germany featured similar attitudes. In Die Welt, a communist newspaper published in Stockholm{{Efn|Having been banned in Stockholm, it continued to be published in Zürich.{{Citation|url=http://library.fes.de/fulltext/sozmit/som-von-aussen.htm|title=Sozmit|contribution=Som von Außen|place=DE|publisher=FES|access-date=19 September 2010|archive-date=17 May 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210517035922/http://library.fes.de/fulltext/sozmit/som-von-aussen.htm|url-status=live}}.}} the exiled communist leader Walter Ulbricht opposed the Allies, stated that Britain represented "the most reactionary force in the world",{{Cite web|place=DE|url=http://library.fes.de/fulltext/sozmit/1940-008.htm|title=Sozialistische Mitteilungen|publisher=FES|issue=8|year=1940|access-date=19 September 2010|archive-date=20 October 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211020042906/http://library.fes.de/fulltext/sozmit/1940-008.htm|url-status=live}}. and argued, "The German government declared itself ready for friendly relations with the Soviet Union, whereas the English–French war bloc desires a war against the socialist Soviet Union. The Soviet people and the working people of Germany have an interest in preventing the English war plan".{{cite book|first=Walther|last=Hofer|title=Die Entfesselung des Zweiten Weltkrieges|year=2007|publisher=Lit|isbn=978-3-8258-0383-4|pages=224–5|quote=Die Welt, February 1940.}}

Despite a warning by the Comintern, German tensions were raised when the Soviets stated in September that they must enter Poland to "protect" their ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian brethren from Germany. Molotov later admitted to German officials that the excuse was necessary because the Kremlin could find no other pretext for the Soviet invasion.{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|pp=128–9}}

During the early months of the Pact, Soviet foreign policy became critical of the Allies and more pro-German in turn. During the Fifth Session of the Supreme Soviet on 31 October 1939, Molotov analysed the international situation, thus giving the direction for communist propaganda. According to Molotov, Germany had a legitimate interest in regaining its position as a great power, and the Allies had started an aggressive war in order to maintain the Versailles system.{{cite book|editor-first=Bianka|editor-last=Pietrow-Ennker|first=Bianka|last=Pietrow-Ennker|contribution=Stalinistische Außen- und Deutschlandpolitik 1939–1941|title=Präventivkrieg? Der Deutsche Angriff auf die Sowjetunion|publisher=Fischer|place=Frankfurt am Main|year=2000|edition=3|page=85|isbn=978-3-596-14497-6}}

{{Main|German–Soviet Credit Agreement (1939)|German–Soviet Commercial Agreement (1940)}}

Germany and the Soviet Union entered an intricate trade pact on 11 February 1940 that was over four times larger than the one that the two countries had signed in August 1939.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|pp=668–9}} The new trade pact helped Germany surmount a British blockade.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|pp=668–9}} In the first year, Germany received one million tons of cereals, half-a-million tons of wheat, 900,000 tons of oil, 100,000 tons of cotton, 500,000 tons of phosphates and considerable amounts of other vital raw materials, along with the transit of one million tons of soybeans from Manchuria. Those and other supplies were being transported through Soviet and occupied Polish territories.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|pp=668–9}} The Soviets were to receive a naval cruiser, the plans to the battleship Bismarck, heavy naval guns, other naval gear and 30 of Germany's latest warplanes, including the Bf 109 and Bf 110 fighters and Ju 88 bomber.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|pp=668–9}} The Soviets would also receive oil and electric equipment, locomotives, turbines, generators, diesel engines, ships, machine tools, and samples of German artillery, tanks, explosives, chemical-warfare equipment, and other items.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|pp=668–9}}

The Soviets also helped Germany to avoid British naval blockades by providing a submarine base, Basis Nord, in the northern Soviet Union near Murmansk. That also provided a refueling and maintenance location and a takeoff point for raids and attacks on shipping. In addition, the Soviets provided Germany with access to the Northern Sea Route for both cargo ships and raiders though only the commerce raider {{Ship|German auxiliary cruiser|Komet||2}} used the route before the German invasion, which forced Britain to protect sea lanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.{{Sfn|Philbin|1994|pp=130–42}}

The Finnish and Baltic invasions began a deterioration of relations between the Soviets and Germany.{{cite book|last=Kennan|first=George|title=Russian and the West, under Lenin and Stalin|place=NY|publisher=Mentor|year=1961|pages=318–9}}. Stalin's invasions were a severe irritant to Berlin since the intent to accomplish them had not been communicated to the Germans beforehand, and they prompted concern that Stalin was seeking to form an anti-German bloc.{{cite book|last=Cartier|first=Raymond|title=Hitler et ses Généreaux|place=Paris|publisher=J'ai Lu/A. Faiard|year=1962|page=233|language=fr|trans-title=Hitler and his Generals}}. Molotov's reassurances to the Germans only intensified the Germans' mistrust. On 16 June, as the Soviets invaded Lithuania but before they had invaded Latvia and Estonia, Ribbentrop instructed his staff "to submit a report as soon as possible as to whether in the Baltic States a tendency to seek support from the Reich can be observed or whether an attempt was made to form a bloc."{{Cite book|editor1-last=Sontag|editor1-first=RJ|editor2-last=Beddie|editor2-first=JS|title=Nazi–Soviet Relations 1939–1941|place=Washington, DC|publisher=State Department|year=1948|page=151}}.

In August 1940, the Soviet Union briefly suspended its deliveries under its commercial agreement after relations were strained after disagreements over policy in Romania, the Soviet war with Finland, Germany's falling behind on its deliveries of goods under the pact and Stalin's worry that Hitler's war with the West might end quickly after France signed an armistice.{{Sfn|Philbin|1994|pp=48, 59}} The suspension created significant resource problems for Germany.{{Sfn|Philbin|1994|pp=48, 59}} By the end of August, relations had improved again, as the countries had redrawn the Hungarian and Romanian borders and settled some Bulgarian claims, and Stalin was again convinced that Germany would face a long war in the west with Britain's improvement in its air battle with Germany and the execution of an agreement between the United States and Britain regarding destroyers and bases.{{Sfn|Philbin|1994|p=60}}

In early September however, Germany arranged its own occupation of Romania, targeting its oil fields.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=720}} That move raised tensions with the Soviets, who responded that Germany was supposed to have consulted with the Soviet Union under Article III of the pact.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|p=720}}

{{Main|German–Soviet Axis talks}}

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1984-1206-523, Berlin, Verabschiedung Molotows.jpg

After Germany in September 1940 entered the Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy, Ribbentrop wrote to Stalin, inviting Molotov to Berlin for negotiations aimed to create a 'continental bloc' of Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union that would oppose Britain and the United States.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=59}} Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to negotiate the terms for the Soviet Union to join the Axis and potentially to enjoy the spoils of the pact.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=58}}{{Sfn|Brackman|2001|p=341}} After negotiations during November 1940 on where to extend the Soviet sphere of influence, Hitler broke off talks and continued planning for the eventual attempts to invade the Soviet Union.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=59}}{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|pp=202–5}}

File:Europe before Operation Barbarossa, 1941 (in German).png

In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Japan, an Axis power.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=63}} While Stalin had little faith in Japan's commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism to reinforce a public affection for Germany.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=66}} Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union.{{Sfn|Roberts|2006|p=66}} Stalin did not know that Hitler had been secretly discussing an invasion of the Soviet Union since summer 1940{{Sfn|Ericson|1999|pp=129–30}} and that Hitler had ordered his military in late 1940 to prepare for war in the East, regardless of the parties' talks of a potential Soviet entry as a fourth Axis power.{{cite book|last=Weeks|first=Albert L|title=Stalin's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939–1941|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2003|isbn=0-7425-2192-3|pages=74–5}}.

File:EasternPoland 1939 border Germany-USSR.jpg and Soviet Union from September 1939 to June 1941, somewhere in the occupied territory of Poland]]

Germany unilaterally terminated the pact at 03:15 on 22 June 1941 by launching a massive attack on the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.{{Harvnb|Roberts|2006|p=82}} Stalin had ignored repeated warnings that Germany was likely to invade{{Harvnb|Roberts|2006|p=67}}{{cite news |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E4D71638F931A25755C0A9639C8B63 |title=Stalin's Intelligence |publisher=The New York Times |work=Review of books by Murphy, Pleshakov, and Service |date=12 June 2005 |access-date=27 March 2010 |first=Niall |last=Ferguson |author-link=Niall Ferguson |archive-date=9 November 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171109134403/https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E4D71638F931A25755C0A9639C8B63 |url-status=live }}{{Harvnb|Roberts|2006|pp=67–68}} and ordered no "full-scale" mobilisation of forces although the mobilisation was ongoing.{{Harvnb|Roberts|2006|p=69}} After the launch of the invasion, the territories gained by the Soviet Union as a result of the pact were lost in a matter of weeks. The southeastern part was absorbed into Greater Germany's General Government, and the rest was integrated with the Reichskommissariats Ostland and Ukraine. Within six months, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties,{{Harvnb|Roberts|2006|pp=116–117}} and three million more had been captured.{{Harvnb|Roberts|2006|p=85}} The lucrative export of Soviet raw materials to Germany over the course of the economic relations continued uninterrupted until the outbreak of hostilities. The Soviet exports in several key areas enabled Germany to maintain its stocks of rubber and grain from the first day of the invasion to October 1941.{{Harvnb|Ericson|1999|pp=202–205}}

File:Curzon line en.svg east of the Curzon Line annexed by the Soviet Union after the war]]

File:EasternBloc BorderChange38-48.svg after World War II]]

The German original of the secret protocols was presumably destroyed in the bombing of Germany, but in late 1943, Ribbentrop had ordered the most secret records of the German Foreign Office from 1933 onward, amounting to some 9,800 pages, to be microfilmed. When the various departments of the Foreign Office in Berlin were evacuated to Thuringia at the end of the war, Karl von Loesch, a civil servant who had worked for the chief interpreter Paul Otto Schmidt, was entrusted with the microfilm copies. He eventually received orders to destroy the secret documents but decided to bury the metal container with the microfilms as personal insurance for his future well-being. In May 1945, von Loesch approached the British Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Thomson with the request to transmit a personal letter to Duncan Sandys, Churchill's son-in-law. In the letter, von Loesch revealed that he had knowledge of the documents' whereabouts but expected preferential treatment in return. Thomson and his American counterpart, Ralph Collins, agreed to transfer von Loesch to Marburg, in the American zone if he would produce the microfilms. The microfilms contained a copy of the Non-Aggression Treaty as well as the Secret Protocol.{{Sfn|Eckert|2012|pp=62–67}} Both documents were discovered as part of the microfilmed records in August 1945 by US State Department employee Wendell B. Blancke, the head of a special unit called "Exploitation German Archives" (EGA).{{Cite book|publisher=National Archives and Records Administration|title=Record Group 84, POLAD, Classified General Correspondence, 1945–49|id=Box 100. [Archive] Location 350/57/18/02}}.

News of the secret protocols first appeared during the Nuremberg trials. Alfred Seidl, the attorney for defendant Hans Frank, was able to place into evidence an affidavit that described them. It was written from memory by Nazi Foreign Office lawyer {{interlanguage link|Friedrich Gaus|de}}, who wrote the text and was present at its signing in Moscow. Later, Seidl obtained the German-language text of the secret protocols from an anonymous Allied source and attempted to place them into evidence while he was questioning witness Ernst von Weizsäcker, a former Foreign Office State Secretary. The Allied prosecutors objected, and the texts were not accepted into evidence, but Weizsäcker was permitted to describe them from memory, thus corroborating the Gaus affidavit. Finally, at the request of a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, American deputy prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd acquired a copy of the secret protocols from Seidl and had it translated into English. They were first published on 22 May 1946 in a front-page story in that newspaper.{{cite news|first=Richard L.|last=Stokes|title=Secret Soviet-Nazi Pacts on Eastern Europe Aired: Purported Texts on Agreed Spheres of Influence Produced at Nuernberg but Not Admitted at Trial|newspaper=St. Louis Post-Dispatch|url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/138237790/|page=1|date=22 May 1946|access-date=24 May 2019|archive-date=18 July 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220718083554/https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/138237790/|url-status=live}} Later, in Britain, they were published by The Manchester Guardian.

The protocols gained wider media attention when they were included in an official State Department collection, Nazi–Soviet Relations 1939–1941, edited by Raymond J. Sontag and James S. Beddie and published on 21 January 1948. The decision to publish the key documents on German–Soviet relations, including the treaty and protocol, had been taken already in spring 1947. Sontag and Beddie prepared the collection throughout the summer of 1947. In November 1947, President Harry S. Truman personally approved the publication, but it was held back in view of the Foreign Ministers Conference in London scheduled for December. Since negotiations at that conference did not prove to be constructive from an American point of view, the document edition was sent to press. The documents made headlines worldwide.{{cite news|agency=United Press|title=Stalin-Hitler Plot to Divide Europe Told: U.S. Discloses Top Secret Documents Dealing With Plans|page=1|date=22 January 1948|access-date=24 May 2019|newspaper=Los Angeles Times|url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/380953974/|archive-date=27 January 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220127230857/https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/380953974/|url-status=live}} State Department officials counted it as a success: "The Soviet Government was caught flat-footed in what was the first effective blow from our side in a clear-cut propaganda war."{{Sfn|Eckert|2012|p=94}}

Despite publication of the recovered copy in western media, for decades, the official policy of the Soviet Union was to deny the existence of the secret protocol.{{Sfn|Biskupski|Wandycz|2003|p=147}} The secret protocol's existence was officially denied until 1989. Vyacheslav Molotov, one of the signatories, went to his grave categorically rejecting its existence.{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8221119.stm|publisher=BBC|work=News|title=Modern views on the Nazi–Soviet pact|date=26 August 2009|access-date=27 March 2010|archive-date=10 April 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220410092321/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8221119.stm|url-status=live}} The French Communist Party did not acknowledge the existence of the secret protocol until 1968, as the party de-Stalinized.{{cite book|title=France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944|publisher=Oxford University Press|last=Jackson|first=Julian|year=2001|pages=[https://archive.org/details/france00juli/page/18 18, 114–15]|isbn=0-19-820706-9|url=https://archive.org/details/france00juli/page/18}}

On 23 August 1986, tens of thousands of demonstrators in 21 western cities, including New York, London, Stockholm, Toronto, Seattle, and Perth participated in Black Ribbon Day Rallies to draw attention to the secret protocols.{{cite web | url=http://enrs.eu/docs/studies.pdf | title=Remembrance and Solidarity. Studies in 20th Century European History | publisher=European Network Remembrance and Solidarity | work=Issue 1, Number 1 | date=December 2012 | access-date=24 August 2014 | pages=18 | format=PDF file, direct download | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130929013543/http://enrs.eu/docs/studies.pdf | archive-date=29 September 2013 | url-status=dead }}

In response to the publication of the secret protocols and other secret German–Soviet relations documents in the State Department edition Nazi–Soviet Relations (1948), Stalin published Falsifiers of History, which included the claim that during the pact's operation, Stalin rejected Hitler's claim to share in a division of the world,{{Harvnb|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|pp=202–205}} without mentioning the Soviet offer to join the Axis. That version persisted, without exception, in historical studies, official accounts, memoirs, and textbooks published in the Soviet Union until the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The book also claimed that the Munich Agreement was a "secret agreement" between Germany and "the west" and a "highly important phase in their policy aimed at goading the Hitlerite aggressors against the Soviet Union."{{cite book|last=Taubert|first=Fritz|title=The Myth of Munich|publisher=Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag|year=2003|isbn=3-486-56673-3|page=318}}.{{cite book|last=Henig|first=Ruth Beatrice|title=The Origins of the Second World War, 1933–41|url=https://archive.org/details/originssecondwor00heni|url-access=limited|publisher=Routledge|year=2005|isbn=0-415-33262-1|pages=[https://archive.org/details/originssecondwor00heni/page/n83 67]–68}}.

For decades, it was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of the secret protocol to the Soviet–German Pact. At the behest of Mikhail Gorbachev, Alexander Yakovlev headed a commission investigating the existence of such a protocol. In December 1989, the commission concluded that the protocol had existed and revealed its findings to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union.{{cite book|last=Dreifeilds|first=Juris|title=Latvia in Transition|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1996|isbn=0-521-55537-X|pages=34–5}}. As a result, the Congress passed the declaration confirming the existence of the secret protocols and condemning and denouncing them.{{cite web|publisher=Law mix|place=RU|url=http://www.lawmix.ru/docs_cccp.php?id=1241|script-title=ru:Ведомости Съезда народных депутатов СССР и Верховного Совета СССР|year=1989|id=Ст. 579|type=text of the declaration|issue=29|language=ru|access-date=15 November 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101223141052/http://www.lawmix.ru/docs_cccp.php?id=1241|archive-date=23 December 2010|url-status=dead}}.{{cite book|first1=Jerzy W|last1=Borejsza|first2=Klaus|last2=Ziemer|first3=Magdalena|last3=Hułas|title=Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes in Europe|publisher=Berghahn|year=2006|page=521}}. The Soviet government thus finally acknowledged and denounced the Secret Treaty{{cite web|url=http://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/ia/archive/view/164427|title=Russian historians defend the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact|access-date=22 January 2015|archive-date=8 December 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208113010/https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/ia/archive/view/164427|url-status=dead}} and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Head of State condemned the pact. Vladimir Putin condemned the pact as "immoral" but also defended it as a "necessary evil".{{cite news |url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/11213255/Vladimir-Putin-says-there-was-nothing-wrong-with-Soviet-Unions-pact-with-Adolf-Hitlers-Nazi-Germany.html |work= Daily Telegraph |first= Tom |last= Parfitt |title= Vladimir Putin says there was nothing wrong with Soviet Union's pact with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany |date= 6 November 2014 |access-date= 20 May 2015 |archive-date= 3 September 2022 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20220903221334/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/11213255/Vladimir-Putin-says-there-was-nothing-wrong-with-Soviet-Unions-pact-with-Adolf-Hitlers-Nazi-Germany.html |url-status= live }}Timothy Snyder, NYreview of books,[http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/nov/10/putin-nostalgia-stalin-hitler/ putin nostalgia hitler stalin] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151002042925/http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/nov/10/putin-nostalgia-stalin-hitler/ |date=2 October 2015 }} At a press conference on 19 December 2019, Putin went further and announced that the signing of the pact was no worse than the 1938 Munich Agreement, which led to the partition of Czechoslovakia.[http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62366 The great press-conference of Vladimir Putin (Большая пресс-конференция Владимира Путина)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201203233504/http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62366 |date=3 December 2020 }}. President of Russia. 19 December 2019 {{in lang|ru}}Ivan Beliayev. [https://www.svoboda.org/a/30345335.html Putin and pigs: social networks about interest of the president to history (Путин и свиньи: соцсети о странном интересе президента к истории)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230411131132/https://www.svoboda.org/a/30345335.html |date=11 April 2023 }}. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 26 December 2019 {{in lang|ru}}

Both successor states of the pact parties have declared the secret protocols to be invalid from the moment that they were signed: the Federal Republic of Germany on 1 September 1989 and the Soviet Union on 24 December 1989,{{cite web|publisher=LFPR|url=http://www.lfpr.lt/uploads/File/1999-4/Loeber.pdf|title=Consequences of The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact for Lithuania of Today International Law Aspects|first=Dietrich A|last=Loeber|access-date=7 November 2009|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090530061314/http://www.lfpr.lt/uploads/File/1999-4/Loeber.pdf|archive-date=30 May 2009}} following an examination of the microfilmed copy of the German originals.{{Cite book|last=Борис|first=Хавкин (Boris Xavkin)|title=Inhalt ForuumRuss 1,2006|url=http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/inhaltruss7.html|place=DE|publisher=KU Eichstaett|script-title=ru:"К истории публикации советских текстов советско-германских секретных документов 1939—1941 гг." Форум новейшей восточноевропейской истории и культуры — Русское издание|year=2007|issue=1|language=ru|access-date=7 August 2010|archive-date=2 May 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110502134826/http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/inhaltruss7.html|url-status=live}}.

The Soviet copy of the original document was declassified in 1992 and published in a scientific journal in early 1993.

In August 2009, in an article written for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin condemned the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as "immoral".{{cite news|title=Putin condemns Nazi–Soviet pact|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8230387.stm|work=BBC News|date=31 August 2009|access-date=31 August 2009|archive-date=21 March 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220321000122/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8230387.stm|url-status=live}}{{cite news|author=Tom Parfitt|date=6 November 2014|title=Vladimir Putin says there was nothing wrong with Soviet Union's pact with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany|newspaper=Telegraph|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/11213255/Vladimir-Putin-says-there-was-nothing-wrong-with-Soviet-Unions-pact-with-Adolf-Hitlers-Nazi-Germany.html|access-date=6 November 2014|archive-date=3 September 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220903221334/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/11213255/Vladimir-Putin-says-there-was-nothing-wrong-with-Soviet-Unions-pact-with-Adolf-Hitlers-Nazi-Germany.html|url-status=live}} "The Russian president made the comments at a meeting with young historians in Moscow, during which he urged them to examine the lead-up to the war, among other subjects." - how does Parfitt know that ? Which young historicans ? Where in Moscow ?

The new Russian nationalists and revisionists, including Russian negationist Aleksandr Dyukov and Nataliya Narotchnitskaya, whose book carried an approving foreword by the Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, described the pact as a necessary measure because of the British and French failure to enter into an antifascist pact.

Some scholars believe that, from the very beginning of the Tripartite negotiations between the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France, the Soviets clearly required the other parties to agree to a Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and for Finland to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence.{{cite book|last=Salmon|first=Patrick|title=Scandinavia and the Great Powers 1890–1940|year=2002|publisher=Cambridge University Press}}.

On the timing of German rapprochement, many historians agree that the dismissal of Maxim Litvinov, whose Jewish ethnicity was viewed unfavourably by Nazi Germany, removed an obstacle to negotiations with Germany.{{Sfn|Nekrich|Ulam|Freeze|1997|pp=109–10}}{{cite book|last=Israėli︠|first=Viktor Levonovich|title=On the Battlefields of the Cold War: A Soviet Ambassador's Confession|publisher=Penn State Press|year=2003|isbn=0-271-02297-3|page=10}}.{{Sfn|Shirer|1990|pp=480–1}}{{Sfn|Ulam|1989|p=508}}{{cite book|last=Herf|first=Jeffrey|title=The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust|url=https://archive.org/details/jewishenemynazip00herf_880|url-access=limited|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2006|isbn=0-674-02175-4|pages=[https://archive.org/details/jewishenemynazip00herf_880/page/n107 97]–98}}.{{cite book|last=Osborn|first=Patrick R|title=Operation Pike: Britain Versus the Soviet Union, 1939–1941|publisher=Greenwood|year=2000|isbn=0-313-31368-7|page=xix}}.{{cite book|last=Levin|first=Nora|title=The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917: Paradox of Survival|publisher=NYU Press|year=1988|isbn=0-8147-5051-6|page=330|quote=[Litvinov] was referred to by the German radio as 'Litvinov-Finkelstein' – was dropped in favor of Vyascheslav Molotov. 'The eminent Jew', as Churchill put it, 'the target of German antagonism was flung aside{{nbsp}}... like a broken tool{{nbsp}}... The Jew Litvinov was gone and Hitler's dominant prejudice placated.'}}{{Sfn|Roberts|1992b|loc=Introduction|ps =: 'Perhaps the only thing that can be salvaged from the wreckage of the orthodox interpretation of Litvinov's dismissal is some notion that, by appointing Molotov foreign minister, Stalin was preparing for the contingency of a possible deal with Hitler. In view of Litvinov's Jewish heritage and his militant anti-Nazism, that is not an unreasonable supposition. But it is a hypothesis for which there is as yet no evidence. Moreover, we shall see that what evidence there is suggests that Stalin's decision was determined by a quite different set of circumstances and calculations.'}} Stalin immediately directed Molotov to "purge the ministry of Jews."{{Sfn|Resis|2000|p=35}}{{cite book|last=Moss|first=Walter|title=A History of Russia: Since 1855|publisher=Anthem|year=2005|isbn=1-84331-034-1|page=283}} Given Litvinov's prior attempts to create an anti-fascist coalition, association with the doctrine of collective security with France and Britain and a pro-Western orientation{{cite book|last=Gorodetsky|first=Gabriel |title=Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1991: A Retrospective|publisher=Routledge|year=1994|isbn=0-7146-4506-0|page=55}}. by the standards of the Kremlin, his dismissal indicated the existence of a Soviet option of rapprochement with Germany.{{Sfn|Resis|2000|p=51}}{{Efn|According to Paul Flewers, Stalin's address to the eighteenth congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 10 March 1939, discounted any idea of German designs on the Soviet Union. Stalin had intended: "To be cautious and not allow our country to be drawn into conflicts by warmongers who are accustomed to have others pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them." This was intended to warn the Western powers that they could not necessarily rely upon the support of the Soviet Union.}} Likewise, Molotov's appointment served as a signal to Germany that the Soviet Union was open to offers.{{Sfn|Resis|2000|p=51}} The dismissal also signaled to France and Britain the existence of a potential negotiation option with Germany.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|pp=696–8}}{{Sfn|Resis|2000|pp=33–56}} One British official wrote that Litvinov's termination also meant the loss of an admirable technician or shock-absorber but that Molotov's "modus operandi" was "more truly Bolshevik than diplomatic or cosmopolitan."{{Sfn|Watson|2000|p=699}} Carr argued that the Soviet Union's replacement of Litvinov with Molotov on 3 May 1939 indicated not an irrevocable shift towards alignment with Germany but rather was Stalin's way of engaging in hard bargaining with the British and the French by appointing a proverbial hard man to the Foreign Commissariat.{{sfn|Carr|1979|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=PgBsST4r9CQC&pg=PA129 129–130]}} Historian Albert Resis stated that the Litvinov dismissal gave the Soviets freedom to pursue faster German negotiations but that they did not abandon British–French talks.{{Sfn|Resis|2000|p=33|ps =: 'By replacing Litvinov with Molotov, Stalin significantly increased his options in foreign policy. Litvinov's dismissal served as a warning to London and Paris that Moscow had a third option-rapprochement with Germany. After Litvinov's dismissal, the pace of Soviet–German contacts quickened. This did not, however, mean that Moscow had abandoned the search for collective security, now exemplified by the Soviet draft triple alliance. Meanwhile, Molotov's appointment served as an additional signal to Berlin that Moscow was open to offers. The signal worked; the warning did not.'}} Derek Watson argued that Molotov could get the best deal with Britain and France because he was not encumbered with the baggage of collective security and could negotiate with Germany.{{Sfn|Watson|2000|pp=695–722|ps =: 'The choice of Molotov reflected not only the appointment of a nationalist and one of Stalin's leading lieutenants, a Russian who was not a Jew and who could negotiate with Nazi Germany, but also someone unencumbered with the baggage of collective security who could obtain the best deal with Britain and France, if they could be forced into an agreement.'}} Geoffrey Roberts argued that Litvinov's dismissal helped the Soviets with British–French talks because Litvinov doubted or maybe even opposed such discussions.{{Sfn|Roberts|1992b|pp=639–57|ps =: 'the foreign policy factor in Litvinov's downfall was the desire of Stalin and Molotov to take charge of foreign relations in order to pursue their policy of a triple alliance with Britain and France – a policy whose utility Litvinov doubted and may even have opposed or obstructed.'}}

E. H. Carr stated: "In return for 'non-intervention' Stalin secured a breathing space of immunity from German attack."{{sfn|Carr|1979|p=136}} According to Carr, the "bastion" created by means of the pact "was and could only be, a line of defense against potential German attack."{{sfn|Carr|1979|p={{page needed|date =August 2013}}}} According to Carr, an important advantage was that "if Soviet Russia had eventually to fight Hitler, the Western Powers would already be involved."{{sfn|Carr|1979|p={{page needed|date =August 2013}}}}{{sfn|Taylor|1961|pp=262–3}} However, during the last decades, that view has been disputed. Historian Werner Maser - who served the German army during the second World War{{cite journal|title=Werner Maser|journal=The New York Times|year=2007|page=60}} - stated that "the claim that the Soviet Union was at the time threatened by Hitler, as Stalin supposed{{nbsp}}... is a legend, to whose creators Stalin himself belonged.{{sfn|Maser|1994|p=64}} In Maser's view, "neither Germany nor Japan were in a situation [of] invading the USSR even with the least perspective {{sic}} of success," which must not have been known to Stalin.{{sfn|Maser|1994|p=42}} Carr further stated that for a long time, the primary motive of Stalin's sudden change of course was assumed to be the fear of German aggressive intentions.{{Sfn|Carr|1949a|pp=3–17}} On the other hand, Soviet-born Australian historical writer Alex Ryvchin characterized the pact as "a Soviet deal with the devil, which contained a secret protocol providing for the remaining independent states of East-Central Europe to be treated as courses on some debauched degustation menu for two of the greatest monsters in history."{{Cite journal |last=Ryvchin |first=Alex |date=4 August 2022 |title=Understanding the Russo–Ukrainian War Through the Prism of Russian History |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/23739770.2022.2105487 |journal=Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs |volume=16 |issue=2 |pages=184–187 |doi=10.1080/23739770.2022.2105487 |s2cid=251353823 |issn=2373-9770}}

Two weeks after Soviet armies had entered the Baltic states, Berlin requested Finland to permit the transit of German troops, and five weeks later Hitler issued a secret directive "to take up the Russian problem, to think about war preparations," a war whose objective would include establishment of a Baltic confederation.{{cite book|first=Franz|last=Halder|author-link=Franz Halder|title=Generaloberst Halder. Kriegstagebuch|place=Stuttgart|year=1962|volume=II|pages=31–2}}.

A number of German historians have debunked the claim that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike, such as Andreas Hillgruber, Rolf-Dieter Müller, and Christian Hartmann, but they also acknowledge that the Soviets were aggressive to their neighbors.{{Cite book |last=Hillgruber |first=Andreas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5woxABMUOlIC |title=Germany and the Two World Wars |date=1981 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-35322-0 |pages=86 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Hartmann |first=Christian |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1005849626 |title=Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany's War in the East, 1941-1945 |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-19-870170-5 |location= |pages=24 |language=en |oclc=1005849626}}{{Cite book|last1=Müller|first1=Rolf-Dieter|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/836636715|title=Hitler's war in the east, 1941-1945: a critical assessment|last2=Ueberschär|first2=Gerd R|date=2002|publisher=Berghahn|isbn=978-1-84545-501-9|location=New York|pages=39–40|language=en|oclc=836636715}}

According to Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva she "remembered her father saying after [the war]: 'Together with the Germans we would have been invincible'."{{cite book |last1=Lukacs |first1=John |title=June 1941: Hitler and Stalin |date=2006 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven London |isbn=0300123647 |page=160}}

Russian Trotskyist historian, Vadim Rogovin argued that Stalin had destroyed thousands of foreign communists capable of leading socialist change in their respective countries. He referenced the thousands of German communists that were handed over from Stalin to the Gestapo after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Rogovin also noted that sixteen members of the Central Committee of the German Communist Party became victims of Stalinist terror.{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |pages=380 |language=en}} Similarly, historian Eric D. Weitz discussed the areas of collaboration between the regimes in which hundreds of German citizens, the majority of whom were Communists, had been handed over to the Gestapo from Stalin's administration. Weitz also stated that a higher proportion of the KPD Politburo members had died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany.{{cite book |last1=Weitz |first1=Eric D. |title=Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State |date=13 April 2021 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-22812-9 |page=280 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JOgSEAAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+handed+over+german+communists+gestapo&pg=PA280 |language=en |access-date=30 October 2023 |archive-date=6 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231106233635/https://books.google.com/books?id=JOgSEAAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+handed+over+german+communists+gestapo&pg=PA280 |url-status=live }} However, according to the work of Wilhelm Mensing, there is no evidence which suggests that the Soviets specifically targeted German and Austrian Communists or others who perceived themselves as "anti-fascists" for deportations to Nazi Germany.{{Cite journal |last=Mensing |first=Wilhelm |date=2006 |title=Eine "Morgengabe" Stalins an den Paktfreund Hitler? Die Auslieferung deutscher Emigranten an das NS-Regime nach Abschluß des Hitler-Stalin-Pakts – eine zwischen den Diktatoren arrangierte Preisgabe von "Antifaschisten"? |url=https://zeitschrift-fsed.fu-berlin.de/index.php/zfsed/article/view/236 |journal=Zeitschrift des Forschungsverbundes SED-Staat |language=de |volume=20 |issue=20 |issn=0948-9878}}

The pact was a taboo subject in the postwar Soviet Union.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d1q1q8SL5-UC |title=Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform without Democracy? |author=Andrew Jack |date=15 December 2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-029336-9 |page=25 |access-date=16 October 2023 |archive-date=21 October 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231021150519/https://books.google.com/books?id=d1q1q8SL5-UC |url-status=live }} In December 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union condemned the pact and its secret protocol as "legally deficient and invalid".{{cite news |title = Upheaval in the East – Soviet Congress Condemns '39 Pact That Led to Annexation of Baltics |url = https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/25/world/upheaval-east-soviet-congress-condemns-39-pact-that-led-annexation-baltics.html |newspaper = The New York Times |date = 25 December 1989 |access-date = 17 May 2020 |archive-date = 4 May 2021 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210504185003/https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/25/world/upheaval-east-soviet-congress-condemns-39-pact-that-led-annexation-baltics.html |url-status = live }} In modern Russia, the pact is often portrayed positively or neutrally by the pro-government propaganda; for example, Russian textbooks tend to describe the pact as a defensive measure, not as one aiming at territorial expansion. In 2009, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that "there are grounds to condemn the Pact",{{cite news |title=Putin Condemns 1939 Soviet Treaty With Nazis |url=https://www.voanews.com/archive/putin-condemns-1939-soviet-treaty-nazis |publisher=Voice of America |date=2 November 2009 |access-date=17 May 2020 |archive-date=19 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210519175510/https://www.voanews.com/archive/putin-condemns-1939-soviet-treaty-nazis |url-status=dead }} but described it in 2014 as "necessary for Russia's survival".{{cite book |url = https://archive.org/details/mrputinoperative0000hill |url-access=registration |title = Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin |author1=Fiona Hill|author2=Clifford G. Gaddy|date=2 February 2015|publisher=Brookings Institution Press|isbn=978-0-8157-2618-0|page=[https://archive.org/details/mrputinoperative0000hill/page/366 366]}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GKFaDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT87 |title=Russia's hybrid aggression: lessons for the world: Russia's hybrid aggression: lessons for the world |author=Yevhen Mahda |date=1 May 2018 |publisher=ТОВ "Каламар" |isbn=978-966-97478-6-0 |page=87 |access-date=1 January 2020 |archive-date=29 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230729074304/https://books.google.com/books?id=GKFaDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT87 |url-status=live }} Accusations that cast doubt on the positive portrayal of the USSR's role in World War II have been seen as highly problematic for the modern Russian state, which sees Russia's victory in the war as one of "the most venerated pillars of state ideology", which legitimises the current government and its policies.{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50918434|title=Why is Putin angry at Poland?|last=Shevchenko|first=Vitaly|date=26 December 2019|publisher=BBC|access-date=1 January 2020|language=en-GB|archive-date=27 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191227140558/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50918434|url-status=live}}{{cite web |url=https://www.dw.com/en/putin-fires-fresh-salvo-on-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-this-time-singling-out-poland/a-51788971 |title=Putin fires fresh salvo on Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, this time singling out Poland {{!}} DW {{!}} 24 December 2019 |website=Deutsche Welle |language=en-GB |access-date=1 January 2020 |archive-date=17 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220917084842/https://www.dw.com/en/putin-fires-fresh-salvo-on-molotov-ribbentrop-pact-this-time-singling-out-poland/a-51788971 |url-status=live }} In February 2021, the State Duma voted in favor of a law to punish the dissemination of "fake news" regarding the Soviet Union's role in World War II, including claiming that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union held equal responsibility due to the pact.{{Cite web |url=https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2021-02-17/ty-article/.premium/russia-enacting-law-to-back-heroic-narrative-about-its-role-in-wwii/0000017f-f450-d223-a97f-fddd41b30000 |title=Russia Enacting Law to Back Heroic Narrative About Its Role in WWII |access-date=24 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220526220425/https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2021-02-17/ty-article/.premium/russia-enacting-law-to-back-heroic-narrative-about-its-role-in-wwii/0000017f-f450-d223-a97f-fddd41b30000 |archive-date=26 May 2022 |url-status=dead }}

In 2009, the European Parliament proclaimed 23 August, the anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, to be commemorated with dignity and impartiality.{{cite web|publisher=European Parliament|url=http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+MOTION+P6-RC-2009-0165+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN|type=resolution|title=On European conscience and totalitarianism|date=2 April 2009|access-date=2 April 2009|archive-date=11 May 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090511230854/http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+MOTION+P6-RC-2009-0165+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN|url-status=live}}. In connection with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe parliamentary resolution condemned both communism and fascism for starting World War II and called for a day of remembrance for victims of both Stalinism and Nazism on 23 August. In response to the resolution, Russian lawmakers threatened the OSCE with "harsh consequences".{{cite news|title=Russia scolds OSCE for equating Hitler and Stalin|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSTRE5632JI20090704|work=Reuters|date=4 July 2009|access-date=20 August 2009|archive-date=20 September 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220920100122/https://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSTRE5632JI20090704|url-status=live}}{{cite news|title=Resolution on Stalin riles Russia|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8133749.stm|publisher=BBC|access-date=20 August 2009|date=3 July 2009|archive-date=22 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210322163213/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8133749.stm|url-status=live}} A similar resolution was passed by the European Parliament a decade later, blaming the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact for the outbreak of war in Europe and again leading to criticism by Russian authorities.{{Cite news|url=https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-slams-eu-resolution-stating-nazi-soviet-pact-paved-way-for-wwii/30176278.html|title=Russia Slams EU Resolution Stating Nazi-Soviet Pact 'Paved Way' For WWII|newspaper=Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty|date=21 September 2019|language=en|access-date=1 January 2020|archive-date=7 July 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220707225252/https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-slams-eu-resolution-stating-nazi-soviet-pact-paved-way-for-wwii/30176278.html|url-status=live}}

{{div col|colwidth=27em}}

• Baltic Way, protest marking the 50th anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
• Italo-Soviet Pact
• German–Soviet population transfers
• National Bolshevism
• Red–green–brown alliance
• Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact
• Stalin's speech of 19 August 1939
• Timeline of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
• Walter Krivitsky, Soviet defector who revealed plans of the non-aggression pact before World War II

{{div col end}}

{{Notelist}}

{{Reflist|22em}}

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• {{cite book|last=Ulam|first=Adam Bruno|author-link=Adam Bruno Ulam|title=Stalin: The Man and His Era|publisher=Beacon Press|year=1989|isbn=0-8070-7005-X}}
• {{cite book|last=Vizulis|first=Izidors|year=1990|title=The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939: The Baltic Case|publisher=Praeger|isbn=0-275-93456-X}}
• {{cite book |editor-last=Wegner |editor-first=Bernd |author-link=Bernd Wegner |year=1997 |title=From Peace to War: Germany, Soviet Russia, and the World, 1939–1941 |place=Providence and Oxford |publisher=Berghahn Books |isbn=978-1-57181-882-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aESBIpIm6UcC}}
• {{cite journal|last=Watson|first=Derek|title=Molotov's Apprenticeship in Foreign Policy: The Triple Alliance Negotiations in 1939|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|year=2000|pages=695–722|volume=52|issue=4 |jstor=153322 |doi=10.1080/713663077|s2cid=144385167}}
• {{cite book|last=Watt|first=DC|year=1989|title=How War Came: the Immediate Origins of the Second World War 1938–1939|location=London|isbn=978-0-394-57916-0|url=https://archive.org/details/howwarcameimmedi00dona}}
• {{cite book|last=Watt|first=Richard M.|year=1979|title=Bitter Glory: Poland & Its Fate 1918–1939|publisher=Simon & Schuster|place=NY|isbn=0-7818-0673-9}}

{{refend}}

{{sister project links|s=Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact}}

• [http://historyfoundation.ru/2019/05/31/pakt/ Originals of the treaty and protocols from the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry, published by History Foundation in Russia in May 2019] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221003171214/http://historyfoundation.ru/2019/05/31/pakt/ |date=3 October 2022 }}
• [http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/nazsov.asp Nazi–Soviet Relations 1939–1941] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110211171826/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/nazsov.asp |date=11 February 2011 }}
• [https://www.angelfire.com/de/Cerskus/english/index.html Leonas Cerskus. The Story of Lithuanian soldier]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20210415055624/http://www.lituanus.org/1989/89_1_03.htm Modern History Sourcebook, a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts in modern European and World history], scanned photocopies of original documents
• [https://archive.org/details/TheMeaningOfTheSoviet-germanNon-aggressionPact The Meaning of the Soviet–German Non-Aggression Pact Molotov speech to the Supreme Soviet on August 31, 1939]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110504152623/http://users.ju.edu/jclarke/wizzg.html Italy and the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 23, 1939]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120125202858/http://www.secretpact.info/ International Conference and booklet on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]

{{Nazi–Soviet relations}}

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