Written by Yuriy Rubtsov; Originally appeared strategic-culture.org
“That the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia”
On the eve of the Second World War, 21 August 1939, Soviet–Anglo–Franco negotiations in Moscow on a military convention were cut short due to the unwillingness of London (then Paris, following in its wake) “to enter into any detailed commitments which are likely to tie our hands in all circumstances”. These were the instructions that the head of the British delegation at the negotiations, Admiral Reginald Drax, received from the British Foreign Office. And this meant that Western democracies weren’t ruling out colluding with Hitler both behind the USSR’s back and against her.
The final chance to stop Hitler was wasted. The Führer got the message and, on 1 September 1939, he calmly moved the Wehrmacht across the Polish border, knowing that neither London nor Paris were going to lift a finger to defend the Poles.
Among other things, the non-aggression pact signed between the USSR and Germany on 23 August 1939 meant that Moscow had seen through Britain’s diplomatic efforts. As the Soviet Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Ivan Maisky, wrote in his diary: “In London, there is confusion and indignation. […] They accuse us of betraying our principles, rejecting the past, and extending a hand to fascism”, but behind this was uncertainty. The Kremlin had evaded the trap set for it, leaving Western democracies to deal with Hitler one on one.
Almost two years later, on 22 June 1941, the day that Hitler invaded the USSR, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US president Franklin Roosevelt (on 24 June) announced their countries’ determination to help the USSR.
How did the future allies in the anti-Hitler coalition manage to put aside the differences that had separated them for years and reach agreement?
Relations between the USSR and Western democracies had been exacerbated by many things, particularly the Soviet–Finnish war. The Third Reich had secretly been providing military aid to Finland, and both London and Paris (as well as Washington) knew about it. What’s more, having forgotten, in their anti-Soviet fervour, that they were at war with Germany, Western powers actually supplied Finland with equipment and weapons, toyed with the idea of sending an expeditionary force to Finland, and the British and French headquarters formulated plans to bomb Baku and Grozny. In December 1939, the US imposed an embargo on the export of aircraft, aircraft equipment, spare parts, and certain types of strategic materials to the USSR, but sent weapons to the Finnish army and extended credit to the Finns.
It seemed that, amid the “frenzied anti-Soviet campaign” Soviet Ambassador Maisky wrote to Moscow about from London, there could be no question of a warming of relations between the West and the USSR.
And yet the ice did start to melt. Especially after the signing of a peace agreement on 12 March 1940 that ended the Winter War. The international situation changed. The Phoney War being waged on Germany by the British and French had to heat up sooner or later, and politicians in the UK and US realised that, just like in the summer of 1939, there was no negotiating with Hitler.
At the end of February, Roosevelt sent US Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles to Europe to find out what the Führer was up to, and, after talking with Adolf Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop in Berlin and Neville Chamberlain, the Earl of Halifax (UK foreign secretary) and Winston Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty) in London, he concluded that no one was going to back down. The Führer was demanding that his Western adversaries recognise the territories annexed by Germany and seeking to destroy British military bases in Gibraltar, Malta and Singapore. Germany was aiming for a decisive victory, and there was no way that Britain, the mistress of the seas, was going to allow that to happen.
Regardless of the anti-Soviet rhetoric coming out of the London salons, the British increasingly realised that the USSR was the only Old World country capable of providing them with real help in their fight against Hitler.
Strictly speaking, contacts resumed between Moscow and London exactly a month after World War II began. On 1 October 1939, Winston Churchill made an important statement on the radio regarding the Red Army’s liberation campaign in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus: “That the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace. At any rate, the line is there, and an Eastern Front has been created which Nazi Germany does not dare assail.” And, after meeting Maisky, Churchill declared that he was “for war to the end. Hitler must be destroyed. Nazism must be crushed once and for all.” Noting that “the real interests of Britain and the USSR do not collide anywhere”, Churchill expressed the British government’s hope that “Soviet neutrality would be friendly towards Britain”.
The Soviet–Finnish war impeded the normalisation of Soviet–Anglo relations, but the process resumed when the war ended. Through Ambassador Maisky, Molotov informed London of the following in February 1940: “We consider ridiculous and slanderous not only the assertion, but even the simple suggestion that the USSR had allegedly entered into a military alliance with Germany. […] As the USSR has been neutral, so it will remain neutral, unless of course England and France attack the USSR and compel it to take up arms.”
And everything sped up following France’s military collapse in June 1940 and the defeat of the Anglo–French coalition. Churchill, who had become prime minister on 10 May, rejected Hitler’s proposals for peace talks. The aerial Battle of Britain began…
At a meeting with Stalin, the new British ambassador to the USSR, Stafford Cripps, handed the Soviet leader a message from Churchill dated 24 June 1940 that said Germany was threatening Great Britain as well as the Soviet Union and expressed the desire for “both countries” to restore former ties.
And on 22 October, Cripps offered to sign a secret agreement between Britain and the USSR on behalf of Churchill stating that London recognised the de facto “sovereignty of the USSR in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and those parts of the Polish state now under Soviet rule.” [Emphasis ours – Ed.]
Bearing in mind that the USSR was bound by obligations under the German–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Stalin declined Britain’s proposal at that time, but he avoided doing anything that would worsen relations with Britain as a potential ally.
And when Moscow and Washington took steps on both sides to normalise Soviet–US relations in the spring and summer of 1940, the faint outlines of the future anti-Hitler coalition began to emerge…
Good article SF. “And yet the ice did start to melt. Especially after the signing of a peace agreement on 12 March 1940 that ended the Winter War.” Attacking Finland was one of Stalin’s mistakes.
Hitler was a Jew….Lenin was a Jew…Trotsky was a Jew…Yagoda was a Jew…Russians suffered a lot under Jewish Rule….
Well, Hitler saw it like that. That’s why he left the German Socialist movement and joined the Nazi movement. To create his own socialist movement free of what he dubbed ‘the Jews’.
Or he was a Jew & wanted to Destroy the German People & the Russian people…this is just another option….
Hitler’s ‘National Socialism’ and Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili’s ‘National Communism’ was in theory not so different, but practice there were worlds in between them – especially after the Strasser brothers got expelled (1930) or murdered (1934)
https://twitter.com/DerorCurrency/status/1206124531024162816
After such long time it is clear now that, it was not Soviet communism that was problem for the West. But Russia and its people and their way to see themselves as an equal to the “First World countries”. Colonial past and reflex to dominate is the very essence how Old Europe (West) perceives herself and the others. Being so close and so far away from them, Russia will never be a part of that exclusive club. Even to great leader like Putin, it took many years to completely understand that. Russia would never be good enough no matter what they do.
It wasn’t that hard for the USSR to sign an agreement with Nazi Germany. National Socialism is still socialism. Hitler was like Stalin, an extreme leftwinger, ideologically related for most parts. He just hated and murdered different people. The communists perfectly understood in the 20’s and 30’s that they were dealing with an ideological rival for the hearts and minds of their target demographics, akin to the Mensheviks and Trotskists communists movements, not their ideological arch nemesis. Fascism and Nazism preached socialism in one country, not a worldwide revolution. All the fascists and Nazi leaders had come from socialist and communist backgrounds. They weren’t right wing at all. That narrative had been used at first to discredit these movements when they were competing with fascists and nazis in the 20’s and 30’s, just like SJW’s today try to discredit anyone who disagree with them as fascists and nazis. And it was really ramped up after the Nazis invaded the USSR to motivate the Soviet people and communists abroad to fight them. But lets not pretend that Stalin was making a deal with the Anti-Christ, because it was like him making a deal with Mao, just another socialist leader. Never forget the fascist creed, everything by the state, everything for the state, nothing outside the state. That is not a rightwing creed, for the exact opposite of socialist and communist total submission of the individual to the group is placing the individual completely above the group. Libertarianism is the apotheosis of extreme rightwing thinking, not fascism or nazism.
On 1 October 1939, Winston Churchill made an important statement on the radio regarding the Red Army’s liberation campaign in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus:
I doubt that there was ANYONE in those territories that saw it as ‘liberation’. Stalin and his secret police had that effect on people. It’s not for nothing that when the Germans invaded those parts (and beyond) they were greeted by the locals as liberators.
At a meeting with Stalin, the new British ambassador to the USSR, Stafford Cripps, handed the Soviet leader a message from Churchill dated 24 June 1940 that said Germany was threatening Great Britain as well as the Soviet Union and expressed the desire for “both countries” to restore former ties.
And on 22 October, Cripps offered to sign a secret agreement between Britain and the USSR on behalf of Churchill stating that London recognised the de facto “sovereignty of the USSR in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and those parts of the Polish state now under Soviet rule.” [Emphasis ours – Ed.]
It’s called making a deal with the devil, as part of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Post fall of France the British were absolutely desperate to find allies to replace France with anywhere. The US was not going to enter the war soon, and even if she did it would take many years for the US to fully mobilize and be capable to take on Germany (as it historically did). On paper the USSR in 1940 and 1941 was the only country that could take on Nazi Germany right now. Except Barbarossa would show that it wasn’t and that she was still a giant on clay feet.
Bearing in mind that the USSR was bound by obligations under the German–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Stalin declined Britain’s proposal at that time, but he avoided doing anything that would worsen relations with Britain as a potential ally.
And when Moscow and Washington took steps on both sides to normalise Soviet–US relations in the spring and summer of 1940, the faint outlines of the future anti-Hitler coalition began to emerge…
Stalin was wisely playing the field by not following Hitler into war with the West, as probably even he knew that the Red Army was not ready for war in 1940, nor 1941. He had purged too many experienced officers and the Red Army had expanded too quickly for the new ones to cope. He probably thought that by supplying Germany with essential raw materials and maintaining diplomatic channels with his enemies he could make himself a useful intermediary to Hitler. Just like Japan used the USSR as an intermediary to the Allies post Pearl Harbour.
“It wasn’t that hard for the USSR to sign an agreement with Nazi Germany. National Socialism is still socialism.”
The R-M pact was not ideological in the least.
The main objective of WW2 for Germany was living space in the east and the elimination of jewish Bolshevism. That’s what Hitler wrote, that’s what Hitler said in his speeches that’s what Hitler showed in his actions. Stalin knew this …. everyone who read Mein Kamph or listened to Hitlers speeches knew this …. and al the communists and union leaders murdered or thrown in concentration camps by the Nazi’s were evidence of what was to come.
The M-R pact was only signed after Britain and France rejected the USSR as an ally against Germany.
Stalins thinking behind it was:
1. Hitler had said many times that the main reason Germany was defeated was fighting a war on two fronts. This agreement would give the USSR time to reorganize the Red Army while Hitler fought France and GB in the west. In 1939 France had the most powerful military in Europe …. no one predicted that France could be defeated in weeks. The thinking was the war would become a war of attrition lasting years that would grind both forces into the ground leaving Europe open for revolution and conquest.
Along this line of thinking supplying the USSR’s enemy with food, oil and raw materials was tantamount to pouring gasoline on an enemies house on fire. This has been twisted in recent years to show that the USSR and Nazi Germany were ideologically partners in war.
2. Re-aquirring Poland and the Baltic States would give the USSR a buffer where the war would be eventually fought. Same strategy the Tsars used and same strategy as the Warsaw pact and the reason why Russia seized the Crimea and lit a match to the Donbass in 2014.
I’m not denying anything you’re saying. That’s probably exactly what Stalin thought. What I was trying to say is that it wasn’t quite the deal between the extreme left USSR and the extreme right Nazi’s, because national socialism is not a right wing ideology. The two are basically identical in every way. Hitler just didn’t believe in international socialism and he really really REALLY hated Jews. He also didn’t think he had to take over every economic aspect of economic life as Stalin had done. In his own words, if you socialize the people, there’s no need to socialize their businesses.
The idea that Nazi’s are right wing extremists is a communist fable that has been swallowed up whole by everyone. But it has always confused people that both Nazi Germany and the USSR and the PRC have been so identical in many ways. Totalitarian control of society by the state, cult of personality, extreme high body count. It’s almost like the political spectrum is a circle where the extreme ends meet again. Akin to how in astrology, which is still based on ancient astronomical observations were everything, including the sun, revolves around the Earth, and which then has to explain why sometimes the planets move backwards.
I’ll get of my soapbox again. Great post!
Your second part is pure speculation that does not go along with source-based records.
The east-west division occured when the Soviet Union, against Yalta agreement, was denied reparation claims from the economic potential of the Ruhr Area and noticed the hostile US reaction when Stalin did not join the Bretton Wood System.
Europe’s division was zealed when the US and Brits established a western German monetary system, as reaction of Stalin’s refusal to submit the Soviet Economy to the Bretton Woods system, i.e. to US control.
Oh, gosh – seeing what harm can be done with spreading distorting historical narratives, primarily an Anglosaxon obsession, peace woulld have a much huger chance, if anybody speaking no other langauge but English would be forbidden once and for all to spread rubbish about nazism and WW2.
Quote from your unqualified post:
“National Socialism is still socialism.”
Wrong. There has never been anything remotely “socialist” about Nazism. That Hitler changed the party name from DAP to NSDAP, when he met his tactical arrangements with the Strasser brothers and Ernst Röhm, had nothing at all to do with his economic premises, but simply with his goal to win over voters in the industrialised German west among Rhine and Ruhr workers – which btw did not work out too well.
And what happened to these “national Bolsheviks”, when Hitler actually was in power? Right – they simply did not survive it. With the Night of Long Knives their fates were zealed.
“Hitler was like Stalin, an extreme leftwinger, ideologically related for most parts.” Even worse. Neither was Hitler a “leftwinger” – nor had he and Stalin anyhting in common “ideologically”.
However, the peak is your pseudo-Freudian speculation about Stalin’s “probable” goals and reflections.
Just a tiny hint: History is an empirical science and past reality has in most cases little in common with after-work speculation of semi-educated pub visitors. Proper reconstruction of the past require studying sources. Intererested people are lucky, though. For anybody interested in Soviet-German pre-WW2 relation, the German-Russian Historical Commission, established in 1997, has now published to first two volumes of the most extended collection of documents about that matter ever. The first two volumes cover the time from January 1933 to end of 1937 and consist of nearly 4000 pages, documents in tiny letters, edited by the German historian of the IfZ Munich and Sergej Slutsh, Academy of Science Moscow.The next volumes will follow soon.
The German edition has been published by de Gruyter, but a Russian version is available, too. I suppose you have no command of any of the two languages – thus it would be advisable that you postpone spreading of irrelevant “opinions”, till you have achieved proper command of any of the two.
Till then, I would advise you to direct your attention to chapters of history whose sources have been published in English. As the African League has claimed that British colonialism has cost more than 100 millions casualties on the Africal continent alone and in India 40 million lives, British atrocities would be a good subject of research.. This would help Brits to cope with the fact, that two third of them are of the opinion that the British Empire was even a blessing for oppressed populations, while none of them shares that belief.
Or if you prefer studying USAmerican sources, an interesting field of research would be to study under which conditions the 30 millions victims of illegal US wars launched since 1949 had to die. And what the world has to fear, as the dimension of Anglosaxon bloodshed has not yet been grasped adequately in the Anglosaxon world.
On these topics, findings of native English speakers would be of huge interests – while Anglosaxon opinion pieces about Nazism or the Soviet Union are of little interest to anybody outside the Anglosphere.
The writer studiously avoids the Munich agremeent that ceded a part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler (and Poland participated in the annexation alongside Germany). Britain would not ally with the Soviet Union in 1939 because Britain was assured Germany would not attack, yet the idea all along had been that Germany would attack and subsequently destroy the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union did not attack Finland – there was a border incident, a provocation from the Finnish side that entailed a Soviet response, which the mainstream media of the day portrayed as a Soviet invasion. Sounds familiar? I think something like that is being prepared in the Baltics even as we speak. A group of Russian speaking goons from Ukraine wearing Russian army uniforms will raid a Lithuanian/Estonian/Latvian village. Western media writers who will just happen to be “in the neighborhood” will blare this flagrant act of cross-border aggression out to the world. That’s how a new world war, or a replay of WWII, may begin. For example.