The “Black Trinity” and the Cold War
Journal: Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks
Year: 2010

The purpose of this chapter is not to adjudicate the actual motives of the participants or to discuss the effects of the Munich, Molotov-Ribbentrop, and Yalta agreements on Eastern Europe, but rather to demonstrate the ebbs and flows of the "black trinity" discourse throughout the Cold War era. During these 50 years, the agreements became deeply ingrained into the Western political discourse. They were often evoked on anniversaries and other commemorative occasions for their historical and emoti