Malleable to the political needs of the Nazi state, "Das Schwarze Korps" along with the "Völkischer Beobachter" were both used as propaganda mechanisms to promote the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Germany in August 1939. Commenting accordingly, the SS-newspaper optimistically asserted that the former tsarist empire "had originally been a Germanic state" that saved Prussia twice in the past, and the two countries "had always flourished when they were friends."