page_title: Earl Browder
section_title: Effects of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
hierarchical_section_title: Earl Browder / Biography / Effects of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Abschluss der Deutsch-Sowjetischer Grenz- und Freundschaftsvertrages am 28. September 1939. Von links nach rechts: Hintergrund: Richard Schulze-Kossens (Ribbentrops Adjutant), Boris Schaposchnikow (Generalstabschef der Roten Armee), Joachim von Ribbentrop, Josef Stalin, Vladimir Pavlov (sowjetischer Übersetzer); Vordergrund: Gustav Hilger (deutscher Übersetzer) Alexey Schkvarzev und Wjatscheslaw Molotow. Schulze-Kossens (hintere Reihe, ganz links) als Zeuge bei der Unterzeichnung des „Deutsch-Sowjetischen Grenz- und Freundschaftsvertrags“ am 28. September 1939 in Moskau. English: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signs the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship in Moscow, September 28, 1939; behind him are Richard Schulze-Kossens (Ribbentrop's adjutant), Boris Shaposhnikov (Generalstabschef der Roten Armee), Joachim von Ribbentrop, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Pavlov (Soviet translator). Alexey Shkvarzev (Soviet ambassador in Berlin), stands next to Molotov.
context_page_description: Earl Russell Browder was an American political activist and leader of the Communist Party USA. Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s.
  During World War I, Browder served time in federal prison as a conscientious objector to conscription and the war. Upon his release, Browder became an active member of the American Communist movement, soon working as an organizer on behalf of the Communist International and its Red International of Labor Unions in China and the Pacific region.
  In 1930, following the removal of a rival political faction from leadership, Browder was made General Secretary of the CPUSA. For the next 15 years thereafter Browder was the most recognizable public figure associated with American Communism, authoring dozens of pamphlets and books, making numerous public speeches before sometimes vast audiences, and twice running for President of the United States. Browder also took part in activities on behalf of Soviet intelligence in America during his period of party leadership, placing those who sought to convey sensitive information to the party into contact with Soviet intelligence.
context_section_description: European geopolitics were fundamentally altered on August 23, 1939, when Foreign Ministers of the USSR and Nazi Germany formally signed a mutual non-aggression treaty known to history as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The agreement included secret protocols providing for the Nazi invasion and division of Poland. Germany's September 1 invasion of Poland brought an immediate response from its treaty partners France and Great Britain, who declared war on Germany on September 3. World War II had begun.
  The Soviet Union invaded Eastern Poland on September 17, its path cleared by the lack of British and French military activity against the Nazis in Western Poland. It wanted to build a cordon against German military strength west of the Soviet Union's national border. The Soviet government went further, however, by signing a joint statement with the Germans characterizing the partition of Poland as a fait accompli, calling for an end to hostilities, and placing the onus for any escalation of the European conflict on the governments of Great Britain and France.
  Virtually overnight the political lines of the Communist parties of the world shifted. Those who were formerly the greatest cheerleaders for collective security against the danger of Germany now became staunch opponents of American intervention in the European military situation—reflective of the newly revised needs of Soviet foreign policy. All anti-fascist propaganda was immediately terminated, overt criticism of German action was minimized, the culpability of the governments of France and Britain was exaggerated. Browder's CPUSA claimed that Hitler's foes intended to escalate the ongoing European conflict into a counterrevolutionary offensive against the USSR.
  The result of the sudden shift of the party line caused shock and confusion among many members of the Communist Party USA, a goodly number of whom had joined during the period of the Popular Front against fascism. Browder declared at one Philadelphia rally that only "a dozen or so" had left the CPUSA over the change of line; but the party's ranks fell by 15% between 1939 and 1940, and recruitment of new members in 1940 fell by 75% from 1938 levels. The public image of the USSR as a main bulwark against fascism and claims of the CPUSA as an indigenous radical organization were severely undermined.
  Moreover, the CPUSA's new propaganda offensive against United States participation in the so-called "Imperialist War" brought it into political conflict with the Roosevelt administration, which had begun to question the wisdom of isolationism. In the summer of 1939, Texas Congressman Martin Dies, Jr. (D), chairman of the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), learned that the U.S. Department of Justice had begun to investigate old charges that Earl Browder had traveled abroad under assumed names, making use of false documents, during the 1920s. Dies proceeded to subpoena Browder to appear before the committee to give testimony on the matter. On September 5, 1939, days after the German invasion of Poland, Browder appeared before HUAC, providing exhaustive testimony over the course of two days.
  Midway through the first day of testimony, Browder was asked in passing whether he had ever traveled abroad under a false passport. Before party attorney Joseph Brodsky could stop him, Browder answered, "I have." Although he subsequently refused to answer follow-up questions about the matter, citing the protection against self-incrimination offered by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the damage caused by Browder's admission under oath had been done. Conservative politicians such as Congressman J. Parnell Thomas (R) of New Jersey attempted to make political hay by intimating that the Roosevelt administration had coddled the country's leading Communist, saying that Browder was "swaggering [and] apparently untouchable" despite being Stalin's "number one stooge in this country."
  With popular feeling against Communism raging in the wake of European events and political heat rising in Washington, the
caption: With German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Communist Party leader Joseph Stalin looking on, V. M. Molotov signs the non-aggression treaty on behalf of the Soviet Union, August 23, 1939.
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