page_title: Soviet Union in World War II
section_title: Pact with Adolf Hitler
hierarchical_section_title: Soviet Union in World War II / Pact with Adolf Hitler
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. ADN-ZB/Archiv Sowjetunion, August 1939, Im Moskauer Kreml wird am 23.8.1939 ein Nichtangriffsvertrag zwischen dem deutschen Reich und der UdSSR unterzeichnet. Nach der Unterzeichnung im Gespräch J.W. Stalin und der deutsche Reichsaußenminister Joachim von Ribbentrop (r.).
context_page_description: The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany on 23 August 1939. In addition to stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included a secret protocol that divided territories of Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into German and Soviet Union "spheres of influence", anticipating potential "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries. In October and November 1940, German-Soviet talks about the potential of joining the Axis took place in Berlin, nothing came from the talks since Hitler's Ideological goal was Lebensraum in the East.
  Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 starting World War II, Stalin waited until September 17 before launching his own invasion of Poland. Part of the Karelia and Salla regions of Finland were annexed by the Soviet Union after the Winter War. This was followed by Soviet annexations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania. It was known at the Nuremberg trials the existence of the secret protocol of the German–Soviet pact regarding the planned divisions of these territories.
context_section_description: In August 1939, Stalin accepted Hitler's proposal into a non-aggression pact with Germany, negotiated by the foreign ministers Vyacheslav Molotov for the Soviets and Joachim von Ribbentrop for the Germans. Officially a non-aggression treaty only, an appended secret protocol, also reached on 23 August, divided the whole of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. The USSR was promised the eastern part of Poland, then primarily populated by Ukrainians and Belarusians, in case of its dissolution, and Germany recognised Latvia, Estonia and Finland as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence, with Lithuania added in a second secret protocol in September 1939. Another clause of the treaty was that Bessarabia, then part of Romania, was to be joined to the Moldovan SSR, and become the Moldovan SSR under control of Moscow.
  The pact was reached two days after the breakdown of Soviet military talks with British and French representatives in August 1939 over a potential Franco-Anglo-Soviet alliance. Political discussions had been suspended on 2 August, when Molotov stated that they could not be resumed until progress was made in military talks late in August, after the talks had stalled over guarantees for the Baltic states, while the military talks upon which Molotov insisted started on 11 August. At the same time, Germany—with whom the Soviets had started secret negotiations on 29 July – argued that it could offer the Soviets better terms than Britain and France, with Ribbentrop insisting, "there was no problem between the Baltic and the Black Sea that could not be solved between the two of us." German officials stated that, unlike Britain, Germany could permit the Soviets to continue their developments unmolested, and that "there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies of the West". By that time, Molotov had obtained information regarding Anglo-German negotiations and a pessimistic report from the Soviet ambassador in France.
  After disagreement regarding Stalin's demand to move Red Army troops through Poland and Romania (which Poland and Romania opposed), on 21 August, the Soviets proposed adjournment of military talks using the pretext that the absence of the senior Soviet personnel at the talks interfered with the autumn manoeuvres of the Soviet forces, though the primary reason was the progress being made in the Soviet-German negotiations. That same day, Stalin received assurance that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would grant the Soviets land in Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and Romania, after which Stalin telegrammed Hitler that night that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on 23 August. Regarding the larger issue of collective security, some historians state that one reason that Stalin decided to abandon the doctrine was the shaping of his views of France and Britain by their entry into the Munich Agreement and the subsequent failure to prevent the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Stalin may also have viewed the pact as gaining time in an eventual war with Hitler in order to reinforce the Soviet military and shifting Soviet borders westwards, which would be militarily beneficial in such a war.
  Stalin and Ribbentrop spent most of the night of the pact's signing trading friendly stories about world affairs and cracking jokes (a rarity for Ribbentrop) about Britain's weakness, and the pair even joked about how the Anti-Comintern Pact principally scared "British shopkeepers." They further traded toasts, with Stalin proposing a toast to Hitler's health and Ribbentrop proposing a toast to Stalin.
caption: Stalin and Ribbentrop at the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939.
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