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The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, [1] [2] and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact [3] [4] and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, [5] was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with a secret protocol establishing Soviet and German spheres of influence across Eastern Europe. [6]
Historians have debated whether Stalin was planning an invasion of German territory in the summer of 1941. The debate began in the late 1980s when Viktor Suvorov published a journal article and later the book Icebreaker in which he claimed that Stalin had seen the outbreak of war in Western Europe as an opportunity to spread communist revolutions throughout the continent, and that the Soviet ...
During the summer of 1939, after it had conducted negotiations with a British-French alliance and with Germany regarding potential military and political agreements, [16] the Soviet Union chose Germany, which resulted in an August 19 German–Soviet Commercial Agreement providing for the trade of certain German military and civilian equipment in exchange for Soviet raw materials.
In the Soviet Union, speaking to his generals in December 1940, Stalin mentioned Hitler's references to an attack on the Soviet Union in Mein Kampf and Hitler's belief that the Red Army would need four years to ready itself. Stalin declared "we must be ready much earlier" and "we will try to delay the war for another two years". [143]
Schulenburg then said he did not approve of his government's decision (he would later participate in the failed 20 July plot against Hitler). [10] Molotov recorded the German note in his diary, with a timestamp of 5:30 a.m. The reaction of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was described particularly
Because of tensions caused by these invasions, Germany's falling behind in deliveries of goods, and Stalin's worries that Hitler's war with the West might end quickly after France signed an armistice, in August 1940, the Soviet Union briefly suspended its deliveries under the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement. [145]
Stalin probably exceeded Hitler". [188] Wheatcroft elaborates: Stalin undoubtedly caused many innocent people to be executed, but it seems likely that he thought many of them guilty of crimes against the state and felt that the execution of others would act as a deterrent to the guilty. He signed the papers and insisted on documentation.
By August, the protests had spread to Bavaria. Hitler was jeered by an angry crowd at Hof, near Nuremberg—the only time he was opposed to his face in public during his 12 years of rule. [148] Hitler knew that he could not afford a confrontation with the Church at a time when Germany was engaged in a life-and-death two-front war.