On this day in 1939, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov signed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which, in its secret protocols, divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. This agreement gave Germany the assurance that they could invade Poland without Soviet interference (and Soviet interference was the only thing likely to prevent German aggression against Poland), in return for which the Soviets received the assurance that they could gobble up the Baltic states, eastern Poland, and parts of Finland without Germany doing anything to stop them. As such, this pact made the beginning of World War II inevitable (Germany started the war slightly more than a week later by invading Poland on September 1, 1939), as well as the Finno-Soviet Winter War of 1940 and the forcible incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and eastern Poland into the Soviet empire. It would be difficult to find a diplomatic agreement more cynical in its conception or more pernicious in its effects than the German-Soviet Pact. The only outcome positive to civilization of this pact than I can think of is that it served as a wake-up call for some Western leftists who had bought Stalinist propaganda through the '20s and '30s.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
On This Day
On this day in 1939, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov signed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which, in its secret protocols, divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. This agreement gave Germany the assurance that they could invade Poland without Soviet interference (and Soviet interference was the only thing likely to prevent German aggression against Poland), in return for which the Soviets received the assurance that they could gobble up the Baltic states, eastern Poland, and parts of Finland without Germany doing anything to stop them. As such, this pact made the beginning of World War II inevitable (Germany started the war slightly more than a week later by invading Poland on September 1, 1939), as well as the Finno-Soviet Winter War of 1940 and the forcible incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and eastern Poland into the Soviet empire. It would be difficult to find a diplomatic agreement more cynical in its conception or more pernicious in its effects than the German-Soviet Pact. The only outcome positive to civilization of this pact than I can think of is that it served as a wake-up call for some Western leftists who had bought Stalinist propaganda through the '20s and '30s.
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It -- or rather Western Communist intellectuals' reaction to it -- was the inspiration for Orwell's writing on DoubleThink in 1984 and "Notes on Nationalism" (my favorite of his essays).
Incidentally, you might be very interested in a talk Max Hastings gave at Pritzker Military Library recently. At the end he gets asked some obnoxious question by a Stalin apologist and reminds the slug of the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact to shut him up. The MP3 is here.
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