Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a pact of non-aggression signed between Nazi Germany and The Soviet Union, wherein neither side was to engage in military action against each other or infringe on areas of one another's political influence. The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov on the eve of World War II. This marked a distinct change in Soviet Foreign Policy towards Germany, since the ending of the Weimar Republic.

Prelude to the Pact

Until September 1939, Nazi Germany and the USSR were countries opposed to each other on ideological, political, cultural and economic bases. The idea of war between the two openly hostile countries was a matter of time, which was obvious to the leaders of all world powers. Until the pact the two countries feverishly prepared for the fast-coming future conflict with economic and political allies.

German Activity

From the rise of Hitler until 1939, Germany was the main, open anti-Soviet state. The propaganda produced by the Nazis embodies the fears and hatred of the entire Capitalist world, and received much support for doing so. Germany used this good will to push controversial politics unopposed, such as the remilitarization of the Rhineland and Anschluss, which were prohibited by the Versailles Treaty. French and British delegations were aware of this but preferred to have an "anti-Bolshevik" cudgel over the risk of a German Empire that would threaten their own power. Even if one waves aside the Versailles treaty for being over 15 years old, in 1925 the Locarno Pact was signed following the European peace conference held in Switzerland. It reaffirmed national boundaries decided by the Treaty of Versailles, approved the German entry into the League of Nations and initiated something nick-named the “spirit of Locarno” symbolizing hopes for an era of European peace. By 1930 German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann had negotiated the removal of the last Allied troops in the demilitarized Ruhr area. Besides economic interaction, this support was also displayed in political pacts. Despite Hitler's repeated desire for lebensraum der ostland and his hatred for communists, he did not want to denounce the 1926 Berlin Treaty of Neutrality with the USSR and the protocol to it from 1931, announcing on May 5, 1933 that these documents would continue to be valid, though it did not stop his mentality. Hitler recognized the obvious need to re-arm and prepare Germany for war before it could try to take the USSR's resources and destroy the communist "threat" and thus did not send Germany rushing into battle like a madman, but carefully acquired resources and political alliances, putting them to use in rapid preparation for the future war, facing off indirectly against the USSR in conflicts like the Spanish Civil War.

Prior to the Soviet-German Pacts there was a long line of pacts with other countries/states that Nazi Germany possessed.

• 1933, July 15: The 4 powers Pact, (Italy, UK, France)
• 1933, July 20: Reichskonkordat (Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich)
• 1934, January 26: Hitler-Pilsudski Pact (Poland)
• 1935, June: Anglo-German Naval Agreement (UK)
• 1936, November 25: Anti-Comintern Pact (Japan, Italy) Machukuo and Hungary joined February 24, 1939., Franco's Spain joined March 26, 1939, On November 25, 1941 Finland , Romania , Bulgaria , and the puppet governments of Croatia, Slovakia, Denmark and Japan's occupied Chinese government of Wang Jingwei
• 1937, July 5: Second Anglo-German Naval Agreement (UK) parallel to the Anglo-Soviet Naval Agreement
• 1938, September 30: German-British Non-Aggression Pact (UK)
• 1938, September 30: Munich Agreement, (UK, France, Italy) permission for the annexation of Czechoslovakia by Germany, Hungary and Poland
• 1938, December: German-French Non-Aggression Pact (France)
• 1939, March: German-Romanian Economic Treaty (Romania)
• 1939, March: Non-Aggression Pact (Lithuania)
• 1939, May: Pact of Steel; Friendship and Alliance (Italy)
• 1939, May: Non-Aggression Pact (Denmark)
• 1939, June: Non-Aggression Pact (Estonia)
• 1939, July: Non-Aggression Pact (Latvia)

And only then

• 1939, August 19: German-Soviet trade agreement (USSR)
• 1939, August 23: Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact

However, by 1939 German militaristic actions stopped being limited to minor countries of Eastern Europe and their own former territories and this alarmed Western governments - their anti-Soviet attack dog could possibly bite the hand that fed it - and officially began to cut off trade, mirroring their actions against Imperial Japan. This left Germany with an incomplete army and a lack of resources needed to complete their planned forces. It was too early to dare attacking Russia in search of resources and they did not want to risk a large war at this stage, so they took the option available - another Non-Aggression Pact written around the political situation of the time. This bought them time and some resources to prepare for the war, and allowed the Western front to be fought without risk of attack from behind, allowing an otherwise weak Germany to beat the take it is revenge upon France, though it failed to take Britain. Paradoxically at the time, despite fear of Germany, Western militaries did not properly mobilize for conflict and did not really act until Germany had crushed Most of Europe in a matter of a few weeks per country and decided to finally take France. This period of time is often called 'The Phony War' due to it being a declared but almost unfought conflict.

Soviet Activity

The Soviet Union also took its own actions through the pre-war period, such as the Soviet effort for an anti-German defensive Pact, which they offered repeatedly since 1933, something well covered in the book Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations by Michael Jabara Carley. The USSR is the only major country that actively tried to prevent WW-II. In 1934, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations, the predecessor to the UN. Maxim Litvinov who represented the Soviet Union spent the next 4 years from 1934 to 1938, trying to install some sort of collective security in the League of Nations. Kind of like a global NATO. strengthening its borders.

“The State I represent entered the League… with the sole purpose of the maintenance of indivisible peace… The League of Nations is still strong enough by its collective actions to avert or arrest aggression… There is no room for bargaining or compromise” - Maxim Litvinov

4 years of imploring for a collective defensive army in the League were ignored. Even as Germany, Japan, and Italy withdrew from the League of Nations and Japan invaded the Soviet Union and China, and Italy invaded Ethiopia, the League of Nations did nothing. After 8 years of disappointment, Litvinov resigned and was replaced by Molotov, and the Soviet government terminated its collective security policy and began focusing on bolstering internal and border security through any means.

Instead the nations of Europe, especially Britain, France and Poland made treaties and appeasements to German state. In 1938 came the most egregious example - the betrayal of Czechoslovakia. The Borders of the country were bitten away by Hungary, Poland and Germany, like removing the front wall of a house. The Germans then decided to take the rest of the house as well, splitting it with Poland. And all this was sanctioned under the Munich Pact by France and Britain, who pressured Czechoslovakia's President Eduard Benes to not invoke their military pact with the Soviet Union.

The result of this was a bolstering of German military might and industry through the absorbed military of the Czechs and the factories like Skoda. In terms of statistics the Germans received

• Airplanes, 1582; roughly 39% of the German air force in mid '39
• Anti-aircraft guns, 501; enough for 46 German infantry divisions (out of 87 in mid '39, at target strength)
• Guns light and heavy, 2175; enough for 26 infantry divisions
• Mine throwers, 785; enough for 33 infantry divisions
• Machine guns, 43,876; enough for 68 infantry divisions
• Tanks, 469; enough for 1.5 (out of 5) tank divisions
• Numerous Germanic Czechs for the army

These numbers are cited by Hitler and are accepted data

In August 1939, Litvinov attempted, for the last time, to sign a military treaty with Poland, the UK, and France that could’ve stopped the war before it ever began. “The Soviet offer - made by war minister Marshall Klementi Voroshilov and Red Army chief of general staff Boris Shaposhnikov - would have put up to 120 infantry divisions (each with some 19,000 troops), 16 cavalry divisions, 5,000 heavy artillery pieces, 9,500 tanks and up to 5,500 fighter aircraft and bombers on Germany's borders in the event of war in the west” However the British only had 16

To summarize the Soviet efforts to prevent WW-2

• In 1933, USSR tried to sign a Pacific pact with Britain and USA to put a brake on Japanese imperialism. They declined, later resulting in Japan making swift advances and allowing the quick capture of Dutch and British Colonies when the Japanese openly attacked in 1939.
• In late 1933, the Soviet government proposed an "Eastern pact", which was to be signed by several countries in opposition to Germany.
• In September 1934 the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations, accepting France's invitation to join.
• In 1936 the Soviet government proposed collective action to stop German aggression, the future allies ignored it.
• In October 1937 at the Brussels Conference, USA and Britain rejected the Soviet proposal for the League of Nations to apply sanctions on Japan, after they had invaded China.
• In 1938, the Soviet government prepared to intervene militarily in Czechoslovakia should they decide to fight Germany. Their government refused under pressure and the allies signed the Munich pact, giving The Sudetenland (and later the rest of the country) to Hitler.
• In April 1939, Soviets proposed another military coalition against Nazi Germany in the event of an aggression in Eastern Europe to no avail.
• The Soviets made one last attempt in July 1939, and proposed a military coalition with a plan laid out by Shaposhnikov to deploy 136 divisions to fight Nazi Germany, which the Polish government refused to allow.

With all these failures to solidify a counter against German imperialism, the USSR took advantage of Germany's own unwillingness to enter conflict at the time, and secured the territories at its own borders. This series of pacts was a success of Soviet diplomacy for the following reasons:

• Prevention of a joint German-Japanese war with the USSR - Japan, which last fought (and lost) against the USSR on the river Khalkhin Gol, lost direct military support from members of the Anti-Comintern Pact. This forced it to cease hostilities, and in 1941 to conclude a pact of neutrality with the USSR. This remained enforced into 1945, and influenced the Japanese decision to instead retaliate against the embargo by the United States.
• Eliminating the threat of creating a coalition of Germany and the Western countries against the USSR - the West carrying out the so-called policy of appeasing the aggressor and the refusal to, together with the USSR, create a system of collective security to prevent world war, in fact, was complicity with the Third Reich and pushing it to war against the Soviet Union.
• Revision of the results of the Peace of Riga (1921) - following the results of the Soviet-Polish war of 1919–1921, unleashed by the Poles, Soviet Russia ceded the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus to Poland. In 1939, these territories (together with the Vilnius region) were returned to the Soviet state after Germany crushed the Polish army and its government fled - the borders of the USSR were moved an average of 600 km to the west from the key cities of the Ukrainian SSR and the BSSR, which increased the path of advance of enemy troops to them.
• The return of the territories of the Baltics and Bessarabia into Soviet influence - like Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, these territories were also lost during the Civil War, and were returned without the opposition of Germany and the West, and also slowed down the enemy's advance into the war.

The Division of Poland

Germany, immediately after signing the pact proceeded to its next goal, taking over Poland. The former ally to Germany refused to join it in an actual anti-Soviet war and therefore Hitler decided to take its assets and remove an obstacle. After it became obvious that Poland was falling to Germany, the USSR made their move and entered the country, annexing the eastern territories and re-integrating them into western Belorus and Ukraine. This Partition was not planned, however the potential of it occurring was taken into account during the writing of the pact.

'Trade' Between the USSR and Nazi Germany

Prior to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact there were very limited communications between the USSR and Nazi Germany, as they were opposed states, with the latter often spouting propaganda decrying the USSR as a Jew-Bolshevik hell-hole. This ideological warfare was only paused during 1939-1941 out of diplomatic reasons.

Prior to the rise of the Nazi Party the USSR did work with the German military and state. We must remember that the Soviet-German military projects were launched in the 1920s, and from 1922 to 1933 it was the so-called Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was a largely democratic state, if corrupt. It was hoped that Germany would eventually become a socialist republic or social-democratic at the least, even in spite of the turmoil in the country.

In the 1920s, the USSR was an agrarian country with an economy that was beginning to recover after the First World War and following the Civil War/Foreign Intervention. Russia's first tank - "Fighter of Freedom - Comrade Lenin" - was copy of a Renault FT tank. By the availability of qualified specialists, USSR was also inferior to Germany and the developed world courtesy of the Tsar's neglect of internal industry; in Germany compulsory secondary education was introduced as early as 1871, while at the end of the Russian Empire the majority of the population was illiterate. After the defeat in the First World War, Russia and Germany were the most "offended" states. Their territories were torn away, the army of Germany was turned into a decorative one. Russia (now the Soviet Union) had to build new armed forces under conditions of international isolation. The Red Army lagged behind the advanced powers in a number of military technologies and the USSR made haste to catch up, sending its engineers, mechanics and scientists to other countries to acquire licenses, knowledge and experience, sometimes with Shell Companies. The USSR bought and transported an entire Ford car factory for licensed production of vehicles, until its own bureau's could create and modify their own designs. A famous example is the Christie Tank, dismissed by the American Military, the USSR bought the patent and used its innovative chassis and suspension as the basis for the BT series of tanks and the legendary T-34. This progress was also linked to Germany.

1920s Germany on the other hand needed landfills/polygons where it was possible to test their equipment. In April 1922, during the conference in Genoa, Berlin and Moscow signed the Rapallo Treaty. Countries renounced claims to each other. Berlin recognized the nationalization of all German property in Russia. Traditional trade ties were restored. However the treaty did not contain military articles. In 1926 Germany and the USSR signed the Treaty of Berlin, which reaffirmed the Rapallo Treaty of 1922, essentially letting one another know that in the case of a third party attacking one of them, the other would not join against them. In the mid-1920s, an aviation school was established in Lipetsk (1925-1930) and a tank school in Kazan (1926). The tank school trained 30 people. The school in Lipetsk trained 200 German pilots in 5 years and nearly 150 Soviet pilots. Compare - in 1932 in the schools in Braunschweig and Reichlin the Germans prepared almost 2,000 pilots. After Hitler came to power, the schools were closed, all equipment on site went to the USSR. In the end, we can say that the Germans helped the Russians understand how to train tankmen and pilots and not the other way around. The Germans, with their own money, prepared their own and Soviet pilots and tankmen. None of the great German commanders were trained in the USSR, they came only for inspections (such as Guderian and Lutz in Kazan in the summer of 1932). Or they came to observe maneuvers of the Red Army. The USSR stopped relations with Germany when Hitler came to power, and no military aid of any kind was given during the Nazi Regime until the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. https://history.wikireading.ru/7639 (temp cite)

The USSR's international trade economy was that of an exporter of raw materials, and so they did export raw materials to Germany as part of the treaty. The USSR occupied the fifth place in Germany's imports (after Italy, Denmark, Romania and Holland) and only came into importance due to embargoes on Germany. Soviet exports were minuscule in the over-all picture of things and made up an inconsequential amount of both its own and German resources. The USSR sent Germany roughly 1 million tons of grain from the beginning of 1940 to the beginning of war in the East (June 22, 1941). The USSR produced 95.6 million tons of grains in 1940 alone... making total soviet exports of grain to Germany ~1.1% of Soviet grain production. The Population of Germany in 1940 was 66 million people - 15 kilograms of grain per person. 1 million tons of grain would be consumed within a couple months. The grain made up nearly 1/3 of the entirety of all Soviet imports.

In return Germany provided the USSR with a loan of 200 million German marks and numerous amounts of equipment. The Soviet Navy received the unfinished heavy cruiser Lutzow with equipment necessary to complete its construction; samples of ship artillery, mines, torpedoes, periscopes, etc. In addition to that, 5 dual-purpose ships, propeller shafts, high-pressure compressors, steering gear, motors for boats, marine electrical equipment, leaded cable, fans, marine medical equipment, pumps, systems for reducing the effects of pitching on marine devices, equipment for galleys, bakeries, ship laundry, rechargeable batteries and for submarines, naval gun turrets, 88 mm submarine cannons, Stereoscopic rangefinders, optical quadrants, photo-theodolite stations, periscopes, five mine samples, anti-submarine bombs, 406-mm and 280-mm three-gun ship towers, and the blueprints for the Battleship "Bismark" as well as other equipment to utilize and reverse engineer. The Soviet Airforce received samples of the latest models of Luftwaffe aircraft as well as aggregates of their construction with propellers, piston rings for aircraft engines, taximeters, altimeters, speed recorders, oxygen supply system at high altitudes, dual aerial cameras, instruments for determining the load on the aircraft control, radio direction finders, aircraft radio stations with intercom, devices for blind landing and other instruments for aircraft, aircraft batteries, stands for testing engines, riveting automatic machines, and bomb sights. The Red Army received samples of artillery, tanks, radio communications devices.

The civilian industrial sphere also received plenty, with samples of over 300 types of agricultural machinery and industrial production machines: excavators, metal lathes, drilling rigs, electric motors, compressors, pumps, steam turbines, oil equipment, etc.

Put simply the USSR sold a relatively tiny portion of its raw resources at a high price to the Germans in exchange for important long-term investment products.

Possible Criticism of Pact

While the Pact was an example of wily political maneuvers during a time of great tension, preventing Hitler from attacking the USSR by 2 years and allowing it to mobilize and acquire allied buffer territories, Soviet policy, in hindsight was not flawless.

Conclusion

The Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact was only signed after it was blatantly clear that the west would not act until Hitler invaded a west friendly power and was otherwise quite willing to be friendly with fascists. The British/French hoped instead that Hitler would invade Russia and take out the USSR which they themselves had invaded and tried to destroy 20 years earlier during the Revolution - the pact was Russia's way of avoiding this since they clearly were not ready to face the German army at the moment, and the Germans were also unprepared. An unhappy compromise between two opposed ideologies. The Pact was not and never will be considered a legitimate alliance in any sane view. It was made at the last moment when the actions of major Western countries like France, Poland and Britain essentially put the USSR in a terrible political position.