The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich《The sigificance of the Soviet-Germ

(...the Soviet German treaty which was honored by neither sides as the situation later proved was concluded just before the very event of German's attack to Poland for the purpose of keeping the Russians on the German side or at least making it neutral.)

Two years later when German troops were pouring into Russia in violation of the pact Stalin would still justify his odious deal with Hitler made behind the backs of the Anglo-French military delegation which had come to negotiate in Moscow. "We secured peace for our country for one and a half year" he boasted in a broadcast to the Russian people on July 31941 "as well as an opportunity of preparing our forces for defence if fascist Germany risked attacking our country in defiance of the pact. This was a definite gain for our country and a loss for fascist Germany."

But was it? The point has been debated ever since. That the sordid secret deal gave Stalin the same breathing space-peredyshka-which Czar Alexander I had secured from Napoleon at Tilsit in 1807 and Lenin from the German at Brest Litovsk in 1917 was obvious. Within a short time it also gave the Soviet Union an advanced defensive position against Germany beyond the existing Russian frontier including bases in the Baltic States and Finland-at the expanse of the poles Lativians Estonians and Finns. And most important of all as the official Soviet History Of diplomacy later emphasized it assured the Kremlin that if Russia were later attacked by Germany the Western power would already be irrevocably committed against the Third Reich and the Soviet Union would not stand alone against the German might as Stalin had feared throughout the summer of 1939.

All this undoubtedly is true. But there is another side to the argument. By the time Hitler got arround to attacking Russia the army of Poland and France and the British Expeditionary Force on the continent had been destroyed and Germany had the resources of all the Europe to draw upon and no Western front to tie her hands. All throuth 1941 1942 and 1943 Stalin was to complain bitterly that there was no second front in Europe against Germany and that Russia was forced to bear the brunt of containing almost the entire Germany Army. in the 1939-40 there was a western front to draw off the German forces. And Poland could not have been overrun in a fortnight if the Russians had backed her instead of stabbing her in the back. Moreover there might not have been any war at all if Hitler had known he must take on Russia as well as Poland England and France. Even the politically timid German generals if one can judge from their later testimony at Nuremberg might have put their foot down against embarking on war against such a formidable coalition. Toward the end of May according to the French ambassordor in Berlin both Keitel and Brautchitsch (heads of the German military stuff) had warned Hitler that Germany had little chance of winnig a war in which Russia participated on the enemy side.

No stateman not even dictators can fortell the course of events over the long run. It is arguable as Churchill has argued that cold-blooded as Stalin's move was in making a deal with Hitler it was also "at the moment realistic in a high degree." Stalin's first and primary consideration as was that of any other head of government was his nation's security. He was convinced in the summer of 1939 as he later told Churchill that Hitler was going to war. He was determined that Russia should not be maneuvered into the disastrous position of having to face the German Army alone. If a foolproof alliance with the West proved impossible then why not turn to Hitler who was knocking at his door.

By the end of July 1939 Stalin had become convinced it is obvious not only that France and Britain did not want a binding alliance but that the objective of the Chamberlain government in Britain was to induce Hitler to make his war in Eastern Europe. He seems to have been intensely skeptical that Britain would honor its guarantee to Poland any more than France had kept its obligations to Czechoslovakia. And everthing had happened in the West for the past two years tended to increase his suspicions: the rejection by Chamberlain of Soviet propasal after Anschluss and after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia for conferences to draw up plans to halt further Nazi aggression; Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler at Munich from which Russia had been excluded; the delays and hesitations of Chamberlain in negotiatinga defensive alliance against Germany as the fateful summer day of 1939 ticked by.

One thing was certain- to almost everyone but Chamberlain. The bankruptcy of Anglo-French diplomacy whcih had faltered and tottered whenever Hitler made a move was now complete. Step by step the two western democracies had retreated: when Hitler defied them by declaring conscription in 1935 when he ocuppied the Rhineland in 1936 when he took Austria in 1938 and in the same year demanded and got Sudetenland; and they had sat by weakly when he occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. With the Soviet Union on their side they still might have dissuaded the German dictator from launching war or if failed have fairly quickly defeated him in an armed conflict. But they had allowed this last opportunity to slip out of their hands. Now at the worst possible time in the worst possible circumstances they were committed to come to the aid of Poland when she was attacked.

The recriminations in London and Paris against the double-dealing of Stalin were loud and bitter. The Soviet Union despot for years had cried out at the "fascist beasts" and called for all peace-loving states to band together to halt Nazi aggression. Now he had made himself an accessory to it. The Krimlin could argue as it did that the Soviet Union had only done what Britain and France had done the year before at Munich: bought peace and the time to rearm against Germany at the expense of a small state. If Chamberlain was right and honorable in appeasing Hitler in September 1938 by sacrificing Czechoslovakia was Stalin wrong and dishonorable in appeasing the Fuehrer(Adolf Hitler) a year later at the expense of Poland which had shunned Soviet help anyway?