Universitatea ,, 1 Decembrie 1918 Alba Iulia

Facultatea de Istorie i Filologie

Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact

Student: Nicolae Beldiman

Specializare: Istorie
Master I

Alba Iulia

2014

Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact
The German-Soviet Pact, also known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact after the two
foreign ministers who negotiated the agreement, had two parts. An economic agreement,
signed on August 19, 1939, provided that Germany would exchange manufactured goods for

Soviet raw materials. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union also signed a ten-year
nonaggression pact on August 23, 1939, in which each signatory promised not to attack the
other.
The German-Soviet Pact enabled Germany to attack Poland on September 1, 1939,
without fear of Soviet intervention. On September 3, 1939, Britain and France, having
guaranteed to protect Poland's borders five months earlier, declared war on Germany. These
events marked the beginning of World War II1.
The nonaggression pact of August 23 contained a secret protocol that provided for the
partition of Poland and the rest of eastern Europe into Soviet and German spheres of interest.
In accordance with this plan, the Soviet army occupied and annexed eastern Poland in the
autumn of 1939. On November 30, 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland, precipitating a
four-month winter war after which the Soviet Union annexed Finnish territory borderlands,
particularly near Leningrad. With German indulgence, the Soviet Union also moved to secure
its sphere of interest in eastern Europe in the summer of 1940. The Soviets occupied and
incorporated the Baltic states and seized the Romanian provinces of northern Bukovina and
Bessarabia.
After the Germans defeated France in June 1940, German diplomats worked to secure
Germany's ties in southeastern Europe. Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia all joined the Axis
alliance in November 1940. During the spring of 1941, Hitler initiated his eastern European
allies into plans to invade the Soviet Union.
Hitler had always regarded the German-Soviet nonaggression pact as a tactical and
temporary maneuver. On December 18, 1940, he signed Directive 21 (code-named Operation
Barbarossa), the first operational order for the invasion of the Soviet Union. From the
beginning of operational planning, German military and police authorities intended to wage a
war of annihilation against the Communist state as well as the Jews of the Soviet Union,
whom they characterized as forming the "racial basis" for the Soviet state.
German forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, less than two years after
the German-Soviet Pact was signed.
German-Soviet Nonaggression

Pact, also

called Nazi-Soviet

Nonaggression

Pact, German-Soviet Treaty of Nonaggression, Hitler-Stalin Pact, Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,

(August 23, 1939), nonaggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union that was

1 Fisher David, Read Anthony, The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin, and the NaziSoviet Pact 19391941, W.
W. Norton & Co, 1999, p. 45-51.

concluded only a few days before the beginning of World War II and which divided
eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence2.
The Soviet Union had been unable to reach a collective-security agreement with
Britain and France against Nazi Germany, most notably at the time of the Munich Conference
in September 1938. By early 1939 the Soviets faced the prospect of resisting German military
expansion in eastern Europe virtually alone, and so they began searching about for a change
of policy. On May 3, 1939, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin fired Foreign Minister Maksim
Litvinov, who was Jewish and an advocate of collective security, and replaced him
with Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov, who soon began negotiations with the Nazi foreign
minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.
The Soviets also kept negotiating with Britain and France, but in the end Stalin chose
to reach an agreement with Germany.
By doing so he hoped to keep the Soviet Union at peace with Germany and to gain
time to build up the Soviet military establishment, which had been badly weakened by the
purge of the Red Army officer corps in 1937. The Western democracies hesitance in
opposing Adolf Hitler, along with Stalins own inexplicable personal preference for the
Nazis, also played a part in Stalins final choice. For his part, Hitler wanted a nonaggression
pact with the Soviet Union so that his armies could invade Poland virtually unopposed by a
major power, after which Germany could deal with the forces of France and Britain in the
west without having to simultaneously fight the Soviet Union on a second front in the east.
The end result of the German-Soviet negotiations was the Nonaggression Pact, which was
dated August 23 and was signed by Ribbentrop and Molotov in the presence of Stalin, in
Moscow3.
The terms of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact were briefly as follows: the two
countries agreed not to attack each other, either independently or in conjunction with other
powers; not to support any third power that might attack the other party to the pact; to remain
in consultation with each other upon questions touching their common interests; not to join
any group of powers directly or indirectly threatening one of the two parties; to solve all
differences between the two by negotiation or arbitration. The pact was to last for 10 years,
with automatic extension for another 5 years unless either party gave notice to terminate it 1
year before its expiration.
2 Vizulis Izidors ,The MolotovRibbentrop Pact of 1939: in The Baltic Case, 1990, p. 153-156.
3 Bendersky Joseph W, A History of Nazi Germany: 19191945, Rowman & Littlefield, N Y,
2000, p. 123 -150.
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To this public pact of nonaggression was appended a secret protocol, also reached on
August 23, 1939, which divided the whole of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres
of influence. Poland east of the line formed by the Narew, Vistula, and San rivers would fall
under the Sovietsphere of influence. The protocol also assigned Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,
and Finland to the Soviet sphere of influence and, further, broached the subject of the
separation of Bessarabia from Romania. A secret supplementary protocol (signed September
28, 1939) clarified the Lithuanian borders. The Polish-German border was also determined,
and Bessarabia was assigned to the Soviet sphere of influence. In a third secret protocol
(signed January 10, 1941, by Count Friedrich Werner von Schulenberg and Molotov),
Germany renounced its claims to portions of Lithuania in return for Soviet payment of a sum
agreed upon by the two countries4.
The public German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact caused consternation in the capitals of
Britain and France. After Germany invaded Poland from the west on September 1, 1939,
Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east on September 17, meeting the advancing
Germans near Brest-Litovsk two days later. The partition of Poland was effected on
September 29, at which time the dividing line between German and Soviet territory was
changed in Germanys favour, being moved eastward to the Bug River (i.e., the current
Polish-Soviet frontier). The Soviets soon afterward sought to consolidate their sphere of
influence as a defensive barrier to renewed German aggression in the east. Accordingly, the
Soviet Union attacked Finland on November 30 and forced it in March 1940 to yield the
Isthmus of Karelia and make other concessions. The Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania,
and Estonia were annexed by the Soviet Union and were organized as Soviet republics in
August 1940. The Nonaggression Pact became a dead letter on June 22, 1941, when Nazi
Germany, after having invaded much of western and central Europe, attacked the Soviet
Union without warning inOperation Barbarossa.

4 Watt Richard M, Bitter Glory, Poland & Its Fate 19181939. NY, 1979, p. 21-30.
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Bendersky, Joseph W (2000). A History of Nazi Germany: 19191945. Rowman & Littlefield
Fisher, David; Read, Anthony (1999). The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin, and the Nazi
Soviet Pact 19391941. W. W. Norton & Co.
Vizulis, Izidors (1990). The MolotovRibbentrop Pact of 1939: The Baltic Case.
Watt, Richard M. (1979). Bitter Glory: Poland & Its Fate 19181939. NY: Simon & Schuster