Roger Moorhouse - The Devils' Alliance - Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941

Once the “spheres of interest” had been cleared up, the essential business of the pact was concluded, and discussion in Moscow turned to current events and the wider ramifications that a Nazi-Soviet agreement and nonaggression pact might have. Japan was at the top of the agenda, and Stalin was keen to know the status of Germany’s links with Tokyo. Ribbentrop reassured him that German-Japanese friendship was in no way directed against the Soviet Union and even offered to intercede in settling disagreements between Moscow and Tokyo. Stalin was again rather cool in response, stating that he would be happy for an improvement of relations and for German assistance in that regard, but he did not want it known that the initiative had his sanction.

Talks then ranged over Italy, Turkey, France, and Britain, the last of which, it seems, excited both Ribbentrop and Stalin greatly and provided an arena for common ground and some competitive damnation of “perfidious Albion.” England was weak, Ribbentrop opined, echoing the tone of Stalin’s speech of March that year, and was keen to use others to further its “arrogant claims to world domination.” Stalin concurred, stating that the British army was feeble and that the Royal Navy longer merited its reputation. “If England has dominated the world it is only because of the stupidity of other countries,” he said. “It is astonishing that only a few hundred British ruled India.”

But, Stalin warned, the British could fight stubbornly and skillfully. Ribbentrop replied that—unlike the British and French—he had not come to ask assistance: Germany was perfectly capable of dealing with both Poland and her western allies on its own. According to Ribbentrop, Stalin thought for a moment before responding, “The viewpoint of Germany deserves attention. However, the Soviet Union is interested in preserving a strong Germany, and in the event of military conflict between Germany and the Western democracies, the interests of the Soviet Union and Germany coincide completely. The Soviet Union shall never tolerate letting Germany fall into difficult straits.”

By the end of their discussions, there was evidently even room for some wit. When Ribbentrop began an unconvincing explanation of how the Anti-Comintern Pact—the anticommunist alliance agreed between Germany and Japan three years earlier—had been directed not against the Soviet Union but against the Western democracies, Stalin replied that the city of London and “English shopkeepers” had been most frightened by the move. Ribbentrop concurred, adding that German opinion on the matter was clear from a recent Berlin quip that Stalin himself was now considering joining the Anti-Comintern Pact. For the otherwise humorless Ribbentrop, it was almost funny.

After this tour d’horizon, a draft communiqué, hastily drawn up in two languages in an anteroom, was presented to the negotiators for their consideration. Ribbentrop had scripted an elaborate, gushing preamble to the original Soviet draft of the treaty, full of references to the “natural friendship” between the Soviet Union and Germany. Stalin, however, who was soberer in his senses, was unmoved. “Don’t you think,” he asked, “that we have to pay a little more attention to public opinion in our two countries? For many years now, we have been pouring buckets of shit on each other’s heads, and our propaganda boys could not do enough in that direction. And now, all of a sudden, are we to make our peoples believe that all is forgotten and forgiven? Things don’t work so fast. Public opinion in our country, and probably in Germany too, will have to be prepared slowly for the change in our relations that this treaty is to bring about.”

Outplayed again, Ribbentrop could only humbly agree, and the preamble reverted to that of the original Soviet draft. With a few minor alterations, the text of the treaty—a short document of only seven brief paragraphs—was then checked and accepted by the parties. Each agreed to desist from any aggressive action against the other and to maintain constant contact for the purposes of consultation on their common interests. Disputes were to be settled by the friendly exchange of opinion or, if necessary, through arbitration. Unusually, the treaty would come into force immediately upon signature rather than upon ratification.

The secret protocol accompanying the treaty was similarly terse, with only four articles delineating the Nazi and Soviet “spheres of influence” that were to apply “in the event of a territorial and political rearrangement.” Accordingly, the Soviet Union laid claim to Finland, Estonia, and Latvia, up to the border of Lithuania, with the latter earmarked for Germany. In Poland, the boundary between the two signatories would be the line of the San, Narew, and Vistula rivers, neatly dissecting the country. To the south, Moscow expressed its “interest” in the Romanian province of Bessarabia, whereas Germany registered its “complete political disinterest.” Finally, both sides agreed that the protocol was to be treated as “strictly secret.” With its pious, high-flown rhetoric about the pernicious “imperialists” and their cynical “spheres of interest,” the Soviet Union could scarcely admit to having similar arrangements of its own. Such was the sensitivity of the secret protocol, indeed, that some have speculated that, on the Soviet side, only Stalin and Molotov knew of its existence.

The hard work done, the signatories and their respective entourages were treated to a small, impromptu reception. At around midnight, samovars of black tea appeared, followed by caviar, sandwiches, vodka, and finally Crimean champagne: “our treat,” as Molotov would later recall. Glasses were filled, cigarettes were lit, and the atmosphere became—according to one of those present—“warmly convivial.” As is the Russian way, an interminable round of toasts followed. Stalin began by exclaiming to a hushed room, “I know how much the German nation loves its Führer. I should therefore like to drink to his health.” Once the glasses had been refilled, Molotov proposed a toast to Ribbentrop, and Ribbentrop in turn toasted the Soviet government. All of them then drank to the nonaggression pact as a symbol of the new era in Russo-German relations.

In the early hours of August 24, after the draft treaty had been retyped, the photographers were ushered in to record its ceremonial signing. Entering the “smoke-laden room,” Hitler’s photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, introduced himself to Molotov and received a “hearty handshake” from Stalin. Then he set to work. Flanked by a Soviet photographer with “a prehistoric camera and an antediluvian tripod,” as well as his own colleague Helmut Laux, Hoffmann began recording the scene for posterity. Stalin insisted on only one condition: that the empty glasses be cleared before the photographers began; he clearly did not want anyone to think that he had signed the pact while drunk. At one point, soon after, Laux took a photograph of him and Ribbentrop together, with glasses of champagne raised in a toast. Spotting him, Stalin remarked that it would probably not be a good idea to publish the picture, in case it gave a false impression to the German and Soviet peoples. With that, Laux immediately began to take the film out of his camera, ready to hand it over to Stalin, but the latter stopped him by waving his hand, assuring him that he “trusted the word of a German.”

After that brief halt, Hoffmann and Laux resumed their work. Between them they would produce the iconic images of the pact’s signing: Molotov and Ribbentrop, seated at the desk, pen in hand; to their rear, Chief of the General Staff Boris Shaposhnikov, looking like a silent-film star with his slicked, parted hair; the interpreters Hilger and Pavlov seemingly startled to be sharing the limelight; and finally Stalin, beaming broadly in his smart, light-colored tunic. Behind them all, Lenin glared down from a large framed photograph.