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

German largesse was very much restricted to the Volksdeutsche , however. If the Baltic states had imagined that they would receive a sympathetic hearing in Berlin, they were sorely mistaken. In the German Foreign Ministry on Wilhelmstrasse, the procedures followed during and after the Soviet occupations were scrupulously correct but perceptibly chilly. A circular from June 17, 1940, reminded all staff that Soviet actions in the region “are the concern of Russia and the Baltic States” and warned them to “refrain from making any statement which could be interpreted as partisan.” A week later, after Latvian and Lithuanian diplomats in Berlin had both lodged notes of protest with their German counterparts over the formal incorporation of their countries into the Soviet Union, those notes were duly returned—“in a friendly manner”—with a reminder that such protests could only be accepted if presented in the name of their governments. As the diplomats no longer spoke in this capacity, they were effectively redundant. For one of them, it was all too much. Lithuanian chargé d’affaires Kazys Škirpa had questioned German press reporting on the crisis, complaining that only the Soviet version of events had been aired and that no sign of sympathy for Lithuania was in evidence. When told that German officials were refraining from any comment on the issue, according to the Foreign Office record, he “burst into tears and could not recover for some time.” While German officials obfuscated, Goebbels—in his diary at least—was brutally honest: “Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia transferred to the Soviet Union” he wrote. “This is the price we pay for Russian neutrality.”

The West withheld its blessing. The British, painfully aware of their own impotence, refused to recognize the Soviet annexations but refrained from making any specific comment on events and continued to deal as before with the—now exiled—representatives of the Baltic governments. Nonetheless, in British government circles the idea of a de facto recognition of the annexations was soon floated as a possible sop to bring Stalin onside. The American reaction was more principled. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles issued a formal statement—the Welles Declaration—condemning Soviet aggression and refusing to recognize the legitimacy of Soviet control in the region, citing “the rule of reason, of justice and of law,” without which, he said, “civilization itself cannot be preserved.” In private he was even more forthright, and when the Soviet ambassador, Konstantin Oumansky, opined that the United States should applaud Soviet action in the Baltic, as it meant that the Baltic peoples could enjoy “the blessings of liberal and social government,” his response was withering. “The US government,” Welles explained, “sees no difference in principle between the Russian domination of the Baltic peoples and the occupation by Germany of other small European nations.” Strong words, perhaps, but the point they expressed was moot; barely six weeks after the Red Army invasion, the Baltic states had effectively ceased to exist.

At the same time that the Baltic region was drawn inexorably into Moscow’s orbit, Stalin turned his gaze southwest toward Romania and the province of Bessarabia, which Moscow had lost in the aftermath of World War I. As in the Baltic example, Molotov’s sense of urgency was spurred by the awareness that the fall of France offered a unique opportunity for him to act while the world was looking the other way. France and Britain had offered a guarantee to Romania in March 1939, so with the defeat of the Western Allies on the continent, Bucharest was effectively at Moscow’s mercy. As Deputy Defense Commissar Lev Mekhlis wrote the day before France fell, “Bessarabia must be snatched from the thieving hands of the Romanian aristocrats.”

Officially at least, Germany’s position on Bessarabia mirrored that which she had adopted toward the Baltic states. When sounded out to ascertain Berlin’s intentions with regard to the region, the German ambassador in Moscow, Schulenburg, gave Molotov the green light, reiterating the “political disinterest” expressed when the secret protocol had been drawn up nearly a year before. Yet, beyond that, there was a concern in Berlin that the Soviets were edging ever closer to Germany’s vital interests—the Romanian oilfields at Ploiești—and to this end Ribbentrop had privately sought to defuse the crisis, fearing that the region could become a battleground. However, flushed with his recent successes, Molotov would not be deterred, and on June 26, 1940, he issued an ultimatum to the Romanian government in Bucharest, demanding the evacuation of all civil and military representatives from Bessarabia and requesting a reply within twenty-four hours. Bessarabia, it read, had been taken by Romania while the Soviet Union was weak and was now to be returned. In addition, by way of “compensation for the tremendous loss” that the Soviet Union had suffered, the neighboring region of Northern Bukovina was to be transferred to Soviet control as well.

Like its unfortunate Baltic counterparts, the Romanian government toyed with the idea of resistance—the firebrand former prime minister Nicolae Iorga exclaimed, “Curse us all if we don’t fight!”—but cooler heads within the cabinet prevailed, particularly when urged to comply by their German allies. On the morning of June 28, they agreed to submit to Soviet demands: “In order to avoid the serious consequences which might follow the use of force and the opening of hostilities in this part of Europe, the Romanian government finds itself obliged to accept the evacuation.” The Romanians’ withdrawal from the region began that same day, and within two days the Red Army had taken their place.

The Soviet arrival often came as a shock to the inhabitants. At Cernăuți (Czernowitz) on the morning of June 28, an eyewitness recalled, “you had the feeling that hell was upon the earth.” Another described the reaction: “Churches rang their bells, as if tolling a death-knell. People were running. Some knelt down to pray. Many were in a state of shock. A low wail was resounding down the streets.” He went on to describe the desperate civilian evacuation: “The atmosphere of desolation was intensifying hour by hour. Hundreds upon hundreds of people were heading for the railway station carrying what they had collected in just a few hours. All goods, vans and cattle waggons were lined up in a hurry. People were asked to pack in so that the space should hold as many as possible.”

As the last train left Cernăuți at 2 p.m. that afternoon, the first Soviet spearheads were already entering the city. Communists, naturally, were much more positive. Jacob Pesate had journeyed from Budapest to Cernăuți the day before the Red Army’s arrival—just as many Bessarabians were fleeing in the opposite direction—as he wanted to greet the soldiers personally “with flowers.” Meanwhile, Red Army marshal Timoshenko took the time to pay a propaganda visit to his native village of Furmanivka in southern Bessarabia, where he was supposedly greeted as a returning hero.

Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were swiftly incorporated. In early August 1940, the two provinces were merged with neighboring Soviet districts to make the new Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, adding 3.5 million citizens and 50,000 square kilometers of territory to the Soviet Union. In total, as Molotov would gleefully inform the seventh session of the Supreme Soviet, the annexations of that summer had brought an additional 10 million souls under Moscow’s control, in addition to the 13 million added with the expansion into eastern Poland the year before. Although the two former Romanian provinces were erased from the map, they would not disappear from popular memory. As diplomat Alexander Cretzianu recalled, their loss and the brutal circumstances of their annexation caused a “deep-seated resentment” in Romania and a “desire for revenge.”