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

20 “after Stalin’s death we will break the Soviet Union”: Quoted in Anthony P. Adamthwaite, The Making of the Second World War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1977), 220.

20 “by a whole lot of charming Russian gentlemen”: Pathé newsreel, August 21, 1939, available at http://www.britishpathe.com/video/moscow-aka-british-mission-to-the-soviet-union.

21 “I distrust her motives”: Cited in Frank McDonough, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2010), 174.

21 instruction to “go very slowly”: A. J. P. Taylor, English History: 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 447.

21 Never has an alliance been pursued less enthusiastically: Ibid., 448.

21 narrowly defeated at the gates of Warsaw: On this, see Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star, op. cit.

22 It was no great surprise, perhaps, that negotiations stalled: Text of negotiations reproduced in Adamthwaite, op. cit., 218–219.

22 “We were able to make a deal”: Quoted in Charles Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929–1969 (New York: Norton, 1973), 86.

22 “There exist no real conflicts of interests”: DGFP, Series D, Vol. VII, op. cit., No. 56, 64, Ribbentrop to Schulenburg, August 14, 1939.

22 Ribbentrop was selected in his stead: Ibid., No. 62, 68–69, Weizsäcker to Schulenburg, August 15, 1939.

22 he “understood things better”: Ribbentrop, op. cit., 224.

22 Molotov found it “very flattering personally”: DGFP, Series D, Vol. VII, op. cit., No. 88, 99, Schulenburg to Weizsäcker, August 16, 1939.

23 “near unanimity amongst the Western embassies in Moscow”: Herwarth, op. cit., 162.

23 draft treaties had already been drawn up: See, for instance, DGFP, Series D, Vol. VII, op. cit., Nos. 125, 132, 134, and 149, August 19 and 20, 1939.

23 Goebbels was unusually laconic in his diary: Fröhlich, op. cit., 71.

24 conspired to make Stalin’s mind up for him: Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945 (London: Pan, 1965), 66.

24 tie up the final details without delay: DGFP, Series D, Vol. VII, op. cit., No. 142, 157, Hitler to Stalin, August 20, 1939.

24 a “turn for the better” in Soviet-German relations: Ibid., No. 159, 168. Schulenburg to Moscow, August 21, 1939.

24 “stared into space for a moment”: Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (London: Macmillan, 1970), 234.

25 “If we agree to a hundred years”: V. N. Pavlov quoted in Laurence Rees, World War Two Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West (London: BBC Books, 2008), 10.

25 The initiative came from the Soviet side: Vladimir Karpov, Marshal Zhukov: Ego soratniki i protivniki v dni voĭny i mira (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stvo, 1992), 124.

25 “spheres of interest” in central and eastern Europe: Ibid., 124.

25 he asked that the meeting be adjourned: Ribbentrop, op. cit., 228.

25 “As we strolled up and down”: Nicolaus von Below, At Hitler’s Side: The Memoirs of Hitler’s Luftwaffe Adjutant, 1937–1945 (London: Greenhill Books, 2004), 28.

26 “Everybody was tense, they waited and waited”: Herbert Döhring, quoted in Rees, op. cit., 17.

26 testament to his eagerness to conclude the pact: Herwarth, op. cit., 165.

27 “If England has dominated the world”: Andor Hencke, Die deutsch-sowjetischen Beziehungen zwischen 1932 und 1941, unpublished protocol held at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, MA 1300/2, 11.

27 “The viewpoint of Germany”: Quoted in Nekrich, op. cit., 121.

27 Stalin himself was now considering joining the Anti-Comintern Pact: DGFP, Series D, Vol. VII, op. cit., No. 213, 227–228.

27 “Don’t you think,” he asked: Read and Fisher, op. cit., 252.

28 protocol was to be treated as “strictly secret”: DGFP, Series D, Vol. VII, op. cit., Nos. 228–229, pp. 245–247.

28 only Stalin and Molotov knew of its existence: Derek Watson, Molotov: A Biography (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 170.

28 “our treat,” as Molotov would later recall: Chuev, op. cit., 12.

28 the atmosphere became “warmly convivial”: Hencke, op. cit., 13.

28 “I know how much the German nation loves its Führer”: Ibid., 13.

29 “a prehistoric camera and an antediluvian tripod”: Hoffmann, op. cit., 109.

29 he had signed the pact while drunk: Hencke, op. cit., 13.

29 he “trusted the word of a German”: Herwarth, op. cit., 165.

31 “The whole course of world politics has suddenly changed”: Mihail Sebastian, Journal, 1935–1944 (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 2000), 230.

31 “the futility of it all is the thing that is frightful”: Terry Charman, Outbreak 1939: The World Goes to War (London: Virgin, 2009), 54, 55, 59.

32 “Poor weary world,” one diarist wrote: Diarist Vivienne Hall, quoted in Charman, op. cit., 56.

32 hailed his returning foreign minister as “a second Bismarck”: Quoted in Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop (London: Bantam Press, 1994), 250.

32 most impatient to learn as much as he could: Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend (Barnsley, UK: Frontline Books, 2011), 112–113; Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (London: HarperCollins, 1991), 685.

32 doctored by Hoffmann, with no cigarettes visible: Ibid., 113–114.

33 vital to leave “responsibility for the opening of hostilities”: Quoted in H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler’s War Directives, 1939–1945 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1964), 38.

33 “seeming very pleased with himself”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (London: André Deutsch, 1971), 111.

33 “Of course, it’s all a game”: Quoted in Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), 276.

33 Soviet Union would maintain “absolute neutrality”: Adam Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973 (New York: Praeger, 1968), 279.

34 “Close your hearts to pity”: Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945 (hereafter “DGFP”), Series D, Vol. VII (London: HMSO, 1956), No. 193, 205.

34 carry out over 700 mass executions: Richard Lukas, Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939–1944 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986), 3.

34 alleged Polish killing of ethnic Germans: Christopher Browning, T he Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, 1939–1942 (London: Arrow, 2005), 29.

34 “The first victims of the campaign”: Quoted in Lukas, op. cit., 3.

34 death of two German horses in a “friendly fire” incident: Jochen Böhler, Zbrodnie Wehrmachtu w Polsce (Kraków, PL: Znak, 2009), 106–116. Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg: Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939 (Frankfurt am Main, DE: Fischer, 2006), 106.

35 12,000 Polish citizens in September 1939 alone: Szymon Datner, 55 Dni Wehrmachtu w Polsce (Warsaw: Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1967), 114–117.

35 secure those areas promised to him by the pact: See, for instance, Ribbentrop telegram to Schulenburg, September 15, 1939, at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/ns072.asp.

35 brigades with a total of nearly 500,000 men: Steven Zaloga, Poland 1939 (Oxford, UK: Osprey, 2002), 80.

35 Soviet intervention could be timed accordingly: DGFP, Series D, Vol. VIII (London: HMSO, 1954), No. 63, 60–61.

35 the note itself had been drawn up jointly: Ibid., No. 80, 79–80.

35 “cross the border and take under their protection”: Text in Sprawa polska w czasie drugiej wojny światowej na arenie międzynarodowej. Zbiór dokumentów (Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Naukowe, 1965), 83–84. Translated by Sebastian Palfi.