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The Nazi-Soviet Pacts: A Half-Century Later

Gerhard L. Weinberg
Fall 1989
Summary: 

Early on August 22, 1939, the world was startled to learn from an announcement in the Soviet press that German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop would arrive in Moscow on the following day to sign a nonaggression pact. Equipped with instructions from Adolf Hitler authorizing him to sign both a treaty and a secret protocol that would enter into force as soon as signed by the two countries (rather than when ratified later), Ribbentrop left for Moscow that evening. At the airport, the German delegation was met by deputy commissar for foreign affairs, Vladimir P. Potemkin, who earlier that year had declined an invitation to meet with British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax.

Gerhard L. Weinberg is William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of many books, including Germany and the Soviet Union, 1939-1941, The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany (in two volumes, Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933-1936 and Starting World War II, 1937-1939) and World in Balance: Behind the Scenes of World War II.

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Early on August 22, 1939, the world was startled to learn from an announcement in the Soviet press that German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop would arrive in Moscow on the following day to sign a nonaggression pact. Equipped with instructions from Adolf Hitler authorizing him to sign both a treaty and a secret protocol that would enter into force as soon as signed by the two countries (rather than when ratified later), Ribbentrop left for Moscow that evening. At the airport, the German delegation was met by deputy commissar for foreign affairs, Vladimir P. Potemkin, who earlier that year had declined an invitation to meet with British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax.

Stalin and Molotov, the commissar for foreign affairs, held several conversations in the Kremlin with Ribbentrop and the other German diplomats. During the night of August 23-24 an agreement was reached on all points; the pact and a secret protocol were signed; a celebration party followed in which the participants drank toasts to each other, to German-Soviet friendship and to the absent Hitler.

II

The nonaggression pact, which was published, provided that Germany and the Soviet Union would not attack the other or assist any third power at war with the other, thereby assuring each of the neutrality of the other party should either decide to attack a third country. They promised not to join groups of powers directed against the other and to settle by peaceful means all differences that might arise between them. The pact was to last for ten years and then an additional five years unless a notice of termination were given a year before its expiration.

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