Betrayal: The Hitler-Stalin Pact Of 1939
Fifty years after its signing, the German-Soviet nonaggression pact is highly relevant to contemporary developments, due to its additional secret protocol that allowed the Soviet Union to take control of the Baltic states. Leonhard, an active German communist until he escaped to the West in 1949, focuses on the signing of the agreement in 1939 and the shock waves it sent through the world communist movement.
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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.
German reunification ranks high on George Bush's impressive list of foreign policy achievements. Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice's engaging account reveals how American leadership won the day.
The two world wars are the mountain ranges that dominate the historical landscape of the twentieth century. We still live in their shadows, in America as well as in Europe. Only with these wars did European and American history begin to coincide. The revolutions of 1820, 1830, 1848 and the wars leading to the unification of Italy and Germany marked the nineteenth century in European history, while the major events in American history were the westward movement, the Civil War and mass immigration. These events had certain transatlantic connections, yet not decisive ones. But in the twentieth century the two world wars have been the main events in the history of Europe and America as well.

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