World War II Day by Day

Munich, Germany • June 17, 1940

On this date in 1940 Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, drawing on pro­vi­sions of the sec­ret pro­to­col in the August 1939 Molotov-Rib­ben­trop Non­aggression Pact with his Nazi ally, ordered an attack on the Baltic state of Lat­via. (The 1939 pro­to­col had already returned divi­dends to the 2 con­spira­tor nations, allowing them to divide Poland between them­selves within a month of the Soviet and German foreign minis­ters signing the pact named after them.) The next day, June 18, 1940, an offi­cial repre­sen­ta­tive of Stalin’s arrived in the Lat­vian capi­tal, Riga, to assume the reins of power. The incor­por­a­tion of Latvia and the other 2 Baltic nations, Lithu­a­nia and Estonia, into the constel­la­tion of Soviet socialist repub­lics was com­pleted in early August 1940, made all the easier after each of the Baltics had been coerced into signing mutual assis­tance treaties the pre­vious Septem­ber and Octo­ber that allowed the stationing of large Red Army garrisons in their countries.

On the other side of the continent, Adolf Hitler, Stalin’s co-con­spi­rator, ordered the sus­pen­sion of hos­tili­ties in France on this date, June 17, 1940, and the new French pre­mier, Marshal Philippe Pétain, took to the nation’s air­waves, informing his coun­try­men that nego­ti­a­tions for an armis­tice were in pro­gress. On June 18, William Shirer, the Berlin corre­spon­dent for the Amer­i­can CBS radio net­work, stood in Paris’ famed Place de la Con­corde listening to the announce­ment of France’s surren­der over loud­speakers. Across from the Place de la Con­corde on the oppo­site bank of the Seine the French Chamber of Deputies flew a giant swastika flag in place of the Tricolore.

The news of France’s surrender was met with enthu­si­asm in the ranks of the Royal Italian Army (Regio Esercito) and in Italy, which had declared war on France and Great Britain just the week before. The hos­til­ities were over; it was time to grab the “spoils” was how Italian strong­man Benito Mus­so­lini saw it. (An Ital­ian skir­mish with French defense forces on June 21 was designed to drive the point home.) Ever the oppor­tun­ist, Il Duce (Italian, “the leader”), on board a train to Munich to confer with Axis part­ner Hitler, gene­rated a shopping list of mate­riel and terri­tories he wanted for his country under the terms of the gen­er­al armi­stice; for example, ships, aircraft, the island of Corsica, Tunisia in North Africa, etc.

On June 18 Mussolini and Hitler drew lines on a large mili­tary map of France that iden­ti­fied their future zones of occu­pa­tion. They also agreed to sepa­rate armis­tice com­mis­sions: Hitler did not want his junior partner’s pre­sence near the north­ern French city of Com­piègne to intrude on the spec­tac­ular pro­gram he had choreo­graphed for the French sur­render—the armis­tice was to be signed in the same rail­way car in which the World War I Allied supreme com­mander, French Marshal Ferdi­nand Foch, had dic­tated peace terms to repre­sen­ta­tives of Kaiser Wil­helm II in 1918. Hitler and Germany had waited 22 years for this trium­phant moment. To show­case France’s humili­ation to visi­tors and resi­dents of the Nazi capi­tal, Hitler exhibited the Com­piègne rail­way car at the foot of the steps to Berlin’s famous Altes Museum on Museum Island (Museuminsel).

Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact with Secret Protocol, Moscow, August 23–24, 1939

Left: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signs the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non­aggres­sion Pact (aka German-Soviet Non­aggres­sion Pact) in Moscow’s Kremlin in the wee hours of August 24, 1939. Imme­diately behind him is German Foreign Minis­ter Joachim von Ribben­trop and, to the German’s left, is Soviet head of state Joseph Stalin. Largely seen as Stalin’s brain­child, the pact marked the first time the Soviet dicta­tor had been per­son­ally involved in for­mu­lating and nego­ti­ating foreign policy. As ten­sions between the 2 signa­tory nations boiled over in the first half of 1941—in April there were over 80 recorded German vio­la­tions of Soviet air­space and reportedly as many as 122 German divi­sions just over the Soviets’ western border at the end of May—Stalin found it diffi­cult to dis­avow the agree­ment until Hitler’s June 22 betrayal, Operation Barbarossa, forced his hands.

Right: Stalin congratulates von Ribbentrop with a warm handshake following the signing ceremony. In 1936 Hitler named von Ribben­trop ambas­sador to Great Britain, whom his hosts soon nick­named “Herr von Bricken­drop” due to his clumsy diplo­macy at the Court of St. James. Nazi Germany’s arch-priest of National Socialism, Alfred Rosen­berg, confided in his diary that Ribben­trop was a “joke of world history” for mis­handling affairs in London, “put[ting] every­body’s nose out of joint.” Two years later, in Febru­ary 1938, Hitler elevated Ribben­trop to head the German foreign minis­try on Wilhelm­strasse, where Ribben­trop became just as despised by Berlin’s diplo­matic com­munity as he was by England’s for his arro­gance and igno­rance. Even Hitler’s inti­mates looked askance at their foreign minister. Luftwaffe chief Her­mann Goering alleged Ribben­trop had only 1 genuine friend, and that was Hitler. “Is von Ribben­trop a clown or an idiot?” he wondered aloud. Never­the­less, Hitler employed Ribben­trop for the length of the war, per­haps most noto­ri­ously at the start when the foreign minister con­cluded the German-Soviet Non­aggression Pact days before Hitler’s Wehr­macht (armed forces) stormed over Poland’s borders to launch the most lethal con­flict of the twen­tieth century. Rosen­berg experi­enced a fore­boding sense for what had tran­spired in Moscow: “I have the feeling that this Moscow pact will eventually have dire consequences for National Socialism.”

Below: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact con­tained a secret codicil (Geheimes Zusatz­pro­tokoll) that was revealed only after Germany’s defeat in 1945. Under its terms Poland, Lithu­a­nia, Lat­via, Esto­nia, and Fin­land were to be divided into Ger­man and Soviet “spheres of influ­ence.” Fin­land, Esto­nia, and Lat­via were assigned to the Soviet sphere, as was the Roman­ian pro­vince of Bessa­rabia. Poland was to be parti­tioned after Hitler’s inva­sion of that coun­try, which came on Septem­ber 1, 1939. Thus, the western half of Poland was occu­pied by Germany and the east­ern half of Poland came under Soviet occu­pa­tion, parti­tioned as war booty between Byelo­rus­sian Soviet Socialist Republic (today’s inde­pen­dent Belarus) and Ukrai­nian Soviet Socialist Republic (today’s inde­pen­dent Ukraine). A second secret pro­to­col, dated Septem­ber 28, 1939, assigned the major­ity of Lithuania, which bordered on Germany’s East Prussia, to the Soviet Union.

Molotov-Ribbentrop: The Pact That Changed Europe’s Borders