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 two 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 two Baltic states, Lithu­a­nia and Esto­nia, into the Soviet Union was com­pleted in early August 1940.

On the other side of the European 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 fellow coun­try­men that nego­ti­a­tions for an armis­tice were in pro­gress. The news 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”), 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.

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

Left: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signs the German-Soviet Non­aggression Pact. Imme­diately behind him is Ger­man Foreign Minis­ter Joachim von Ribben­trop and, to the Ger­man’s left, is Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The Kremlin, Moscow, August 24, 1939.

Right: Stalin congratulates Ribbentrop with a warm handshake following the signing ceremony.

Below: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Non­aggression Pact con­tained a secret pro­to­col (Geheimes Zusatz­pro­tokoll) that was revealed only after Ger­many’s defeat in 1945. Under its terms Roma­nia, 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. 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 after the war between Byelo­rus­sian Soviet Socialist Republic (today’s inde­pen­dent Belarus) and Ukrai­nian Soviet Socialist Republic (today’s inde­pen­dent Ukraine). A second se­cret pro­to­col 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