World War II Day by Day

Moscow, Soviet Union • August 3, 1940

Early on the morning of August 24, 1939, Soviet People’s Com­mis­sar on Foreign Affairs, Vyache­slav Molotov, and his German counter­part, Joachim von Ribben­trop, affixed their signa­tures to the German-Soviet Non­aggres­sion Pact, also known as the Molotov-Ribben­trop Pact. As German dicta­tor Adolf Hitler viewed it, the pact was a “stra­tegic neces­sity” that secured Nazi Germany’s eastern frontier against any future hostile atten­tions the Soviet Union might direct west­ward; it also provided the green light Hitler needed to launch his war of aggression against neighboring Poland.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact con­tained a secret proto­col “in the event of a terri­torial and polit­i­cal rearrange­ment” of the states sand­wiched between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Under its terms Poland; the three Baltic states of Lithu­a­nia, Lat­via, and Esto­nia; and Fin­land were to be divided into Soviet and German “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. A second secret pro­to­col, dated Septem­ber 28, 1939, assigned the major­ity of Lithu­a­nia, which bordered on Germany’s East Prussia, to the Soviet Union.

Poland’s military defeat and occupation in Septem­ber 1939 made it possi­ble for the Soviet Union to impose “mutual assis­tance treaties” on Estonia (Septem­ber 28, 1939), Latvia (Octo­ber 5, 1939) and Lithu­ania (Octo­ber 10, 1939). Soviet armed forces estab­lished army, air force, and naval bases (closed-off mili­tary zones) in each Baltic state—troop numbers always exceeding treaty limits—in effect making them Soviet protectorates.

The next summer a wave of Soviet diplo­matic and mili­tary provo­ca­tions unsettled the demo­cratic govern­ments in all three states; their govern­ments were replaced by Moscow-friendly ones after parlia­mentary elec­tions in which only Soviet-approved candi­dates were per­mitted to run. Voter turn­out and elec­toral results were pre­dict­able and even ludi­crous: com­pul­sory turn­out varied from a low of 92.8 per­cent in Estonia to a high of 99.2 per­cent in Lith­u­a­nia. Indeed, in one Lith­u­a­nian pre­cinct voter turn­out reached 122 per­cent. After the mari­o­nettes of the new “people’s parlia­ments” were installed, they peti­tioned the Supreme Soviet in Moscow to allow their sover­eign states to become Soviet republics. Lith­u­a­nia became a Soviet Socialist Republic on this date, August 3, 1940, Latvia on August 5, 1940, and Estonia the next day, August 6.

German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact with Secret Protocol, Moscow, August 23–24, 1939

Left: Soviet Premier and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986) signs the German-Soviet Non­aggre­ssion Pact, dated August 23, 1939, in Moscow’s Kremlin in the wee hours of August 24. Imme­diately behind him is German Foreign Minis­ter Joachim von Ribben­trop (1893–1946) and, to the German’s left, is Soviet General Secre­tary Joseph Stalin (1878–1953). Although the treaty is formally known by the names of its two signa­tories, it was largely Stalin’s brain­child and marked the first time the Soviet dicta­tor had been per­son­ally involved in formulating and negotiating foreign policy.

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 where, in the words of Alfred Rosen­berg, Nazi Germany’s arch-priest of National Socialism, he “put 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. 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’s Kremlin: “I have the feeling that this Moscow pact will eventually have dire consequences for National Socialism.” Eventually it did.

Below: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact had an insep­a­rable com­po­nent, a secret proto­col (Geheimes Zusatz­pro­tokoll) that sur­faced in the archives of West Germany’s Foreign Office several years after Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945. His­to­rians some­times refer to the non­aggres­sion pact as a “pact of aggres­sion,” which Germany debuted on Septem­ber 1, 1939, and the Soviet Union 17 days later. It destroyed the existing system of bilat­eral and multi­lateral non­aggres­sion treaties from the 1920s and ’30s that the smaller Euro­pean states had with their more power­ful neighbors. Latvia, for instance, had a mutual non­aggres­sion pact with Moscow dating to February 1932 and one with Germany signed in Berlin of June 7, 1939. Estonia’s non­aggres­sion pact with Germany was signed in Berlin on the same day as Latvia’s.

Why Germany and the Soviet Union Signed the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact: Sets Stage for World War II in Europe