Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

The Treaty of Non-aggression between Nazi Germany and the USSR was signed in late August 1939, a week before the start of World War II. It was signed in Moscow by Germany’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, hence coming to be known in history as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The treaty came as a surprise to many observers, since relations between the two countries had been gradually deteriorating from the moment Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.

It is argued that by the middle of 1939 Hitler already had plans for of the invasion of Russia, and the main purpose of the treaty was to sooth the suspicions of the head of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, by assuring him that no hostile activities would come from the German side. This tactical maneuver was partly successful, as Germany’s invasion of Russia in June 1941 was largely unexpected. Perhaps the treaty’s main significance comes from the secret protocol, which was signed by the two parties separately and was not revealed to the public until 1948. The secret addendum stipulated the mutually recognized spheres of interest of both countries in Eastern Europe, forestalling the partition of Poland in 1939 and the annexation of the Baltic states, parts of Finland, and Romania by the Soviet Union in 1940.

The fact of the secret addendum to the treaty was widely used by the separatist movement in the Baltic states in the late 1980s to justify their claims to independence. At the end of 1989 the government of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, formally denounced the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.