On 23 August 1939, the representatives of the two totalitarian powers – Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of the Third Reich, and Vyacheslav Molotov, People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, signed a Soviet-German non-aggression pact in Moscow in the presence of Stalin, together with a secret additional protocol, the consequence of which was the Fourth Partition of Poland.
The two almost opposite ideologies of Nazism and Communism agreed to halt mutual animosity to fight their common enemy which was Poland. At that time the country had to choose between remaining in the future anti-Nazi Allied camp or collaborating with Hitler’s regime, which was proposed by the Germans on many occasions. Poland remained faithful to its commitments and principles, for which it was trampled by the totalitarian regimes.
The first of the 4 secret points to the official treaty said: “In the event of territorial and political transformations in the territories belonging to the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Lithuania’s northern border will at the same time constitute the border of the zones of interest of Germany and the USSR. Therefore, both sides recognise Lithuania’s interest in the Vilnius area”.
Another one was strictly connected to the fate of Poland as a whole: “In the event of territorial and political transformations on the territories belonging to the Polish State, the boundary of the zones of interest of Germany and the USSR will run approximately along the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula and San. The question of whether it will be in the mutual interest to maintain an independent Polish State and what the boundaries of this State will be can only be finally clarified in the course of further political developments. In any case, the two governments will settle this question by friendly agreement”.
The other two named Besarabia a sole zone of Soviet interests and agreed to keep all of the four clauses a strict secret between the two countries.
The result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact soon came to a result. On 1 September 1939, Poland was attacked by Nazi Germany from all sides. As the country’s military started to move East to prepare the defence – which could be more effective than the rest of the campaign as the German tanks did not have enough fuel and autumn mud stopped them more frequently – the Soviets who saw no reaction from the Western powers allied with Poland (France and Britain) began its attack on Poland’s eastern territories.
The result of that criminal act that broke the bilateral non-aggression agreements with Poland was 6 years of brutal global conflict that allowed the killing of millions of Jews in the Holocaust and the persecution and slaughter of millions from other nations across the world.
Up until today the fact that the Soviet Union was a close ally of Hitler’s Germany in the first days of the 2 World War remains unknown by many. Only by understanding the cooperation of Germany and Russia to suppress the nations of Central and Eastern Europe can let us understand the origins of the Russo-Ukrainian war that started in 2022. For years German diplomacy discredited Poland as a “Russophobic” country calling the idea of keeping distance to Russia a Polish “Rapallo complex”.
The Soviet-German Pact was later amended on 28 September 1939 to exchange territories as a new agreement on “borders and friendship”. The deal was signed as Polish troops continued to fight the dual aggression. Following Joseph Stalin’s proposal, the previous border, which was to run along the Vistula River, was moved eastwards to the line of the San-Bug-Narew-Pisa rivers. In return, the Soviets were given a free hand on the question of Lithuania, originally intended to remain in the German zone of influence.
The Nord Stream 2 project was nothing else than playing into the Russian idea of energy domination in the CEE region, known under the name of the Falin-Kvitsinsky Doctrine.
Source: dzieje.pl
Tomasz Modrzejewski
Photo: IPN
