On the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II, we review the final events leading to its outbreak in 1939.
In the Soviet Union, this document was always pointedly referred to as the “Non-Aggression Treaty,” without the odious names of the Nazi and Stalinist diplomats who concluded it. (Interestingly, in Russian, when the names are used in referring to the treaty, Ribbentrop’s comes first.) The emphasis has always been on how crucial this treaty was to the country’s security (and on Hitler’s treachery in violating it two years later).
Until 1989, not a word was said about the secret protocol in which Stalin and Hitler essentially divided up their “spheres of interest” in Europe. Even now, thirty years after Gorbachev acknowledged the existence of those provisions, many Russians still have their doubts. In textbooks, the events of 1939-40 are intentionally covered separately from the “Great Patriotic War.” In the minds of most Russians, “the War” began only in 1941 – nothing much was going on before then.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact having untied Hitler’s hands, Germany could avoid fighting on two fronts, as it had during the First World War. Although England and France, which soon declared war on Germany, did not begin military operations right away, German troops in the West had to be ready for anything, while in the East, their new ally posed no threat.
On this same day, the Soviet Union passed a law “On Universal Military Conscription” that, awful as it may sound, looked progressive at the time. Previously, only people of proletarian or peasant pedigree had the privileged right of serving in the army. Any male answering “no” to the question of whether or not he had ever served in the military on an application or other form instantly had a black mark against him. Now, everyone was supposed to serve. That this was Stalin’s first step in preparing for war became clear only later.
As provided for by the agreement with Germany, Soviet forces crossed Poland’s eastern border. This date has no historical significance in the Russian consciousness; it has never been treated as a day of remembrance or reflection, but this was when Stalin clearly showed that he was acting in concert with Hitler.
Andrzej Wajda’s monumental film Katyn begins with a scene where refugees crossing a narrow bridge as they flee the Nazis run up against people fleeing the Red Army. The image created of people caught between two superpowers is visually striking and extremely powerful.
There were few forces to resist the Soviet invasion, since the Polish Army was busy fighting the Germans and by then the heroic resistance put up by the Poles had been decimated. There was simply nobody left to fight. Tens of thousands of Polish soldiers and officers were taken prisoner. Many of them perished in Katyn Forest and in various camps. Some survivors were later able to leave the Soviet Union as part of Anders’ Army, but only in 1942, by which time the Soviet Army was at war with the Germans.
Soviet and German forces met up outside Brest-Litovsk. Little could anyone have suspected, two years later Brest Fortress would become a symbol of heroic Soviet resistance during Operation Barbarossa. Today, however, we know that Soviet propaganda distorted the truth about this battle. It turns out that far from all of the fortress’s defenders died, and it is not quite clear just when some of them were taken prisoner. There are almost no Soviet documents to shed light on what exactly transpired at Brest Fortress in 1941, so our understanding of its takeover by the Germans is based primarily on the accounts of the Soviet defenders themselves, some of which historians suspect are inaccurate.
In Brest, Soviet Brigade Commander Krivoshein and German General Heinz Guderian jointly presided over a parade of German and Soviet troops. Did the Jewish commander take the opportunity to discuss the persecution of German Jews and the arrest of Red Army commanders? Probably not.
The parade has receded into oblivion as part of the general tendency to gloss over the compact between Stalin and Hitler. Some contemporary historians, most notably Russia’s Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky, have claimed that no such parade ever took place. Medinsky, who has a habit of making baseless claims, went one step further and compared photographs of the parade... to photos of American astronauts on the moon – apparently the moon landing also never took place!
Also known as the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty, this agreement is even more disgraceful than the original Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that it amended. Countries can sign non-aggression treaties with enemies, but the name of this “Friendship Treaty” speaks for itself. The Soviet Union was entering into this friendship at the very time when other countries were declaring war on Hitler. This new protocol adjusted both parties’ new “spheres of interest,” giving the Soviet Union eastern Poland and Lithuania.
Soviet newspapers touted the “reunification” of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus with their eastern (Soviet-controlled) counterparts, Wagner was performed at the Bolshoi, and defenses along the Soviet Union’s former western border began to be dismantled, since the border had now moved farther west. For some reason, the old fortifications were dismantled much more quickly than new ones were built.
On this day, the Soviet authorities made the “noble gesture” of giving Vilnius, which was taken by Poland in 1920, back to the independent Republic of Lithuania. This was no great sacrifice for Stalin, since he was already making preparations to take over Lithuania, something he would achieve in less than a year.
The Supreme Soviet of the USSR convened a special session at which members held a moment of silence to honor the memories of those who “died in Poland liberating the peoples of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus from the enslavement of capitalism.” Hastily elected members of the People’s Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus rushed to communicate their populations’ universal desire to become part of the Soviet Union.
People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov delivered a speech at the session congratulating his audience with the disappearance of Poland (“that grotesque spawn of the Treaty of Versailles”) from the map of Europe. The Supreme Soviet unanimously approved the government’s foreign policy.
Now it was time for Finland and the Baltics to brace themselves.
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