The bad deal that led right to the start of World War II
Some 80 years ago, on Aug. 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, formally known as the “Treaty of nonaggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
The world was shocked — and terrified — by the agreement. Western democracies of the 1930s had counted on the huge resources of Communist Russia, and its hostility to the Nazis, to serve as a brake on Adolf Hitler’s Western ambitions. Great Britain and the other Western European democracies had assumed the Nazis wouldn’t invade them as long as a hostile Soviet Union threatened the German rear.
The incompatibility between communism and Nazism was considered existential — and permanent. That mutual hatred explained why dictators Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin despised and feared each other.
Yet, such illusions vanished with signing of the pact. Just seven days later, Germany invaded Poland. World War II began.
After quickly absorbing most of Eastern Europe by either coercion or alliance, Hitler believed he now had a safe rear. So he turned west in spring 1940 to overrun Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and the Netherlands. Hitler failed only to conquer Great Britain.
During all these Nazi conquests, a compliant Stalin shipped huge supplies of food and fuel for the German war effort against the West. Stalin cynically had hoped Germany and the Western democracies would wear themselves out in a wasting war as happened during World War I.
Communism then easily would spread to the Atlantic amid the ruins of European capitalism. Unlike Czarist Russia in 1914, this time around the Soviets wanted to stay out of a German war. Instead, Stalin rearmed during the nonaggression pact with Hitler.
Stalin had no idea he’d created a Nazi monster that would quickly devour all of Continental Europe — and turn to its rear to eye a nowisolated Soviet Union less than two years after the signing of the pact.
At the time of deal, imperial Japan was fighting the Soviet Union on the Manchurian-Mongolian border. The Japanese were de facto allies of Nazi Germany. But now, the surprise agreement stunned the Japanese, who saw it as a German betrayal. It left them alone against the superior forces of Russia’s eastern armies.
Japan quickly withdrew from its losing Russian war. In time it signed its own nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, just months before Hitler’s massive invasion of Russia.
Japan never joined Hitler’s surprise invasion of Russia. Instead, the Japanese turned their attention to the Pacific and especially the vulnerable British and American bases at Singapore, Burma, the Philippines — and Pearl Harbor.
In sum, the 1939 nonaggression pact ensured the German attack against Great Britain and Western Europe. It also convinced Hitler that Russia was vulnerable and could be overrun in weeks.
The deal also ended all Japanese ideas of fighting the Soviet Union and it instead turned toward the vulnerable British and American eastern forces.
We sometimes forget that the balance of power and military deterrence — not good intentions and international peace organizations — alone keep the peace. When the pact destroyed fragile alliances and encouraged German adventurism, war was certain.
The final ironies? The Soviet double-cross of the Western democracies eventually ended up almost destroying Russia, which bore the brunt of an empowered Germany.
The redirection of Japanese war strategy to target America finally brought the United States into World War II, which ensured the destruction of Japan and Germany.
Add this all up, and in some sense World War II really started on Aug. 23, 1939, 80 years ago this summer.