Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Also called the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact and the Frontiers and Friendship Treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, executed by the Foreign Ministers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939. The Pact had both a public and a secret section.[1] It was de facto abrogated by the Operation Barbarossa Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.
Given that there had been a relatively recent Anti-Comintern Pact, this Pact needed explanation to the German and Soviet masses.
Soviet
Appropriately enough, the phrase "wise peace policy" of Stalin, used in 1935 by Georgi Dimitroff, General Secretary of the Comintern,[2] was expanded to include this agreement.
The Pact
Secret spheres of influence
Poland was split into spheres of influence with Russia by a "secret additional protocol," signed a week before the invasion of Poland.[3]
References
- ↑ Modern History Sourcebook: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1939, Fordham University
- ↑ Georgi Dimitroff (13 August 1935), Speech in Reply to the Discussion on Dimitroff's Report at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International, The United Front: The Struggle against Fascism and War, Proletarian Publishers
- ↑ Secret Additional Protocol, Avalon Project, Yale University, 23 August 1939