had been no hint in the central daily newspapers. Apart from Molotov, the foreign-policy group in the Politburo which included Malenkov, Beria and Mikoyan was left in the dark about the matter.5 If ever there was proof that Stalin was willing to take immense risks, the Nazi–Soviet agreement provided it. Having reached the decision, moreover, he did not deign to explain his calculations to others. In truth there were at the time only two basic options for Soviet foreign policy: an agreement with Hitler or an agreement with France and the United Kingdom. Peace with Hitler would give Stalin a period of respite to go on building up Soviet military strength. By contrast it was not clear that the French and British were seriously interested in a deal. The fact that the British had sent only a middle-ranking Foreign Office official to conduct talks in Moscow in summer 1939 was deeply discouraging to the Kremlin.
Stalin, fearing dangerous isolation, believed a deal with Germany was the only option on the table. He had to surmount ideological inhibition: the Nazis were the greatest enemy of world communism. Yet Stalin did not let doctrine impede him. Marxism–Leninism anyway made no fundamental distinction between types of capitalist states. For Stalin, all such states — whether liberal-democratic or fascist — were fundamentally deplorable. When he moved towards the policy of the popular front in 1934, he was merely making the practical calculation that the Third Reich posed an immediate threat to the USSR in Europe. This had not ruled out the ultimate possibility of a treaty with Hitler any more than Lenin had excluded the possibility of temporary armed collusion with German proto-Nazis in mid-1920.6 Furthermore, Lenin too had wanted the Soviet state to avoid entanglement in a world war among capitalist states. The basis of the USSR’s policy should be for the great powers to fight any future world war among themselves and for the Red Army to exploit whatever situation might result. If it took a non-aggression treaty to keep Hitler’s hands off the USSR and to induce Germany to move its armed forces against France and the United Kingdom, Stalin was willing to take the step.
He did not believe that a mere treaty would secure peace for the Soviet Union. He also knew that Hitler was a formidable potential enemy. Molotov was to recall:7
It would be wrong to say that he underestimated him. He saw that Hitler had somehow managed to take only a short time to organise the German people. There had been a large communist party and yet it had disappeared — it was wiped out! And Hitler took the people with him and the Germans fought during the war in such a way that this was palpable. So Stalin with his dispassionate approach to the consideration of grand strategy took all this very seriously.
This has the ring of truth. In public it was necessary for a Marxist to stress that Nazism was supported mainly by the middle class. Yet Stalin knew that he was up against a Fuhrer whose people were behind him. He also had no reason to believe that Hitler would quickly crush the armies of the French after defeating Poland. Like most observers, Soviet leaders assumed that the Third Reich would be enmired in difficulties in the West and that this would enable the USSR to go on preparing for war rather than having to fight one against the Wehrmacht.
There were two sections to the Treaty of Non-Aggression: one was public, the other secret. The public section stipulated that the USSR and the German Reich agreed not to make war on each other either individually or in concert with other powers. Disputes between them were to be settled by negotiations or, if this proved ineffective, by an arbitration commission. The treaty entailed that, if either party became engaged in war with another power, no support should be forthcoming to that other power. The treaty was to remain valid for ten years with provision to extend it for five years. The USSR and Germany were to increase their trade on a mutually advantageous basis. Yet the treaty’s secret section was still more significant. Its clauses demarcated ‘spheres of interest’ for the Soviet and German regimes in eastern Europe. Germany was recognised as having freedom of action from its existing eastern frontier across to Lithuania. Influence in Poland was to be divided between the USSR and the Third Reich. Without expressly saying so, Hitler and Stalin intended to occupy their ‘spheres’ and reduce them to direct political subservience.
Hitler quickly realised his geopolitical objective. On 1 September 1939 a Blitzkrieg was started against Poland. Within days the Polish military resistance had been crushed. Warsaw fell on 27 September. The British and French governments, somewhat to Hitler’s surprise, delivered an ultimatum to Berlin on the first day of the war. Hitler ignored it. To German dismay, Stalin at first refused to sanction the movement of the Red Army into the territory agreed as falling within the Soviet sphere of interest. The reason was that the USSR and Japan remained at war in the Far East, and the military risk of deploying forces in eastern Poland was too great until the two countries agreed to make peace on 15 September. The Red Army moved into Polish territory two days later. A second agreement — the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Demarcation — was agreed on 28 September. Stalin demanded not only Estonia and Latvia but now also Lithuania as part of the Soviet sphere. He aimed both to recover the land of the Russian Empire and to secure a compact area of defence for the USSR. Hitler, who already was thinking about attacking France, quickly acceded.
Stalin’s established procedures for dealing with ‘enemies of the people’ came into effect. Political, economic and cultural leaders were rounded up. Army officers too were arrested. Some were shot, others were sent to labour camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan. The NKVD, learning lessons from the Great Terror, had prepared itself carefully with lists of people to be seized. Stalin wanted to be sure that police action hit exactly those groups which he had identified as hostile to Soviet interests. He and Beria did not confine themselves to persecuting individuals. Whole families were arrested and deported. Poland was the first country to suffer.8 Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were next on the agenda as Stalin and Molotov ordered their governments to sign pacts of mutual assistance. A similar command was conveyed to Finland. The consolidation of the entire region under Soviet hegemony was pursued. The problem was that Finland, which was diplomatically close to Germany, was unwilling to lie down. Negotiations ceased. Stalin set up a government-in-waiting with Moscow-based Finnish communists and, on 30 November, the Red Army attacked confident that it would soon reach Helsinki.
The Finns, however, held steadfast. The Reds, racked by the effects of the Great Terror, fought hard but incompetently. The Winter War turned into a bloody stalemate in the northern snows. The Finnish government was aware that the total defeat of the Red Army was beyond it. Discussions were resumed and a peace treaty was signed in March 1940. The realistic Finns gave up much territory and several military bases. The Soviet frontier with Finland was moved hundreds of miles to the north of Leningrad. Stalin had achieved his ends but at a terrible price. One hundred and twenty-seven thousand Red Army soldiers perished.9 More importantly for Stalin (who cared nothing for the number of deaths), the military might of the USSR had been exposed as weaker than the world had thought. If the Soviet armed forces could not crush Finland, what would they be able to do against the Third Reich if ever war broke out with Hitler?
The shock was general in the Kremlin. With so large a force, the Red Army had been expected to thrust back the Finns without difficulty and enable the establishment of a Finnish Soviet Republic which would apply for incorporation in the USSR. Stalin was beside himself with fury. He rebuked Voroshilov. Drink and old friendship loosened Voroshilov’s tongue. Despite the Great Terror, he kept a sense of personal honour and was unwilling to accept criticism from the Leader who had supervised every large decision about security and defence in recent years. Voroshilov had had enough: he picked up a plate of suckling pig and crashed it down on the table.10 This sort of outburst would have condemned most men to the Gulag. (They would usually have gone to the Gulag long before they got round to shouting at the Leader.) The war, though, gave Stalin reason to take stock strategically and necessitated a reorganisation of the Red Army. Stalin dismissed the inadequate Voroshilov and appointed Semen Timoshenko, a professional commander, to lead the People’s Commissariat of Defence.
The urgency of the task was demonstrated in summer 1940 as the Wehrmacht raced through the Low Countries into France, forcing Paris’s capitulation and the emergency evacuation of British forces from the beaches of Dunkirk. The fall of the United Kingdom seemed imminent. Timoshenko, with Stalin’s consent, restored a sense of pride to the Soviet officer corps. Political education was reduced as a proportion of required military training. Plans were put in hand for a new line of defence works to be constructed along the boundaries separating the German and Soviet spheres of interest. In order to realise this aim it appeared necessary to bring Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania under the USSR’s control. There was to be no repetition of the Finnish debacle. A brief charade was played out. Incidents of ‘provocation’ were arranged for the Kremlin to have a pretext to intervene. Baltic politicians had to be intimidated. Ministers were summoned from the capitals of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Stalin and Molotov were bullies with decades of experience. The visitors to Moscow were given no choice but to accept annexation. Molotov snarled to the Latvian Foreign Minister: ‘You’re not going to return home until you give your
