Fact Wizard
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Join date : 2021-09-10
 |  Subject: The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 and the aftermath Tue 16 Nov 2021, 21:32 | |
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This agreement mainly referred to as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed on August 23 1939 in Moscow, it was negotiated by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. It paved the way for the joint invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, it allowed both the parties to carve up Poland and establish their evil regimes in Eastern Europe, they pledged not to attack each other for 10 years. This German-Soviet Pact was in two parts, one public and one secret. The public part was the non-aggression pact, with the further provision, that should one of the two signatories be attacked by a third country, the other signatory would not provide assistance of any kind to the third country, the non-aggression agreement could be renewed automatically after ten years, for a further five years, if neither participant moved to end it .The secret protocol of the pact, assigned Lithuania and the city of Vilnius [in Poland at the time] to Soviet control, together with Estonia, Latvia, and Bessarabia. On September 29 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, partitioned Poland between them. Germany occupied western and most of central Poland, and proceeded to annex the western provinces, they becoming part of the Third Reich. The Soviets annexed the rest of Poland. The agreement also provided for the Soviet Union to annex other territories in its sphere of influence. On November 30 1939, the Soviets attacked Finland. After a four month war , they annexed Finnish territory along the Soviet border, particularly the area near Leningrad [now St Petersburg]. In the summer of 1940, the Soviets occupied and incorporated Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, they als seized the Romanian provinces of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia. Hitler never intended to honour the Pact with the Soviet Union, it was a ploy, to avoid a two-front war, he always intended to invade the Soviet Union, and establish his cherished desire for living space [Lebensraum]. On December 18 1940, Hitler signed Directive 21 [code-named Operation Barbarossa], the first operational order for the invasion of the Soviet Union. On June 22 1941, German forces invaded the Soviet Union, less than two years after signing the German-Soviet Pact. |
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