Long before the Spanish Civil War and Munich made him more convinced, Stalin expected war at some point. After Munich he was deeply suspicious that Britain and France were actually manipulating events to make a war between the Soviet Union and Germany the most likely conclusion, whilst the Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan made a two-front war for the Soviet Union a distinct possibility.
He told the Seventeenth Party Congress in January, 1934 that the next major war would aim to conquer and break-up the Soviet Union. Then in March, 1939 he told the Eighteenth Party Congress that the imperialist war was already underway, throwing the “aggressor” states – Germany, Italy and Japan – against Britain, France and America. And given the way the “non-aggressor” states had set out to appease the “aggressors” – Japan in Manchuria, Italy in Abyssinia and Germany repeatedly – he had become convinced that they must have it in mind that the Soviet Union will find itself fighting Japan in the East and Germany and Italy in the West leaving the old imperial powers, plus America, to pick up the pieces when they had fought themselves to a standstill. They would ‘arrive on the scene with new-found strength, ‘in the interests of peace’ of course, and to dictate conditions to the weakened belligerents. Cheap and easy!’[1]
With Hitler in power, the Soviet Union followed a twin approach to dealing with the potential new threat. They were prepared to work with Hitler and though the military agreement with the Soviet Union made during Weimar may have ended they had still ratified the 1931 extension of the Berlin Treaty of Friendship, and trade between the two countries continued even if there was less of it. But the Soviet Union also set about strengthening its armed forces and seeking alternative diplomatic avenues.
In a speech at the end of 1933, Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, i.e. its Foreign Minister, declared that the Soviet Union was willing to work ‘with those states which, like us, give proof of their sincere desire to maintain peace, and are ready to resist those who break the peace.’[2]
In September, 1934 the Soviet Union backed up this stance by joining the League of Nations. It also signed a mutual-assistance pact with France. However, the pact included no specific military agreements, and made no provision for collaboration between the two general staffs The planners and organisers of armies) nor for automatic activation (any act of aggression would have to have been declared by the League first for the pact to come into effect). Still, the Soviet Union had ended its isolation, partly imposed on it, partly self-imposed, and was at least open to a policy of collective security, with Germany seen as the common threat.
But Soviet relations with France and Britain were again strained when civil war broke out in Spain in 1936. Stalin had expected France to take a lead in supporting the Republican government but Britain wanted all countries to keep out of what was a domestic matter lest war spread. Stalin had expected Britain and France to form an anti-fascist alliance with the Soviet Union. That they were determined not to only fueled his suspicion. The Czech crisis was another opportunity for Britain and France to stand with the Soviet Union in an anti-fascist alliance. France and the Soviet Union had after all, promised to defend Czech independence, and the Soviet Union’s commitment depended on that of France (it also depended on Poland or Rumania agreeing to Soviet troops crossing their territory). All the evidence points to a clear intent on the part of the Soviet Union to honour its treaty with the Czechs, and it would have done so as part of a League initiative, but France didn’t honour its own treaty. Suspicion grew.
After Munich, Stalin addressed the Soviet Communist Party’s Eighteenth Party Congress in March, 1939, saying that they had not only rejected collective security but that their ‘policy of non-intervention means conniving at aggression, giving free rein to war…. encouraging the Germans to march east, promising easy pickings and prompting them ‘Just start war on the Bolsheviks and everything will be all right.’[3] He went on to accuse the British media of raising non-issues in an attempt to bring about war between the Soviet Union and Germany.
Clearly the Soviet Union were now deeply suspicious of Britain and France, yet still they tried to negotiate an anti-fascist pact with them, yet still the British and French seemed reluctant. Britain rejected the Soviet idea of a conference to prevent further German aggression. On April 16th, Litvinov made a formal proposal to the British ambassador in Moscow for a triple pact of mutual assurance between Britain, France and the Soviet Union (Poland could join if it wished) and a guarantee by them to support all central and eastern European nations which felt threatened by Germany; and it called for a military convention between the three countries to enforce the pact. But it was to be Litvinov’s last act for on May 3rd a minor item in the Soviet press announced that at his own request he had been replaced as Foreign Commissar by Vyacheslav Molotov. The significance of Litvinov’s abrupt dismissal was clear: his policy of collective security, be it through the League of Nations or in pacts with Britain and France, had failed. Molotov was close to Stalin and, significantly, unlike Litvinov, was not a Jew. It seemed Soviet policy was about to change away from collective security and an alliance with Britain and France and towards some accommodation with Germany. On May 8th the British government replied to Litvinov’s proposal for a military alliance. It wasn’t an outright rejection but neither was it supportive. Stalin must have felt justified in dismissing Litvinov.
As May turned into June, the situation was complex. The Soviet Union wanted to forge an anti-fascist alliance but Britain and France seemed reluctant to commit. They didn’t trust Germany but then a deal with the devil might be better than no deal at all. They were fast-reaching the conclusion that if their choice was between a war against Germany in which they would be required to do most of the fighting, or a war between Germany and France and Britain in which the Soviet Union would be neutral, then the second option was far more preferable. Let the Western Powers weaken each other, the Soviet Union would also be buying time which they could use to prepare for the war they ultimately expected, between themselves and Germany. And so the door was opened for a deal.
Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to attack each other, not to lend support should a third power attack one of them, and nor would either country join any group of powers that is aimed at the other (the Anti-Comintern Pact, Ribbentrop assured Stalin, was aimed at Britain). In the secret protocol, and it was this that was critical in persuading Stalin to side with the Germans, the respective spheres of influence where Poland was concerned would be defined by the rivers Narew, Vistula and San; where the rest of Europe was concerned, Finland, Latvia and Estonia would fall under the Soviet sphere of influence, Lithuania under the German sphere. The Soviet Union would also regain Bessarabia from Rumania. That was the price Hitler had to pay for separating the Soviet Union from Britain and France.
[1] Quoted in Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, p. 346
[2] Quoted in Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, p. 567