The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - ELTE BTK Történelem Szakos Portál

Molotov’s speech on August 31,1939 in which the minister explains the pact
by Moscow’s apprehensions concerning the real motives of France and of
Great Britain, Maurice Baumont wrote: „It is certain that the Western powers
had conducted their negotiatons with Moscow with an inexcusable weakness.”,
while adding: „it is no less certain that they could not offer the Soviets, as did
Germany, the occupation of the Baltic states, of Bessaraba and of half of
Poland.” 23 Other historians underline another aspect of the responsibility of
France and of Great Britain: „the main mistake the Western allies made was to
have believed that the Geman-Soviet ideological antagonism would always
preclude the two dictatorships from getting along, and that, for this reason,
they could take Stalin for a ride, a Stalin who was constantly depicted by Hitler
as the embodiement of absolute perversion.” 24
From the 1990s on, after the collapse of Communism, the responsibility of
Westerners was minimized in favour of an almost exclusively ideological
intepretation in which Stalin and the USSR are to blame. Thus François Furet
writes: „although it is obvious that the appeasement policy towards Hitler
which was conducted by the British Conservatives and the French leaders
following in their steps, did play a role in the diplomatic reversal of the USSR
towards Hitler in 1939, it is not quite right to make this the sole explanation of
this reversal” 25 . Thus, S. Courtois mainly relies on the Dimitrov papers and
notably on the report of his meeting with Stalin on September 7, 1939 to
establish „Stalin’s true intentions”. He concludes with the „absolute cynicsim”
of Stalin who „with the pact freed Hitler from any fear of a second front to the
East and made him decide to attack Poland.” In the text of the treaty of
September 28, 1939, he sees „the extreme cyncism of two totalitarian powers
which did not respect any international rules.” Referring to the achievement by
the USSR of the policy inscribed in the pacts of August 23 and September 28,
S. Courtois insists on „the enormous traumas which shook the nations which
were victims of the complicity of these two totalitarian states”. And he
concluded that „as long as the criminal dimension of the alliance with Hitler is
not clearly recognized - in particular by Russia -, the scars that it left on the
body of Europe will not heal (…).” 26 Behind the diverging opinions on the
reasons which may explain the signature of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, there
clearly appear various interpretations of the effects of this pact.
The effects of the „German-Soviet pact” or „the scars on the body of Europe”
What were, according to French historiography, the consequences of the
German-Soviet pact on the beginning of the war, on the future of Central
23 BAUMONT, Maurice: op.cit., 872.
24 GIRAULT, René, FRANK, Robert, op.cit., 237.
25 FURET, François: op.cit., 368.
26 COURTOIS, Stéphane: art.cité, 7. et 8. et 14.
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