The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - ELTE BTK Történelem Szakos Portál

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the borders of the Revolution, a space which was reduced compared to the imperial space, and isolated from Europe which regarded it with suspicion”, and that „the German-Soviet pact of August 1939 and the war in the West allowed Stalin to express his international ambitions for the first time.” 30 . S. Courtois, again, goes the furthest, by asserting that: „this alliance between the two great totalitarian dctators, Hitler and Stalin, were to have the bleakest outcome, which today still scar the body of a reunited Europe.” 31 And if the historians of Communism are the ones who focus the most on the long-term effects of the pact, it is also because they have made the best analysis of the immediate and long-term consequences of the pact on the PCF (the French Communist Party) and the French communists. As Jean-Paul Brunet wrote in 1974 - at a time when the left was uniting in France -: „the Soviet-German was supposed to (…) and for many years, made people believe that the French Communist Party was the „Foreign Nationalist Party” which Blum spoke of with alarm. It is true that the dramatic conditions in which the country was forced to live for nearly five years, the turnabout of the PCF after June 1941, the exemplary patriotic attitude of the Communists up until the end of the war, all contributed to keeping this thorny point of such controversial history in the shadows.” 32 <strong>The</strong> shock was a harsh one for the French Communist Party, as it was for the other parties of the Komintern. But the International upheld its anti- Hitler stance until September 7, which we have already evoked, and which corresponds to the Stalin/Dimitrov encounter. Indeed, L’Humanité was closed down as early as August 26, in the context of rising anticommunism, and many disconcerted Communist activists and a few elected representatives took their distances. But the Communists did vote the war credits on September 2. From September 9 on, „the anti-Hitler struggle was abandonned to the advantage of the fight against the imperialist war and for peace”. On September 26, the French Communist Party was dissolved by the government and the Communists were severely repressed in the following months. 33 After 1945, due to their massive and essential committment to the Resistance, the French Communists found it difficult to evoke the Soviet- German pact and the period running from the summer of 1939 to June 1941, when the USSR entered the war. Thus, during the peak period of their strength as a party, electoral power, and intellectual influence (1945/1956), they 30 D’ENCAUSSE, Hélène Carrère: Le grand frère. L’Union soviétique et l’Europe soviétisée. Flammarion, Paris, 1983. 13. et 21. 31 COURTOIS, Stéphane: arti.cité, 1. 32 BRUNET, Jean-Paul: art.cité, 211-212. 33 About this subject see BUTON, Philippe: Le pacifisme communiste de la Seconde Guerre mondiale à la Guerre froide. In: VAISSE, Maurice (dir.): Le pacifisme en Europe des années 1920 aux années 1950. Bruylant, Bruxelles, 1993. and COURTOIS, Stéphane et LAZAR, Marc: Histoire du parti communiste français. PUF, Paris, 1995. 30
adopted a stance of denying the facts. In 1957, B. Goriely explains this in a volume devoted, under the direction of J.B. Duroselle, to the European borders of the USSR up to 1941, as he sees it as an obstacle for historians: „the revelation in Nuremberg of the existence of the secret protocol of August 23rd, 1939, and later, the publication, by the State Departement of the United States, of the two confidential protocols of September 28, 1939, came up against the hostility of some French Communists who denied the existence of the documents in question, with a note refering to the book by Jean Bouvier and J. Gacon, La Vérité sur 1939, published by the Éditions sociales in 1953” 34 . This episode has been studied by the historian Laurent Jalabert who sees this as an example of the „last breath of Marxist hegemony” between 1953 and 1956. L. Jalabert explains that the two young historians, members of the French Communist Party, were defending „the dominant thesis of French historiography justifying the Soviet-German pact: Stalin signed the pact of non-intervention with Hitler because of the inability of the Western states to support the USSR in the case of German aggression. This idea is kept alive by the memory of the Munich agreement (…). Thus, by signing an agreement with Hitler, Stalin gained time in order to finish building the industrial basis of the military effort which was indispensable to fight against Nazism (…). In the conclusion, the Little Father of the Peoples is congratulated for having forged from the beginning a long-term victory strategy.” Very quickly, a journalist, André Rossi, expressed his indignation: „no historian, whether a Communist or not, would have dared to use his name to support such a hotchpotch and this endless series of falsifications. Two schoolboys must have been requested to do the job.” 35 How certain is it that this refusal by the Communists to recognize the whole Soviet-German pact ended in 1956? In fact it did not, since this is still a very controversial topic in France: when a historian - we have witnessed this personally - refers to it in front of an audience of militant Communists - especially those who lived through the war -, he often arouses reactions in which reference is always made first to the Munich agreement (the French Communist Party was the only one to condemn it), the Spanish Civil War (which the Communists considered as a conflict between democracy and fascism and in which they wanted to see France get involved in the name of antifascism), and 1934 (when the French Communist Party committed itself to the „Rassemblement populaire” and to antifacism), and after to the Resistance, of course, and to the heavy tribute paid by the French Communists and by the USSR which lost 20 million lives. S. Courtois has an explanation for the Communist obstacle in the historiography of the pact. He is convinced that if the Soviet responsibility was not highlighted before, and if „the Soviet-Nazi 34 DUROSELLE, Jean-Baptiste (dir.): Les frontières…op.cit., 284. 35 JALABERT, Laurent: op.cit., 113-115. BOUVIER, Jean (1920-1987) was one of the famous French historians during the second half of the twentieth century. 31
Page 2 and 3: ISBN 978-963-284-164-9
Page 5 and 6: Unknown Clauses: The Background Dea
Page 7 and 8: CONTENTS Foreword (István MAJOROS,
Page 9 and 10: Foreword The world remembers in 200
Page 11: The Historical Judgement of the Mol
Page 14 and 15: went often on emotional instead of
Page 16 and 17: What is much more interesting is th
Page 18 and 19: such an international agreement as
Page 20 and 21: Text of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggress
Page 22 and 23: Done in duplicate, in the German an
Page 25 and 26: Lachaise, Bernard Historiography of
Page 27 and 28: Relations) are the focus of special
Page 29 and 30: Russian agreement (…) would allow
Page 31: Europe and on the French communists
Page 35 and 36: Ortolan, Guillaume The 70 th annive
Page 37 and 38: government (more than twenty) came,
Page 39 and 40: War. On the contrary, it shows that
Page 41 and 42: this anniversary and more widely of
Page 43: interesting: „Illusions. In summe
Page 47 and 48: Kretschmann, Vasco The ideological
Page 49 and 50: One of the most influential associa
Page 51 and 52: Germanness in the provinces of West
Page 53 and 54: Prętkiewicz, Przemysław The syste
Page 55 and 56: interwar period and the treaty was
Page 57 and 58: situation of rising danger accepted
Page 59 and 60: Manchukuo and broke relations with
Page 61: I would like to finish my article w
Page 64 and 65: party itself but for the whole Slov
Page 66 and 67: In summary, the group of the „Mod
Page 68 and 69: make proposals or suggestions. 6 In
Page 70 and 71: (Aland), Hanko and the islands of t
Page 72 and 73: have had a less serious effect on t
Page 74 and 75: not expect strong resistance and ho
Page 77 and 78: Winkler, Paul Adolf Eichmann’s Vi
Page 79 and 80: individual offenders, 10 who used h
Page 81 and 82: esearch. But how could the suppress
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expert of this matter 29 and had as
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Arendt on the contrary is in the op
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the „matter”, where there was a
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adoption of the model it became cle
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of Eichmann. For that Heydrich deli
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esistance […] but of logistics. N
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British government refused to give
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ole in the defence of Madrid in Nov
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public doubt the democratic idea of
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Republicans. In the refugee camps i
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102
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iron? Where can one find more nicke
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According to his diaries, the main
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announced: „We have no active all
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110
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negative, an analysis of the disapp
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can let think of an imminent war po
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de la guerre [il] ne fait que l'agg
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Party), the enemy of the inside. Of
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120
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Before the Pact M. Coulondre, the F
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Lets us skip a few decades and list
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argain with. Hitler had an offer th
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secret protocol clarified that the
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to reach out for Russia through the
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of a war interesting rather on civi
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At the same moment, we can note an
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Faure 2 , remains hostile to war. I
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war can still be avoided in June 19
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acked by a „belligerent” coalit
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142
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agreement” sound anachronistic. E
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1939 between Germany and the Soviet
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Two ideas emerge from the press: on
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soviets didn’t have motive. Blum
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Moscow's line, with the national an
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154
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2.000 German speaking inhabitants).
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The Eastern Polish border was not r
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Army. The mayor of Lviv did not wan
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162
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Budapest, and for Warsaw. The two c
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could not destroy the Polish Air Fo
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independence, Romania was forced to
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importance for the events considere
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possible future opposition to the S
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ate of communists within the Jews o
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the initial positive feeling toward
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wanted to take revenge for the NKVD
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German Reactions A last point that
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The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - ELTE BTK Történelem Szakos Portál

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