The Nazi-Soviet Pact

Hitler paid no attention to the Anglo-French promise of help to Poland. And who could blame him? The British and French had done nothing to stop the introduction of conscription in 1935, the occupation of the Rhineland or the Anschluss with Austria. They had handed the Sudetenland to him. Why would Poland be any different?

Hitler was much more worried about the response of the Soviet Union. The Russians had tried to negotiate some agreement with the western democracies (Britain and France) to oppose Hitler, but the British and French had not seemed too interested. Stalin, the Soviet dictator, was certain that the West was secretly encouraging Nazi Germany to expand eastwards against the Soviet Union. A war between Communist Russia and Nazi Germany would go down well with Britain and France. Hitler was concerned that an attack on Poland, without Soviet agreement, might well lead to war with Russia. Hitler wanted a war with Russia but not then.

In August 1939 the Soviets and Germans signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact in which they promised not to attack one another. Secretly, they agreed between them to invade and occupy Poland, each taking half the country. Hitler was confident that the one power which might have stood in his way, the Soviet Union, was no longer a problem.

Poland Doomed

The Nazi-Soviet Pact sealed Poland's fate and made war in Europe almost inevitable. The western democracies had a chance to win Soviet support in the mid 1930s to form an alliance against Hitler but, it seems, they hated Communism more than they feared Nazism. The loss of the Soviet Union as a possible ally for Britain and France made Hitler's task a great deal easier.

Less than a week after the Nazi-Soviet Pact, on 1 September 1939, German troops invaded Poland. Two days later Britain and France stood by their promise to Poland and declared war on Nazi Germany. The Second World War had begun.

Neil Demarco: The era of the Second World War; Oxford University Press, 1993/2000, page 19