Talks between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union occurred in October and November 1940, nominally concerning the latter's potential adherent as a fourth Axis power during World War II, among other potential agreements. The negotiations, which occurred during the era of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, included a two-day conference in Berlin between Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, Adolf Hitler and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. While Ribbentrop and most of the German Foreign office wanted an alliance with the Soviet Union, Hitler (supported by most of the other leadership) had been planning to invade the Soviet Union. In early June 1940 as the Battle of France was still ongoing, Hitler reportedly told Lt. General Georg von Sodenstern that the victories against the Allies had “finally freed his hands for his important real task: the showdown with Bolshevism." Ribbentrop nevertheless convinced Hitler to allow diplomatic overtures, with his own hope being for an alliance. Ribbentrop and Benito Mussolini had already speculated at the idea of offering the Soviet Union a free hand in a southern direction. Ribbentrop's approach in general to foreign policy was different from Hitler's: he favored an alliance with the Soviet Union, while Hitler had wanted to pressure Britain into an alliance and pushing for "lebensraum" (living space) in the east.
After negotiations from 12 to 14 November 1940, Ribbentrop presented Molotov with a written draft for an Axis pact agreement that defined the world spheres of influence of the four proposed Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union). Ribbentrop and Molotov tried to set German and Soviet spheres of influence. Hitler encouraged Molotov to look south to Iran and eventually India, to preserve German access to Finland's resources and to remove Soviet influence in the Balkans. Hitler however seemingly had no intention of allowing the Soviet Union into the Axis: in an internal memoranda Hitler stated: "Political conversations designed to clarify the attitude of Russia in the immediate future have been started. Regardless of the outcome of these conversations, all preparations for the East previously ordered orally are to be continued. [Written] directives on that will follow as soon as the basic elements of the army's plan for the operation have been submitted to me and approved by me." There was, in other words, no expectation by Hitler of a long-term agreement with Russia—war was intended. The Soviets approached the negotiations differently, anticipating a general agreement and willing to make huge economic concessions to secure it, and general terms which had been acceptable to the Germans just a year before. Hitler's stated objective was to test Soviet attitude concerning the period before he could launch Operation Barbarossa.
Molotov remained firm and sought to remove German troops from Finland and gain a warm water port in the Baltic. Soviet foreign policy calculations were predicated on the idea that the war would be a long-term struggle and so German claims that the United Kingdom would be defeated swiftly were treated with skepticism. In addition, Stalin sought to remain influential in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Those factors resulted in Molotov taking a firm line.
According to a study by Alexander Nekrich, on 25 November 1940, the Soviets presented a Stalin-drafted written counterproposal accepting the four power pact but including Soviet rights to Bulgaria and a world sphere of influence, to be centred on the area around Iraq and Iran. Germany did not respond, and left the negotiations unresolved.
Regarding the counterproposal, Hitler remarked to his top military chiefs that Stalin "demands more and more", "he's a cold-blooded blackmailer" and "a German victory has become unbearable for Russia" so that "she must be brought to her knees as soon as possible." Hitler had already decided to invade the Soviet Union in July 1940, but this apparently accelerated the process. As early as 1935 Germany had proposed a joint alliance and invasion of the Soviet Union to Poland, but this was rejected by the Poles. Germany ended the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in June 1941 by invading the Soviet Union.
In the following years, the Soviet Information Bureau published a book titled Falsifiers of History, largely edited by Stalin himself, in which the Soviet premier claimed that he was simply testing his enemy. This became the official version of events that persisted in Soviet historiography up until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. According to Soviet diplomat Victor Israelyan, the book "certainly did nothing to disprove the existence of Soviet-German cooperation in the first years of World War II, a cooperation that to a certain degree assisted Hitler's plan".
Background
Relations in 1939 and 1940
During the summer of 1939, after it had conducted negotiations with a British-French alliance and with Germany regarding potential military and political agreements, the Soviet Union chose Germany, which resulted in an August 19 German–Soviet Credit Agreement providing for the trade of certain German military and civilian equipment in exchange for Soviet raw materials. Four days later, the countries signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which contained secret protocols dividing the states of Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.
Just before the signing of the agreements, the parties had addressed past hostilities, with German Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop telling Soviet diplomats that "there was no problem between the Baltic and the Black Sea that could not be solved between the two of us". Diplomats from both countries addressed their common ground by stating "there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies", "neither we nor Italy have anything in common with the capitalist west" and "it seems to us rather unnatural that a socialist state would stand on the side of the western democracies".
A German official claimed that their prior hostility toward Soviet Bolshevism had subsided with the changes in the Comintern and the Soviets' renunciation of a world revolution. A Soviet official characterised the conversation as "extremely important". At the signing, Ribbentrop and Stalin enjoyed warm conversations, exchanged toasts and further discussed their prior hostilities between the countries in the 1930s.
As Ribbentrop left, Stalin took him aside and stated that the Soviet government took the new pact very seriously, and he would "guarantee his word of honor that the Soviet Union would not betray its partner".
One week after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact had been signed, the partition of Poland started by the German invasion of western Poland.
The Soviet Comintern suspended all anti-Nazi and antifascist propaganda by explaining the war in Europe to be a matter of capitalist states attacking each other for imperialist purposes.
When anti-German demonstrations erupted in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the Comintern ordered the Czech Communist Party to employ all of its strength to paralyze "chauvinist elements". Moscow soon forced the French Communist Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain to adopt an antiwar position.
Two weeks after the German invasion, the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland in co-ordination with German forces. On September 21, the Soviets and the Germans signed a formal agreement coordinating military movements in Poland, including the "purging" of saboteurs. A joint German–Soviet parade was held in L'vov and Brest.
Stalin had decided in August that he was going to liquidate the Polish state, and a German–Soviet meeting in September addressed the future structure of the "Polish region". The Soviets stated in September that they must enter Poland to "protect" their ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian brethren therein from Germany, but Molotov later admitted to German officials that the excuse had been necessary because the Soviets could find no other pretext for their invasion.
Three of the Baltic States described by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) were given no choice but to sign a "Pact of Defence and Mutual Assistance", which permitted the Soviet Union to station troops in them.
Expansion of raw materials and military trading
Hitler's pressing for a German invasion of Poland in 1939 placed tremendous strain on the German war machine, which had been gradually gearing up for total war only in 1942 or 1943. Germany's lack of raw materials meant that it had to seek increased supply from outside. However, a British blockade occurred, which left it increasingly desperate for materials. The only country that could still supply Germany with the oil, rubber, manganese, grains, fats and platinum that it needed was the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the Soviets' demands for manufactured goods, such as German machines, were increasing, and their ability to import those goods from outside decreased when many countries ceased trading relations after the Soviets had joined the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Accordingly, Germany and the Soviet Union entered an intricate trade pact on February 11, 1940, which was over four times larger than the one that both countries had signed in August 1939. The new trade pact helped Germany to circumvent the British blockade.
In the first year, Germany received hundreds of thousands of tons of cereals, oil and other vital raw materials, which were transported through Soviet and occupied Polish territories. In addition, the Soviets provided Germany with access to the Northern Sea Route for both cargo ships and raiders (though only the raider Komet had used the route before June 1941). This forced Britain to protect sea lanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.
Deterioration of relations in mid-1940
Finland, Baltics and Romania
In November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland, resulting in stiff losses and the entry of an interim peace treaty in March 1940 that granted to the Soviet Union parts of Karelia and Salla (9% of Finnish territory). In mid-June 1940, while international attention was focused on the German invasion of France, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, and replaced each government with pro-Soviet politicians, who then requested entry for their respective countries to the Soviet Union. In June, the Soviets issued an ultimatum demanding Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania. After the Soviets had agreed with Germany that they would limit their claims in Bukovina to Northern Bukovina, Germany urged Romania to accept the ultimatum. Two days after the Soviet entry, Romania acceded to the Soviet demands, and the Soviet Union occupied the demanded territories and also the Hertsa region, which had not been included in the ultimatum.
The Soviet invasion of Finland, which had been covertly ceded to it under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocols, created domestic problems for Hitler. The German populace did not know about the secret protocols that divided up spheres of influence. Many Germans opposed the Soviet invasion, and Finland had close ties with Germany. Hitler had to deflect opposition to Germany's pro-Soviet policies from even Nazi Party stalwarts. Supporting the Soviet invasion became one of the most ideologically and politically difficult aspects of the pact for the German government to justify.
The secret protocols caused Hitler to be in the humiliating position of being forced to evacuate ethnic German families, the Volksdeutsche, in a hurry although they had lived in Finland and the Baltic countries for centuries, all the while to condone the invasions officially. When the three Baltic countries, which did not know about the secret protocols, sent letters protesting the Soviet invasions to Berlin, Ribbentrop returned them.
In August, Molotov told the Germans that with the government change, they could close down their Baltic consulates by September 1. The Soviet annexations in Romania caused further strain. Germany had given Bessarabia to the Soviets in the secret protocols but not Bukovina. Germany wanted the 100,000 tons of grain for which they had previously contracted with Bessarabia, guarantees of German property safety, guarantees for 125,000 Volksdeutsche in Bessarabia and Bukovina and the reassurance that the train tracks carrying Romanian oil would be left alone.
Increasing German raw material dependence
In the summer of 1940, Germany grew even more dependent on Soviet imports. German occupations of France, the Netherlands and Belgium created additional demand and decreased avenues for indirect supply. Compared to 1938 figures, the expanded Greater Germany and its sphere of influence lacked, among other items, 500,000 tons of manganese, 3.3 million tons of raw phosphate, 200,000 tons of rubber and 9.5 million tons of oil. Meanwhile, the Baltic invasions resulted in the Soviet occupation of states on which Germany had relied for 96.7 million Reichsmarks of imports in 1938 at blackmailed favorable economic terms but from which they now had to pay Soviet prices. No concrete plans had yet been made, but Hitler told one of his generals in June that the victories in Western Europe "finally freed his hands for his important real task: the showdown with Bolshevism". In addition, Hitler increasingly believed the eventual invasion of the Soviet Union to appear the only way for Germany to solve that resource crisis. However, German generals told Hitler that occupying Western Russia would create "more of a drain than a relief for Germany's economic situation".
Suspension of Soviet raw materials to Germany
In August 1940, the Soviet Union briefly suspended its deliveries under their commercial agreement after relations were strained following a disagreement over policy in Romania, the Winter War, Germany's falling behind in its deliveries of goods under the pact, and Stalin's concern that Hitler's war with the West might end quickly after France had signed an armistice. The suspension created significant resource problems for Germany.
By late August, relations improved again as the countries had redrawn the Hungarian and Romanian borders and settled some Bulgarian claims, and Stalin was again convinced that Germany would face a long war in the west with Britain's improvement in its air battle against Germany and the execution of an agreement between the United States and Britain regarding destroyers and bases.
However, in late August, Germany arranged its own annexation of part of Romania, which targeted oil fields. The move raised tensions with the Soviets, who responded that Germany was supposed to have consulted with the Soviet Union under Article III of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Tripartite Pact
Before entering a deal with Italy and Japan, German officials had discussed the feasibility of including the Soviet Union as a fourth member to direct Soviet focus southward, to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, both of which were in the British sphere of influence. German officials indicated that they would be willing to give the Soviet Union freedom to operate east of the Dardanelles.
Just before the signing of the agreement, Germany informed Molotov that it would enter the pact and that while it was not explicitly stated, the pact was effectively directed against "American warmongers" by demonstrating to them the folly of war with three great powers aligned against them. Moscow had actually been aware of the proposed pact terms from Soviet intelligence sources in Japan.
On September 27, 1940, Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, which divided the world into spheres of influence and was implicitly directed at the United States. The pact contained an explicit provision (Article 5) that stated it did not concern relations with the Soviet Union. Molotov, worried that the pact contained a secret codicil pertaining specifically to the Soviet Union, attempted to extract information from the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Togo.
On a home visit, the German military attaché to the Soviet Union, Ernst Köstring, stated on October 31 that "the impression is steadily growing in me that the Russians want to avoid any conflict with us".
Meanwhile, from August to October, Germany conducted a massive air campaign against Britain to prepare for Operation Sea Lion, the plan to invade Britain.