German–Soviet Axis talks
German–Soviet Axis talks occurred in October and November 1940 concerning the Soviet Union's potential adherent as a fourth Axis power during World War II. 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 and Adolf Hitler and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The talks were followed by both countries trading written proposed agreements.
After two days of negotiations from 12 to 14 November 1940, Germany presented the Soviets with a draft written Axis pact agreement that defined the world spheres of influence of the four proposed Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union).[1] Hitler, 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.[2]
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.[3] In addition, Stalin sought to remain influential in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Those factors resulted in Molotov taking a firm line.[2]
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.[4] Germany did not respond[5][6] 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."[7] 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".[8]
Tripartite Pact[edit]
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.[47]
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.[48] Moscow had actually been aware of the proposed pact terms from Soviet intelligence sources in Japan.[47]
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.[47] 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.[49]
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".[49]
Meanwhile, from August to October, Germany conducted a massive air campaign against Britain to prepare for Operation Sea Lion, the plan to invade Britain.[50]
Stalin–Ribbentrop exchange in October[edit]
In October 1940, Stalin requested that Molotov be permitted to discuss with Hitler the countries' future relations.[54] Ribbentrop responded to Stalin in a letter that "in the opinion of the Führer... it appears to be the historical mission of the Four Powers — the Soviet Union, Italy, Japan and Germany — to adopt a long-range policy and to direct the future development of their peoples into the right channels by delimitation of their interests in a worldwide scale".[55]
The delivery of Ribbentrop's letter was delayed to Stalin. That resulted, after earlier press stories, in the ideas no longer seeming "fresh", which caused Ribbentrop to lash out at the personnel of German embassy in Moscow.[54][56] Delivering the letter, von Schulenburg stated that the Berlin conference would be a preliminary meeting preceding a convening of the four powers.[56]
Stalin was visibly pleased by the invitation for talks in Berlin.[57] Stalin wrote a letter responding to Ribbentrop on entering an agreement regarding a "permanent basis" for their "mutual interests".[58]
On November 6, Köstring wrote that "since Göring has now put our military deliveries in balance with the Russian deliveries, one may hope that the negotiations will end in peace and friendship".[49] During the first two weeks in November, German and Soviet economic negotiators in Moscow enjoyed moderate success.[59] German military-economic negotiators had hoped for success in the negotiations, in part because they felt that it would strengthen their arguments against Hitler's policy, which was increasingly anti-Soviet.[60]
On November 1, the head of the Army General Staff, Franz Halder, met with Hitler and wrote, "The Führer hopes he can bring Russia into the anti-British front".[61] After Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential election four days later after he had promised that there would be no foreign wars if he was elected, Goebbels noted that "after his statement, Roosevelt will hardly be able to enter the war in an active capacity".[61] Meeting with Benito Mussolini, Ribbentrop explained the German view of the meetings that the acid test would be the Soviets' stand on the Balkans.[51] With the Balkans and the Bosporus a potential "dangerous overlapping of interests" if the Soviets backed away from it, it would be a peaceful and even a preferable alternative to an invasion.[51]
Hitler revealed to Mussolini that he did not expect to accommodate the Soviets beyond forcing Turkey to yield to some guarantees on the Bosporus.[51] Also, he did not want Stalin taking a Romanian entry point to the Bosporus and stated that "one Romanian bird in the hand is worth more than two Russians in the bush".[56] However, Hitler stated that he was skeptical because he believed that Stalin was obsessed with the Danube and Bulgaria.[56] Germany was aware that the Soviet Union had attempted to extend guarantees to Bulgaria to become its ally and that Bulgaria had turned it down.[62]
Bulgarian pressure and a surprise[edit]
Hitler had already issued a secret directive on the eventual attempts to invade the Soviet Union.[79][81] He had not yet abandoned the possibility of other political outcomes and still talked of a "great worldwide coalition that stretched from Yokohama to Spain", but he had resolved to not give up the Balkans.[82]
Meanwhile, the Soviets immediately summoned the Bulgarian ambassador to the Foreign Ministry and stated that the Soviets needed to do a deal with the Bulgarians before they joined the Axis and that Germany was attempting to make them a puppet state.[82] The Bulgarians turned down the offer and leaked it to Germany.[82] Hitler still hoped to dissuade Stalin from giving guarantees to Bulgaria if the Bosporus issue could be solved, and he pressed the Bulgarian ambassador that the Soviets could be persuaded against resistance if the Bulgarians joined the pact, and he warned about the horrors of Soviet occupation.[82]
The Soviets had meanwhile produced the biggest surprise. In an unannounced November 25 visit in Sofia, the Soviets told Bulgarian Prime Minister Bogdan Filov that if Bulgaria permitted transfer access to Soviet troops, the Soviets were prepared to drop their objections to Bulgaria's entry into the Axis, and most surprisingly, the Soviets stated that it likely would not be an issue, as it would "very probably, almost certainly" lead to the Soviets' own entry into the Axis.[83] The stunned Filov stated that it required further contemplation.[83] The Soviet negotiators had concluded that the Bulgarian government "is already committed to Germany to the hilt".[83]
Postwar Soviet reactions: Falsifiers of History[edit]
In 1948, one month after Nazi government foreign ministry documents describing the negotiations had been publicly released by the United States, the Soviet Foreign Information Bureau wrote a response in a book, Falsifiers of History.[93][94] After receiving translations of the newly released documents, Stalin personally edited, struck and rewrote by hand entire sections of drafts he had been given of Falsifiers before the book's release in February 1948.[95]
In Falsifiers, Stalin claimed that he was merely "probing out" Germany in Axis negotiations and to have outright rejected Hitler's proposal to share a division of the world.[79] That version persisted without exception in all historical studies, official accounts, memoirs and textbooks published in the Soviet Union until 1990.[79] According to his daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva she "remembered her father saying after [the war]: Together with the Germans we would have been invincible".[96]