Book Review - The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin

Book Review - The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin

By Roger Moorhouse

The Second World War is easily the most well-known conflict in human history. It was also the deadliest, with estimations of the total number of casualties running as high as eighty-five million people, including civilians. Most aspects of the war have been widely studied, yet historian Roger Moorhouse found to his chagrin that the non-aggression pact signed in August 1939 between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union has largely been relegated to a footnote in history. It is often explained as merely a temporary convenience, as both sides were intent on going to war with one another, yet the pact lasted for nearly two years, during which Soviet raw materials fueled the Nazi war effort and German technological expertise enabled the Soviets to expand their industrial capacity. In The Devils’ Alliance, Mr. Moorhouse delves deeply into every aspect of the nonaggression-pact that shook the world, and tries to answer whether the pact was a temporary necessity born out of realpolitik or if, had the Germans not invaded the USSR during the spring of 1941 during Operation Barbarossa, the outcome of the war could have been radically different.

Germany, as Henry Kissinger helpfully pointed out in World Order (previously reviewed on this blog) has always suffered from being nestled smack bang in the middle of Europe, with potentially hostile nations to the east and west. In the eyes of the Western democracies, Adolf Hitler’s strategic position looked shaky during the build up to the war. Having agitated against the evils of communism for most of his political life, a détente between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union seemed very unlikely. In the event of a conflict against Britain and France, Germany’s eastern flank would be terribly vulnerable against an opportunistic Soviet attack. The Nazi high command had also grasped this fact, however, and during the summer of 1939 a tentative dialogue was initiated between the two regimes. At the same time, Britain and France made an attempt to eke out a diplomatic agreement with the Soviets that was almost comical for its ineptness. Weeks before the pact with Nazi Germany was signed, a joint delegation led by a British admiral and a French general arrived in Moscow. They had crossed the Baltic on a decrepit old steamship, a journey that took the better part of six days, and upon their arrival in Moscow the soviets were annoyed that neither half of the Anglo-French duo had the authority to negotiate a robust deal. Moreover, Mr. Moorehouse notes drily that the British admiral, an aristocrat by the name of Sir Reginald Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, was perhaps not ideally suited to rubbing shoulders and making small talk with the sons and daughters of a proletarian revolution.

In contrast to the allies quaint doddering, the Germans looked a much safer bet. Stalin had never held the Western democracies in very high regard. His suspicion is understandable given the fact that they had sent troops to fight against the Bolsheviks in the immediate aftermath of the 1917 revolution. Merely a couple of days after talks with the British and French had broken down, the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, visited Moscow to much fanfare. A pact of non-aggression that included economic exchanged was signed between Ribbentrop and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, on August the 23^rd. The pact became known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and when it was signed Stalin declared a toast to the continued good health of the Führer. When news of the pact reached the West on the following day, it struck like a bombshell. At a stroke, this worsened the prospects for the English and the French. They could no longer hope for Soviet assistance in the event of a war breaking out, and the Americans were still firmly against being drawn into another European war.

The pact also included a secret clause that divided Poland between the two regimes. This secret clause came into effect a month later, when the Nazis invaded Poland and the Soviets followed suit a couple of weeks later. As Hitler’s panzers struck west to attack France the following year, Stalin was busy gobbling up the Baltic states to add their territory to the Soviet Union. When German soldiers marched into Paris during the summer of 1940, Britain had to come to terms with the lonely prospect of being the only major European country still standing against the Nazis. For Hitler, the war had so far gone spectacularly well, and Stalin was also mightily pleased with what the pact had helped him achieve.

Yet for all this superfluous bonhomie between the scum of the earth and the bloody assassin of the workers, the pact came with some obvious complications. For adherents to Communism or Nazism, a great deal of ideological acrobatics was now necessary to explain the new geopolitical circumstances. Communists all over Europe, who had for years been vehemently opposed to Nazi Germany, suddenly had to justify the necessity of a pact with their worst enemy. Harry Pollitt, general secretary of the British communist party, refused to tow the Comintern’s line, and welcomed the British declaration of war against Germany. He was forced to resign shortly thereafter, but following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 he regained his lost standing in the party. After the war the USSR saw fit to commemorate him with a postage stamp for leaning against the wind. For the Nazis, the pact was equally uncomfortable, not least because Hitler in his work, Mein Kampf, had railed against communism and declared that it needed to be exterminated from the face of the earth.

Such ideological conundrums could at first be brushed under the rug, both sides benefited from the mutual economic exchange, but it wasn’t long until tensions flared. Soviet delegations to German factories clutched long lists detailing the different schematics for various components they were interested in obtaining. The German’s soon got into the habit of keeping their more sensitive projects classified and tried to make sure that the Soviets only got to inspect older fighter planes and tanks that were scheduled for decommission. The shipments of raw materials they had been promised in return had a curious habit of almost drying up when Stalin didn’t think he needed the German’s goodwill. When the Germans were becoming seriously annoyed by this practice, Stalin decided it was time to turn on the taps. Russian cargo trains started rattling westwards laden with oil and wheat with startling alacrity. At a summit in Berlin in December 1940, when Molotov visited the capital to negotiate plans for a new phase of deeper cooperation, the talks did not go well. The rival delegations talked past each other, the Germans giving lofty declarations that they would carve up the world between them, while the Soviets were interested in more urgent matters such as the precis demarcation of territory in eastern Europe. Molotov left without anything of import having been decided, and the future of the pact did not look promising.

Yet for all this mutual mistrust Stalin had no wish to go to war in 1941, and he trusted that Hitler would honor his commitments. Even when German forces were massing on the Polish border during the months before Operation Barbarossa, Stalin ordered that the raw materials should keep flowing and that everything should be done to appease Hitler. In the end, Hitler’s invasion ended the pact, which was pretty much the outcome that had been predicted in the West, but the short-lived treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union remains an interesting topic of academic study. As Mr. Moorehouse notes, Hitler and Stalin had a lot of similarities, and both seemed to mistrust the Western allies more than each other. Not the best foundation for building lasting cooperation perhaps, but that probably wasn’t what either side had in mind to begin with. For a more in depth look at the ambiguous relationship between Hitler and Stalin, and the events immediately preceding the invasion, I would recommend John Lukacs’s excellent June 1941: Hitler and Stalin.          

The Devils’ Alliance is a very interesting read and one that I would recommend for anyone with an interest in history and the Second World War. It delves into the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact from several angles, geo-political, economical and ideological, as Mr. Moorehouse walks the reader through the implications of perhaps the most shocking and unexpected diplomatic treaty signed during the Second World War.