THE ROAD TO WAR

THE ROAD TO WAR

SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

New Focus

Growing Nazi threat

Turn to West

The “Popular Front”

Maxim Litvinov, Foreign Commissar, 1930-1939

“Bolshevism unmasked”

Main goal = restrain Nazis but avoid war

THE ROAD TO WAR

SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

Appeasement

Britain & France make concessions to Hitler

Munich Agreement - 1938

Soviet isolation

The Anschluss: Nazi troops enter Austria, March 1938

“What, no seat for me?”Germans take Sudetenland, 1938

THE ROAD TO WAR

SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

Problems in the Far East

Japanese aggression in China (Manchukuo)

Fighting on Mongolian border

Threat of 2-front war

THE ROAD TO WAR

SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT

Litvinov replaced by Molotov

Germans & Soviets sign Non-Aggression Pact, August 1939

German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop & Molotov sign pact

Also contains Secret Protocol including territorial divisions

Vyacheslav Molotov

THE ROAD TO WAR

SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT

Shocked much of world

Caused loss of support for Soviets

THE ROAD TO WAR

SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT

Economic collaboration

Germans did not follow through with obligations

Soviet supplies getting ready for shipment to Germany

THE ROAD TO WAR

SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT

Soviet benefits

• territory in Poland (western Belorussia & Ukraine

• Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)

THE ROAD TO WAR

SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

THE WINTER WAR, 1939-1940

Finns resist Soviet demands

inflict heavy damage & casualties on Soviets

convinced Germans of Soviet military weakness