World War II: An Anachronistic Alliance

Seldom in history has there been such extensive lying, manipulation and concealment over many decades as in the case of the so-called Hitler-Stalin Pact, also known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, with its secret additional protocol and subsequent contracts. Even today, heated debates are still inevitable when this historical event is remembered.

85 years ago, on August 23, 1939, the foreign ministers of the German Reich and the Soviet Union, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyatcheslav Molotov, signed two important documents: a non-aggression treaty, which was immediately published, and a secret additional protocol, which remained secret for decades should. In it, the two states divided East Central Europe into spheres of interest between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. Finland and the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet Union as a sphere of influence, and Lithuania to Germany. In the event of Poland’s military defeat in the impending war, Lithuania was to receive the area around Vilna and the USSR was to receive the Polish areas east of a line marked by the Narew, Vistula and San rivers. The Soviet Union also claimed Bessarabia, which belonged to Romania. Later, Hitler also accepted Soviet control over Lithuania in exchange for central Polish areas up to the Bug.

The consequences of this treaty between Hitler’s Germany and the Soviet Union were devastating, especially for Poland, but also for the communist movement and all anti-fascist forces. The anachronistic alliance between the fascist state and a state calling itself socialist collapsed almost two years later with the German Wehrmacht attack on the USSR on June 22, 1941.

The consequences of the pact were devastating, especially for Poland. But also for the communist movement.

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An exhibition in the Karlshorst Museum is dedicated to this entire, difficult complex of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and its effects, which was created in cooperation with the Chair of Eastern European History at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. The curator of the exhibition entitled “Rip through Europe”, Christoph Meißner, says it is important that not only the crimes that were committed as a result of the pact are named, but also the differences in the goals and methods between them National Socialist and Stalinist crimes in order to counteract an equation of systems that are essentially contradictory. Four geographical regions are presented in more detail in the exhibition. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as one region, Finland, Poland and Romania as separate regions.

The treaty system made the path for the German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939 easier, aided by the codified silence of the Soviet Union. The advance of the Red Army on September 17, 1939 into the spheres of influence promised to Moscow accelerated the defeat of the Polish armed forces. Mass deportations from eastern Poland to Siberia followed. The Stalinist massacres of Polish officers in the Katyń forest near Smolensk in April/May 1940 were painfully burned into the collective memory of Poles and continue to strain relations with Russia. It is not just the German war of conquest and annihilation that has not been forgotten in our neighboring country.

The exhibition not only shows the circumstances that led to the conclusion of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, but also its aftermath for several states in East Central Europe, which are “still largely unknown,” as the director of the Karlshorst Museum Jörg Morré emphasizes. A focus was therefore placed on the discourses there. The exhibition organizers also point out the differences in the culture of remembrance in the two German states. In the Federal Republic, the pact was viewed exclusively as a precursor to the Second World War and as a cronyism between two dictators, ignoring the security interests of the Soviet Union, while in the GDR these were overemphasized, pointing to the West’s negative attitude towards Soviet offers of a collective security system and the existence of the secret Persistently denied the Additional Protocol and followed the Soviet interpretation of history.

For example, in the 1978 textbook “History of the USSR” for students one could read: “On September 17, Red Army units crossed the Soviet-Polish border and within a few days liberated more than 13 million Ukrainians and Belarusians, who covered an area of ​​20,000 square kilometers inhabited by capitalist exploitation. The fate of the Polish population under Stalinist tribulation received no attention. It was not until 1992 that Moscow admitted that it had the original of the Secret Additional Protocol. The Soviet Union no longer existed at this point. Today in Russia this chapter of Stalinist history is being put into perspective again.

In addition to major politics, the exhibition also presents the fates of members of different nationalities. One of them was the then 13-year-old Finn Anja Kesäläinen from Karelia. After her homeland became a war zone, she fled with her family to southern Finland; They were only able to return to their village in the summer of 1942, when Finnish soldiers recaptured Karelia. In 1944, Karelia was again occupied by the Soviets and the family fled again to southern Finland, where they would find their permanent home. They were not allowed to return to their old homeland.

Boundaries that were drawn back then still exist. This should not be shaken for the sake of peace. However, the political, social and geopolitical consequences of the Hitler-Stalin pact should not be forgotten. The show in Karlshorst, designed as a traveling exhibition, is reminiscent of and also offers an extensive accompanying program (www.museum-karlshorst.de).

»Rip through Europe. The consequences of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday closed, admission free.
Dr. Daniela Fuchs is a member of the Speakers’ Council of the Historical Commission of the Left.