August 23 marks the 80th anniversary of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact) between the then-socialist Soviet Union and Hitler’s Nazi Germany, on the eve of World War II. This was a non-aggression treaty, not an alliance, as the anti-communist capitalist historians want us to believe. The Soviets needed to buy time to build up their military and industrial capabilities before they could take on the German fascists. Not only did the Soviet Red Army take on the Nazis, they smashed them, driving them all the way back to Berlin. 80 percent of German casualties in World War II were at the hands of the Soviet forces. But this victory came at a political cost as the communists promoted the nationalist idea of “defending the motherland” instead of inspiring and organizing workers everywhere to rise up against the Nazis and all capitalists.
Pre-World War II period
The capitalist bosses lie about this treaty because it exposes their own loyalty to fascism.During the 1930s, Britain, France, and the U.S., desperate to crush the first workers’ state that they had failed to do in their onslaught after the Bolshevik Revolution, encouraged Hitler to move East to attack the Soviet Union. They allowed him to take back the Rhineland, a region of Germany that had been occupied by the U.S., France, Belgium and Britain as a result of Germany’s defeat in World War I; to build up Germany’s military in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I; and to incorporate Austria as part of Germany. In the 1938 “Munich Agreement,” the British and French gave Germany more of what it wanted, the most industrialized part of Czechoslovakia, in a brazen attempt to aim the Nazis toward the Soviet Union and hold off war in Western Europe.
In 1939, the Soviets tried to get Britain, France, and Poland to agree to a mutual defense treaty against Hitler. Britain was reluctant; its negotiators were sent to Moscow on a slow boat, instructed to drag out the talks, and given no authorization to sign anything. The French also did nothing. The Soviets got the message – the Allies wanted Hitler to smash the USSR, headquarters of the world communist movement that the capitalists of the world hated far more than they hated Hitler.
All the while, the USSR was at war with Japan, which had attacked it from Mongolia at Khalkhin Gol in May 1939. This was clearly a Japanese probe to test the strength of the Soviet Far Eastern Army. Without a temporary treaty with Germany, the USSR might have faced two wars at the same time. But by early September 1939, Japanese forces were defeated.
Meanwhile, Hitler wanted to conquer Poland without worrying about the Soviet Red Army. He rightly guessed that Britain and France would not fight.On August 23, 1939, the USSR and Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. On August 25, Britain signed a treaty with Poland promising to go to war if Germany attacked it (France and Poland later signed a similar agreement).
World War II begins
On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s armies attacked Poland. On September 3, Britain and France declared war on Germany. From September 1939 to May 1940, the “Phony War” took place with no large-scale military land operations. The Western capitalists were signaling Hitler that they still wanted him to “move eastward” against the Soviets.
Communist led workers defeated the Nazis
Tactically, the Pact was of some help in defeating Hitler. It temporarily kept Hitler’s armies 300 miles from the Soviet border. When the war started in September, Leningrad and Moscow, two centers of Soviet industry and political strength, were that much further from the Nazi armies. But it was the heroic workers of Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad and throughout the USSR that defeated the Nazis. Just think of what an inspired and organized working class throughout Europe and the world could have accomplished.
The treacherous Western Allies were hoping that Hitler would conquer the Soviet Union defeating the world’s first workers state. Today they rewrite history saying the Soviets invaded Poland after dividing it up with the Germans. Not true. The Germans invaded, the fascist Polish army provided little resistance, and the Polish government fled to Rumania. Quickly the Germans declared that the Polish government was no longer in control of the country and therefore the Polish state no longer existed. That meant that the secret “sphere of influence” clause in the Pact was no longer valid. Hitler ordered the German army to help form a fascist Ukrainian state in former Eastern Poland. The Soviets sent in the Red Army to keep the Nazi army away from their border by occupying those parts of Poland that had been seized from Soviet Russia by imperialist Poland in 1921.
Everyone – Soviets, Germans, and the Western powers – assumed that the Polish government would make peace with Hitler and then form a buffer state that, no matter how anti-Soviet, would also be anti-German. But the Polish government did not form a so-called government-in-exile. “Their own” ruling class abandoned the Polish working class to Hitler’s Nazis, who proceeded to murder several million of them.
Reject nationalism, fight for communism!
It is in the interest of workers around the world to get to the truth behind historical events. Our working class worldview allows us to develop our revolutionary communist ideas. We can’t depend on the rulers to do this for us, as they do in our schools, because their “truth” is always based on their class interest, and therefore lies. When the working class controls all aspects of society, then we will tell the class history of humanity.
From the standpoint of the USSR, the treaty was a delaying tactic, as the Soviets prepared for the German attack. Progressive Labor Party criticizes this treaty as the Soviets succumbing to nationalism and prioritizing the “defense of the motherland” instead of building the international communist movement. In spite of their weaknesses the Soviet communists, with a monumentally heroic effort, defeated the Nazis. We must learn from their strengths and weaknesses as the imperialist powers once again are headed toward world war. Say no to nationalism. Workers of the world unite! Fight for communism!
Further Reading: Pages of articles and evidence at tinyurl.com/furr-mlg09 ; Grover Furr, Blood Lies (2014), Chapters 7-8.