helped Poland when it came to the test. Without the strongest military commitments by France, Britain and Poland, the alliance offered no attraction to them. Short of such commitments, a last-minute deal with Hitler was almost certainly at the back of Stalin's mind from April or May onwards.
Chapter II THE SOVIET-GERMAN PACT
It is customary to look for turning points in history. Much has, of course, been read into Stalin's speech of March 10 with its phrase about the "chestnuts", suggesting a "curse on both your houses" and a desire to keep out of any military entanglements. Even more has been made of Hitler's speech of April 28, 1939, in which both the Polish-German non-aggression pact and the Anglo-German naval agreement were denounced, and in which
the Führer refrained from his habitual attack on the Bolshevik menace. A shrewd
observer like Robert Coulondre, the French Ambassador in Berlin, had at once
considered this omission as very significant, and, in his dispatches to the Quai d'Orsay, had quoted authoritative German sources in support of his assessment. Gafencu also
looked upon this Hitler speech of April 28 as a starting point: "Facing the failure of his Western policy, the Führer already contemplated an about-turn in his Eastern policy.
Such a change ... would obviously find support among the German General Staff... as
well as in German economic circles."
[ G. Gafencu, op. cit., p. 175.]
This was written in 1945 and since then there have been a variety of data to show that the matter was not as simple as that. We know, for instance, that it took Hitler a very long time to get used to the idea of a pact with Moscow, and that Ribbentrop, in particular, became enthusiastic about it some time before the Führer did. But none the less, it is probable that, already in April, after the British guarantee to Poland, he kept the
possibility of an agreement with Moscow up his sleeve.
Although there is evidence to show that there were earlier contacts, the Soviet
[ IVOVSS, vol. I, p. 174.]
On that day Weizsäcker, the permanent head of the German Foreign Office, told G. A.
Astakhov, the Soviet chargé d'affaires in Berlin, that "there was a possibility of improving Soviet-German relations". He pointed out that, in renouncing the Carpathian Ukraine—which had been handed over to Hungary in the partition of Czechoslovakia—
Germany had eliminated a
then it should know that such a possibility now exists. If, however, the Soviet Union wants to persist, together with Britain and France, in its policy of encircling Germany, then Germany is ready to meet the challenge."
The Soviet
Ribbentrop told G. A. Astakhov that there were no insoluble problems between the
USSR and Germany "in the whole area between the Baltic and the Black Sea. All questions could be solved if the Soviet Government accepted these premises."
Ribbentrop made no secret of the fact that Germany had been conducting secret
negotiations with Britain and France, but declared that "it would be easier for the Germans to talk to the Russians, despite all ideological differences, than with the British and the French". Having said that, Ribbentrop then resorted to threats.
"If," he said, "you have other solutions in mind, if you think, for instance, that the best way of settling your problems with us is to invite an Anglo-French military
