With Pravda (August 19) accusing the British and the French of preparing a “new Munich” with Germany, Stalin received an intelligence report to the effect that Hitler was determined to tackle the Polish question come what may, and that he thought Moscow would “conduct negotiations with us, as she has no interest whatever in a conflict with Germany, nor was she anxious to be defeated for the sake of England and France.” Such information dovetailed with the intercepts of Schulenburg’s telegrams to Berlin.104 On the evening of August 19, Schulenburg reported to Berlin that he had been received twice that day by Molotov—at 2:00 p.m., for one hour, and again at 5:00 p.m.—and that the Soviet government had presented him with a Soviet text for a nonaggression pact consisting of five articles and a postscript, to last five years, and had agreed to receive the Nazi foreign minister in Moscow on August 26 or 27.105 That was the proposed date for Germany’s invasion of Poland. A German-Soviet economic agreement had been finalized in Berlin around noon on August 19, but at 4:00 p.m. local time, Soviet negotiators had informed their German counterparts that they could not sign it.
Finally, the Soviets in Berlin consented to sign the economic agreement at 2:00 a.m. on August 20, dating it the previous day. It stipulated that the Reich would export “industrial goods” totaling about 60 million reichsmarks of “current business” (trade covered by earlier clearing agreements) and 180 million reichsmarks of “new business.” The Soviets would export the same in raw materials and repay old credits. The Reich, in turn, would finance 200 million reichsmarks’ worth of the new Soviet orders. Schnurre, the lead German negotiator, noted that “the framework now set up represents a minimum,” and predicted that bilateral trade could leap to nearly 1 billion reichsmarks. The German government agreed to guarantee the loan nearly fully, at a publicly stated interest rate of 5 percent, but with a secret protocol refund of 0.5 percent, reducing the actual interest while allowing a seven-year term of payback, and not requiring an itemized list of goods. The Germans had wanted to grant a larger Soviet credit, 500 million reichsmarks or more, at a higher interest rate, with lower German government loan guarantees, shorter terms of payback (five years maximum), and a specific list of goods to contain Soviet appetites.106
Later that afternoon of August 20, 1939, Hitler dispatched a personal telegram to Stalin via the German embassy in Moscow. “The conclusion of a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union means to me the establishment of a long-range Germany policy,” Hitler wrote. “I accept the draft pact that your foreign minister, Herr Molotov, delivered, but consider it urgently necessary to clarify questions connected with it as soon as possible.” He referred to “intolerable” tension between Germany and Poland and, noting that Ribbentrop would have full powers to sign a state accord, asked that he be received on August 22, or August 23 latest. Also on August 20, nine days after his arrival in Moscow, Drax finally produced written credentials allowing him to negotiate on behalf of the British government, but Voroshilov adjourned the negotiations indefinitely. Stalin, who was micromanaging the process, sent Voroshilov duck hunting.107
Pravda, on the morning of August 21, carried the announcement of the Nazi-Soviet economic agreement, calling it “a serious step in the cause of improving not only economic, but also political relations between the USSR and Germany.” Stalin effectively would supply the Germans with grain harvested by his enslaved collective farmers and oil and strategic raw materials extracted partly by his Gulag inmates, for the right to engage in a shopping spree through one of the world’s most modern economies for machines and models of modern weaponry.108 That day at 3:00 p.m., Schulenburg was able to hand Hitler’s telegram for Stalin to Molotov.109 Stalin underlined in blue pencil Hitler’s phrase regarding Poland (“A crisis may break out any day”), as well as the Führer’s urgent appeal (“I would be pleased to receive your immediate reply”).110 Stalin had Molotov summon Schulenburg back already at 5:00 p.m. Moscow time to reveal that Ribbentrop would be welcome on the 23rd. “The people of our countries,” Stalin wrote in his response to Hitler, “need peaceful relations.”111
