322. Pravda, May 28, 1939; KPSS v rezoliutsiiakh (8th ed.), V: 398–404 (May 27, 1939). Stalin also complained about labor shortages and called for extracting additional labor power from collective farms, claiming that much of it was idle. Zelenin, Stalinskaia “revoliutsiia sverkhu,” 246–7, 285; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1123, l. 1–30: uncorrected transcript; Danilov et al., Tragediia sovetskoi derevni, v/ii: 416–24. The transcript of the plenum, which met May 21–24 and 27, was never printed or distributed to regional party committees. There would not be another plenum until March 26–28, 1940.
323. Gromyko et al., SSSR v bor’be za mir nakanune, 395 (May 14, 1939), 417–21 (May 27, 1939); Falin, Soviet Peace Efforts, II: 39–40, 61–4; DBFP, 3rd series, V: 679–80.
324. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, V: 453 (Völkischer Beobachter, May 23, 1939); Toscano, Origins of the Pact of Steel.
325. DGFP, series D, VI: 586 (Weizsäcker, May 25, 1939). That same day, Japanese ambassador Shigenori Tōgō told Molotov that, according to the 1924 Soviet-Chinese Agreement, the USSR recognized Chinese suzerainty over Outer Mongolia, and therefore the Japanese government did not recognize the Soviet-Mongolian Pact. Tōgō also remonstrated that not Manchukuo but Outer Mongolia had violated the border. Zolotarev, Russkii arkhiv: Velikaia otechestvennaia, XVIII (VII/i): VII/i: 115–6 (RGVA, f. 33987, op. 3, d. 1233, l. 165–6).
326. Sontag and Beddie, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 8–9; DVP SSSR, XXII/i: 386–7 (AVP RF, f. 06, op. 1, p. 1, d. 2, l. 24–26: May 20, 1939), also in God krizisa, I: 482–3; Stronski, “Soviet Russia’s Common Cause.” Schulenburg was evidently not allowed to bring an interpreter and had to speak French for the Russian interpreter.
327. Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, 163–4; Der Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher, XXXVII: 546–56; DGFP, series D, VI: 574–80; Weinberg, Foreign Policy, II: 576, 579–83; Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, 191–3.
328. Presseisen, Germany and Japan, 221–2; Sommer, Deutschland und Japan, 238–42, 248–56; Morley, Deterrent Diplomacy, 105–11.
329. Iklé, German-Japanese Relations, 101 (April 28, 1939, citing International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Documents Presented in Evidence, exhibit 497: Ōshima’s interrogation).
330. On May 27, 1939, the German ambassador in Tokyo, Eugen Ott, reported to Berlin that “I hear from another source that the Emperor, during a report by [chief of the general staff] Prince Kanin, who put forward the Army’s demands on the alliance, made his consent dependent on the Army and Navy coming to an agreement. In view of the stubborn resistance by opponents of the alliance, rumors have cropped up about terrorist plans by radical groups.” DGFP, series D, VI: 594–5.
331. DGFP, series D, VI: 597–8 (received at Moscow embassy on June 2).
332. DGFP, series D, VI: 599–600, 603–4 (unsigned, May 29, 1939).
333. Gavrilov, Voennaia razvedka informiruet, 88–99 (TsAMO, f. 23, op. 9157, d. 2, l. 101–17, 120–4), 740n40; God krizisa, I: 379–87, 405.
334. Mehringer, Die NSDAP, 5; Overy, Dictators, 639–40.
CHAPTER 11. PACT
1. Cadogan also wrote that he himself was “in favor of it [a Soviet alliance]. So, I think, is H. [Halifax].” Dilks, Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 182.
2. Michalka, Ribbentrop und die deutsche Weltpolitik; Bloch, Ribbentrop. “I honestly hated him,” the long-serving state secretary in Ribbentrop’s foreign ministry Baron von Weizsäcker would later claim. No one had a good word for him. Ribbentrop “was a man who occupied a responsible position for which he had neither talent, knowledge, nor experience, and he himself knew or sensed this very well,” surmised the Moscow embassy official Gustav Hilger. “He sought to hide his feelings of inferiority by an arrogance that often seemed unbearable.” Hilger and Meyer, Incompatible Allies, 293. The old-line conservative Franz von Papen—who had midwifed the invitation to Hitler to assume the Chancellorship at Ribbentrop’s villa—deemed Ribbentrop “a husk with no kernel.”
