Why Germany Signed The Non Aggression Pact With The USSR

[Mortimer]

On August 23 1939 Germany and the USSR signed a non aggression pact.
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/nazi_soviet.html
Earlier in 1939 an Anglo-French delegation had tried to negotiate a similar treaty but failed. As Poland had refused the German offer of an anti soviet alliance and Britain had given a guarantee to Poland Hitler seized the initiative. He was forced to act over the Poles refusal to negotiate over Danzig.
http://www.cwporter.com/letter13.htm
Poland had even threatened to invade Germany which was not a threat to be taken lightly as the Poles had stopped the westward drive of the red army in the 1920's.
http://www.conflicts.rem33.com/images/P ... ov_war.htm
Another reason why negotiations with Poland failed was the interference and warmongering of the US president Franklin Roosevelt.
http://codoh.com/library/document/2051
If Germany didn't strike a deal with the USSR then the British and French would try again and if successful Hitler would have been facing a two front war from day one. Although he was anti communist he faced reality and agreed to the non aggression pact as being a case of realpolitik.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/realpolitik

[Mortimer]

People who are saying that Hitler always wanted to invade the USSR as outlined in MEIN KAMPF are mistaken. As the situation changes so does the politics. Realpolitik is the term. If Hitler was a strict ideologue he never would have signed the non aggression pact with the Soviet Union.

[Hektor]

Actually, Hitler didn't "outline an invasion of the USSR" in Mein Kampf. He rather says that the lands then in troubled Russia would be ideal for new "Lebensraum". Imagine someone saying that about the Libyan Desert. If that wasn't Hitler, people won't say that person is "planning an invasion".

[hermod]

Actually, Hitler didn't "outline an invasion of the USSR" in Mein Kampf. He rather says that the lands then in troubled Russia would be ideal for new "Lebensraum". Imagine someone saying that about the Libyan Desert. If that wasn't Hitler, people won't say that person is "planning an invasion".

That's true. When Hitler wrote Mein Kampf he thought the new Soviet Union was about to dislocate because it was led by Jews at that time and "the jew is no element of organization but a ferment of decomposition" (Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 655). So Hitler believed he could take parts of the former Russian empire for German colonization without any war and without exterminating anybody (pushing peoples further East to the vast expanses of Russia is no extermination, but normal human history).

People who are saying that Hitler always wanted to invade the USSR as outlined in MEIN KAMPF are mistaken. As the situation changes so does the politics. Realpolitik is the term. If Hitler was a strict ideologue he never would have signed the non aggression pact with the Soviet Union.

Also true. In November 1937 Hitler even stated: "In the event of a general conflict, only one country can win. That country is the Soviet Union." (Hitler, November 19, 1937 - http://winstonsmithministryoftruth.blog ... 23544f8631).

Hitler wasn't prepared at all for a war on the Soviet juggernaut. Operation Barbarossa was clearly improvisation set up in a hurry and intended to counter Stalin's imminent invasion.

"The state of German armament in 1939 gives the decisive proof that Hitler was not contemplating general war, and probably not intending war at all." (Prof AJP Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, p. 267)

"Even in 1939 the German army was not equipped for a prolonged war; and in 1940 the German land forces were inferior to the French in everything except leadership." (Prof AJP Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, p. 104-5)

[Mortimer]

"If the British don't, maybe we will" says the caption to this cartoon - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/LSE2672 - which is exactly what happened. Hitler saw the opportunity and acted accordingly. Forget about the "Notes" underneath the cartoon as they are the standard politically correct text eg. they say nothing about Hitler offering an alliance to Poland first.

[Werd]

I just made it to the halfway point of TRUTH FOR GERMANY by Udo Walendy, and the war mongering and drive for territorial expansion by Poland was mind boggling to me since I am only a newcomer to that particular aspect of historical revisionism outside of the holocaust. And Walendy also gives just enough detail about the British for helping to whip up Poland into a frenzy and making them think Britain would support the Polish drive to continue to expand on German lands. AJP Taylor who is more politically correct than Walendy, could not ignore this fact in his book Origins of the Second World War (often cited by Walendy). Nor could Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof in his book 1939 – The War That Had Many Fathers. Out of those three books, as far as I know, only Walendy's was banned for any period of time.

[Kingfisher]

"If the British don't, maybe we will" says the caption to this cartoon - http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/LSE2672 - which is exactly what happened. Hitler saw the opportunity and acted accordingly. Forget about the "Notes" underneath the cartoon as they are the standard politically correct text eg. they say nothing about Hitler offering an alliance to Poland first.

Actually, apart from

it was clear that appeasement had failed and Hitler's ultimate objectives of expansion eastwards were obvious.

I don't find too much to criticise in there.

[Kingfisher]

I just made it to the halfway point of TRUTH FOR GERMANY by Udo Walendy, and the war mongering and drive for territorial expansion by Poland was mind boggling to me since I am only a newcomer to that particular aspect of historical revisionism outside of the holocaust. And Walendy also gives just enough detail about the British for helping to whip up Poland into a frenzy and making them think Britain would support the Polish drive to continue to expand on German lands. AJP Taylor who is more politically correct than Walendy, could not ignore this fact in his book Origins of the Second World War (often cited by Walendy). Nor could Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof in his book 1939 – The War That Had Many Fathers. Out of those three books, as far as I know, only Walendy's was banned for any period of time.

You are right insofar as Poland is always presented today as the innocent victim and no mention is made of the factors you reference or of the attacks on ethnic Germans within Poland.

Poles had delusion de grandeur and thought they should be a great European power. They had a record of militarism and had occupied territories to the East which were ethnically majority Ukrainian and White Russian as well as making some incursions into Silesia in the 1920s. I believe, though I can't give you sources for this, that Polish nationalists laid claim to East Prussia and lands up to the Oder-Neisse line, which, of course, they obtained in 1945. They also participated in the carve-up of Czechoslovakia in 1938-9 taking Teschen and some other small border territories.

I have read the books you mention, except that I have only got a short way into Walendy. I have also read Hoggan's The Forced War and Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War.

The ignorance on the part of the general public about the issues of WW2 and the events leading up to it is profound and all the efforts of the media seem oriented to maintaining this ignorance. It is a contrast with the interest in the events preceding WW1 which for many years I was unable to comprehend, though now I can see it in terms of the need to justify the war and to pacify Germany by presenting the Nazis as symbols of ultimate evil incarnate and the war as a crusade against it.

[Review]

Like his predecessors, Hitler probably aimed to keep Germany's status quo and have peace in Europe by allying the great powers of the continent to avoid war. Bismarck tried the same from 1870 to 1900, by allying with (then) conservative Russia. Bismarck's complex alliance system later broke down, and soon Europe had a world war between Germanic Europe and Russia (over the Balkans).

http://ibatpv.org/projects/germany/2ndr ... system.htm

[Mortimer]

Some members of the NSDAP resigned in protest over the non aggression pact because they considered it a betrayal of the anti communist cause. By signing the non aggression pact Germany broke an earlier agreement called the Anti Comintern Pact which they had signed with Japan in 1936.
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Anti-Comintern_Pact

[Otium]

Some members of the NSDAP resigned in protest over the non aggression pact because they considered it a betrayal of the anti communist cause. By signing the non aggression pact Germany broke an earlier agreement called the Anti Comintern Pact which they had signed with Japan in 1936.
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Anti-Comintern_Pact

Germany proposed the pact, and when the pact was no longer applicable as it was in 1935 and foreign policy decisions had to change, then the pact was null and void. Hitler tried to get the Poles to join it too, but they wouldn't.

In the end, the Japanese, while still being Allies with Germany, did nothing to help Germany against the USSR. And the USSR was really no threat to Japan during WW2 despite their skirmishes in the later 1930s.