and neutral – halfway across the Atlantic, and was
occupying Iceland. In August 1941 Roosevelt met
Churchill off Newfoundland and they jointly
enunciated the principles on which a post-war
settlement (known as the Atlantic Charter) would
be based after the final destruction of the Nazi
tyranny. Roosevelt and Congress supported all
such non-neutral behaviour partly out of hatred of
Nazi rule but above all because the safety of the US
depended on Britain’s successful resistance.
Roosevelt and Congress had virtually placed the
US in a state of undeclared war against Germany,
but did not cross the Rubicon of declared all-out
war until after the attack by Japan in December
1941 – and then it was Germany that first declared
war on the US.
The third decisive strand of these years was the
transformation of the Nazi–Soviet partnership
into war which Germany launched against Russia
on 22 June 1941. Since 23 August 1939, when
the Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact had been
concluded, Stalin had avoided being drawn into
war against Germany. Military unpreparedness in
1939 would have made war even more cata-
strophic for Russia then than in 1941: the West
would have remained behind their defensive line
leaving Russia to face the full force of the
Wehrmacht. If the Wehrmacht had succeeded in
defeating the Soviet Union, the military picture
of the Second World War would have been totally
different. Stalin in 1939 had no wish, of course,
to save the Western democracies. He wanted to
protect Russia and never lost his belief in the
ultimate hostility of the Western capitalist powers.
From the Soviet point of view the pact with the
Germans had other advantages in enabling Russia
to take on Japan without fear of a German attack
in Europe. The Japanese were stunned by Hitler’s
U-turn of policy. Left isolated, they hastened
their own undeclared war with the Soviet Union
on the borders of Manchuria and Mongolia and
were defeated. The Non-Aggression Pact also
brought other gains for Russia. In a secret addi-
tional protocol the Russians secured German
acknowledgement of the Russian sphere of inter-
est in Eastern Europe. The Baltic states, Finland,
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, fell into Russia’s
sphere. Russia also expressed its ‘interest’ in
Bessarabia, then part of Romania. Poland was par-
titioned ‘in the event of a territorial and political
rearrangement’ taking place, a fine circumlocu-
tion for the imminent German attack on Poland.
Germany’s unexpectedly rapid defeat of the
Poles nevertheless alarmed the Russians, who
extensively mobilised and entered Poland on 17
September 1939. But Hitler did not plan to
attack the Soviet Union next. France was to be
defeated first. Stalin in any case was confident that
he could ‘appease’ Hitler. A new Soviet–German
treaty of friendship was concluded on 28
September, adjusting the Polish partition in
favour of the Germans. The Russians also
denounced France and Britain as responsible for
continuing the war. From the end of September
1939 to June 1941, the Soviet Union supplied
Germany with grain, oil and war materials.
In this way the Soviet Union, though officially
neutral, became aligned with Germany. The faith-
fulness with which Stalin carried out his part of the
bargain indicates his fear of being exposed to
Germany’s demonstrated armed might and he
expected no real help from the West. Fears of
Allied hostility, especially now that the Soviet
Union was collaborating with Germany economic-
ally, were well founded. Until May 1940, when the
German victories in the West revealed the desper-
ate weakness of their own position, the British and
French were considering not only sending volun-
teers to Finland, but also stopping the flow of oil
from the Baku oilfields by bombing them.
Soviet aggression in 1939 and 1940 was, in
part, pure aggrandisement to recover what had
once belonged to the Russian Empire and more,
but also to improve Russia’s capacity for defence.
The Baltic states were occupied without a war. But
the Finns refused to accept Soviet proposals for
naval bases and a shift of the frontier on the
Karelian isthmus which was only twenty miles
from Leningrad. In return Finland was offered
Soviet territory. The three-month Soviet–Finnish
War that followed from 30 November 1939 to 12
March 1940 did nothing to enhance Russia’s mil-
itary prestige. Hitler noted Finland’s military
incompetence, but its turn had not yet come, and
Germany did nothing to help the ‘Nordic’ Finnish
defenders against the Russian Slavs. Stalin was
1
GERMANY’S WARS OF CONQUEST IN EUROPE, 1939–41 253
