The Soviets conspired with Hitler to START WWII so as to split eastern Europe between them.
'Spheres Of Influence'
But there was a secret protocol to the public agreement, under which the two dictators divided Central and Eastern Europe into "spheres of influence" in anticipation of "political and territorial rearrangements" in the region.
Although the secret protocol was widely believed to exist almost from the beginning, the precise wording of the text was not known until the Allies found and published a microfilmed copy that had been seized from German archives.
The Soviets maintained the document was a fake and denied the existence of the protocol until 1989. Three years later, Russia released the official protocol from its archives.
A week after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, on September 1, 1939, German forces attacked Poland, beginning World War II. On September 17, Stalin's Red Army moved into the eastern parts of Poland (see video here of joint Soviet-Nazi parade in Brest-Litovsk in September 1939).
In November, Stalin attacked Finland, which was assigned to the Soviet sphere of influence under the secret protocol. In June 1940, the Soviets forcibly installed pro-Soviet governments in the three Baltic states, governments that promptly requested annexation into the Soviet Union. Later that month, Stalin occupied the Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina regions of Romania.
Throughout the territories it occupied, the Soviet Union carried out harsh political reprisals, including mass executions and deportations. |
