What gave Russia the Moscow treaty 1939 of the year?
The boundaries established by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact still apply in full
Over the past quarter of a century, negative materials about the Moscow Treaty appeared in the domestic and foreign media much more than about any other issue. history of humanity. He even came up with a new name: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This was done contrary to the world tradition to name the treaties at the place of their signing: Tilsit Peace, Nishtadt Peace, Munich Treaty (1938), etc. Although the same Brest Peace 1918, is called “the most fabled one”, no one is going to rename it yet.
We look at the 1939 treaty of the year through the prism of the 1941 – 1945 war. But then no one could even imagine the death of 30 by millions of Soviet citizens and the massacres of people in the German death camps. By this time, in the Polish concentration camps since 1919, several times more people died than in Hitler's. And the French and the British in the colonial wars also many times more killed civilians in Asia and Africa. I keep mum about the gulag.
Prophecies of politicians
We all have forgotten that the beginning of the Second World War was predicted by dozens of the most far-sighted politicians, including Lenin, in April 1919, immediately after the conclusion of the Versailles Peace.
In the Russian and German empires, by the end of 1919, the rulers guilty of starting a war were executed or fled the country. People came to power who in the fall of 1914 were opposing the war. So why would the Entente not accept the peace plan "without annexations and indemnities" put forward by Lenin in 1917? Alas, the rulers of England, France and the United States felt like the unlimited lords of the world and committed savage reprisals against Germany and Russia. Moreover, if Russia was dealt with “according to the rules”, as with some African country, then a very representative Versailles Conference was convened to enslave and dismember Germany.
About a third of the territory was taken away from Russia and Germany, almost the entire military fleet of both countries was sunk by the allies, and the entire trade fleet was assigned. Germany Versailles Treaty allowed to have 100-thousandth army, or rather the police force.
England and France decided to create a sanitary cordon against Soviet Russia and Germany — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia — on the torn away Russian and German territories. I note that modern Poland should not be confused with the 30-s of Poland under the dictatorship of Marshal Pilsudski. Now Poland is a national state in which the vast majority of citizens are Poles. But this was achieved through the destruction or deportation of many millions of Germans, Jews, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Well, the rest forcibly polonizirovat.
And in the 1922 year in the Republic of Poland, ethnic Poles made up about 60 percent of the population. Moreover, Slavic ethnic groups — Lemki, Kashubians, Pomeranians, and others who had more linguistic and cultural differences with the Poles than the Russians with the Ukrainians — were forcibly recorded in the Poles.
In Czechoslovakia, there were 14 million from the 6,6 million population of the Czechs, Germans - 3,5 million, Slovaks - 3 million, Hungarians, Romanians, Ruthenians, Poles and others - 400 thousand people. Its authorities made the Czechs (45 percent of the population) the titular nation. The rest of the nation did not want to live in this artificial state, which was held on French bayonets before the 1938 year and on the Soviet ones - until the 1991 year.
Immediately after the Versailles Conference, the French Marshal Foch said: “Versailles is not a peace, but a truce for 20 years”. And at the conference itself, British Prime Minister Lloyd George told the French Prime Minister Clemenceau, who wanted to include the lands inhabited by the Germans in Poland: “Do not create a new Alsace-Lorraine.”
Thus, the French Marshal and the British Prime Minister accurately predicted the time (1939 year) and the cause (Poland) of the outbreak of World War II.
Other scenarios
Exactly five years after the end of World War I, 9 November 1923, Hitler, who was marching at the head of the Nazi column in Munich, came under fire from the police. Max Scheibner-Richter, a former officer of the royal army, covered the Fuhrer with his body. Hitler was under the corpse of Richter, and then took refuge in the apartment of General Vasily Biskupskogo. Well, the Russian mark on the rise of Nazism is a special topic, and for a second we imagine that Richter would be half a meter to the right or left of Adolf and the Fuhrer would get a police bullet. So, in this case, the Second World War would not have taken place, and in Europe would the Versailles treaty system still operate?
In Soviet times, our historians enthusiastically wrote about Ernst Telman - the leader of the German Communists, an implacable fighter against fascism. But apparently, these authors did not read the speech of Telman. I was not lazy and read with a pencil. No doubt, the programs of the Communists and the Nazis in internal politics radically diverged. But I could not find a difference between Hitler and Telman in relation to the Western powers and the Versailles Treaty.
Telman officially declared: “Soviet Germany will not pay any pfennig for reparations ... We Communists do not recognize any forcible joining of a people or a part of a people to another national state, we do not recognize any borders drawn without the consent of the real majority of the population ... We Communists are against territorial division and plunder of Germany, carried out on the basis of the Versailles Treaty forcibly imposed on us. "
As we see, the Second World War would have begun under the Reichskanzler Ernst Telman. The only question is when England and France would declare war on Soviet Germany. In 1934, 1938, or 3 September 1939? It is not difficult to guess which side Russia would be on and what the final of this war would be.
I am sure that the liberals will get it wrong. The author, they say, correctly shows that the Communists and the Nazis are inveterate instigators of war. Well, let's remove them from the political scene, and in 1933, the Hohenzollern monarchy will be restored in Germany and the Romanovs in Russia.
But, alas, none of the Hohenzollerns and the Romanovs would have ever recognized the Versailles world and its brainchild - the state-limitrofy. Fortunately, the “Coburg Emperor” Kirill Vladimirovich intermarried with the Hohenzollerns, and his wife Victoria met in the 20-ies with Hitler and supported the “movement” financially. Or maybe General Anton Denikin would have kissed with Pan Pilsudski?
The Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, the Bolsheviks killed two siblings, confiscated palaces in the Crimea and St. Petersburg. At the beginning of 1933, the grand duke slowly died in poverty on the Cote d'Azur. Before his death, he wrote in his memoirs: “Now I’m sure that my sons will see the day when not only the ridiculous independence of the Baltic republics will end, but Bessarabia and Poland will be recaptured by Poland, and cartographers will have to work hard to redraw the borders in the Far East.
Each has its own benefit
By 1938, Poland turned out to be the only state in the world that has territorial claims to all countries along the perimeter of the borders: to Danzig, bourgeois Lithuania, the USSR (Minsk, Kiev, Odessa), Czechoslovakia and Germany. Polish politicians frankly stated: “Since the First World War gave Poland independence and returned part of the original Polish lands, it is to be hoped that another big war will give Poland the rest of its territories.”
During the Sudeten crisis of 1938, Poland, together with Germany, demanded the partition of Czechoslovakia.
In Munich, the Western powers capitulated to Hitler, with the result that Germany received the Sudetenland, and Poland - the Cieszyn region of Czechoslovakia.
5 January 1939 th in Berchtesgaden, Hitler met with the Polish Foreign Minister Beck. On it, as before, the question of the annexation of Soviet Ukraine was considered. Alas, the Poles demanded a lot, but they themselves didn’t even want the German city of the free city of Danzig to be annexed to Germany.
In 1939, the conflict of Poland and Germany was for us not a struggle of good and evil, but something of a type of "arrow" of Solntsevo and Lyubertsy brotherhood. Both sides not only hated the USSR, but also dreamed of making the Russian people their slaves.
An interesting aspect: by August 1939, both Germany and the USSR were not ready for a major war. In both countries, the rearmament of the ground forces has just begun. And if the Wehrmacht could be rearmament in a year and a half, then the Red Army - not earlier than 1942. Again, in both countries, huge funds were spent on the construction of a large fleet. In 1939, in Germany and in the USSR, dozens of battleships and huge battlecruisers were laid down. All these superdreadnoughts could be put into operation not earlier than 1943-1944.
Thus, Hitler risked relying on a local war with Poland, and Stalin tried to delay the war at any cost. Therefore, the Soviet government went to negotiations with Britain and France, trying to stop Hitler by threatening to create a large coalition. However, neither England nor France were going to enter into a military alliance with Russia. Their negotiations were only a bluff in bargaining with Germany. The Poles did not want to talk to the Russians at all. Polish generals were eager to fight, planning to take Berlin for a month, for which a powerful central group was created.
By the way, Russia at the end of the summer of 1939 was already waging one war. It was in August that a grand battle unfolded on the Khalkhin-Gol River. By August 23, the Red Army had made significant strides, but they were pinpricks for the huge Japanese army. The fighting continued, the Kwantung army tightened reserves. The Japanese stopped the war only a few days after the signing of the Moscow Treaty. Only then did the samurai understand that Stalin’s hands were untied and tens of thousands could appear in the east tanks and airplanes.
22 March 1939 in Poland announced the start of the first partial and covert mobilization (four infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade) in order to provide cover for the mobilization and concentration of the main forces of the Polish army. I repeat for those who consider Poland completely unprepared for the September catastrophe: 22 March, that is, 20 (!) Days before Hitler signed the Weiss plan - an attack on Poland.
Three scenarios
The Soviet government, having no other way out, signed an agreement with Germany. I note that in the well-known secret protocols, the delimitation of zones of influence was carried out only in the territories that had belonged to the Germans and Russians for centuries and were cut off from the Versailles Treaty. Looking ahead, I will say that the boundaries established by the Moscow Treaty of 1939 of the year and the subsequent agreements between the USSR and Germany are still in effect. And all detractors of these contracts and do not dare to utter a word about restoring the boundaries of the 1938 model of the year.
In the first days of September 1939, the Soviet government faced the question: what to do in the current situation? Theoretically, three options were possible: the first was to start a war with Germany, the second was to occupy a part of the territory of Poland inhabited by Belarusians and Ukrainians, the third was to do nothing at all.
To fight simultaneously with Germany and Japan, at best, with the hostile neutrality of England and France, would be madness.
Suppose that Stalin would not have reacted in any way to the German invasion of Poland. By the way, this is exactly the forecast Beck and Co. gave to Polish intelligence. The rhetorical question invariably arises: why Stalin could not have imagined that the war would end in November-December 1939 by an agreement between Germany and the Western allies?
Who in Paris and London could have admitted that Poland would be smashed to pieces in two or three weeks, and France with Belgium, Holland and even with the British army in four to five weeks? And if such an expert had been found, he would have been immediately placed in a psychiatric hospital.
It is curious that Ribbentrop, already in the first days of August 1939, began to frighten the Soviet People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs with the possible creation of any third states on the territory of Poland if Soviet troops did not enter there. It was about the state of Ukrainian nationalists.
In the summer of 1939, between the leadership of the Wehrmacht and the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Melnik underwent intensive negotiations on the creation of the OUN army, and the Germans gave advances on the creation of the Ukrainian state. In August, a Ukrainian legion was formed in Slovakia under the command of Colonel Sushko in Slovakia, consisting of about 1939 people.
The German command in early September, the beginning of the redeployment of legions from Slovakia in the direction of Lviv, however, the introduction of the USSR troops in Poland and the occupation of Lvov by Soviet troops forced the Wehrmacht to transfer legionnaires to the area of the city of Sanok.
Regardless of the legion in the deep rear of the Poles, units of the OUN began to operate - about 7700 people, who in two weeks captured more than 3,6 thousands of Polish soldiers.
The rhetorical question: was Stalin interested in the creation of a state by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus? (This part of Belarus was considered by the UPA to be its own.) From September 1939 to June 1941, this state could well form a million-strong army and equip it with modern German equipment (of course, with the blessing of the Fuhrer). We must not lose the moral factor. It’s one thing when the Kiev Special and Odessa Military District troops are fighting the Wehrmacht, and it’s another with the professional Ukrainian army.
How would events develop in this variant in the summer-autumn 1941 of the year?
Let's not forget that in the territories annexed to the USSR in 1939 – 1940, the Germans lost more soldiers and equipment in 1941, than from September 1939 to June 1941 throughout Europe. And the fighting in these territories detained the Wehrmacht on the way to Moscow for at least two months.
Over the past quarter of a century, negative materials about the Moscow Treaty appeared in the domestic and foreign media much more than about any other issue. history of humanity. He even came up with a new name: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This was done contrary to the world tradition to name the treaties at the place of their signing: Tilsit Peace, Nishtadt Peace, Munich Treaty (1938), etc. Although the same Brest Peace 1918, is called “the most fabled one”, no one is going to rename it yet.
We look at the 1939 treaty of the year through the prism of the 1941 – 1945 war. But then no one could even imagine the death of 30 by millions of Soviet citizens and the massacres of people in the German death camps. By this time, in the Polish concentration camps since 1919, several times more people died than in Hitler's. And the French and the British in the colonial wars also many times more killed civilians in Asia and Africa. I keep mum about the gulag.
Prophecies of politicians
We all have forgotten that the beginning of the Second World War was predicted by dozens of the most far-sighted politicians, including Lenin, in April 1919, immediately after the conclusion of the Versailles Peace.
In the Russian and German empires, by the end of 1919, the rulers guilty of starting a war were executed or fled the country. People came to power who in the fall of 1914 were opposing the war. So why would the Entente not accept the peace plan "without annexations and indemnities" put forward by Lenin in 1917? Alas, the rulers of England, France and the United States felt like the unlimited lords of the world and committed savage reprisals against Germany and Russia. Moreover, if Russia was dealt with “according to the rules”, as with some African country, then a very representative Versailles Conference was convened to enslave and dismember Germany.
About a third of the territory was taken away from Russia and Germany, almost the entire military fleet of both countries was sunk by the allies, and the entire trade fleet was assigned. Germany Versailles Treaty allowed to have 100-thousandth army, or rather the police force.
England and France decided to create a sanitary cordon against Soviet Russia and Germany — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia — on the torn away Russian and German territories. I note that modern Poland should not be confused with the 30-s of Poland under the dictatorship of Marshal Pilsudski. Now Poland is a national state in which the vast majority of citizens are Poles. But this was achieved through the destruction or deportation of many millions of Germans, Jews, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Well, the rest forcibly polonizirovat.
And in the 1922 year in the Republic of Poland, ethnic Poles made up about 60 percent of the population. Moreover, Slavic ethnic groups — Lemki, Kashubians, Pomeranians, and others who had more linguistic and cultural differences with the Poles than the Russians with the Ukrainians — were forcibly recorded in the Poles.
In Czechoslovakia, there were 14 million from the 6,6 million population of the Czechs, Germans - 3,5 million, Slovaks - 3 million, Hungarians, Romanians, Ruthenians, Poles and others - 400 thousand people. Its authorities made the Czechs (45 percent of the population) the titular nation. The rest of the nation did not want to live in this artificial state, which was held on French bayonets before the 1938 year and on the Soviet ones - until the 1991 year.
Immediately after the Versailles Conference, the French Marshal Foch said: “Versailles is not a peace, but a truce for 20 years”. And at the conference itself, British Prime Minister Lloyd George told the French Prime Minister Clemenceau, who wanted to include the lands inhabited by the Germans in Poland: “Do not create a new Alsace-Lorraine.”
Thus, the French Marshal and the British Prime Minister accurately predicted the time (1939 year) and the cause (Poland) of the outbreak of World War II.
Other scenarios
Exactly five years after the end of World War I, 9 November 1923, Hitler, who was marching at the head of the Nazi column in Munich, came under fire from the police. Max Scheibner-Richter, a former officer of the royal army, covered the Fuhrer with his body. Hitler was under the corpse of Richter, and then took refuge in the apartment of General Vasily Biskupskogo. Well, the Russian mark on the rise of Nazism is a special topic, and for a second we imagine that Richter would be half a meter to the right or left of Adolf and the Fuhrer would get a police bullet. So, in this case, the Second World War would not have taken place, and in Europe would the Versailles treaty system still operate?
In Soviet times, our historians enthusiastically wrote about Ernst Telman - the leader of the German Communists, an implacable fighter against fascism. But apparently, these authors did not read the speech of Telman. I was not lazy and read with a pencil. No doubt, the programs of the Communists and the Nazis in internal politics radically diverged. But I could not find a difference between Hitler and Telman in relation to the Western powers and the Versailles Treaty.Telman officially declared: “Soviet Germany will not pay any pfennig for reparations ... We Communists do not recognize any forcible joining of a people or a part of a people to another national state, we do not recognize any borders drawn without the consent of the real majority of the population ... We Communists are against territorial division and plunder of Germany, carried out on the basis of the Versailles Treaty forcibly imposed on us. "
As we see, the Second World War would have begun under the Reichskanzler Ernst Telman. The only question is when England and France would declare war on Soviet Germany. In 1934, 1938, or 3 September 1939? It is not difficult to guess which side Russia would be on and what the final of this war would be.
I am sure that the liberals will get it wrong. The author, they say, correctly shows that the Communists and the Nazis are inveterate instigators of war. Well, let's remove them from the political scene, and in 1933, the Hohenzollern monarchy will be restored in Germany and the Romanovs in Russia.
But, alas, none of the Hohenzollerns and the Romanovs would have ever recognized the Versailles world and its brainchild - the state-limitrofy. Fortunately, the “Coburg Emperor” Kirill Vladimirovich intermarried with the Hohenzollerns, and his wife Victoria met in the 20-ies with Hitler and supported the “movement” financially. Or maybe General Anton Denikin would have kissed with Pan Pilsudski?
The Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, the Bolsheviks killed two siblings, confiscated palaces in the Crimea and St. Petersburg. At the beginning of 1933, the grand duke slowly died in poverty on the Cote d'Azur. Before his death, he wrote in his memoirs: “Now I’m sure that my sons will see the day when not only the ridiculous independence of the Baltic republics will end, but Bessarabia and Poland will be recaptured by Poland, and cartographers will have to work hard to redraw the borders in the Far East.
Each has its own benefit
By 1938, Poland turned out to be the only state in the world that has territorial claims to all countries along the perimeter of the borders: to Danzig, bourgeois Lithuania, the USSR (Minsk, Kiev, Odessa), Czechoslovakia and Germany. Polish politicians frankly stated: “Since the First World War gave Poland independence and returned part of the original Polish lands, it is to be hoped that another big war will give Poland the rest of its territories.”
During the Sudeten crisis of 1938, Poland, together with Germany, demanded the partition of Czechoslovakia.
In Munich, the Western powers capitulated to Hitler, with the result that Germany received the Sudetenland, and Poland - the Cieszyn region of Czechoslovakia.
5 January 1939 th in Berchtesgaden, Hitler met with the Polish Foreign Minister Beck. On it, as before, the question of the annexation of Soviet Ukraine was considered. Alas, the Poles demanded a lot, but they themselves didn’t even want the German city of the free city of Danzig to be annexed to Germany.
In 1939, the conflict of Poland and Germany was for us not a struggle of good and evil, but something of a type of "arrow" of Solntsevo and Lyubertsy brotherhood. Both sides not only hated the USSR, but also dreamed of making the Russian people their slaves.
An interesting aspect: by August 1939, both Germany and the USSR were not ready for a major war. In both countries, the rearmament of the ground forces has just begun. And if the Wehrmacht could be rearmament in a year and a half, then the Red Army - not earlier than 1942. Again, in both countries, huge funds were spent on the construction of a large fleet. In 1939, in Germany and in the USSR, dozens of battleships and huge battlecruisers were laid down. All these superdreadnoughts could be put into operation not earlier than 1943-1944.
Thus, Hitler risked relying on a local war with Poland, and Stalin tried to delay the war at any cost. Therefore, the Soviet government went to negotiations with Britain and France, trying to stop Hitler by threatening to create a large coalition. However, neither England nor France were going to enter into a military alliance with Russia. Their negotiations were only a bluff in bargaining with Germany. The Poles did not want to talk to the Russians at all. Polish generals were eager to fight, planning to take Berlin for a month, for which a powerful central group was created.
By the way, Russia at the end of the summer of 1939 was already waging one war. It was in August that a grand battle unfolded on the Khalkhin-Gol River. By August 23, the Red Army had made significant strides, but they were pinpricks for the huge Japanese army. The fighting continued, the Kwantung army tightened reserves. The Japanese stopped the war only a few days after the signing of the Moscow Treaty. Only then did the samurai understand that Stalin’s hands were untied and tens of thousands could appear in the east tanks and airplanes.
22 March 1939 in Poland announced the start of the first partial and covert mobilization (four infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade) in order to provide cover for the mobilization and concentration of the main forces of the Polish army. I repeat for those who consider Poland completely unprepared for the September catastrophe: 22 March, that is, 20 (!) Days before Hitler signed the Weiss plan - an attack on Poland.
Three scenarios
The Soviet government, having no other way out, signed an agreement with Germany. I note that in the well-known secret protocols, the delimitation of zones of influence was carried out only in the territories that had belonged to the Germans and Russians for centuries and were cut off from the Versailles Treaty. Looking ahead, I will say that the boundaries established by the Moscow Treaty of 1939 of the year and the subsequent agreements between the USSR and Germany are still in effect. And all detractors of these contracts and do not dare to utter a word about restoring the boundaries of the 1938 model of the year.
In the first days of September 1939, the Soviet government faced the question: what to do in the current situation? Theoretically, three options were possible: the first was to start a war with Germany, the second was to occupy a part of the territory of Poland inhabited by Belarusians and Ukrainians, the third was to do nothing at all.
To fight simultaneously with Germany and Japan, at best, with the hostile neutrality of England and France, would be madness.
Suppose that Stalin would not have reacted in any way to the German invasion of Poland. By the way, this is exactly the forecast Beck and Co. gave to Polish intelligence. The rhetorical question invariably arises: why Stalin could not have imagined that the war would end in November-December 1939 by an agreement between Germany and the Western allies?
Who in Paris and London could have admitted that Poland would be smashed to pieces in two or three weeks, and France with Belgium, Holland and even with the British army in four to five weeks? And if such an expert had been found, he would have been immediately placed in a psychiatric hospital.
It is curious that Ribbentrop, already in the first days of August 1939, began to frighten the Soviet People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs with the possible creation of any third states on the territory of Poland if Soviet troops did not enter there. It was about the state of Ukrainian nationalists.
In the summer of 1939, between the leadership of the Wehrmacht and the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Melnik underwent intensive negotiations on the creation of the OUN army, and the Germans gave advances on the creation of the Ukrainian state. In August, a Ukrainian legion was formed in Slovakia under the command of Colonel Sushko in Slovakia, consisting of about 1939 people.
The German command in early September, the beginning of the redeployment of legions from Slovakia in the direction of Lviv, however, the introduction of the USSR troops in Poland and the occupation of Lvov by Soviet troops forced the Wehrmacht to transfer legionnaires to the area of the city of Sanok.
Regardless of the legion in the deep rear of the Poles, units of the OUN began to operate - about 7700 people, who in two weeks captured more than 3,6 thousands of Polish soldiers.
The rhetorical question: was Stalin interested in the creation of a state by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus? (This part of Belarus was considered by the UPA to be its own.) From September 1939 to June 1941, this state could well form a million-strong army and equip it with modern German equipment (of course, with the blessing of the Fuhrer). We must not lose the moral factor. It’s one thing when the Kiev Special and Odessa Military District troops are fighting the Wehrmacht, and it’s another with the professional Ukrainian army.
How would events develop in this variant in the summer-autumn 1941 of the year?
Let's not forget that in the territories annexed to the USSR in 1939 – 1940, the Germans lost more soldiers and equipment in 1941, than from September 1939 to June 1941 throughout Europe. And the fighting in these territories detained the Wehrmacht on the way to Moscow for at least two months.
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