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“War is another form of Diplomacy” is a paraphrase of the activities undertaken by sovereign states striving to develop a temporary balance in their relationships. In rereading one of my favorite books, The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact 1939-1941, I am once again mesmerized and mystified by the intricate diplomatic maneuvers undertaken by super antagonistic national states striving to reach some temporary accord while seeking to protect their national interest. 

 

I thought it might be fun, as well as exasperating to take excerpts from this book in order to highlight the series of diplomatic steps and missteps involved in the journey leading to the Soviet-German non-aggression pact. 

 

First of all, the major diplomatic players—Stalin, Hitler, Molotov, and Chamberlain—needed to balance their own complicated motivations and psyches. Moreover, democratic politicians and dictators must accommodate their competing constituencies. Let me give you just a few examples. During June 1939, in a personal conversation with Princess Olga who was indirectly related to George VI of England, Hitler admitted he had a dual personality: his true character was that of an artist and architect, but fate decreed that he should also be a politician, a military man, and the builder of a new Germany. As a man of simple tastes, he would prefer to live in a small house with no luxury, but was forced to live in a large palace surrounded by a certain amount of pomp and ceremony. Hitler failed to mention he was a demonic monster!  But perhaps the most important part of Hitler’s conversations with Princess Olga was that he told her he could not understand why he was so misunderstood in England. Later that week, he told his generals that he did not seek war in the West, but was really concerned only with gaining Lebensraum in the east. Within days, Hitler prioritized normalization of relations with the Soviet Union.

 

Stalin given his total authoritarian control over the Soviet state lived very spartanly, frequently sleeping on a cot. Stalin, sometimes referred to as Uncle Joe, committed between twenty-five and fifty million, murders of primarily innocent civilians. 

This ultimate political realist who gauged carefully the nuances of political shifts from Japan to England, sabotaged his own position by annihilating his army officer corp. leaving his country vulnerable to the German onslaught of 1941. 

 

Chamberlain in a speech in the House of Commons in 1939 seeking to placate the growing opposition led by Churchill, Eden and Lloyd George publicly stated that he had every hope to reach an alliance with the Soviets. Privately, he did not state his personal misgivings about an alliance with such a wayward state, and confided in his diaries that he was trying to conciliate Hitler—‘the positive side of our policy.’ 

 

Further more, the other players anxious to disrupt conciliatory steps dissected every step taken by the major parties. 

 

Interestingly enough the first major step in thawing the tension between Moscow and Berlin took place between a relatively minor Soviet diplomat, Astakhov and the Bulgarian minister in Berlin. In the course of a two-hour rambling conversation that initially bewildered the Bulgarian, Astakhov, the Soviet diplomat indicted that the Soviet Union preferred a non-aggression pact between Germany and Russia rather than concluding a treaty with England. Hitler instead of initially jumping at the chance of eliminating the threat of a two front war remained unmoved. Hitler feared that the Soviets merely wished to force conciliations from the French and British. That is, the Soviets were negotiating an all-embracing military pact with the two Western countries calling for mutual military support in case of war. 

 

Let me give other subtle examples of the nuances that caused tension between the West and the Soviet Union. In negotiating with the Soviet Union, England sent an able by minor foreign diplomat, William Strand on June 12,1941 to help the ailing William Seeds to conduct negotiations with Molotov. The Russians were mortified that the most senior British diplomat, Lord Halifax, was not sent. They were acutely aware of the presence of Halifax and Chamberlain at Munich. Thus, Stalin cynically concluded that England merely was procrastinating and was engaged in duplicitous and ultimately disastrous policies of isolating the Soviet Union. Hitler keeping careful watch on the Anglo-Soviet negotiations waited until strains developed before launching a far-reaching proposal to Stalin.

 

On June 29, 1939 while the Soviets were in the midst of negotiating with the Western allies, one of Stalin’s closest associates, Andrei Zhdanov, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet Foreign Affairs Committee, published an article in Pravda, under the headline ‘British and French Governments Do Not Want a Treaty on the Basis of Equality with the Soviet Union. 

 

In essence, the book is filled with countless examples of the discrete messages that countries discharge to provide nuances of their state of satisfaction. In the June 1939 meetings held in Molotov’s office, Molotov sat at his desk on a raised dais while the British and French officials sat below him on chairs to his left. In late August 1939 when the German-Soviet negotiations were reaching their climatic, and ultimately devastating conclusions, the representatives sat in neutral positions.