Germany Divides the USSR from Britain and France, 1939

This chapter describes Germany's successful attempt to stop the USSR from allying with Britain and France in 1939. Adolf Hitler's policy was informed by two beliefs about Soviet strategic weight. The first was that Soviet neutrality was necessary for victory in a war against Poland that included British and French intervention. Soviet neutrality would diminish the effects of the allied strategy of economic blockade and punishment. The second was that the shock of Moscow's neutralization would likely compel Britain and France to abandon their commitments to Poland and thus allow Germany to attack it isolated. As German leaders foresaw, despite the apparent long odds, their policy to accommodate the Soviet Union might work because they could extend strategic benefits to Moscow that the Allies' alliance plans could not. Other conditions, captured in the theory, strongly favored success. First, Germany's policy tried to induce a low degree of alignment change. The Soviet Union was uncommitted; the German goal was to solidify this in a formal arrangement. Second, Germany faced low alliance constraints at the time. Its closest (and only formal) military ally, Italy, was weak relative to Germany and had little direct influence or interests at stake in the elements of the bargain, and it favored compromise with USSR for the same general reasons Germany did.