THE ROAD TO WAR

SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY  New Focus  Growing Nazi threat  Turn to West  The “Popular Front” Maxim Litvinov, Foreign Commissar, “Bolshevism unmasked”  Main goal = restrain Nazis but avoid war

THE ROAD TO WAR SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY  Appeasement  Britain & France make concessions to Hitler  Munich Agreement  Soviet isolation The Anschluss: Nazi troops enter Austria, March 1938 “What, no seat for me?” Germans take Sudetenland, 1938

THE ROAD TO WAR SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY  Problems in the Far East  Japanese aggression in China (Manchukuo)  Fighting on Mongolian border  Threat of 2-front war

THE ROAD TO WAR SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY  THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT  Litvinov replaced by Molotov  Germans & Soviets sign Non- Aggression Pact, August 1939 German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop & Molotov sign pact  Also contains Secret Protocol including territorial divisions Vyacheslav Molotov

THE ROAD TO WAR SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY  THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT  Shocked much of world  Caused loss of support for Soviets

THE ROAD TO WAR SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY  THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT  Economic collaboration  Germans did not follow through with obligations Soviet supplies getting ready for shipment to Germany

THE ROAD TO WAR SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY  THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT  Soviet benefits territory in Poland (western Belorussia & Ukraine Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)

THE ROAD TO WAR SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY  THE WINTER WAR,  Finns resist Soviet demands  inflict heavy damage & casualties on Soviets  convinced Germans of Soviet military weakness