Needless to say, this approach was not to the liking of the Germans, who suggested instead a joint communiquё justifying military action in Poland on the grounds that order needed to be restored on the former Polish territory.100 This proposal was rejected; Stalin feared such close identification with Hitler.101 A convenient formula was soon found. Without mentioning Germany, it spoke nebulously of third parties that might attempt to take advantage of the chaos in Poland. Molotov asked the Nazis to understand that there was no other way of justifying the Soviet intervention to the masses.102
On September 17 the Red Army crossed the Polish border. It was a treacherous stab in the back of the Polish army, which kept up its desperate resistance for another two weeks.
Pressed by Germany, Stalin was finally forced to agree to a joint communique. The original draft proposed by the Germans was far too candid in Stalin's opinion. Eventually, the Soviet draft was accepted, but even that was fairly revealing. The presence of German and Soviet troops in Poland, it said, was not in contradiction to the interests of the two states, as defined in the Soviet—German pact.103 A protocol signed in Moscow on September 20, 1939, by representatives of the Soviet and German armed forces (with Voroshilov, the people's commissar of war, and Shaposhnikov, chief of the general staff, signing for the Soviet side) contained a paragraph on the willingness of the Soviet command to place the necessary troops at the Germans' disposal in order to destroy Polish military units or "bands" if it turned out that the German command did not have sufficient forces at hand. To the Soviet population and the rest of the world, the Soviet intervention was presented as a liberating crusade. The full truth about the facts and events connected with the Stalin—Hitler pact have been carefully hidden from the Soviet people.
The Soviet—German aggression against Poland culminated in a joint parade of Soviet and German troops at Brest-Litovsk.104 The Soviet press, as was to be expected, did not say a word about it.
On September 27 Ribbentrop made a second visit to Moscow. The next day a Friendship and Border treaty was signed. It established the border between the German and Soviet spheres of influence, a border passing through Polish territory. At the same time another confidential protocol was signed. It authorized the departure of German nationals from the territories occupied by the Soviets, as well as of Ukrainians and Byelorussians from the German-occupied territories. A special additional secret protocol provided that Lithuania would be in the Soviet sphere, while the province of Lublin and part of Warsaw Province would be in the German sphere.
In another secret agreement Germany and the Soviet Union stated that neither would allow, on its territory, "Polish agitation" directed against the other party, that they would nip all such activities in the bud and would keep one another informed, so that the necessary measures could be taken. Thus Nazi Germany and the socialist Soviet Union joined hands against the Polish Resistance.105 In a joint statement on the signing of the friendship pact, the German and Soviet governments announced that the pact had resolved all problems arising from the collapse of the Polish state and had laid the basis for a lasting peace in Eastern Europe. They likewise stated their desire for an end to the war between Germany, England, and France. If Britain and France refused to stop the war, Germany and the USSR would engage in mutual consultations in regard to necessary measures. "It is not only absurd, it is criminal," Molotov said, "to wage a war to 'smash Hitlerism,' under the false slogan of a war for democracy."106 Eighteen months later, Stalin would speak of the need to smash Hitlerism and would raise high the banner of the defense of democracy.
The partitioning of Poland between Germany and the USSR, and the secret agreements between the two powers, radically changed the situation in Europe. For the Soviet government it was very important to show that the Red Army had taken as much a part as the Wehrmacht in the war against Poland. Germany had to remember that the USSR provided military as well as political help. At the session of the Supreme Soviet on October 31, Molotov bragged about the military partnership with Germany: "It proved enough for Poland to be dealt one swift blow, first by the German army and then by the Red Army, to wipe out all remains of this misshapen offspring of the Versailles treaty" (emphasis added).107
Answering Ribbentrop's congratulations on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, Stalin made a special point: "I thank you, Herr Minister. The friendship of the peoples of Germany and the Soviet Union forged in blood has every reason to be lasting and solid" (emphasis added).108
In Moscow people joked cynically: the friendship was forged in blood all right, Polish blood.
The Soviet leadership did its best to present the backstabbing of Poland by the Red Army as an attempt to save the Ukrainian and Byelorussian populations from the sorry situation they had been brought to by the senseless policies of the old Polish government. It is characteristic of the attitude of the Soviet and German governments that no document of the period refers to the Polish population: it was treated as though it had never existed. Three million Poles lived in the areas annexed by the Soviet Union. Special NKVD troops were rushed into eastern Poland, under the leadership of General Ivan Serov, with the mission of finding, arresting, and deporting "socially alien elements." These troops were accompanied by party functionaries whose role was to prepare the 12 million inhabitants of eastern Poland to "freely choose" fusion with the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet socialist republics.
The secret agreement provided for Soviet occupation of the Baltic states. In the fall of 1939 the governments of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, under heavy Soviet pressure, signed mutual assistance pacts with the USSR. Then, in 1940, under the false pretext of anti-Soviet activities on their territories, Soviet troops were brought in. Again, the populations of these countries were organized to "freely choose" absorption into the Soviet Union, on the basis of a schedule carefully worked out in Moscow. From June 17 to June 21, 1940, in Lithuania and Latvia, "people's governments" were formed, then elections to popular assemblies held. On July 14 and 15 similar elections were held to the State Council in Estonia. On July 21, 1940, Soviet power was established simultaneously in all three countries.109 Two weeks later the Supreme Soviet admitted the three Baltic republics to membership in the USSR. The new Soviet republics were immediately flooded with NKVD troops, and preparations for mass deportations to Siberia of suspicious persons or elements hostile to Soviet power soon followed. General Serov was in charge of all these operations.
Bessarabia had been occupied by Romanian troops and annexed to Romania in 1918. The Soviet government had never recognized this action.
In July 1940, assured of support by Nazi Germany, the USSR demanded the immediate return of Bessarabia, and the Romanian government was forced to comply. In August Bessarabia merged with the autonomous republic of Moldavia to form the Moldavian SSR.
Whereas the Soviet Union might have had some arguable legal right to Bessarabia, the occupation of northern Bukovina, which had been part of the old Austro-Hungarian empire, was a simple annexation. It was not even provided for in the secret Soviet—German agreements of 1939. Molotov, in reply to the question of the German ambassador in Moscow, explained that Bukovina was "the last missing component of a reunified Ukraine."110
Hitler had used similar arguments to justify the occupation of Austria, the Sudetenland, Klaipeda (Memel), and so on. He was simply including in the Reich all areas with German-speaking populations. Stalin sympathized with this approach.