The Soviet government also authorized German naval vessels to seek refuge in the port of Murmansk. When war began in September 1939, the Soviets held British and other Allied naval vessels in Murmansk, to allow German ships to travel safely back to their bases in Germany. Later, when the battleship Bremen tried to break the British blockade and return to Germany, the Soviet authorities held all British and Allied ships at Murmansk until the Bremen had reached home safely.139
Stalin's government likewise made its icebreakers available to help German commerce raiders, camouflaged as merchant ships, pass through the northern Arctic route to the Pacific. On August 12, 1940, the raider Schiff- 45 was helped through the Bering Strait by a Soviet icebreaker and reached the Pacific on September 5.140 Together with another German raider, Schiff- 45 was responsible for sinking a number of Allied vessels with a total tonnage of 64,000.
The Germans, for their part, limited the movement of their ships in the Baltic and Black seas during the Soviet—Finnish war. Abusing its formal neutrality, the USSR sent its ships out to obtain weather information for the Germans. This was used by the Luftwaffe in the bombing of British cities.
In its desire to appease Hitler, the Soviet government went to the extent of handing over to the German authorities approximately 800 anti-Nazi German and Austrian activists, including former Comintern functionaries who had been held in Soviet prison camps. The formal pretext for this action was the clause in the Stalin—Hitler pact providing for the liberation of German and Austrian citizens detained in the Soviet Union on charges of "espionage for Germany." They were handed over to the Nazis. It is easy to imagine the joy of the Gestapo at the delivery of, among others, Franz Korichoner, founder of the Austrian Communist party. There was nothing unusual about all this. The core of the Comintern had been eliminated in the USSR during the Great Terror of the 1930s. The Gestapo took care to eliminate the rest. "/ deshevo i milo (Cheap and sweet)," as Stalin used to say.
The very organization of the Comintern had been placed at the disposal of the short-term foreign policy interest of the Soviet state. At the beginning of the war many Western Communist parties, following Moscow's orders, declared the democratic states (Britain and France) to be the aggressors.
As Germany occupied Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and other countries, the Soviet government closed the Moscow embassies of each victim of aggression and denied support to the populations of those countries in their resistance against the German occupation. This situation lasted until the Soviet Union itself became the victim of German attack.
Shortly after the capitulation of France, Germany began a propaganda offensive, with Soviet support, urging Britain to make peace.141 At the same time the German air force began its terroristic bombing raids on British cities. But the British refused to surrender. Hitler was in a hurry. He wanted to establish German hegemony over all of Europe as quickly as possible, and he became convinced that Britain would not give in as long as the Soviet Union existed. In July 1940 Hitler and the German high command began a discussion of the problems connected with waging war against the Soviet Union.142 On July 31 the German General Staff received orders to draw up a plan for such a war. This was to become Plan Bar- barossa.143
Hitler then began his war preparations on the diplomatic level. First he needed to consolidate the forces of the totalitarian states (Germany, Italy, and Japan), who wished to divide the world among themselves. Hence the Tripartite Pact of September 27, 1940, under which Germany was assigned the "Euro-African space," Italy the "Mediterranean area," and Japan "the East Asia space." Soon after, Germany sent a military mission nearly the size of a division to Romania. The mission's real task was to prepare the Romanian army for the attack on the Soviet Union. Also in September, Germany sent troops to Finland, which it considered a prospective ally.
The German military-industrial base was strengthened. At the end of 1940 Germany's "Lebensrauni" consisted of 4 million square kilometers, with a population of 333 million. From the summer of 1940 on, the Germans began to make systematic use of the economies of the occupied or satellite countries for the war effort. Foreign workers were brought in as labor for German industry, freeing a significant number of Germans for military service. Industrial production soon experienced major growth.
As the German Reich grew larger and stronger, conflicts with the Soviet Union became more and more frequent. The Reich no longer needed Soviet assistance to the same degree as it had in the first months of war.
For its part, the Soviet government sought to use the period of peaceful relations with Germany to increase its own territory and strengthen its position, wherever possible. On April 9, 1940, Molotov told Schulenburg that the Soviet Union was interested in the continued neutrality of Sweden. Germany was forced to take this into account.
Lithuania also became a source of friction between the Soviet Union and Germany. Under the secret protocol of 1939, the Lithuanian region of Mariampol was to remain in the German sphere of influence, and the Soviet Union had agreed to stay out of the area. Yet on August 3, 1940, Soviet troops occupied this territory.
The dispute over Lithuania was resolved later, on January 10, 1941, when the two powers signed another secret agreement, under which the Soviet Union agreed to pay Germany $7.5 million, one-eighth of which would be paid immediately in the form of nonferrous metals, the remainder to be paid in gold.144
Earlier in 1940, during the German offensive in Norway, the USSR had slowed down its deliveries of strategic goods, fearing that the German move into Scandinavia might have a bearing on the Baltic states within the Soviet sphere of influence. Once it was convinced that the German offensive would be limited to Norway, deliveries were resumed. But the incident left its mark on relations between the two powers, making Germany particularly sensitive to its dependence on Soviet supplies.
In August and September 1940 new frictions developed in the wake of the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Germany gave Romania a unilateral guarantee and, acting as a mediator, awarded Transylvania to Hungary. For the Soviet Union, this was a violation of article 3 of the nonaggression pact, which called for discussions between the two powers on problems affecting their common interests. Economic negotiations between the two states likewise produced friction. In addition, the Soviet Union objected to the fact that it had not been notified of the Tripartite Pact until the eve of its being signed.
In October 1940 Germany explained to the Soviet Union that it was sending its military mission to Romania at Romania's request and supposedly, to protect Germany's interest in Romania's oil.145 Serious tensions between the Soviet Union and Germany were also developing over Bulgaria and the rest of the Balkans.
It was under these circumstances in the fall of 1940 that the question arose as to whether it was possible and desirable to continue collaboration, or whether Soviet and German interests had become irreconcilable. On October 13, Ribbentrop sent Stalin a letter that began with an analysis of the relations between the two countries and ended with an invitation to the USSR to join the Tripartite Pact and thus share in the division of the world into spheres of influence. Ribbentrop invited Molotov to Berlin to discuss these questions and said that he was ready to come to Moscow with representatives of Japan and Italy to pursue this proposal, which he emphasized "would be practically beneficial to all of us."146