At nine o'clock on the morning of August 24, 1939, the American ambassador in Moscow, Laurence Steinhardt, cabled Washington. The treaty had been signed early that morning in the Kremlin, by Molotov and Ribbentrop, with Stalin present. It had seven articles, and he summarized them one by one.

Three hours later he sent another cable. He had been told, in strict confidence, that the two governments had also reached a full "understanding" the night before on territorial questions in Eastern Europe. Estonia, Latvia, eastern Poland and Bessarabia were recognized as spheres of Soviet vital interest.

That day the Soviet press printed the treaty. The other sheet of paper was not printed. The Soviet state would take fifty years to admit that it had ever existed.

I. A Sheet Without a Letterhead

It had begun four days earlier.

On the afternoon of August 20, Ribbentrop wired Ambassador Schulenburg in Moscow with a message from Hitler to Stalin. Germany accepted the draft nonaggression pact Molotov had handed over. The supplementary protocol the Soviet government wanted could, Hitler was convinced, be cleared up very quickly if a responsible German statesman came to Moscow to negotiate in person.

There was another sentence: the tension between Germany and Poland had become intolerable, and a crisis might arise any day.

So Hitler proposed again that Stalin receive his Foreign Minister on Tuesday, August 22, or at the latest on Wednesday, August 23. The Foreign Minister would have full powers to sign the pact and the protocol, but in view of the international situation he could not stay in Moscow longer than a day or two.

The telegram ended with an instruction to the ambassador: deliver the message to Molotov in writing, on a sheet of paper without letterhead.

II. Three O'Clock to Five

At three in the afternoon on August 21, Schulenburg handed the message and a translation to Molotov. Molotov read it through, he reported, and was evidently deeply impressed. He would forward it and give an answer as soon as there was a decision. Schulenburg asked for an answer that day under any circumstances.

At five, Molotov saw him again and handed over Stalin's reply.

It was short. Stalin thanked Hitler for the letter and hoped the pact would mark a decided turn for the better in political relations between the two countries. The Soviet government, he wrote, agreed to Herr von Ribbentrop's arriving in Moscow on August 23.

Molotov added a request. By the next morning at the latest, a short communiqué should be published in Moscow announcing the intended pact and the "pending" arrival of the German Foreign Minister, and Berlin should agree by midnight. Schulenburg advised saying yes: by publishing, the Soviet government would be putting itself on record.

III. Worry in Tokyo

Around midnight that night, State Secretary Weizsäcker at the German Foreign Office received the Japanese ambassador, Hiroshi Oshima, for about an hour.

Oshima raised the earlier German-Japanese anti-Comintern talks. Weizsäcker's memorandum recorded his two worries.

First, if Russia were relieved of anxiety in Europe, she would strengthen her East Asian front and put new life into the Chinese war.

Second, the jurists in Tokyo, and there were a great many of them, would debate whether Germany's present course squared with certain earlier German-Japanese conversations.

Oshima said there was no use interfering with accomplished facts. But he expected a shock in Japan and wanted to cable home that night to soften it.

One of the first anxieties raised by a pact signed in Europe pointed toward the war in China.

IV. The One O'Clock Plane

At midday on August 23, Ribbentrop's plane landed on time. Steinhardt wrote at four that afternoon that he had arrived promptly at one, had been met at the airport by Deputy Commissar Potemkin, the commander of the Moscow garrison and other officials, and was to see Molotov at three.

The British ambassador, Sir William Seeds, was waiting too.

At seven that evening in London, the American ambassador Joseph Kennedy saw Foreign Secretary Halifax, who passed on Seeds's report. Seeds had asked Molotov whether the new pact would contain the clause usual in Soviet nonaggression pacts, dissolving the pact if one party committed aggression against another country. Molotov seemed very embarrassed and said only, "We will have to wait and see what happens later on."

Then Molotov turned on Britain and France. Their military missions had come to Moscow with nothing concrete to offer. Again and again the Soviet side had asked whether Soviet troops could pass through Polish and Romanian territory, and again and again it had been put off. The Soviet government had concluded that it was being played with, and had accepted Germany's proposals.

Seeds asked whether this meant Russia would stand by and let Poland be overrun. Molotov said only that the British must wait and see how things worked out; perhaps after a week or so they would see.

Halifax told Kennedy: "My reason shows me no way out but war, but my instincts still give me hope."

V. Five Past Eight

At 8:05 that evening, Ribbentrop sent an urgent wire from Moscow asking that the Führer be told at once: the first conference with Stalin and Molotov, three hours long, had just ended.

It had gone well. But the decisive point for the final result was a Russian demand that Germany recognize the ports of Libau and Windau as within the Soviet sphere of influence.

The two ports lie on the Baltic coast of Latvia. Today they are Liepāja and Ventspils.

Ribbentrop asked for confirmation before eight o'clock German time that the Führer agreed. A secret protocol delimiting the two spheres of influence in the whole eastern area was contemplated, he added, and he had declared himself ready in principle.

Berlin's reply was one line: "Answer is Yes. Agreed." It went by telephone and reached Moscow at eleven that night.

Which sphere two ports of another country belonged to was settled in a telephone call.

VI. The Sheet the Papers Did Not Print

The signing came after midnight. The documents were still dated August 23.

The public treaty had seven articles. Article II said that if either party became the object of belligerent action by a third power, the other would in no manner support that third power. The clause Seeds had asked about, ending the pact if one side attacked someone else, was not there. The treaty entered into force on signature, without waiting for ratification.

The other sheet, the Secret Additional Protocol, had three points.

First: in the event of a territorial and political rearrangement in the Baltic States, namely Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the northern boundary of Lithuania would divide the German and Soviet spheres. Both sides recognized Lithuania's interest in the Vilna area.

Second: in the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state, the spheres would be bounded approximately by the rivers Narew, Vistula and San. Whether an independent Polish state should be kept at all, and how it should be bounded, could be settled only "in the course of further political developments," by friendly agreement.

Third: in Southeastern Europe, the Soviet side called attention to its interest in Bessarabia. Germany declared its complete political disinterestedness in those areas.

The last line: this protocol shall be treated by both parties as strictly secret.

The same two men signed it: Ribbentrop and Molotov.

VII. Toasts

There was other talk that night. The next day in Moscow, Andor Hencke of the German side wrote it up in a memorandum marked "Very Secret" and "State Secret."

On Japan, Stalin said the Soviet Union wanted better relations, but its patience with Japanese provocations had limits. If Japan wanted war, it could have it. If Japan wanted peace, so much the better.

On Britain, Stalin and Molotov complained that the British military mission had never told them what it really wanted. Stalin said the British army was weak and the navy no longer deserved its reputation. If Britain still ruled the world, it was because other countries were stupid enough to be bluffed. It was ridiculous, for example, that a few hundred British should dominate India.

On the Anti-Comintern Pact, Ribbentrop told a joke he said had been going around Berlin for months: "Stalin will yet join the Anti-Comintern Pact."

On how Germans felt about the pact, Ribbentrop said the German people wanted peace, but their indignation against Poland was so great that every single man was ready to fight.

Then came the toasts. According to Hencke, Stalin spontaneously raised his glass: "I know how much the German nation loves its Führer; I should therefore like to drink to his health." Molotov toasted Stalin, saying it was Stalin's speech of March that had turned relations around. They drank again and again to the pact and to a new era in German-Russian relations.

As they took leave, Stalin told Ribbentrop that the Soviet government took the new pact very seriously. He could guarantee on his word of honor that the Soviet Union would not betray its partner.

This is one German record. The Soviet account is not in it.

VIII. A Leak, and One Mistake

In his noon cable of August 24, Steinhardt got nearly everything right: Estonia, Latvia, eastern Poland, Bessarabia, all to the Soviet side. He had also heard that Stalin drank to Hitler and to "the revival of the traditional German-Russian friendship." Ribbentrop would fly back to Berlin at two that afternoon.

He got one thing wrong. His informant said: "Apparently Finland was not mentioned."

In the first point of the protocol, Finland was named first.

That afternoon Steinhardt cabled again. At seven the previous evening, he wrote, the British ambassador had been completely unaware how far German-Soviet agreement had gone and still believed Molotov's assurance that it would be a mere nonaggression pact, compatible with an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance. The British and French military missions had been told to stay in Moscow and await the outcome of Ribbentrop's visit.

The least informed were the countries written onto that sheet. On August 28 a member of the Polish embassy in Moscow told Steinhardt that Warsaw had instructed its ambassador to assume the Soviet Union would honor the assurances Molotov and others had given: in a German-Polish war, economic help for Poland. Poland would not protest the pact, since it had a nonaggression pact with Moscow of its own. The diplomat had just inspected Murmansk. The port was small, he said, with only three large cranes for unloading, but in a war Poland still meant to ask to bring essential supplies in through it.

IX. Twenty-Five Days

At 8:45 on the evening of August 31, the Supreme Soviet ratified the treaty. Molotov spoke at length, accusing Britain and France of insincerity and blaming Poland for refusing Soviet military aid under any conditions. Steinhardt noticed that he built on Stalin's March speech but left out the part about supporting the victims of aggression. The secret protocol was never put before the Supreme Soviet.

A few hours later, at one in the morning on September 1, Steinhardt cabled that he was inclined to discount rumors in Moscow of Soviet military operations against Poland. That same day, Germany invaded Poland.

At two in the morning on September 17, Stalin received Schulenburg, with Molotov and Voroshilov present, and told him that the Red Army would cross the border at six that morning along the whole line from Polotsk to Kamenets-Podolsky. He asked that German planes not fly east of the line Białystok, Brest-Litovsk, Lwów from that day on.

On September 28, Ribbentrop flew to Moscow a second time. His timetable read: dinner at the Kremlin; one act of ballet, Swan Lake, while Stalin negotiated with the Latvians; meeting resumed at midnight; signing at five in the morning. A new secret protocol amended the first point of August's: Lithuania now fell to the Soviet sphere, and in exchange the province of Lublin and parts of the province of Warsaw went to Germany.

This time a whole country was moved from one side of the line to the other.

X. Fifty Years Later

In 1945, American and British troops captured the archives of the German Foreign Office, which had been evacuated from Berlin. In 1948 the State Department published documents from them as Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941, and the text of the secret protocol became public.

On December 24, 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR adopted a resolution giving its "political and legal assessment" of the pact.

It acknowledged that, both at the signing and at ratification, the fact had been concealed that a "secret additional protocol" was signed together with the treaty, dividing "spheres of interest" from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from Finland to Bessarabia. The originals of the protocol, it said, had not been found in Soviet or foreign archives; but handwriting, photographic and textual examination of copies, maps and other documents, and the match between later events and the protocol's contents, confirmed that it had been signed and had existed.

The negotiations on the secret protocols, the resolution said, had been conducted by Stalin and Molotov in secret from the Soviet people, the Central Committee and the whole party, the Supreme Soviet and the government: an act of personal power. The Congress condemned the protocol and declared it legally untenable and invalid from the moment it was signed.

The originals, it later turned out, had been there all along, locked in the archive of the Communist Party's Central Committee.

Epilogue

Go back to the noon cable of August 24.

Steinhardt was one name away from the truth. His informant thought Finland had not been mentioned. On that sheet of paper, Finland came first.

On December 2, 1939, Weizsäcker instructed German missions abroad: in conversations about the Finnish-Russian conflict, avoid any anti-Soviet note, and justify the Soviet action instead.

The first name on the sheet had come due.

Sources and editorial boundaries

1. German Foreign Office archives: Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941: Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Office (Department of State, 1948), compiled from the archives captured by American and British forces in 1945 (see its preface). Used here: Ribbentrop to Schulenburg, No. 189 (Berlin, Aug. 20, 1939, 4:36 p.m., with Hitler's message to Stalin and the instruction to deliver it "on a sheet of paper without letterhead") and No. 191 (Aug. 21); Schulenburg Nos. 197, 199 and 200 (Moscow, Aug. 21: delivery at 3 p.m., Stalin's reply at 5 p.m. and its text); Hitler's full powers (Obersalzberg, Aug. 22); Weizsäcker memorandum St.S. Nr. 644 (Berlin, Aug. 22, conversation with Oshima); Ribbentrop No. 204 (Moscow, Aug. 23, 8:05 p.m., Libau and Windau) and the Foreign Office reply No. 205 ("Answer is Yes. Agreed.", sent by telephone, received in Moscow at 11 p.m.); the Treaty of Nonaggression and the Secret Additional Protocol (Moscow, Aug. 23, 1939); Hencke's memorandum of the conversation on the night of Aug. 23–24 (Moscow, Aug. 24); Schulenburg No. 372 (Moscow, Sept. 17, 1939); timetable of Ribbentrop's second visit (Sept. 27–28, 1939); Secret Supplementary Protocol (Moscow, Sept. 28, 1939); and the calendar summary of Weizsäcker's circular to German missions of Dec. 2, 1939. Read in the full OCR text at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.499061 ; treaty and protocol texts checked against the Avalon Project: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/nonagres.asp and https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/addsepro.asp . 2. US diplomatic papers: FRUS 1939, vol. I, docs. 333 (Steinhardt, Aug. 23, 4 p.m.), 334 (Kennedy, London, Aug. 23, 7 p.m., reporting Seeds's talk with Molotov and Halifax's remark), 335 (Steinhardt, Aug. 24, 9 a.m.), 336 (Steinhardt, Aug. 24, noon: the secret "understanding" and "Apparently Finland was not mentioned"), 337 (Steinhardt, Aug. 24, 5 p.m.), 338 (Steinhardt, Aug. 28, the Polish embassy source), 340 (Steinhardt, Aug. 31, ratification) and 341 (Steinhardt, Sept. 1, 1 a.m.). Read at https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1939v01/d333 through d341. 3. Soviet side: Resolution No. 979-I of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, "On the political and legal assessment of the Soviet-German nonaggression treaty of 1939," Dec. 24, 1989, signed by M. Gorbachev, read in the Russian Wikisource text (which cites Mir mezhdu voinami, Moscow, 1997): https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Постановление_СНД_СССР_от_24.12.1989_«О_политической_и_правовой_оценке_советско-германского_договора_о_ненападении_от_1939_года» . The statement that the originals were kept in the CPSU Central Committee archive, shown publicly in 1992 and published in Novaya i noveishaya istoriya, 1993, no. 1, comes from that page's editorial note; the journal itself was not read. 4. Boundaries: Hencke's memorandum is a one-sided German record, so Stalin's toast and parting words are given as the German side recorded them; Steinhardt's informant reported a differently worded toast, and both are given. Steinhardt's informant is unnamed in the cable and is not identified here. "After midnight" rests on Steinhardt's "early this morning" and Hencke's "night of August 23d to 24th"; the documents are dated August 23 and no exact hour of signing was found in the sources read. How "before 8 o'clock German time" in telegram No. 204 relates to its sending time is not explained in the source and is reported as written. Soviet records of the talks, the Anglo-French military mission's own records, and the course of the Soviet-Finnish war are outside the documents read and are not described. No invented dialogue, inner thoughts, or sensory scene-setting; all speech comes from the documents above, quoted or paraphrased. 5. Rights: US government publications and the Soviet resolution are public documents; the narrative is original, and quotations are short.