THE ROAD TO WAR

1. THE ROAD TO WAR

2. THE ROAD TO WAR SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY • New Focus • Growing Nazi threat • Turn to West • The “Popular Front” • Main goal = restrain Nazis but avoid war Maxim Litvinov, Foreign Commissar, 1930-1939 “Bolshevism unmasked”

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

4. 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

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

6. THE ROAD TO WAR SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY • THE NAZI-SOVIET PACT • Shocked much of world • Caused loss of support for Soviets

7. 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

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

9. THE ROAD TO WAR SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY • THE WINTER WAR, 1939-1940 • Finns resist Soviet demands • inflict heavy damage & casualties on Soviets • convinced Germans of Soviet military weakness