Nazi Germany and Poland signed a 10-year declaration pledging to resolve disputes by negotiation, briefly easing tensions in Eastern Europe and affecting Soviet security calculations.
The Soviet Union entered the League of Nations, signaling a stronger push for collective-security diplomacy even as Germany’s foreign policy trajectory increasingly threatened the European order.
Germany and Japan agreed to cooperate against the Comintern, an overtly anti-communist alignment that further worsened Soviet–German political relations before the later 1939 reversal.
Britain, France, Germany, and Italy reached the Munich Agreement without Soviet participation, undermining the USSR’s collective-security position and shaping Stalin’s later openness to a deal with Germany.
Germany’s March 1939 occupation of Bohemia and Moravia shattered the Munich framework, accelerating the European crisis and intensifying Soviet interest in security arrangements—including with Germany.
Germany unilaterally terminated the 1934 non-aggression declaration with Poland, removing a diplomatic constraint shortly before the negotiations that culminated in the Nazi–Soviet pact.
Germany and the USSR concluded a major trade-and-credit arrangement (dated August 19), laying the economic groundwork that helped enable the rapid political breakthrough that followed days later.
Germany and the Soviet Union signed a 10-year non-aggression pact, paired with a secret protocol dividing much of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence—clearing the way for war against Poland.
Germany invaded Poland, initiating the European phase of World War II and triggering the practical implementation of the Nazi–Soviet spheres-of-influence arrangement.
The Red Army entered Poland from the east, completing the two-front assault envisaged in the secret protocol and enabling the partition of Poland between Germany and the USSR.
Germany and the USSR signed a follow-on agreement revising the partition lines in Poland and coordinating occupation arrangements; secret provisions also adjusted claims affecting Lithuania.
Lithuania accepted Soviet military bases and troop deployments in exchange for the return of part of the Vilnius region, deepening Soviet control in the Baltic area tied to the 1939 secret protocols.
A major economic agreement expanded German access to Soviet raw materials and transit while the USSR received industrial goods and technology—key to sustaining cooperation under wartime blockade pressures.
Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov met Adolf Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop in Berlin, exposing widening disagreements over spheres of influence (notably the Balkans and Finland) despite ongoing trade.
Germany and the USSR settled several border and claims disputes (including a secret arrangement related to Lithuania) and extended/enlarged economic deliveries—among the last major agreements before the rupture.
Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union, ending the Nazi–Soviet rapprochement and rendering the Molotov–Ribbentrop framework obsolete as the war expanded into the Eastern Front.
Soviet–German Relations and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1933–1941)
