85th Anniversary of Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact
August 23, 1939

Government of Canada’s Cold War Historiography About the Origins of the Second World War

August 23, 1939 is the date when the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler Germany, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It did so after Britain and France refused to sign the Treaty of Mutual Assistance offered by the Soviet Union in 1939 in order to stop Munich-type concessions and prevent war from breaking out. According to historical records, polls at the time showed more than 80 per cent public support for this offer of an alliance with the Red Army. In May 1939, as Czechoslovakia was being swallowed up, Winston Churchill called on British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Parliament to demand that the Treaty of Mutual Assistance offered by the Soviet government be signed because then there would be no war: “If you are ready to be an ally of Russia in time of war, […] why should you shrink from becoming the ally of Russia now, when you may by that very fact prevent the breaking-out of war?”

The refusal of the British and French to sign this Treaty of Mutual Assistance is evidence that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his French counterpart Edouard Daladier wanted a German-Soviet war in the East as announced by Hitler. It was the refusal of the British and French to sign the Treaty of Mutual Assistance offered by the Soviet Union that gave Hitler the green light to occupy Europe and start the Second World War.

But anti-communist historiography since 1946 has remained virtually silent about this, relying on Nazi documents captured after the war to spread disinformation about an alleged secret protocol appended to the Non-Aggression Pact which provides proof positive that the Soviet Union was an aggressor in Europe, along with Hitler. No such damning secret protocol has ever emerged, not even after the Soviet archives became available after the fall of the former Soviet Union in the 1989-1991 period. Even U.S. Cold War scholars affirm that Soviet diplomatic correspondence shows Stalin’s aim throughout the negotiations with Germany, contained in a separate protocol, was to get Hitler’s undertaking not to invade all the countries he had said he wanted to conquer in Mein Kampf. Winston Churchill himself confirmed this in his radio statement on October 1, 1939 when he said: “[W]e sign the peace on condition that it includes all the neighbouring countries listed in a separate confidential protocol.”

Canada’s blaming the Soviet Union for starting the Second World War goes hand in hand with the U.S., British and Canadian claim that it was thanks to them that Hitler was defeated and Europe was saved from the scourge of war while the mighty decisive role and sacrifice of the Soviet Union is ignored. This is all part of a convoluted narrative Canada uses to portray Ukrainian neo-Nazis as freedom fighters and justify making Russia an enemy to this day. Towards this end, Canada remains silent about the significance of the refusal of Britain and France to sign the Treaty of Mutual Assistance offered by the Soviet government in 1939.

Canada intentionally remains silent on the sequence and significance of events which led to the non-aggression pact signed between Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany Ribbentrop on August 23, 1939. Hitler had already annexed Austria in March 1938. The British and French signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler Germany on September 30, 1938 which gave Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Germany and was the green light for the Hitlerites to take over Czechoslovakia. The refusal of Britain and France to enter into a collective security alliance with the Soviet Union in 1939 forced the Soviet Union to negotiate a non-aggression pact with Germany to stave off a Hitlerite assault for a short time, allowing it to better prepare to face the onslaught and turn things around in what became a mighty fight which saved Europe.

Official Canadian historiography based on Cold War anti-communist ideology falsifies history. It forces the dominant Cold War version of history onto the polity by “forgetting” to speak about the pertinent facts, going so far as to remain silent about Churchill’s demand for Chamberlain to sign the offer of mutual assistance with the Red Army. In this way, Cold War historiography has arranged the facts in such a way as to make Stalin appear as co-responsible for the outbreak of war.

After the war, Churchill maintained his position on this matter, despite the official silence on the subject: “There can, however, be no doubt, even in the after light, that Britain and France should have accepted the Russian offer, proclaimed the Triple Alliance […] The alliance of Britain, France, and Russia would have struck deep alarm into the heart of Germany in 1939, and no one can prove that war might not even then have been averted. […] Hitler could afford neither to embark upon the war on two fronts, which he himself had so deeply condemned, nor to sustain a check. It was a pity not to have placed him in this awkward position, which might well have cost him his life.”

Reactionaries today use the anniversary of the non-aggression pact to slander the great deeds of the Soviet Union by repeating claims which falsify history. To his shame, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on August 23, 2019 called the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact a “sombre anniversary” and said, “Signed between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939 to divide Central and Eastern Europe, the infamous pact set the stage for the appalling atrocities these regimes would commit.”

Equating the Soviet Union’s unrelenting battle to defeat Nazi aggression with Nazi war crimes serves a nefarious purpose of protecting the neo-Nazis and attacking Russia today. The lie that supporting neo-Nazis is “defending democracy” is criminal and cannot be condoned. Canada’s declaration of August 23 as “Black Ribbon Day” should be rescinded. It is based on an anti-communist falsification of history according to which as a result of the non-aggression pact, Stalin and Hitler were co-responsible for starting World War II. In fact, the non-aggression pact simply stated the two countries would not attack each other. It was not a “military alliance” to take joint military action against some third country, as Canada claims. The pact contained no such agreement.

The anti-communist outlook of the Canadian state which informs the declaration of August 23 as Black Ribbon Day is also used to justify Canada’s membership in the aggressive North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), both directed primarily against Russia. It is used to justify financing and training, in the name of democracy, the Ukrainian neo-Nazis in Canada and Ukraine and the U.S./NATO proxy war in that country to isolate and destroy Russia. To this day, Russia is presented to Canadians as an enemy and threat to peace while countries like the U.S., Britain and Canada which finance and support genocide are presented as the defenders of democracy to oppose the resistance movements of the peoples of the world. It is important today to settle scores with this Cold War ideology so as to end all conciliation with those who are committing crimes against humanity today.

Notes

Lies about the Soviet Union becoming an enemy of Canada because of the non-aggression pact began at the time of its signing. In January 1948, the lies then took the form of full-blown Nazi propaganda about a so-called Soviet-German “alliance.” The publication by the U.S. of material from the diaries of Hitlerite officials, in collaboration with the British and French foreign offices, started a fresh wave of slander and lies in connection with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact. We are to ignore that the German documents were all written from the standpoint of the Hitler government and were without independent verification. It was a deliberate Cold War campaign against the Soviet Union by the U.S. and its allies to cover up their own nefarious post-war deeds.

The Soviet Union did not treat these lies lightly. The Soviet Information Bureau almost immediately published a significant document, Falsificators of History, to refute them.[1] These lies about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact should also not be treated with indifference today. They aim to present the values of those who are prompted by narrow ideological beliefs as Canadian values. In fact, the proponents of Black Ribbon Day are descendants of the very same Nazi forces that spread death and destruction across Europe. They present their forebears as freedom fighters. These so-called freedom fighters Canada champions were Nazis and Nazi collaborators that sent Jews, Poles, Roma, communists, resistance fighters, those they called “deviants” and many others to their deaths in concentration camps. Their values are not “Canadian values.”

There is no place for a monument in Ottawa in a space called the Garden of the Provinces and Territories, or anywhere else, which espouses these values based on narrow anti-communist ideological beliefs. Such values are precisely what Canadians fought against in the Second World War in defeating the Nazis. They sacrificed their lives to win freedom, democracy and peace. Their sons and daughters had nothing but admiration for the sacrifices of the communists led by the Soviet Union. To suggest we need a monument to the “victims of communism,” not to the victims of genocide and crimes against humanity carried out in Canada during colonial times and since then or to the victims of Nazi-fascism and U.S. imperialist wars of aggression, coups d’etat, sanctions and crimes against humanity in the 20th century is not worthy of Canada or what Canadians stand for.

If signing a non-aggression pact in 1939 was “helping Hitler” then the British and French had already been “helping Hitler” since signing such pacts a year earlier and Poland had been “helping Hitler” since 1934. Britain and France issued a joint declaration of non-aggression with Germany in 1938, as well as a “Pact of Accord and Cooperation” signed in 1933 when Hitler came to power. Poland signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis in 1934, five years before the Soviet Union. These are never mentioned as a cause of war. Of all the Great Powers in Europe, the Soviet Union was the very last to agree to a pact with the Germans, a decision it was forced into by the rejection by Britain and France of collective security with the Soviet Union.

It is also significant that these same reactionaries never once mention the filthy pro-Nazi role of U.S. corporations such as Ford, General Motors, Standard Oil, Texaco, Dupont and ITT which supplied the Nazi war machine with essential equipment and materials that enabled their invasion of Europe.[2]

The history of events in 1938 – both before and after Hitler’s occupation of Austria in March – show that the Soviet Union, as it had done in earlier years, made many efforts to persuade Britain and France to maintain collective mutual assistance and in particular to carry out their undertaking to defend Czechoslovakia against aggression. The Soviet Union was not only willing to join forces with France to defend Czechoslovakia if France would keep her word, but was prepared to defend Czechoslovakia on her own, even if France refused.[3]

All the efforts by the Soviet Union to build collective security were shunned by the British and French. The British and French refused to sign any collective mutual assistance pact with the Soviet Union because their rulers still hoped Germany would attack and destroy the Soviet Union.

The reactionaries never want to discuss the refusal of the British and French governments to sign the Treaty of Mutual Assistance offered by the Soviet Union because it was such a blatant betrayal of the world’s people. It is indisputable that faced with the British and French betrayal, the Soviet Union had no choice but to take whatever measures it could to defend itself and the cause of peace.

References

1. Falsificators of History by Soviet Information Bureau (Moscow: 1948).

2. See, for example, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust by Edwin Black (Washington, DC: Dialogue Press, 2009), and Big Business and Hitler by Jacques R. Pauwels (Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., 2017).

3. “Stalin ‘planned to send a million troops to stop Hitler if Britain and France agreed pact:’ Stalin was ‘prepared to move more than a million Soviet troops to the German border to deter Hitler’s aggression just before the Second World War,'” by Nick Holdsworth, Telegraph (London, UK), October 18, 2008.

(Hardial Bains Resource Centre Archives)

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