2024-08-24 14:24:11
It is difficult to love; a ‘Frankenstein’ that unites the most fervent anti-communism with those who have established themselves as the bastion of anti-fascism. Between August 23 and 24, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union broke all known agreements and signed the treaty. Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact; an agreement in which they promised friendship for ten years and divided the old continent into spheres of influence. What is not often said is that this extraordinary plan angered the European followers of both parties. On the one hand, Franco and Mussolini became suspicious of Adolf Hitler in the following weeks. On the other hand, the communist parties were divided in the face of the directives sent from Moscow.
Fascism, sorry
The agreement was not well received by the peninsular countries. According to historian Bartosz Kaczorowski in the documentary ‘Spain before the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939’, Francoism received the news with astonishment: “Unexpectedly, the country of Spain that had thought it was the main power capable of defending Europe against Bolshevism had just become the ally of the country that took it as a doctrine.” The surprise was justified, since Hitler himself said in his own ‘Mein Kampf’, already in 1924, that the Soviet Union had to fight as part of his plan to regain German “living space” (‘Lebensraum’).
An example of this confusion is the headline with which the newspaper ‘Arriba’ refers to the agreement: ‘Surprise. A great surprise.’ It should be said that he is not the only one; from Havana, the ‘Navy Diary’, of red sources, had already said a few days before the surprise of this foreign partnership was representative: “Germany and Russia surprised the world with a non-aggressive agreement that raised an unexpected question about the deep and important implications of old computer is suffering. .” At the same time, the article emphasized that “the German action represents the end of its purpose of killing Bolshevism and perhaps the destruction of the former famous Axis.”
The Spanish president, however, now shows his classic caution to avoid possible problems with the German big brother. “Franco, for fear of worsening relations with the Third Reich, stopped talking about his anti-communism and began to insist that an agreement with the Soviets was the only answer to the negotiations that took place between Great Britain and the Soviet Republic,” added the expert his dossier. And the data went further: on the 23rd, immediately after receiving information about the agreement, he refused to make judgments standing with the Portuguese representative Pedro Teotónio Pereira. Although, yes, he did not defend Germany’s actions and was angered by the decision.
Down the ranks, Franco’s leaders allowed themselves to splutter against the pact; at least, a little more than the dictator. Embassy of Madrid in Washington, Francisco Cardenasadmitted to the Governor of North America that the popularity of the Third Estate in Spain had declined after the ratification became known. And, although the source that revealed it to him is unknown, Philippe Pétain confirmed that our country understands that alliance as a kind of freedom from the obligation to support Germany in future conflicts. He was probably his bravest Juan Beigbederthen Minister of Foreign Affairs. And this politician has announced his “great anger” during the event on several occasions.
But that anger towards Germany is not only palpable in Spain. The same thing happened in Japan; and well so, since the Japanese and the Germans signed them ‘Anticomintern Pact‘: an agreement in which they were made to counter the threat of the Communist International, led by the Soviet Union. The same thing happened in Italy. According to María Sánchez, from the University of Costa Rica, in ‘The Soviet Pact View of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’, the fascists were suspicious of Hitler’s decision, and refused to enter the struggle at the beginning of the European conflict. “As a result of all the above, Germany started the war alone,” the expert revealed.
And communism, in arms
On the other hand, the Stalinist party, the opposite effect was experienced. The Soviets sell agreements as needed and keep the clauses secret: those in which, when the time comes, Germany and the USSR will share some of the communist countries. Under this agreement, the supreme court ordered all international commissions to ratify the agreement and confirm that France and Great Britain were to blame for the conflict. The logic? That appeasement policy maintained by President Neville Chamberlain gave Hitler wings and made him a threat to the Soviet Union.
The order caused shockwaves in some international councils. It was kind of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The group, dedicated to organizing the resistance after the conquest of the country by the Nazis, was forced to support that unity and avoid the criticism of the Third Reich. This is how one of your members explained it, Jiri Pelican: «To our great surprise and anger, Radio Moscow is celebrating the achievements of Soviet agriculture, while all of us in the Gestapo have arrested, tortured and killed comrades and countrymen. Nothing was said about that, nor was there any criticism of Hitler. He is the only leader who condemns that crime Vladimir Clementand he had to go into exile because of it.
The same thing happened in France. Just two days after the agreement was signed, the newspaper ‘L’Humanité’, the organ of the Communist Party of France (PCF), was banned. And a month later, on September 26, the same thing happened with the PCF itself and many of its organizations. The party had no choice but to relax its hard anti-fascist line in the fall to avoid censorship by the USSR. At the same time, however, many of his members said that, if the ‘Führer’ decided to attack their country, he would find them before them.
Also in Spain
The same thing happened in Spain. Dolores Ibárruri, ‘La Pasionaria’, joined the community sent from Moscow and wrote a very extensive article entitled ‘Social democracy and the current imperialist war’ in the newspaper ‘España Gbajumo’. Although he did so soon after the occupation of Poland by Hitler and Stalin, which was the zenith of the Pact. His main lines were dedicated, like his French communist colleagues, to attacking the great Allied powers, the victors of the Great War. Although he did so because he did not intervene in the Spanish Civil War in favor of the Second Republic.
After these bitter criticisms, Pasionaria accused the same Poland that, less than a year before, Hitler and Stalin had escaped from. In a section entitled “Fear of Revolution”, he said that “the ‘pacifists’ and supporters of the policy of ‘non-intervention'” had built the institutions that were put forward shortly before , with rifles, help the staff. . “The spokesmen of the social democracy of England and the French government repeat every day that they are fighting to ‘return Poland’, in the name of democracy and ‘the rights of the people,'” he wrote. What is bloody most, in his words, is that, contrary to what is happening in the Second World, in this country “millions of Ukrainians, Belarusians and Jews do not even have the right to speak their language freely, and they live in the status of pariahs.”
Pasionaria also argued that only France and Britain had come to Poland’s aid because the country served as a “cordon sanitaire” against the Soviet Union and, when the time came, also as a vehicle to attack “the country of socialism.” Not only that, but he argued that the Allies had traditionally created territory in the Treaty of Versailles for this reason and had left it in the hands of “landlords and colonels.”
In the article he also blamed Poland for creating detention centers. “Yesterday’s Poland, a prison for the people, a country of consensual institutions, of leaders who are traitors to their people, who are in the image of the democracy of Blum and Citrine!” It seems that he did not know about the gulags created by Stalin, and he forgot about the famine created by the Soviet government, between 1932 and 1933, and millions of people died in Ukraine. «The democratic society is crying over the loss of Poland, because imperialism has lost a leg against the Soviet Union, against the homeland of the proletariat. Cry for the loss of Poland, because the Ukrainians, Belarusians, thirteen million people, have won their freedom. Just like during the Spanish war, today they find themselves on the side of the enemies of Humanity,” he concluded.
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