The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact With Stalin, 1939-1941, Moorhouse - B +

                                               It was not just the world that was totally shocked by the famous pact, it was each country's populace and military staffs. The Germans had spent the 30's vilifying the Soviets. For the communists, Germany, the most industrialized country in the west, was always assumed to be the place where their philosophy would take root and defeat capitalism and the bourgeoisie.  However, both Hitler and Stalin saw meaningful benefits to the pact. Hitler was annoyed that  the British and French had delayed him from moving on Prague, and then guaranteed Poland's integrity.  Having a temporary understanding in the east would help him move in the west. As for Stalin, he was afraid the British and French were trying to engineer a war to the death between Germany and the USSR. Also, the German offer of territory and non-belligerence was particularly timely as the Soviets and Japan were engaged in serious skirmishes in Asia. Within days of the pact, war broke out, Poland was divided between the two signatories and the murder of the country's elite began. "Measures adopted against the racial enemy in one half of Poland were virtually indistinguishable from those applied to the class enemy in the other."  Hitler started moving Germans into the desirable sections of western Poland and  began the importation of what would eventually be over a million laborers into the Reich. Stalin sent tens of thousands of Poles off to Siberia and Kazakhstan, murdered almost all of Poland's officer corps at Katyn, and began to absorb the Baltic states.  He had a free hand to then initiate the Winter War against Finland. Less than a year after the pact, Hitler and Stalin had achieved all that they could have imagined. Stalin had recovered everything that Russia had lost in WWI and more, and Hitler had chased the British from the continent and marched into Paris.  The first significant crack in the relationship came when the Soviets took Bessarabia from Romania. Hitler was quite angered because there had been no mention of this in the allocation of spheres of influence.  In November of 1940, Molotov and Ribbentrop sat down again, this time in Berlin.  No progress was made on any topic and the Germans became further alarmed when it became apparent that the Soviets were desirous of  expanding further into the Baltic and the Balkans. On Dec.18, 1940, the Fuhrer ordered the planning for an invasion of Russia.  Soviet intelligence advised Stalin within a week that the attack would come in March.
                                                         This is a well-written and enlightening read. It's a good book.  That said, it felt at times as if the author was struggling with the the story from the end of 1939 until Barbarossa on June 22, 1941. Almost all of the action took place hard on the signing of the pact. Then, it was just a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Any reader of 'Mein Kampf' could tell you the Reich was not going to ally itself with the USSR for long.  Interestingly, the anniversary of the signing, August 23rd, has become known in Europe as the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Naziism and is commemorated across central and eastern Europe.