What Secret Agreement Was Made

On 3 October, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, German ambassador to Moscow, informed Joachim Ribbentrop that the Soviet government was ready to cede the city of Vilnius and its surroundings. On 8 October 1939, a new National Socialist-Soviet Agreement is concluded by an exchange of letters between Vyacheslav Molotov and the German Ambassador. [149] The Protocols attracted greater media attention when they were included in an official State Department collection, Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941, edited by Raymond J. Sontag and James S. Beddie, and published on January 21, 1948. The decision to publish the most important documents on German-Soviet relations, including the Treaty and the Protocol, had already been taken in the spring of 1947. Sontag and Beddie prepared the collection in the summer of 1947. In November 1947, Truman personally agreed to the publication, but it was delayed in light of the Conference of Foreign Ministers in London scheduled for December. As the negotiations at this conference did not prove to be constructive from an American point of view, the document was sent to the printing press.

The documents made headlines around the world. [243] State Department officials called it a success: "The Soviet government was caught off guard with the first effective blow on our side in a clear propaganda war." [244] In any event, the two governments will resolve this issue through an out-of-court settlement. Wilson repeated his Fourteen Points at the Versailles Peace Conference, where he proposed a commitment to "open alliances." Without written certification, Drax was not allowed to guarantee anything to the Soviet Union and had been ordered by the British government to prolong the talks as long as possible and avoid the question of whether Poland would be willing to allow Soviet troops to enter the country if the Germans invaded. [65] When the negotiations failed, a great opportunity was probably missed to prevent German aggression. [66] In addition to the agreement, Ribbentrop and Molotov added a secret protocol to the pact – a secret addendum whose existence was denied by the Soviets until 1989. .