Moscow, August 1939 — Stalin's Choice

In the summer of 1939, Stalin holds both ends of the same game. On one side, the negotiations with France and the United Kingdom, lukewarm and blocked by the question of allowing troops to pass through Poland. On the other, Nazi Germany, which multiplies its overtures and offers, for its part, something concrete and immediate.

Hitler is in a hurry: he wants to attack Poland before autumn and needs to neutralise the USSR to avoid a second front. Berlin therefore proposes a non-aggression pact — accompanied, in secret, by a division of « spheres of influence » in Eastern Europe.

For Stalin, the calculation is cold. Ally with the democracies against Germany, at the risk of bearing alone the weight of war in the East without sufficient guarantees? Sign with Hitler, gain time, recover territories lost in 1920 and divert the war towards the West? Or stay aloof, in armed neutrality? The decision, matured in the secrecy of the Kremlin, will redraw the map of forces in Europe and weigh on the very outbreak of war.