On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact, pledging that their respective countries would never launch an attack against the other, nor interfere with one another’s allies. It is best known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, for the two officials who signed it in Moscow on behalf of their governments: Germany’s Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Russia’s Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, setting off a six-year conflagration in Europe previously unimagined by mankind. The next two years saw huge swaths of Europe taken and apportioned between Germany and the Soviet Union like so much common merchandise . . . each of their leaders — Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin — pursuing similar goals of expansionism and empire-building.

Then Hitler made the mistake that would ultimately be his undoing. On June 22, 1941, he launched Operation Barbarossa: an invasion of his alleged ally, the Soviet Union, thus nullifying the 1939 treaty and forcing Stalin, out of necessity, to turn his loyalty to Great Britain and its allied nations.

Had that not happened — had the Soviet Union not allied itself with the free nations of Europe and the U.S. — Hitler’s Third Reich might well have succeeded and World War II ended very differently.

And then, in his own display of treachery, Stalin immediately set about launching the Cold War against the very nations that had protected his country from Hitler.

There are two morals to this well-known story:

First, from a military standpoint, never allow yourself to be surrounded by your enemies. It’s just illogical. With the Allied troops (later to include the United States) to the west, and the massive Soviet Union to the east, Nazi Germany — though a formidable foe for another four years — was ultimately doomed.

And second, from a political point of view, never, ever trust a dictator, an autocrat, a tyrant, a despot, a sociopath, a psychotic megalomaniac, or a fascist.

Not ever.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
8/23/25