Chapter 247: The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact – October 1944 to December 1945
Soviet Government and Relationships in October 1944
In terms of the private sympathies of their citizens, the ruling Communist Party held a significant majority of the population’s support. But their organisation (and thus practical political power) was supreme, at over 90%.
While the rapprochement of the Geneva Conference had healed relations with Japan somewhat, a low level of diplomatic hostility remained after years of fierce fighting and occupation of most of the Soviet Far East since late 1940. This would worsen again in 1945. The relationship with Britain under Churchill was businesslike but not really friendly. Those with Roosevelt’s America and the provisional French government remained amicable enough. But all three democratic countries had already faced elections or would do during 1945, which would require a recalibration of diplomacy with them. Finally, the relationship with Turkey could not be any friendlier, ensuring the two core Comintern sub-groupings began the post-war period in diplomatic harmony.
The Stalin-Inönü ‘Brotherhood’ Continues
Relations between Inönü and Stalin remained warm all through 1945, thus ensuring the USSR-UGNR strategic relationship remained equally strong. Molotov (as Deputy FM during GW2) and Litvinov had maintained a very cordial relationship with the long-time Turkish FM Aras. Even though both their Pacts pursued their own specific interests, at this stage there was little to disagree over. Both sides had more than enough to get on with as part of post-war recovery and scrupulously avoided overt or even aggressive covert involvement in each other’s spheres of interest in this early post-war period.
Brothers in arms and in peace.
---xxx---
Litvinov and the Allies
Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, long a proponent of closer strategic relations with the UK and France despite his grudging acquiescence to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, had been conducting negotiations with the French provisional government in the background of the Geneva Conference of October-November 1944. The culmination of his time as Foreign Minister came when France and the Soviet Union signed a 20-year Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance on 10 December 1944.
Maxim Litvinov addresses the dignitaries gathered during the signing of the 1944 Franco-Soviet Treaty in Paris on 10 December 1944.
France, very concerned about its rather weak and isolated position in Europe, wanted to shore up its strategic position as best it could. It would remain within the Allies and the more general Western grouping, but also prosecuted its own foreign policy. The agreement was in essence more a non-aggression pact than any type of military or mutual defensive pact, but France at least hoped it would stick while the Soviets would be happy to see France not take an actively anti-Soviet stance.
---xxx---
Poland and the Rise of Molotov
But Litvinov’s star would soon begin to wane. It started on 1 January 1945 when Britain refused to recognise the Polish Committee of National Liberation. Also known as the Lublin Committee, it was an executive governing authority established by the Soviet-backed communists in Poland. Litvinov’s long-time (and ambitious) deputy Molotov argued for a harder line against Britain in particular and the West more generally. He chose deteriorating relations with Britain as the vehicle to begin undermining his boss, who nevertheless still retained Stalin’s (always conditional, of course) respect and support.
Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (b. 9 March 1890) in 1945.
Molotov and NKVD head Andriy Pantilov began advocating for a harder line in Poland. On 6 March 1945, Soviet authorities began to arrest or kill anyone associated with the Polish Home Army or the Polish government-in-exile in London.
An attack on the NKVD Camp in Rembertów on the outskirts of Warsaw took place on 21 May 1945. A unit of the pro-independence Home Army freed all Polish political prisoners from the camp. This only fed into the Pantilov-Molotov narrative and hardened the Soviet line on Poland.
On 18 June the ‘Trial of the Sixteen’ was held where officers of the Polish Home Army were put in the dock in Moscow on charges of fighting against the Red Army. The verdict was issued on 21 June, with most of the defendants coerced into pleading guilty by the NKVD. Witnesses for the defence were declared unreachable "owing to bad atmospheric conditions", and no evidence was offered during the trial. Of the sixteen defendants, twelve were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four months to ten years, while charges against the four others were dropped by the prosecution.
The show trial of 16 leaders of the Polish wartime underground movement (including the Home Army and civil authorities) convicted of "drawing up plans for military action against the U.S.S.R.", Moscow, June 1945. All of them had been invited to help organise the new "Polish Government of National Unity" in March 1945 and were subsequently captured by the NKVD.
The Soviet-backed Provisional Government of National Unity had been formed to govern Poland on 28 June. The Polish government-in-exile did not recognise it. But on 4 July, the day before the general election in the UK, the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity was recognised by Britain and the United States. It gained their recognition by including politicians from the close political sphere of Stanisław Mikołajczyk, the former prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile based in London.
Stanisław Mikołajczyk (b. 18 July 1901).
This ploy provided an excuse for Western nations to tacitly approve the
fait accompli of Poland becoming part of the Soviet sphere of influence, and to legitimise the Warsaw government while withdrawing their recognition of the Polish government-in-exile.
On 10 July, Soviet forces and Polish communists began the Augustów roundup targeting the "cursed soldiers", anti-communist partisans and sympathisers.
The newly reappointed British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin on 10 August condemned Soviet policy in Eastern Europe as "one kind of totalitarianism replaced by another." Litvinov’s hopes of a better relationship with the newly avowedly socialist British Labour government were dashed.
A day later, Litvinov was dismissed, finally replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov after years of agitating for the position.
Molotov with Stalin, soon after his appointment as Foreign Minister in August 1945.
After Litvinov's dismissal, many of his aides were arrested and beaten, evidently in an attempt to extract compromising information. However, Stalin continued to respect Litvinov and he was not purged or completely frozen out.
The Soviets happily ratified the new LN Charter on 10 October and formally took up their role as one of the P5 members of the Security Council.
---xxx---
Japan
One thing both Litvinov and Molotov
could agree on was suspicion and dislike of the Japanese imperialists. On 5 April 1945, as we saw previously in the Japan chapter, the Soviet Union confirmed it would
not consider a Japanese proposal to revive the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact of April 1941, primarily over the future of Mongolia. This apparently irrational intransigence over Mongolia thus rebounded and led to the resignation of Japanese PM Okada Keisuke, seen as an architect of the temporary rapprochement with the Soviets.
It seemed to the Soviets that Mongolia was being used by an anti-Soviet Japanese faction in some obscure Tokyo power play to promote itself and an alternate Japanese strategic approach. The Soviets would not let them off this hook easily!
As noted earlier when considering Japanese post-war events, the USSR’s flanks were secure in Europe and along the long border with the still-friendly UGNR (technically still a Comintern member albeit with its own developing Bucharest Pact sub-faction). This allowed the Soviets to ‘play nasty’ against the Japanese in Korea, Vietnam and China while maintaining a strong force to distract and occupy them along the Line of Demarcation in Mongolia and the long Manchurian border with the Japanese.
---xxx---
Mongolia and China
In February 1945, in negotiations with Nationalist China Stalin insisted on the Republic of China's recognition of Outer Mongolia's independence – something that it already enjoyed
de facto even as it remained a part of China
de jure. Chiang Kai-shek resisted the idea at first but eventually gave in. However, Chiang extracted from Stalin a promise to refrain from supporting the Chinese Communist Party against the Nationalist China, partly as a
quid pro quo for giving up Outer Mongolia. A provisional pro-Soviet government was soon established as the Mongolian People’s Republic and incorporated into the Warsaw Pact.
Flag of the Mongolian People’s Republic.
The Chinese Communists had resumed their insurgency against the Japanese on 10 August 1945. As operations ramped up during the rest of 1945, Mao’s troops began to receive clandestine support from the Soviets, who secretly and continuously supported the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army, but the Soviets claimed was support for the PLA’s liberation war against Japan, not against Nationalist China per se.
The Soviets controlled northern Outer Mongolia and Japan occupied its south and Inner Mongolia (Mengukuo) and Mao directed his efforts solely against the Japanese at this point, so Chiang was left with little practical choice and acquiesced. The Treaty of Friendship and Alliance was signed by the National Government of the Republic of China and the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on 14 August 1945.
Stalin and Molotov (in his first major diplomatic engagement after becoming Foreign Minister) look on as the Chinese sign the China-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, 14 August 1945.
A referendum to officially assert independence from China was held in the Mongolian People's Republic on 20 October 1945. According to the Soviet election supervisors, voter turnout was 98.5% and it was approved by 100% of voters, with
no votes against, according to official statistics.
---xxx---
Vietnam and Korea
As noted in the Japan chapter, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed on 2 September 1945 when revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh declared independence from ‘Japanese overlordship’ exercised through their ‘Imperialist puppets in Hanoi’. They did so with covert (but separate) support from the Soviets, the US and France, the former colonial masters.
And from October 1945 the Soviets also laid the groundwork for covert (though obviously suspected) military support for the Korean Communists.
Kim Il-sung, right, young and seemingly loyal to Soviet interests, poses with a visiting Soviet military officials on an ‘observation mission’ in Pyongyang, November 1945.
Late in December 1945, as Kim Il Sung’s Communists began to agitate and start low scale political violence aimed at restoring Korean independence under Communist rule, Molotov put a proposal to the Politburo in Moscow to begin clandestine financial and military support for Kim.
---xxx---
India and the Middle East
Soviet policy towards India soon saw it establishing a consulate in New Delhi in early 1945 as it tried to position itself to be an influential player in India. Similarly, the Soviet Union was an early supporter of the Arab League, though had to tread carefully where this crossed into the UGNR’s sphere of influence. But this did nothing to prevent them ingratiating themselves with whatever Arab government proved amenable and to taking a more interventionist approach in British-run or puppeted Arab countries.
Soviet policy in both the sub-continent and the Middle East would develop further in future years, but for now remained of second-order importance to consolidating their hegemony with the Warsaw Pact and the emerging ‘Cold War’ with Japan.
---xxx---
Relations with the US
Relations with fellow-Comintern ally the US were more complicated. Even before the Geneva Conference had concluded in November 1944, Dewey’s Republicans had won the Presidency but with a contested Congress.
When the new US Administration began with Dewey’s inauguration on 20 January 1945, the Soviets had to deal with a new interlocutor – and one with a number of political limitations at home. The story of the US in 1945 and its relations with the USSR (among other nations) will be told in a subsequent chapter.
For now, suffice it to say that early in November 1945, Litvinov was summoned from his short period of 'internal exile' to see Stalin and told his services were required as ambassador to the United States. In the US the appointment was met with enthusiasm. The
New York Times stated:
“Stalin has decided to place his ablest and most forceful diplomat and one who enjoys greater prestige in this country. He is known as a man of exceptional ability, adroit as well as forceful. It is believed that Stalin, in designating him for the ambassadorship, felt Litvinov could exercise real influence in Washington.”
Soviet Ambassador to the US Maxim Litvinov at a diplomatic function in Washington DC, November 1945.
---xxx---
The ‘Old-New’ Germany: Government and Relations in October 1944
Up until the implementation of the Geneva Treaty outcomes, Germany had remained under the DNVP (Paternal Autocrat) provisional government of Ludwig Beck and Oskar Meissner that had served as a puppet regime under Turkish direction following the death of Adolph Hitler and Germany’s capitulation to Turkey earlier in 1944. However, the majority of the German people remained Nazi supporters at heart.
With the close-run and controversial vote to cede a united Germany (less the cessions to Poland already agreed at Geneva Conference) to Soviet supervision in the Warsaw Pact, such popular sympathies and the right-wing regime then in power in Germany were never going to be tolerated by the Soviets for long. And so it would prove.
At Geneva, it had been the Beck government that had been casting Germany’s small voting bloc. When the armistice with Japan was declared in early October 1944 and the Conference began, Germany’s sympathies had rested heavily with their then-puppet master, Turkey. Most in the German government had hoped they might remain under their ostensibly like-minded tutelage.
However, as new semi-autonomous members of the Comintern, the diplomatic relationship with the Soviets had improved considerably, while post-Axis sympathy with the Japanese persisted somewhat. Relations with the US remained frosty, France slightly more so and the UK remained an object of heavy German disapproval.
---xxx---
The German Democratic Republic (DDR): November 1944 – December 1945
The Soviets would soon begin implementing a command economy for Germany under the eventual control of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). But first, the Soviets began a harsh program of extracting war reparations through the disassembly of German industry. Soviet troops, organised in specialised "trophy" battalions, removed millions of tons of materials and equipment, as well as large quantities of agricultural produce.
The Soviets sought to extract around US$40bn from Germany, in addition to the trophy removals
[$10b in OTL just from the East]. In 1945 and 1946 an estimated 70,000 factories would be removed, amounting to a third of German productive capacity. The general population was greatly embittered, but the policy was ruthlessly implemented.
The Soviets wasted no time in starting to dismantle much of Germany’s industrial base that had not been destroyed in GW2. This caused great hardship across Germany through 1945 and afterwards and weakened it significantly in all respects of economic and military capacity.
Military industries and those owned by the state, by Nazi activists, and by war criminals were confiscated by the Soviet occupation authority. These industries amounted to about 60% of total industrial production. Most heavy industry (constituting 20% of total production) was claimed by the Soviet Union as reparations, and Soviet joint stock companies were formed. The remaining confiscated industrial property was nationalised, leaving 40% of total industrial production to private enterprise.
A decree of 10 June 1945 allowed the formation of antifascist democratic political parties (only) with all others banned, of course. A democratic-antifascist coalition, which included the KPD, the SPD, the new Christian Democratic Union (Christlich-Demokratische Union—CDU), and the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (Liberal Demokratische Partei Deutschlands—LDPD), was formed in July 1945.
The KPD (led by Wilhelm Pieck) and the SPD (led by Otto Grotewohl) merged in August 1945 under strong pressure from the Soviets to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands—SED). The SED was structured as a Soviet-style "party of the new type". To that end, German communist Walter Ulbricht became first secretary of the SED, and a Politburo, Secretariat, and Central Committee were formed.
21 August 1945: Otto Grotewohl (right) and Wilhelm Pieck (left) sealing the unification of the SPD and KPD with a symbolic handshake. Walter Ulbricht is in the foreground to the right of Grotewohl.
The logo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).
According to the Leninist principle of democratic centralism, each party body was controlled by its members, meaning that Ulbricht, as party chief, theoretically carried out the will of the members of his party.
Elections held in October 1945 rubber-stamped this arrangement, as the German armed forces were rapidly reduced in size and much of their industry was sent eastwards. The German nuclear research program was taken over by the Soviets and incorporated into their own.
The new flag of the DDR, formally adopted after the October 1945 elections.
Left: Wilhelm Pieck (b. 3 January 1876) chairman of the Socialist Unity Party and first president of the DDR. Right: Otto Grotewohl (b. 11 March 1894), first prime minister of the DDR.
However, rumours would persist that a large number of German nuclear and rocket scientists had fled abroad during the Geneva Conference. Some would turn up in the US, but most would make their way to the UGNR. There, they would meet up again with most of the members of the Beck government, who sought and received political asylum in Turkey after the Geneva Conference ‘disaster’ for Germany. But all would be required to keep a very low profile – for now – in order to maintain cordial Comintern relations.
Ludwig Beck in exile in Ankara, December 1944.
