Devils Alliance Hitlers Pact with Stalin 1939 41

Nazism and Bolshevism made unlikely bedfellows, but the brutally efficient joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 illustrated the powerful incentives that existed for both sides to set aside their differences. Forged by vain and pompous German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Russian counterpart, the inscrutable and stubborn Vyacheslav Molotov, the Nazi-Soviet pact in August of 1939 briefly unified the two powers. Together, the Germans and Soviets quickly conquered and divvied up central and eastern Europe— Poland, the Baltic States, Finland, and Bessarabia—aiding one another through exchanges of information, blueprints, and prisoners. The human cost was staggering: in Poland alone, the Soviets deported 1.5 million people in 1940, 400,000 of whom would never return. Tens of thousands were also deported from the Baltic States, including almost all of the members of the Estonian parliament. Of the 100,000 civilians deported to Siberia from Bessarabia, barely a third survived.

Nazi and Soviet leaders hoped that a similar quid-pro-quo agreement would also characterize their economic relationship. The Soviet Union would export much-needed raw materials to Germany, while the Germans would provide weapons and technological innovations to their communist counterparts. In reality, however, economic negotiations were fraught from the start, not least because the Soviets, mindful that the Germans were in dire need of raw materials to offset a British blockade, made impossible demands of their ally. Although German-Soviet trade still grew impressively through 1940, it was not enough to convince Hitler that he could rely on the partnership with Moscow, which on the whole was increasingly turbulent and unpredictable.

Fortunately for the Allies, the pact—which seemed to negate any chances of an Allied victory in Europe—was short-lived. Delving into the motivations and forces at work, Moorhouse explores how the partnership soured, ultimately resulting in the surprise June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. With the final dissolution of the pact, the Soviets sided with the Western democracies, a development that changed the course of the war—and which, upon Germanys defeat, allowed the Soviets to solidify the inroads they had made into Eastern Europe during their ill-starred alliance. Reviled by contemporaries, the Nazi-Soviet Pact would have a similarly baleful afterlife. Though it was torn up by the Nazis and denied or excused as a strategic necessity by the Soviets, its effects and political ramifications proved remarkably persistent. The boundaries of modern eastern and central Europe adhere closely to the hasty divisions made by Ribbentrop and Molotov. Even more importantly, the pact laid the groundwork for Soviet control of Eastern Europe, a power grab that would define the post-war order.

Drawing on memoirs, diaries, and official records from newly opened Soviet archives, The Devils Alliance is the authoritative work on one of the seminal episodes of World War II. In his characteristically rich and detailed prose, Moorhouse paints a vivid picture of the pacts origins and its enduring influence as a crucial turning point, in both the war and in modern history.

“Superb.... The lesson that Mr. Moorhouses excellent book teaches us is that there should never again be a Russo-German partition of Eastern Europe into ‘spheres of influence.”

Foreign Affairs

“Moorhouse captures the essence of the wretched deal better than anyone has before.”

New York Review of Books

“A good account by the British historian Roger Moorhouse of what the pact meant for Hitler and Stalin—and, worse, for its victims. Moorhouse concludes his modest introduction: the history of the Nazi-Soviet Pact ‘deserves to be rescued from the footnotes and restored to its rightful place.... I can only hope that this book makes some small contribution to that process. It does.”

Christian Science Monitor

“Carefully researched and exceptionally readable.... This volume is an important addition to the vast literature on the war and will be a starting place for readers who want to understand this critical aspect of the conflict. Moorhouse offers a wealth of important insights about this unlikely alliance.”

Guardian, UK

“Moorhouse tells a good story and...he is able to add interesting new details. His account of the negotiation and signing of the pact, finalised by Ribbentrop and Molotov, two men who had become foreign ministers of their respective countries through fawning sycophancy towards their respective leaders, is masterly.”

Washington Times

“[A] vivid, well-researched and gripping account.... Mr. Moorhouses book is a valuable reminder of this most shameful event.”

Telegraph, UK

“Meticulous and vividly readable.... At a time when tensions are once again simmering in the same Eastern European badlands where the “devils alliance” was forged, Moorhouses grim and compelling book could not be more topical.”

Independent, UK

“Moorhouse makes an elegant plea for retrieving the Pact from its "place too often in the footnotes", to disentangle the myths from facts and recast erroneous readings.”

Financial Times, UK

“Moorhouse provides a vivid account, full of primary source material, of the pacts origins and explains how Berlin and Moscow co-operated for almost two years before the partnership collapsed with Germanys invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941…The Devils Alliance is a highly enjoyable history written with verve and attention to detail.”

Winnipeg Free Press, CAN

“While the Second World War has been scrupulously documented, analyzed and liberally interpreted, Moorhouse's knack for combining scholarly and comprehensive research with first-hand and eyewitness testimony creates an engaging, informative, and lucid polemic that adds to the canon.”

Literary Review, UK

“A detailed, up-to-date and highly readable account.”

Open Letters Monthly

“A concrete and well-paced financial and interpersonal accounting of the Russo-German alliance that has not elsewhere been performed nearly as fully as Moorhouse has done here.”

Daily Express, UK

“Superbly detailed and well-written.... Moorhouse, an expert in modern German history uses first-hand and eyewitness testimony to tell a compelling story.”

WWII History Magazine

“[Moorhouse] has done a commendable job, presenting the story in clear prose and fascinating detail.”

History News Network

“Outstanding and revelatory.”

H-Diplo

“Among the virtues of Roger Moorhouses lively popular history is that he gives his reader a sense of how historians understanding of the pact has changed over time as new sources have slowly emerged.... An excellent and vibrant introduction to the subject.”

Library Journal

“Well-researched and well-written.... Moorhouse's accessible prose and clear explication make this a great story for history readers, and his extensive research and documentation help create a critical text for academics focusing on World War II, German history, and Soviet history.”

Publishers Weekly

“Riveting.... Readers of military and diplomatic history as well as those interested in the Holocaust will find this book immensely interesting and informative.”

Kirkus

“A well-researched work offering new understanding of the pact's pertinence to this day.”

Jan T. Gross, Professor of War and Society and Professor of History at Princeton University

“A superb book. Carefully researched and beautifully written, it covers a sorely neglected yet very important chapter of the Second World War. A must-read for anyone even vaguely interested in the history of World War II.”

Adam Zamoyski, author of Moscow 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March

“In this profoundly researched, briskly argued, and wonderfully readable book—full of dramatic and darkly comic detail—Roger Moorhouse has done history a great service. He has rescued one of the Second World Wars dirtiest little secrets from the shadows into which the pro-Soviet bias of post-war historians had swept it, and reveals in all its moral squalor the deal that made it possible for Hitler to go to war.”

Andrew Roberts, author of The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War

“Superbly researched and academically impeccable, yet written with all the pace of a thriller, The Devils Alliance shines a powerful beam into one of the undeservedly least known aspects of the Second World War. That conflict could not have taken place without the Pact, so anyone wishing to understand how Hitler could have attacked Poland and France, and when and how he did, must read this book, in which the personalities (and treacheries) are as gigantic as the world events they spawned.”

Norman Davies, author of Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe

“The Devils' Alliance is a marvelous achievement. No event was more crucial to the outbreak of the Second World War than the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, and no one is better qualified to explore its grim implications than Roger Moorhouse.”

Nigel Jones, author of Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London

“With The Devils' Alliance Roger Moorhouse has achieved what all historians dream of. He has taken a neglected facet of Second World War history—the unnatural and short-lived "marriage" between Europe's worst 20th century tyrants, Hitler and Stalin—and demonstrated that it was one of that century's crucial defining events. Current happenings in the Ukraine prove its topicality as well. Altogether an astonishing achievement, confirming Moorhouse's place as the leading, and most readable, of modern writers on central and eastern Europe.”

In The Devils Alliance, Roger Moorhouse explains how the two powers—though ideologically opposed—forged a brutally efficient partnership, exchanging raw materials and machinery and orchestrating the division of Poland and the Baltic States. Hundreds of thousands caught between Hitler and Stalin were killed or deported. But ironically, by sharing materiel and technological expertise during the Pact, the Nazis and Soviets made possible a far more bloody and protracted war than would have been otherwise conceivable.

Combining comprehensive research with a gripping narrative, The Devils Alliance is the authoritative history of the Nazi-Soviet Pact—and a portrait of the people whose lives were irrevocably altered by the alliance.

Chapter 1. The Devils Potion

Chapter 2. Bonded in Blood

Chapter 3. Sharing the Spoils

Chapter 4. Contortions

Chapter 5. A Rough, Uncertain Wooing

Chapter 6. Oiling the Wheels of War

Chapter 7. Comrade “Stonearse” in the Lair of the Fascist Beast

Chapter 8. Riding the Nazi Tiger

Chapter 9. No Honor Among Thieves

Epilogue: Life After Death

Appendix: Text of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact