Between Berlin and Moscow: German-Soviet Relations in 1939-1941, by Sławomir Dębski
(For professors, college students, teachers, and adults). This scholarly work by Sławomir Dębski was first published in Polish as Między Berlinem a Moskwą. Stosunki niemiecko-sowieckie, Warszawa PISM 2003, second edition 2007. It was later published in German.
This English-language edition was submitted to the publisher, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, by the Janusz Kurtyka Foundation. When the work was submitted, it included important historical photographs from the Polish edition as well as some archivist material and commentary by the author. However, De Gruyter Oldenbourg inexplicably excluded them from this English edition, which constitutes censorship of critically relevant historical fact. As a result, six photographs from the Polish edition are presented below, confirming that Stalin’s logistical support provided to Hitler aided significantly in the destruction of Poland.
Nevertheless, Sławomir Dębski presents a brilliant reconstruction of the sequence of events from the point at which Germany clinched its rapprochement with the Soviet Union in August 1939 until the open clash of the two totalitarian Powers in June 1941. His book answers key questions for historiography on the motives that prompted Hitler and Stalin to make their deal and why their alliance collapsed. His account of the alternative Soviet plans for an attack against Germany explains Stalin’s conduct in the critical opening days of the war. Dębski offers his readers a set of novel and thoroughly thought-out assessments, with an original account of diplomatic relations between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union in 1939-1941 based on his examination of German, Soviet, and Polish sources. The study is an invaluable source of information for all who are interested in geopolitics, the background to twentieth-century diplomacy, and the history of totalitarian states. This book will also give readers a deeper insight into the plight of the Polish State and its people wedged between the two twentieth-century totalitarian regimes.
As previously noted, six photographs from the English edition are presented below. The captions are translated from each photograph’s Polish caption.
Photo 1. 23 August 1939 – Moscow. Joachim von Ribbentrop signs the Non-Aggression Pact between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, along with the secret supplementary protocol. Molotov and Stalin are visible in the background.
Photo 2. June 1940 – Przemysł. Goods exchange point between the USSR and the Reich. Arrival of a Soviet train carrying kerosene at the Przemyśl railway station.
Photo 3. July 1940 – Przemysł. Soviet tankers transporting oil to Germany.
Photo 4. July 1940 – Przemysł. Transshipment of Soviet oil at the Przemyśl station.
Photo 5. August 1940 – Przemysł. Transport of goods from the USSR to Germany via the Przemyśl border bridge.
Photo 6. 12 November 1940 – Berlin. People’s Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov in conversation with Adolf Hitler. Interpreter: Embassy Counselor Hilger.
