On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany concluded a non-aggression pact - the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed in Moscow by the main diplomats of both countries. The parties pledged to refrain from attacking each other and not to support third countries in the war against Germany or the USSR. However, this agreement, although it came as a surprise to the Western powers and the allied Nazis of Japan, was only part of the pact.
With the filing of Joseph Stalin and with the consent of Adolf Hitler, the heads of two foreign affairs agencies - Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop - also signed a secret protocol to the document. It provided for the separation of spheres of influence of the USSR and Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe in the event of a "territorial and political reorganization." One of the German representatives explained that the earlier hostility to Soviet Bolshevism ceased after the changes in the Comintern and the Soviet Union abandoned the world revolution.
