Russia’s Defense Ministry has declassified a trove of documents relating to a Soviet-Nazi nonaggression pact signed 80 years ago which historians say paved the way for the start of World War II. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact pact on Aug. 23, 1939. A secret protocol that accompanied the non-aggression treaty divided the territories of Poland, Romania, the Baltic nations and Finland into German and Soviet "spheres of influence," leaving the way open for the German invasion of Poland.

Рakt1939.mil.ru

The Defense Ministry said it released the documents “not in chronological order, but in a sequence that will allow viewers to get the most complete picture” of what led to the pact. It highlighted a 31-page dispatch by a Red Army chief of general staff, Boris Shaposhnikov, as a key document that “completely flips traditional notions of” why Molotov-Ribbentrop was signed. “The Soviet Union needs to be ready to fight on two fronts: In the West against Germany and Poland and partially against Italy with the possible accession of the border states, and in the East against Japan,” the 1938 dispatch reportedly reads.

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