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The Soviets, the Munich Crisis, and the Coming of World War II
Hugh Ragsdale's analysis of East European documentation sheds new light on the Munich Crisis. If Hitler had been stopped at Munich, World War II, as we know it, could not have happened. The Crisis has been thoroughly studied in British, French, and German documents, and, consequently, we have learned that the weakness in the Western position at Munich consisted of the Anglo-French opinion that the Soviet commitment to its allies--France and Czechoslovakia--was utterly unreliable. Ragsdale's findings will contribute to a "considerable shift" of opinion.
236 pages, Hardcover
First published January 22, 2004
11 people want to read
About the author
Hugh Ragsdale
9 books1 followerHugh Ragsdale is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Alabama and a Slavic Studies scholar. He received his B. A. from the University of North Carolina and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.
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July 24, 2025
"Es tut mir leid, aber das geht nicht mehr."
An excellent survey of the available documents from eastern Europe in the leadup to WW2.
The entire tragic episode can be characterised by the repeated, multi-level dialectical interplay between idiocy and necessity.
At least until Danzig, the Nazis played their hand almost perfectly, but they were ideological idiots who truly believed that, when war came, their natural superiority would mean they would just magically win.
The French were conspicuous cowards who barely had a functional government at all, and had a Nazi sympathiser and appeaser as foreign minister, who then went on to make his own foreign policy on the fly with no oversight.
The British under Chamberlain has been talked about to death, but suffice to say it's even worse than most people know, including Lord Halifax trying to form a non-aggression pact with Germany even during the invasion of Poland.
The Czechs ultimately surrendered without a fight.
Poland loved Hitler and wanted to partition Czechoslovakia with the Nazis only to get immediately shocked Pikachu'd.
Romania vacillated, but even when they were seemingly ok with letting the Soviets through to Czechoslovakia, they simply did not have the infrastructure to support the required troop movements. Poland, with its infinitely superior infrastructure was an immediate no go as mentioned above.
The Soviets were the only ones with a consistently good policy (supporting Czechoslovakia even to the point of actively mobilising on their western frontier), but even they managed to fuck it up. Namely, all of this was happening during the Great Purge, so as much as their policies were good and amenable, the diplomats the Soviets sent kept getting recalled to Moscow and getting executed, so no one could trust that their line would hold!
Litvinov begged Stalin many times to stop massacring his diplomatic corps in the middle of a giant international crisis, but no dice.
The worst hit part was the Soviet military though. Effectively the entire officer corps was beheaded, and Stalin had refused to adequately invest in military railroads, making the Soviet position look much shakier than it turned out to be by 1941.
Even in the days immediately before the Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to bide time, they were still desperately, fruitlessly, trying to form a pact with Britain and France (the former of which didn't even bother to send someone authorised to sign treaties). It was only at this point that the Soviets said "alright, fuck it."
Even after the pact, with Germany invading Poland, the Soviets were bewilderedly asking the Poles why they weren't asking for help against the Nazis.
It's excruciating, there are so many almosts in this story.
Unfortunately, there's still a lot we don't have access to, and as Ragsdale himself puts it:
"If there is any prospect of the refinement and improvement of conclusions such as these, it awaits the capricious impulses of the furtive Neanderthals who are keepers of the secrets of the Russian archives."
To make matters worse, the Soviets seized all the valuable Romanian documents and the Russians, being furtive Neanderthals, refuse to release them
An excellent survey of the available documents from eastern Europe in the leadup to WW2.
The entire tragic episode can be characterised by the repeated, multi-level dialectical interplay between idiocy and necessity.
At least until Danzig, the Nazis played their hand almost perfectly, but they were ideological idiots who truly believed that, when war came, their natural superiority would mean they would just magically win.
The French were conspicuous cowards who barely had a functional government at all, and had a Nazi sympathiser and appeaser as foreign minister, who then went on to make his own foreign policy on the fly with no oversight.
The British under Chamberlain has been talked about to death, but suffice to say it's even worse than most people know, including Lord Halifax trying to form a non-aggression pact with Germany even during the invasion of Poland.
The Czechs ultimately surrendered without a fight.
Poland loved Hitler and wanted to partition Czechoslovakia with the Nazis only to get immediately shocked Pikachu'd.
Romania vacillated, but even when they were seemingly ok with letting the Soviets through to Czechoslovakia, they simply did not have the infrastructure to support the required troop movements. Poland, with its infinitely superior infrastructure was an immediate no go as mentioned above.
The Soviets were the only ones with a consistently good policy (supporting Czechoslovakia even to the point of actively mobilising on their western frontier), but even they managed to fuck it up. Namely, all of this was happening during the Great Purge, so as much as their policies were good and amenable, the diplomats the Soviets sent kept getting recalled to Moscow and getting executed, so no one could trust that their line would hold!
Litvinov begged Stalin many times to stop massacring his diplomatic corps in the middle of a giant international crisis, but no dice.
The worst hit part was the Soviet military though. Effectively the entire officer corps was beheaded, and Stalin had refused to adequately invest in military railroads, making the Soviet position look much shakier than it turned out to be by 1941.
Even in the days immediately before the Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to bide time, they were still desperately, fruitlessly, trying to form a pact with Britain and France (the former of which didn't even bother to send someone authorised to sign treaties). It was only at this point that the Soviets said "alright, fuck it."
Even after the pact, with Germany invading Poland, the Soviets were bewilderedly asking the Poles why they weren't asking for help against the Nazis.
It's excruciating, there are so many almosts in this story.
Unfortunately, there's still a lot we don't have access to, and as Ragsdale himself puts it:
"If there is any prospect of the refinement and improvement of conclusions such as these, it awaits the capricious impulses of the furtive Neanderthals who are keepers of the secrets of the Russian archives."
To make matters worse, the Soviets seized all the valuable Romanian documents and the Russians, being furtive Neanderthals, refuse to release them
Displaying 1 of 1 review