3 NATIONS REJECT REICH PACT OFFER (5/18/39)

Microfiche-New York Times archives, McHenry Library, U.C. Santa Cruz | 5/18/39 | Otto D. Tolischus

[Homer_J_Simpson]

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[Homer_J_Simpson]

The net result is that three States rejected the offer and one accepted. Consequently Herr Hitler’s score on non-aggression pact offers, totaling eight, now stands at four rejections and four acceptances.

[Mercat]

Please ping me.

[henkster]

The biggest acceptance is yet to come.

The real tally, however, will be how many of these pacts non-aggression pacts the Germans will abrogate. In reading “Nuremberg, Infamy on Trial” the author recounted how during the war, the German Foreign Ministry threw Ribbentrop a 50th birthday party. The usual “50th birthday props” were considered, like a coffin. The foreign ministry officials thought it would be a nice touch to put into the coffin all of the treaties Ribbentrop had negotiated. When they rounded up the treaties, they realized to their embarrassment and dismay that every single one of them had been broken by Germany.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

The real tally, however, will be how many of these pacts non-aggression pacts the Germans will abrogate.

I hope the Danes don't place too much hope on their agreement with Hitler. They could wind up disappointed in about eleven months.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

. . . [O]n May 20 Ambassador von der Schulenburg had a long talk with Molotov in Moscow. The newly appointed Commissar for Foreign Affairs was in a “most friendly” mood and informed the German envoy that economic negotiations between the two countries could be resumed if the necessary political bases for them were created. This was a new approach from the Kremlin but it was made cautiously by the cagey Molotov. When Schulenburg asked him what he meant by “political bases” the Russian replied that this was something both governments would have to think about. All the ambassador’s efforts to draw out the wily Foreign Commissar were in vain. “He is known,” Schulenburg reminded Berlin, “for his somewhat stubborn manner.” On his way out of the Russian Foreign Office, the ambassador dropped in on Vladimir Potemkin, the Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and told him he had not been able to find out what Molotov wanted of a political nature. “I asked Herr Potemkin,” Schulenburg reported, “to find out.”

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Molotov update at #6.