[The threads of the trade negotiations] were, in fact, picked up four days later, on July 26, in Berlin. Dr. Schnurre was instructed by Ribbentrop to dine Astakhov, the Soviet charge, and Babarin at a swank Berlin restaurant and sound them out. The two Russians needed little sounding. As Schnurre noted in his confidential memorandum of the meeting, “the Russians stayed until about 12:30 A.M.” and talked “in a very lively and interested manner about the political and economic problems of interest to us.”
Astakhov, with the warm approval of Babarin, declared that a Soviet-German political rapprochement corresponded to the vital interests of the two countries. In Moscow, he said, they had never quite understood why Nazi Germany had been so antagonistic to the Soviet Union. The German diplomat, in response, explained that “German policy in the East had now taken an entirely different course.”
On our part there could be no question of menacing the Soviet Union. Our aims were in an entirely different direction . . . German policy was aimed at Britain . . . I could imagine a far-reaching arrangement of mutual interests with due consideration for vital Russian problems.
However, this possibility would be barred the moment the Soviet Union aligned itself with Britain against Germany. The time for an understanding between Germany and the Soviet Union was opportune now, but would no longer be so after the conclusion of a pact with London.
What could Britain offer Russia? At best, participation in a European war and the hostility of Germany. What could we offer against this? Neutrality and keeping out of a possible European conflict and, if Moscow wished, a German-Russian understanding on mutual interests which, just as in former times, would work out to the advantage of both countries . . . Controversial problems [between Germany and Russia] did not, in my opinion, exist anywhere along the line from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and to the Far East. In addition, despite all the divergencies in their views of life, there was one thing common to the ideology of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies in the West.
Thus in the late-evening hours of July 26 in a small Berlin restaurant over good food and wine partaken by second-string diplomats was Germany’s first serious bid for a deal with Soviet Russia Made. The new line which Schnurre took had been given him by Ribbentrop himself. Astakhov was pleased to hear it. He promised Schnurre that he would report it at once to Moscow.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
*The entire press today features extensive accounts of German submarine manoeuvres in the Baltic Sea, in which the entire submarine fleet – reported to number seventy-one craft – participated under the personal supervision of Admiral General Erich Raeder.
71? I thought it was closer to 50.
The authorities adduced for that argument and widely cited in the German press are, first, Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, described as “the greatest military critic of Germany,” and Alfred Duff Cooper, former First Lord of the Admiralty.
I know that name! B.H. Liddell Hart is the author of one of my reference books, History of the Second World War. I expect to be excerpting from it in the not-so-distant future.
Nazi Soviet Pact update at Reply #2.