With an ineffectual League of Nations and Bolshevik USSR and Nazi Germany assisting each other in military buildup, the small independent nations in the “cordon sanitaire” between Germany and Soviet Union were vulnerable to the expansionist aspirations of their much more powerful and ideologically driven neighbours. Even though the Soviet Union was formally recognized by Roosevelt in 1933, and was subsequently allowed into the League of Nations in 1934, its small neighbours were well aware of the Bolshevik reign of terror upon its own people, and the threat that it posed to them.
On August 23, 1939, the Nazis and Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (MRP), dividing Europe into two defined spheres of influence. These two evil powers would subsequently divide Poland. On September 1, 1939, the Nazis attacked Poland to take their partition as agreed to in the MRP, and two days later, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany in support of their ally. When the Soviets invaded Poland on September 17, 1939 and took their MRP partition, neither France nor Britain ever declared war on the Soviet Union in support of their beleaguered ally.
(In 2017, Winston Churchill’s archives are to be released which should reveal whether prior to July 1939 there was an understanding in place between Churchill and Stalin.)
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