American Betrayal: Nuremberg and the Nazi-Soviet Pact

An overheard conversation between top Nazis Goering (front left) and von Ribbentrop (front, second from right) set off the chain of events revealing to the public the existence of the Hitler-Stalin Pact’s “secret protocol,” which included evidence of Soviet war crimes committed in tandem with the Nazis. The Allies suppressed the document at the Nuremberg trials.

 

Today is the 75th anniverary of the non-aggression pact between the Hitler and Stalin, the latter becoming (after Hitler attacked Stalin on June 22, 1941) the member of the “Big Three” known as “Uncle Joe.” In the commemorative essays discussing the twin dictators’ earlier alliance of August 23, 1939, which would be followed by Hitler and Stalin’s conquest of Poland the following month, the pact’s secret protocol that divided the nations of central and Eastern Europe between them is also mentioned. I have yet to see, however, any discussion of how that secret protocol became known to the public.

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There, in a Nuremberg prison yard, a German defense lawyer by chance overheard top Nazis (von RIbbentrop and Goering) discussing the contents of the still-secret protocol, which offered evidence of Stalin’s guilt in committing “conspiracy to wage aggressive war,” one of the key charges against the German high command. With Stalin trying to blot out his alliance with Hitler from the record — with full support of his British and American allies — how did the secret protocol ever come to the world’s attention?

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… Even to participate in these trials, the Western Allies had to overlook Stalin’s crimes and pretend they had not taken place within the timeline of the war whose very outbreak was precipitated by the infamous 1939 Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact negotiated by German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. After all, the Nazis and Soviets had begun World War II together as allies with the invasion of Poland. The Germans invaded Poland from the west on September 1, 1939—a well-known date—and the Red Army invaded from the east on September 17, 1939.