Papers which were kept secret for almost 70 years show that the Soviet Union proposed sending a powerful military force in an effort to entice Britain and France into an anti-Nazi alliance.
Such an agreement could have changed the course of 20th century history, preventing Hitler’s pact with Stalin which gave him free rein to go to war with Germany’s other neighbours.
The offer of a military force to help contain Hitler was made by a senior Soviet military delegation at a Kremlin meeting with senior British and French officers, two weeks before war broke out in 1939.
The new documents, copies of which have been seen by The Sunday Telegraph, show the vast numbers of infantry, artillery and airborne forces which Stalin’s generals said could be dispatched, if Polish objections to the Red Army crossing its territory could first be overcome.
But the British and French side - briefed by their governments to talk, but not authorised to commit to binding deals - did not respond to the Soviet offer, made on August 15, 1939. Instead, Stalin turned to Germany, signing the notorious non-aggression treaty with Hitler barely a week later.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the foreign secretaries of the two countries, came on August 23 - just a week before Nazi Germany attacked Poland, thereby sparking the outbreak of the war. But it would never have happened if Stalin’s offer of a western alliance had been accepted, according to retired Russian foreign intelligence service Major General Lev Sotskov, who sorted the 700 pages of declassified documents.
“This was the final chance to slay the wolf, even after [British Conservative prime minister Neville] Chamberlain and the French had given up Czechoslovakia to German aggression the previous year in the Munich Agreement,” said Gen Sotskov, 75.
The Soviet offer - made by war minister Marshall Klementi Voroshilov and Red Army chief of general staff Boris Shaposhnikov - would have put up to 120 infantry divisions (each with some 19,000 troops), 16 cavalry divisions, 5,000 heavy artillery pieces, 9,500 tanks and up to 5,500 fighter aircraft and bombers on Germany’s borders in the event of war in the west, declassified minutes of the meeting show.
But Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, who lead the British delegation, told his Soviet counterparts that he authorised only to talk, not to make deals.
“Had the British, French and their European ally Poland, taken this offer seriously then together we could have put some 300 or more divisions into the field on two fronts against Germany - double the number Hitler had at the time,” said Gen Sotskov, who joined the Soviet intelligence service in 1956. “This was a chance to save the world or at least stop the wolf in its tracks.”
I don’t see how the fact that France and Britain refused an alliance with the USSR makes the one with Nazi Germany more acceptable.
And do you know why France and Britain refused? It’s in your text:
Stalin was ‘prepared to move more than a million Soviet troops to the German border’
Because between the Soviet and German borders there were countries! What Stalin asked was to conquer independent countries with the benediction of Paris and London. It was not a generous offer, it was an imperialist ultimatum. “Let me invade Poland, Romania and other allies of yours, and that will calm Hitler” was in substance Stalin’s proposition.
And to put true non-aggression pacts like the ones with France and Britain in the same group as an offensive alliance which was actually the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is intellectually dishonest.
The USSR first sought an alliance with Britain and France which was rejected, so they signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. Britain and France also signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, betraying one of their allies (Czechoslovakia) in exchange.
Should we take the fact that the US and USSR fought on the same side in WWII to say that they were always close friends and ideologically aligned, completely ignoring everything else? Because if anything that would be more reasonable to assert, because it never escalated to a hot war between the two.
It wasn’t just a pact of non-aggression. They divided Poland between themselves! France and Britain abandoned Czechoslovakia to avoid a war, USSR made an alliance with Nazi Germany to begin one.
And USSR and the US were on the same side because they were attacked by allied countries (Germany and Japan), they didn’t chose one another. Stop your historical revisionism.
I won’t defend all of the USSR’s actions, but it’s absurd to suggest they were motivated by any sort of ideological alignment with the Nazis as opposed to self-interest and circumstance, in the same way that the US and USSR were motivated by a common interest rather than ideological alignment.
At basically every other moment in history, all across the globe, Marxists and fascists have been at each other’s throats.
Nothing I’ve said is in the least bit “historical revisionism.”
Still, the USSR considered that an alliance with Nazi Germany was ideologically acceptable, even if they were not aligned. Because the only true ideology of USSR was to maintain its leaders in power, Marxism was just a facade. And that’s will always ultimately the case with authoritarian governments.
Of course self-preservation was a priority for the USSR, as it is with any nation. Failure to achieve self-preservation would have meant being ruled by the Nazis.
Not sure how that in any way indicates that “Marxism was a facade.”
The Soviet Union was not entitled to an alliance with partners they were at war with only a decade prior. Britain and France were at war with the entity that would become the Soviet Union until 1922, There was no reason to Trust an alliance from a state that was ideologically opposed to them and wanted to destroy their way of life.
But the Victim complex from the Russians is a venerable beast, it was as relevant in 1925 as it was in 2025.
I’m not sure how it’s relevant whether or not the Soviets were “entitled” to an alliance. What matters is the fact that they attempted to negotiate one there first.
I can ask for a cup of sugar from the neighbor who I wrecked the car of last month. that neighbor is still within his reasonable rights to tell me to fuck off
Which the Red Army made up for by murdering untold thousands of German citizens on the way to Berlin. Let’s not pretend the Soviets weren’t huge pieces of shit, the only reason they didn’t start WW2 was because they were too busy shitting in buckets and starving to death.
The only people you idiot .ml users are fooling is yourselves, so I don’t know why you bother with this revisionist bullshit.
The Soviet Union. Or more accuratley, RUSSIA was one of the two aggressors that Started the second world war.
Furthermore, they were not an ally, but a co-belligerent. Why else did the free world go from a period of direct confrontation and war in the 20s, to Cold war in the 30s. to temporary truce for 4 years from 1941 to 1945. right back to Cold war with Moscow from 1945 till 1991? (and then another temporary truce from 1991 until about 2008) right back to more or less being de facto at war with each other again since 2014
And you can’t pin tens of millions of your own people, with Purges, Pogroms, Mentally handicapped suicidal orders. And general paranoid hysterical incompetnece. and blame those on the germans.
especially when large percentages of those people were colonized nations that wanted nothing to do with the Bolshevik Russian Imperial rule (Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, Balts etc and were just used like buffers and meat shields)
I dont know. you tell me. Outside of the thunderdome in the middle east. whens the last time there was a major conflict with dozens of nations and more than two major ideoligies at play.
If you’re asking in good faith. World War II’s situation was largely unprecedented.
Unlike WWI Where Imperial Russia and France were allied. Soviet Russia was not allied with France, Britain, or western Europe.
for four years. a temporary matter.
they went right back to being in a hostile competition for spheres of influence a few weeks or months after V-E day however.
Well, that’s twice as long as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact lasted before the Nazis and Communists went right back to killing each other, not just in a “hostile competition” but in a large scale, total war that left tens of millions of people dead.
The Soviet Union did more to stop the fascists than anyone else, and 27 million people in the Soviet Union were killed in the fight.
Yeah, but that’s after they made an alliance with Nazi Germany. An alliance Germany broke, not the USSR.
The Telegraph, 2008: Stalin ‘planned to send a million troops to stop Hitler if Britain and France agreed pact’ | Stalin was ‘prepared to move more than a million Soviet troops to the German border to deter Hitler’s aggression just before the Second World War’
I don’t see how the fact that France and Britain refused an alliance with the USSR makes the one with Nazi Germany more acceptable.
And do you know why France and Britain refused? It’s in your text:
Because between the Soviet and German borders there were countries! What Stalin asked was to conquer independent countries with the benediction of Paris and London. It was not a generous offer, it was an imperialist ultimatum. “Let me invade Poland, Romania and other allies of yours, and that will calm Hitler” was in substance Stalin’s proposition.
And to put true non-aggression pacts like the ones with France and Britain in the same group as an offensive alliance which was actually the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is intellectually dishonest.
A non-aggression pact is not so much of an alliance. Nazis are the ones who broke it anyway. US armed/financed German military-industrial complex.
It was not just a pact of non aggression. They attacked Poland together, and shared its territory. It was an alliance.
And the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact included (in secret) an agreement dividing Europe up into Nazi and Soviet halves preemptively.
The USSR first sought an alliance with Britain and France which was rejected, so they signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. Britain and France also signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, betraying one of their allies (Czechoslovakia) in exchange.
Should we take the fact that the US and USSR fought on the same side in WWII to say that they were always close friends and ideologically aligned, completely ignoring everything else? Because if anything that would be more reasonable to assert, because it never escalated to a hot war between the two.
It wasn’t just a pact of non-aggression. They divided Poland between themselves! France and Britain abandoned Czechoslovakia to avoid a war, USSR made an alliance with Nazi Germany to begin one.
And USSR and the US were on the same side because they were attacked by allied countries (Germany and Japan), they didn’t chose one another. Stop your historical revisionism.
I won’t defend all of the USSR’s actions, but it’s absurd to suggest they were motivated by any sort of ideological alignment with the Nazis as opposed to self-interest and circumstance, in the same way that the US and USSR were motivated by a common interest rather than ideological alignment.
At basically every other moment in history, all across the globe, Marxists and fascists have been at each other’s throats.
Nothing I’ve said is in the least bit “historical revisionism.”
Still, the USSR considered that an alliance with Nazi Germany was ideologically acceptable, even if they were not aligned. Because the only true ideology of USSR was to maintain its leaders in power, Marxism was just a facade. And that’s will always ultimately the case with authoritarian governments.
Of course self-preservation was a priority for the USSR, as it is with any nation. Failure to achieve self-preservation would have meant being ruled by the Nazis.
Not sure how that in any way indicates that “Marxism was a facade.”
Self-preservation is something else than making an offensive alliance with Nazis.
The Soviet Union was not entitled to an alliance with partners they were at war with only a decade prior. Britain and France were at war with the entity that would become the Soviet Union until 1922, There was no reason to Trust an alliance from a state that was ideologically opposed to them and wanted to destroy their way of life.
But the Victim complex from the Russians is a venerable beast, it was as relevant in 1925 as it was in 2025.
I’m not sure how it’s relevant whether or not the Soviets were “entitled” to an alliance. What matters is the fact that they attempted to negotiate one there first.
I can ask for a cup of sugar from the neighbor who I wrecked the car of last month. that neighbor is still within his reasonable rights to tell me to fuck off
Again, not relevant. The point is not how Britain and France responded, the point is that the Soviets chose to go to them first.
Which the Red Army made up for by murdering untold thousands of German citizens on the way to Berlin. Let’s not pretend the Soviets weren’t huge pieces of shit, the only reason they didn’t start WW2 was because they were too busy shitting in buckets and starving to death.
The only people you idiot .ml users are fooling is yourselves, so I don’t know why you bother with this revisionist bullshit.
Projection, as always.
The Soviet Union. Or more accuratley, RUSSIA was one of the two aggressors that Started the second world war.
Furthermore, they were not an ally, but a co-belligerent. Why else did the free world go from a period of direct confrontation and war in the 20s, to Cold war in the 30s. to temporary truce for 4 years from 1941 to 1945. right back to Cold war with Moscow from 1945 till 1991? (and then another temporary truce from 1991 until about 2008) right back to more or less being de facto at war with each other again since 2014
And you can’t pin tens of millions of your own people, with Purges, Pogroms, Mentally handicapped suicidal orders. And general paranoid hysterical incompetnece. and blame those on the germans.
especially when large percentages of those people were colonized nations that wanted nothing to do with the Bolshevik Russian Imperial rule (Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, Balts etc and were just used like buffers and meat shields)
Do nations typically put aside differences to make temporary truces with co-belligerents of the nations they’re at war with?
I dont know. you tell me. Outside of the thunderdome in the middle east. whens the last time there was a major conflict with dozens of nations and more than two major ideoligies at play.
If you’re asking in good faith. World War II’s situation was largely unprecedented.
Unlike WWI Where Imperial Russia and France were allied. Soviet Russia was not allied with France, Britain, or western Europe.
The point is that the US put aside ideological differences because the USSR was fighting against the Nazis, they were not “co-belligerents.”
for four years. a temporary matter. they went right back to being in a hostile competition for spheres of influence a few weeks or months after V-E day however.
Well, that’s twice as long as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact lasted before the Nazis and Communists went right back to killing each other, not just in a “hostile competition” but in a large scale, total war that left tens of millions of people dead.