Documents And Materials Relating To The Eve Of The Second World War

New Times note, aka Foreward:

A collection of documents has just appeared in Moscow published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R. and entitled: “Documents and Materials Relating to the Eve of the Second World War. Vol. 1. November 1937-1938. From the Archives of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

The preface to the collection states:

“In the early part of 1948 the State Department of the U.S.A. published a collection of reports and records of Hitlerite diplomatic officials under the title “Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939-1941.” One learns from the preface to this collection that in the summer of 1946 an agreement to publish German diplomatic documents was reached between the Governments of the U.S.A. and Great Britain, to which France subsequently adhered. In 1945 the Soviet Government had addressed the British Government proposing a joint study of the German documents and insisted that Soviet experts be allowed to participate. The Soviet Government’s proposal was rejected. The American, British and French Governments undertook a separate publication of German documents, without the participation of the Soviet Union. In view' of this, the Soviet Government feels entitled to make public the secret documents from the Archives of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs captured by the Soviet Army on its triumphant entry into Berlin.”

The documents included in the first volume of this publication relate to the period from November 1937 to December 1938. They comprise records of conversations of Hitler, Ribbentrop and other representatives of the German Government with foreign statesmen, reports of German foreign diplomatic representatives, and documents relating to the negotiations of the German Government with other governments, as well as documents of other governments having a direct bearing on the materials from the Archives of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs contained in the collection. The documents are arranged in chronological order. Where the translation is not from the German, but from some other language, this is indicated by footnotes. The collection was prepared for the press by the Archives Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R. This supplement to NEW TIMES, No. 16, April 14, 1948, contains eleven of the documents included in the published collection.

Download: Documents And Materials Relating to The Eve of The Second World War, New Times Supplement (.pdf)

Tags: WW1Interlude, Britain, France, Germany, USSR, ThirdReich

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