German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty
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The German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty was a treaty signed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on September 28, 1939 after jointly invading Poland. It was signed by Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, the foreign ministers for Germany and the Soviet Union respectively. It was a follow up to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, dated August 23. Only a small portion of the treaty was publicly announced.
Several secret articles were attached. These articles allowed the exchange of Russian and German nationals from the other sides partition of Poland, redrew parts of the central European spheres of interest dictated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and included an agreement to suppress any "Polish agitation". When Wehrmacht advanced against Poland, Germans took control of the Lublin Voivodeship and eastern Warsaw Voivodeship, territories which according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact were in the Soviet sphere of influence. To compensate the Soviet Union for this loss, the treaty's secret attachment detailed Nazis transferred Lithuania, except for a small territory in Suwałki Region, to the Soviet sphere of influence. This transfer enabled the Soviet Union to occupy Lithuania on June 15, 1940 and establish Lithuanian SSR.
[edit] References
- Eidintas, Alfonsas; Vytautas Žalys, Alfred Erich Senn (September 1999). in Ed. Edvardas Tuskenis: Lithuania in European Politics: The Years of the First Republic, 1918-1940, Paperback, New York: St. Martin's Press, 170. ISBN 0-312-22458-3.
