Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also called the German-Soviet Pact, the Nazi-Soviet Pact or the Hitler-Stalin Pact, was an agreement signed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in Moscow on August 23, 1939, after negotiation by the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. It had a public part and a secret part. The public part was a ten year non-aggression pact in which each state promised not to attack the other, not to help a third state that attacked either of them, and not to join any arrangement aimed at the other; it could renew for five more years unless a party ended it. The secret protocol set out Soviet and German spheres of influence in eastern Europe and a line for dividing Poland. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 without fear of Soviet intervention, and the Soviet Union invaded from the east on September 17. The pact ended on June 22, 1941, when German forces invaded the Soviet Union, so it lasted less than two years.