<P> In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Axis power Japan . While Stalin had little faith in Japan's commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism, to reinforce a public affection for Germany . Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union . Stalin did not know that Hitler had been secretly discussing an invasion of the Soviet Union since summer 1940, and that Hitler had ordered his military in late 1940 to prepare for war in the east regardless of the parties' talks of a potential Soviet entry as a fourth Axis Power . </P> <P> Nazi Germany terminated the Molotov--Ribbentrop Pact at 03: 15 on 22 June 1941 by launching a massive attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland which marked the beginning of the invasion of the Soviet Union known as Operation Barbarossa . Stalin had ignored several warnings that Germany was likely to invade, and ordered no' full - scale' mobilization of forces although the mobilization was ongoing . After the launch of the invasion, the territories gained by the Soviet Union as a result of the Molotov--Ribbentrop Pact were lost in a matter of weeks . Within six months, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties, and Germany had captured three million Soviet prisoners . The lucrative export of Soviet raw materials to Nazi Germany over the course of the Nazi--Soviet economic relations (1934--41) continued uninterrupted until the outbreak of hostilities . The Soviet exports in several key areas enabled Germany to maintain its stocks of rubber and grain from the first day of the invasion until October 1941 . </P> <P> The German original of the secret protocols was presumably destroyed in the bombing of Germany, but in late 1943, Ribbentrop had ordered that the most secret records of the German Foreign Office from 1933 on, amounting to some 9,800 pages, be microfilmed . When the various departments of the Foreign Office in Berlin were evacuated to Thuringia at the end of the war, Karl von Loesch, a civil servant who had worked for the chief interpreter Paul Otto Schmidt, was entrusted with these microfilm copies . He eventually received orders to destroy the secret documents but decided to bury the metal container with the microfilms as a personal insurance for his future well - being . In May 1945, von Loesch approached the British Lt. Col. Robert C. Thomson with the request to transmit a personal letter to Duncan Sandys, Churchill's son - in - law . In the letter, von Loesch revealed that he had knowledge of the documents' whereabouts but expected preferential treatment in return . Colonel Thomson and his American counterpart Ralph Collins agreed to transfer von Loesch to Marburg in the American zone if he would produce the microfilms . The microfilms contained a copy of the Non-Aggression Treaty as well as the Secret Protocol . Both documents were discovered as part of the microfilmed records in August 1945 by the State Department employee Wendell B. Blancke, head of a special unit called "Exploitation German Archives" (EGA). </P> <P> The treaty was published in the United States for the first time by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 22, 1946, in Britain by the Manchester Guardian . It was also part of an official State Department publication, Nazi--Soviet Relations 1939--1941, edited by Raymond J. Sontag and James S. Beddie in January 1948 . The decision to publish the key documents on German--Soviet relations, including the treaty and protocol, had been taken already in spring 1947 . Sontag and Beddie prepared the collection throughout the summer of 1947 . In November 1947, President Truman personally approved the publication but it was held back in view of the Foreign Ministers Conference in London scheduled for December . Since negotiations at that conference did not prove constructive from an American point of view, the document edition was sent to press . The documents made headlines worldwide . State Department officials counted it as a success: "The Soviet Government was caught flat - footed in what was the first effective blow from our side in a clear - cut propaganda war ." </P>

Why did germany and the ussr sign a nonaggression pact in 1939