p The German invasion of Poland and the rapid advance eastward showed beyond a doubt that Hitler wanted to take up favourable positions along the Soviet border for a subsequent attack. Nothing could guarantee that, intoxicated by the conquest of Poland and encouraged by the Western powers, he would not attempt an immediate assault on the Soviet Union. Western reactionaries followed the developments with bated breath, hoping their aim was near.

p ’ The Soviet Union was not going to be caught unawares. Reserves in six military districts were called up for training, while troops of the Kiev and Byelorussian military districts 43 were put on the alert. Special front commands were formed. The situation became most strained in the middle of September. The Germans went beyond the line where they were to have stopped under a Soviet-German understanding. They crossed the Western Bug and San and entered the Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia, annexed by Poland in 1921.

p The Soviet Union was compelled to take action. The German advance had to be halted and the nazi troops prevented from marching to the Soviet frontier. Neither could it be indifferent to the lot of its brothers, the Western Ukrainians and Byelorussians, deprived of equal rights in prewar Poland and then totally abandoned to their fate.

p When the Polish state collapsed, Soviet troops were sent to liberate the Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia. This was an internationalist duty. It was the only possible help they could then render to the neighbouring peoples. Furthermore, the campaign had to be undertaken to prevent Germany from thrusting to the Soviet border, which could be expected in a matter of six to eight days, considering the rate of the nazi advance.

p Soviet war historian D. Proektor wrote:

p "In the circumstances, marching to halt the victorious aggressor and compel him to withdraw meant salvation in the nearest future for hundreds of thousands of people of nations soon to be drawn into the vortex of a world war; it meant salvation for hundreds of towns; it meant winning hundreds of days of peace, shortening the Second World War thereby, because the decisive event, the Great Patriotic War, began in circumstances far less favourable for Hitler than if the Red Army had not moved to meet his armies at the height of their victories."  [43•1 

p The Soviet operation alarmed the nazi command, General Nicolaus von Vormann, a member of Hitler’s Headquarters, recalls in his memoirs.  [43•2  The Headquarters debated whether to come to blows with the Red Army or to bide its time and retreat. In the end, it decided on the latter course.

p "That,” Proektor writes, "was the first order of retreat issued by the Hitler Wehrmacht in the Second World War. 44 Significantly, it was issued in connection with a Red Army advance, whose move westward was, kilometre by kilometre, a move towards the future still very distant victory of the anti-Hitler coalition. Who can tell how many people in different countries owe their lives to these kilometres marched west by the Red Army in those autumn days of 1939?”  [44•1 

p Few Western politicians saw the Soviet action in the proper focus. Winston Churchill was extremely perspicacious in this respect. Of the Red Army move to the western borders of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian territories, he said: "That the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace. At any rate, the line is there, and an Eastern front has been created which Nazi Germany does not dare assail."  [44•2 

p The German retreat had a strong bearing on the attitude of many European countries. For one thing, the bourgeois governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which had previously rejected Soviet proposals, agreed to conclude treaties of mutual aid against aggression, Estonia signing it on September 28, 1939, Latvia on October 5, and Lithuania on October 10. The signatories undertook to give each other every possible aid, including military, in the event of a direct attack or threat of attack by any European great power.

p The treaties prevented seizure of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by Hitler Germany, already poised to overrun them. In that part of Europe, too, the full power of the Soviet Union deterred German aggression. The Soviet line of defence moved farther west and Germany was again compelled to desist.

p Regrettably, the Soviet efforts to firm up the peace front along its north-western frontier were resisted by Finland’s rulers, ’whose endeavours to turn their country into an antiSoviet staging area accorded not only with German wishes, Unit also those of the British, French and US governments, which exerted unprecedented pressure on Finland. They hoped that a Soviet-Finnish conflict would pave the way for a deal with Hitler. That was the mainspring of the Soviet- Finnish war, the blame for which lies not only on certain Finnish groups, but also on their Western abettors. Nor did the 45 attitude of these Finnish groups change after Finland’s defeat in the resultant war against the Soviet Union and the conclusion of a peace treaty on March 12, 194.1, under the terms of which, among other things, the signatories undertook to refrain from any armed attack on each other.

The objective sense of this succession of events is obvious: the Soviet Union blocked the road for the German troops, forcing them to stop. If the Soviet moves had been supported by the governments of the United States, Britain and France, the German road to aggression could have been blocked by collective measures both in East and West even in those opening months of the Second World War. But that went against the plans of those still trying to engineer a world crusade against the USSR.