For the Record

Much of the unlovely story had been told before,/- but last week, for the first time, the U.S. State Department published the record in full: 357 pages of captured German documents describing the course of Stalin's deals with Hitler. Some memorable landmarks:

P: In August 1939, after the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact which freed Hitler for his war against the West, Stalin toasted Adolf Hitler: "I know how much the German nation loves its Fuehrer; I should therefore like to drink to his health."

P: A secret protocol tothe Nazi-Soviet pact divvied up Poland and split the Baltic States between Russian and German spheres of influence. From the protocol: "The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish state and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments. . . . Attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in [Rumania's] Bessarabia."

P: On June 18, 1940, after the fall of Holland, Belgium and France, German Ambassador to Moscow Count von der Schulenburg reported: "Molotov . . . expressed the warmest congratulations of the Soviet government on the splendid success of the German armed forces."

P: On July 13, 1940 Schulenburg reported: "In Stalin's opinion no power had the right to an exclusive role in the consolidation and leadership of the Balkan countries. The Soviet Union did not claim such a mission either. . . ."

P: In November 1940 came the fateful disagreement over the postwar swag. Stalin demanded bases on the Dardanelles and staked his claim on the Persian Gulf area as "the center of the aspirations of the Soviet Union." Hitler balked. The next month he issued his directive for "Operation Barbarossa": "to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign."

None of the dry texts recalled the past quite so vividly as the old photographs: Stalin and Ribbentrop clasping hands in the Kremlin, faces gleaming with private smiles.

The State Department's "Voice of America" began broadcasting the documents to the world, including Russia. It was clearly propaganda, but propaganda with the virtue of sober truth.

/- For earlier accounts, see TIME, Dec. 23, 1946 and James Byrnes's Speaking Frankly.

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