Cover of Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy, used as the shared image for this summary series.
In 1994, Henry Kissinger published the book Diplomacy. He was a renowned scholar and diplomat who served as the United States National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. His book provides an extensive sweep of the history of foreign affairs and the art of diplomacy, with a particular focus on the 20th century and the Western World. Kissinger, known for his alignment with the realist school of international relations, inquires into the concepts of the balance of power, raison d'État, and Realpolitik across different eras.
His work has been widely praised for its scope and intricate detail. Yet, it has also faced criticism for its focus on individuals over structural forces, and for presenting a reductive view of history. Also, critics have also pointed out that the book focuses excessively on Kissinger's individual role in events, potentially overstating his impact. In any case, his ideas are worthy of consideration.
This article presents a summary of Kissinger's ideas in the fourteenth chapter of his book, called "The Nazi-Soviet Pact".
You can find all available summaries of this book, or you can read the summary from the previous chapter of the book, by clicking these links.
The Pact and Western Paralysis
Hitler and Stalin had both rejected the moral and political assumptions of the existing European order, yet their 1939 bargain resembled the dynastic diplomacy of the eighteenth century. The partition of Poland recalled earlier partitions conducted by rulers who disposed of territory according to power rather than self-determination. The difference, in Kissinger’s account, was that Hitler and Stalin were ideological enemies as well as geopolitical partners. For a time, their common interest in eliminating Poland outweighed their hostility. Once that arrangement unraveled, the consequences showed how much of the twentieth century’s catastrophe could still be shaped by the will and misjudgment of a few individuals.
The immediate military setting deepened the paradox. Germany crushed Poland in less than a month while French forces remained behind the Maginot Line, even though Germany’s western defenses were thin. The “phony war” completed France’s demoralization because the country had entered a conflict without a convincing political or military strategy. France had historically fought for concrete objectives, such as containing Central Europe or recovering Alsace-Lorraine. Now it was nominally fighting for Poland after Poland had already been conquered and after France had failed to act decisively in its defense. Britain and France seemed to imagine that blockade and defensive waiting would wear Germany down, but that strategy ignored Germany’s freedom to attack through Belgium and France’s unreadiness for another war of attrition.
While the Western powers waited, Stalin converted the secret protocol into territorial gains. He revised the arrangement with Germany, exchanging part of the Polish zone originally assigned to the Soviet Union for Lithuania in order to strengthen the buffer around Leningrad. He forced the Baltic States into military agreements that opened the way to their loss of independence, and on September 17, 1939, the Red Army occupied the Polish territory assigned to the Soviet sphere. In November, Stalin demanded bases and territory from Finland. Finland resisted and inflicted severe losses, but Soviet numbers eventually prevailed.
The Finnish war mattered less as a major theater than as proof of Allied disorientation. Britain and France briefly imagined the Soviet Union as a vulnerable flank of the Axis, even though Moscow was not formally part of it. Their plan to send troops to Finland through Norway and Sweden would also have cut German access to northern iron ore, yet it depended on transit rights that neither neutral country was willing to grant. Kissinger treats this episode as strategic unreality: only months before France’s collapse, the Western powers came close to widening the war against the Soviet Union while still failing to confront Germany effectively.
Hitler’s Victory and the Problem of Ending the War
The phony war ended in May 1940 when Germany struck through Belgium and routed France. The speed of the collapse shocked observers because the First World War had made advances toward Paris seem costly and slow; in 1940, the Blitzkrieg put German troops in Paris by late June. Hitler appeared to be master of the Continent, but victory did not solve the problem of how to end the war.
Kissinger identifies three choices before Hitler: defeat Britain, make peace with Britain, or conquer the Soviet Union and then use its resources to return west against Britain. During the summer of 1940, Hitler first probed for peace. His July offer asked Britain to accept German domination of the Continent in return for a German guarantee of the British Empire. Kissinger compares the offer to proposals imperial Germany had made before 1914, but under far worse circumstances for Britain and from a leader far less trustworthy. A German power strong enough to guarantee the empire would also be strong enough to threaten it, so Britain’s traditional balance-of-power instincts could not accept the bargain.
Churchill’s refusal carried a wider historical meaning. He had no illusion that Britain would emerge from the war as the premier world power; either Germany or the United States would occupy that position. In Kissinger’s interpretation, Churchill’s resistance amounted to choosing American predominance over German hegemony, since American power shared language and culture and had fewer direct strategic conflicts with Britain. By the summer of 1940, Hitler himself had become the reason Britain continued the war.
Hitler next tried to break Britain by air attack and the threat of invasion. This effort also failed, since Germany had not planned seriously for amphibious operations and the Luftwaffe could not destroy the Royal Air Force. By the end of the summer, Germany had won spectacular victories but could not convert them into final victory. A rational leader might have gone on the defensive; Hitler’s temperament made such waiting intolerable. He therefore turned toward the Soviet Union.
As early as July 1940, Hitler ordered preliminary planning for a Soviet campaign. He believed Britain’s hope rested on Russia and the United States, and that destroying the Soviet Union would strengthen Japan in Asia, distract Washington, and leave Britain isolated. Still, he first explored whether Stalin could be drawn into a joint assault on the British Empire. Stalin understood that France’s collapse had ruined his expectation of a long war of attrition between Germany and the Western democracies. If Britain also fell, Germany would be free to move east with the resources of Europe behind it. Stalin responded by trying to conceal vulnerability through firmness, gain territory while Germany was occupied, and avoid any sign of weakness that might raise Hitler’s demands.
Stalin’s Expansion and the Return of Rivalry
Stalin’s policy after France’s collapse had two tracks. First, he accelerated the collection of gains promised or implied by the secret protocol. In June 1940, he forced Romania to cede Bessarabia and also demanded northern Bukovina, which went beyond the original German-Soviet understanding and moved Soviet power closer to the Danube. At the same time, he completed the incorporation of the Baltic States through coerced political arrangements and sham elections. By doing so, he recovered the territories Russia had lost at the end of the First World War.
Second, Stalin kept feeding Germany’s war machine. A February 1940 trade agreement committed the Soviet Union to deliver large quantities of raw materials, while Germany supplied coal and manufactured goods. Moscow observed and often exceeded its obligations. Soviet railcars continued crossing the border with deliveries up to the moment of the German invasion. Stalin was simultaneously strengthening his own strategic position and trying to placate the dangerous neighbor that his own gains were bound to alarm.
The difficulty was that German predominance in Central Europe increasingly limited Soviet room for maneuver. Hitler would not tolerate Soviet advances beyond the secret protocol. In August 1940, Germany and Italy forced Romania to cede Transylvania to Hungary, and in September Hitler guaranteed Romania in order to protect its oil supplies. Finland also allowed German troops to transit toward northern Norway and received German arms, contradicting Moscow’s assumption that Finland lay within the Soviet sphere. On September 27, the three Axis powers signed the Tripartite Pact. Although its terms excluded relations with the Soviet Union, Stalin could hardly ignore that the old Anti-Comintern alignment had been reorganized into a global bloc in which the Soviet Union remained the outsider.
By the autumn of 1940, both dictators made one last attempt to outmaneuver the other diplomatically. Hitler wanted Stalin to join a campaign against the British Empire, leaving Germany better placed to destroy the Soviet Union later. Stalin wanted time, security, and a chance to extract further gains if Britain collapsed. Ribbentrop invited Molotov to Berlin and suggested that the Soviet Union might join the Tripartite Pact in a division of future spoils. Stalin accepted the meeting but remained wary of dividing conquests not yet made. He also misread Hitler’s swift acceptance of Molotov’s visit as proof that Germany still needed the Soviet relationship, when Hitler was actually trying to settle his plans before a possible eastern campaign in 1941.
Molotov in Berlin
Molotov’s November 1940 visit to Berlin exposed the impossibility of genuine understanding between the two regimes. Kissinger stresses the incompatibility of the personalities involved. Hitler preferred monologues, grand principles, and intimidation. Molotov wanted precise applications, concrete boundaries, and instructions that would satisfy Stalin. Soviet negotiators turned diplomacy into a test of endurance, and Molotov’s abrasive style came from both temperament and fear of Stalin.
Ribbentrop opened by presenting German victory as inevitable and proposing broad spheres of influence among Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union. The offer pushed each power southward, with the Soviet Union pointed toward the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. Molotov had little reason to accept the logic. Germany did not yet control the territories it was offering to distribute, and Hitler’s own writings had made clear that the real German goal was living space in Russia. Molotov therefore responded with questions about precision, duration, and boundaries, using agreement in principle as a way to postpone commitment.
The meetings with Hitler sharpened the conflict. Hitler proposed a long-term division of Europe, Africa, and the British colonial inheritance by rulers strong enough to commit their countries. Molotov answered by cross-examining him about the Tripartite Pact, the New Order, German intentions in the Balkans, and the German-Soviet understanding over Finland. Hitler had no intention of limiting German freedom of action wherever German armies could reach. When he returned to visions of dividing the British Empire, Molotov brought the discussion back to concrete European questions. His questions made clear that Stalin cared less about distant imperial fantasies than about the Soviet sphere in Europe and the Straits.
Molotov’s conduct bought time for Stalin, but it also irritated Hitler and clarified the strategic deadlock. Stalin faced a nearly insoluble choice. If he joined Hitler in destroying Britain, the Soviet Union might later stand isolated before Germany, Italy, and Japan. If Britain collapsed without Soviet help, Moscow might miss the chance to improve its position before the inevitable confrontation with Germany. On November 25, Stalin sent his conditions for joining the Tripartite Pact. He wanted German withdrawal from Finland, a Soviet alliance with Bulgaria, bases tied to Turkey and the Dardanelles, and German recognition of Soviet action in the Balkans. He also demanded recognition of Soviet interests in Iran and the Persian Gulf, along with Japanese abandonment of claims on Sakhalin. Kissinger argues that Stalin had to know these terms would be unacceptable, since they blocked German expansion eastward and offered no equivalent Soviet concession. The memorandum therefore functioned mainly as a declaration of the Soviet sphere.
For Hitler, the decision had already moved beyond negotiation. Even as Molotov arrived in Berlin, Hitler had ordered preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union to continue. On November 14, the day Molotov left, he directed that the earlier staff studies become an operational plan for an invasion in the summer of 1941. When Stalin’s conditions arrived on November 25, Hitler ordered that no answer be given, and Stalin never asked for one. The diplomatic silence masked the acceleration of German military preparations.
Stalin’s Misreading and the Road to Barbarossa
Kissinger presents Stalin’s central error as a failure to grasp Hitler’s impatience and irrationality. Stalin assumed that Hitler, like himself, was a cold calculator who would not willingly invade Russia before settling the war in the west. That assumption reflected Stalin’s own habits: he was brutal and opportunistic, but patient enough to respect historical forces and avoid staking everything on a single throw. Hitler’s record pointed in the opposite direction, from rearmament and the Rhineland to Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France. Waiting implied that circumstances could limit his will, and that was precisely what Hitler could not accept.
Stalin’s mistake did not mean passivity. He continued a two-track policy of cooperation and resistance, supplying Germany with materials while opposing its geopolitical expansion. In April 1941, he concluded a nonaggression treaty with Japan, again removing the immediate danger of a two-front war and encouraging conflict elsewhere among capitalist powers. The treaty later allowed him to shift Far Eastern forces toward Moscow, a move that helped decide the defense of the Soviet capital. He also used the public farewell to Japanese foreign minister to signal Berlin that Moscow wanted continued friendship and that its eastern border was secure.
Stalin’s attempts to deter Germany also created friction. He pressed Bulgaria to accept a Soviet guarantee and signed a friendship and nonaggression treaty with Yugoslavia in April 1941, just as Germany sought transit through Yugoslavia for its attack on Greece. This conduct could only encourage resistance to German pressure. Still, Kissinger argues that Stalin believed almost to the end that a last-minute negotiation might avert war. His weakness as a statesman was to project his own cold calculation onto opponents, underestimating how his intransigence affected Hitler and overestimating what his occasional conciliatory gestures could achieve.
In May 1941, Stalin took the public post of Prime Minister from Molotov, the first time he assumed visible responsibility for day-to-day government. The German ambassador interpreted the move as a sign that Stalin had set himself the overriding goal of preserving the Soviet Union from conflict with Germany. Stalin then sent reassurance after reassurance. Through public statements and cautious diplomatic gestures, he tried to convince Berlin that Moscow accepted Germany’s conquests. He also refused to alert forward units and restrained responses to German reconnaissance flights. Stalin distrusted British and American warnings because he suspected them of trying to drag him into war with Germany. He allowed some rear-area preparations, but he judged that reassurance offered a better chance of negotiation than military countermeasures unlikely to decide the outcome.
On June 13, 1941, TASS again denied rumors of imminent war and hinted at negotiations over disputed issues. Molotov’s reaction when Germany declared war on June 22 suggests how far Stalin had been prepared to go. The Soviet Union, he protested, had even been ready to remove its troops from the frontier, and other demands were negotiable. The invasion therefore struck Stalin not simply as a military blow but as the collapse of his assumption that Hitler would use pressure to obtain concessions before risking war.
The Invasion and the Final Balance of Miscalculation
Stalin initially seemed stunned by the attack and withdrew for several days. On July 3, he returned with a radio address that matched his character: dry, concrete, and administrative rather than theatrical. He ordered destruction of machinery and rolling stock, called for guerrilla resistance behind German lines, and appealed to Soviet citizens in unusually personal terms. Kissinger notes that Stalin was no natural orator, but his matter-of-fact style conveyed that the immense task ahead was manageable.
Hitler, by contrast, had achieved the war he had always wanted and sealed his own defeat. Germany had again overreached by fighting on two fronts, and after Hitler brought the United States into the war in December 1941, roughly 70 million Germans faced adversaries numbering around 700 million. The campaign against the Soviet Union represented the triumph of Hitler’s obsession over strategic prudence.
The chapter ends by contrasting two failed gambles. Stalin gambled that Hitler would behave rationally, while Hitler gambled that the Soviet Union would collapse quickly. The difference was that Stalin’s error could be repaired through the depth, population, and resilience of the Soviet state, while Hitler’s error placed Germany in an unwinnable strategic position. In Kissinger’s interpretation, the Nazi-Soviet Pact was therefore both an old-fashioned diplomatic bargain and the road to a war that traditional diplomacy could not contain once ideological ambition and personal will took command.
You can read the summary of the next chapter of the book by clicking this link.