Stalin had every reason to be concerned or distressed. Before the Munich Conference, the U.S. ambassador to France, William C. Bullit, observed that the important thing was to isolate “Asiatic despotism,” saving “European civilization” from a fratricidal war. After the triumph achieved by Hitler a British diplomat noted in his diary: “Czechoslovakia, from having been a dagger pointed to the heart of Germany, is now rapidly being organized as a dagger into Russian vitals.” 26 At the time of the crisis that resulted in the Munich Conference, the USSR had been the only country to call out the Third Reich and confirm its support for the government in Prague, putting more than seventy army divisions on a state of alert. Subsequently, after the complete dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by the Third Reich in March 1939, Moscow forwarded a harsh note of protest to Berlin.27 The reaction of the other capitals was much more “composed.” And so, the Nazi-fascist aggressors successively devoured Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Albania and China in Asia, thanks to the direct complicity or passivity of the Western powers, who were inclined to direct the further ambitions and expansionist aims of the Third Reich toward the country that had emerged from the October Revolution. To the east the Soviet Union felt the pressure exerted by Japan on those frontiers. The danger of invasion and war was thus arriving on two fronts. It was only at this point that Moscow began to move in the direction of the non-aggression pact with Germany, taking note of the failure of the popular front policy.

Carried out by Stalin with conviction and decisiveness, the popular front policy had cost not a little. It had strengthened the Trotskyist opposition and agitation especially in the colonies. What credibility could there be in an anti-colonialism that spared—so the accusation sounded—the major colonial powers of the time, to concentrate fire on a country, Germany, which at Versailles had lost even the few colonies it had previously possessed? Above all, for colonial peoples themselves it was difficult to accept the turn of events. England had been largely discredited. In the spring of 1919 it had not only been responsible for the Amritsar massacre, which had cost the lives of hundreds of defenseless Indians, but had resorted to “public floggings” and de-humanizing collective punishment and terrible national and racial humiliation, forcing on city dwellers “the humiliation of crawling on all fours to and from one’s home.” 28 Later, as the Second World War flared up, the imperial government repressed pro-independence demonstrations by machine-gunning them from above with the air force (infra, ch. 6, § 4). These were the years when Gandhi stated that “In India we have a Hitlerian government, albeit disguised in milder terms.” And again, “Hitler was ‘Great Britain’s sin.’ Hitler is only an answer to British imperialism.” 29 Indeed, when the war was over, Gandhi would go so far as to pay homage to Subhas Chandra Bose who had fought alongside the Axis for the sake of independence: “Subhas was a great patriot. He laid down his life for the country.”30

In conclusion: it had not been easy for the USSR to get the idea accepted that, despite appearances, even for the people of the colonies the main danger was still constituted by the Nazi-fascist coalition, by the Germany-Japan-Italy axis, and in particular by the Third Reich, which was determined to resume and radicalize the colonial tradition, even resorting to extreme means. For countries like England and France the policy of the popular fronts entailed much lower costs, and yet they sabotaged it. At this point the USSR had no choice but a pact with Germany, a move that has been defined as “a last-minute, dramatic improvisation” to which Moscow resorted in the absence of any other alternative, “on the very eve of a new European war.” 31

This became a turning point that is usually assessed with an eye exclusively on Europe. But there is no reason to ignore the repercussions in Asia. Mao Zedong expressed his satisfaction thus: “The pact represents a blow for Japan and a help for China,” because “it gives the Soviet Union a better chance” of supporting “China in her resistance to Japan.” 32 Precisely for this reason the Japanese government considered Berlin’s behavior to be “treacherous and inexcusable.” 33 In fact, flows of Russian arms and ammunition into China became very substantial.