Ambassador von der Schulenburg saw Molotov at 8 P.M. on August 15 and, as instructed read to him Ribbentrop’s urgent telegram stating that the Reich Foreign Minister was Prepared to come to Moscow to settle Soviet-German relations. According to a “most urgent, secret” telegram which the German envoy got off to Berlin later that night, the Soviet Foreign Commissar received the information “with the greatest interest” and “warmly welcomed German intentions of improving relations with the Soviet Union.” However, expert diplomatic poker player that he was, Molotov gave no sign of being in a hurry. Such a trip as Ribbentrop proposed, he suggested, “required adequate preparation in order that the exchange of opinions might lead to results.”
What results? The wily Russian dropped some hints. Would the German government, he asked, be interested in a nonaggression pact between the two countries? Would it be prepared to use its influence with Japan to improve Soviet-Japanese relations and “eliminate border conflicts”? – a reference to an undeclared war which had raged all summer on the Manchurian-Mongolian frontier. Finally, Molotov asked, how did Germany feel about a joint guarantee of the Baltic States?
All such matters, he concluded, “must be discussed in concrete terms so that, should the German Foreign Minister come here, it will not be a matter of an exchange of opinions but of making concrete decisions.” And he stressed again that “adequate preparation of the problems is indispensable.”
The first suggestion, then, for a Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact came from the Russians – at the very moment they were negotiation with France and Great Britain to go to war, if necessary, to oppose further German aggression. Hitler was more than willing to discuss such a pact “in concrete terms,” since its conclusion would keep Russia out of the war and enable him to attack Poland without fear of Soviet intervention. And with Russia out of the conflict he was convinced that Britain and France would get cold feet.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
August 15. – The Duce . . . is convinced that we must not march blindly with the Germans. However . . . he wants time to prepare the break with Germany . . . He is more and more convinced that the democracies will fight . . . This time it means war. And we cannot engage in war because our plight does not permit us to do so.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich