ABSTRACT
The territories of non-Russian peoples in the USSR made up a large part of the German-Soviet war theatre. The Soviets had to go to battle in the bloodiest war in history to keep the 1939 and 1940 annexations that seemed so easy to acquire. The Soviet Union's most significant territorial expansion ever was the result of a diplomatic coup that has remained unmatched in recent history: the German-Soviet agreement of August 1939. The territories the Soviet Union gained by moving its state borders westward were exclusively non-Russian ones in which Russians constituted a marginal minority among the populace. The non-Russian peoples' patriotism acquired a life of its own that was contrary to the general line of Stalin's nationalities policy, and only the fact that the Soviets mobilized all energies during the war years can explain its resurrection. However, Soviet power, collectivization, and the persecution of the Church had eroded ethnic Germans' loyalty to the Soviet Union.
