ABSTRACT
On August 24, 1939, Russia and Germany announced that they had signed a nonaggression pact the previous day. Each country promised not to attack the other and to increase trade. Non-Communists in the Party’s front organizations had assumed that communications with Russia went both ways. Events themselves justified Fischer’s claim that Stalin had made an error, one so great, as it turned out, that Soviet Russia would barely survive it. Later Soviet apologists would excuse the pact on the ground that it bought Russia time to prepare for war. The Soviets were worse off in 1941 than in 1939, having outsmarted themselves to an almost fatal degree. Sinclair’s guess was that Hitler would be in Moscow by the next summer, that is, the summer of 1941, as nearly happened.
