Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

    August 24, 1939

by the spring of 1939, world war appeared inevitable. Hitler had occupied Austria and annexed the Sudetenland, a province of Czechoslovakia, and soon thereafter he captured the rest of the country. All you had to do was look at a map of Europe to see that Poland would be next. Given these circumstances, the prime ministers of England and France decided to investigate the possibility of an alliance with the USSR, something that would have restored a balance of power in Europe, albeit a shaky one.