A few weeks after the Wehrmacht’s March 1939 occupation of all Czechoslovakia, and despite increasing doubts about Western intentions, Stalin again approached the Franco-British powers.
On 16 April 1939, he submitted a formal proposition: a three-power military pact with the obvious goal of deterring Nazi aggression.
Stalin’s diplomatic proposal mirrored the agreement in place prior to the First World War, in which Britain, France and Russia were bound together in an alliance directed against the German and Austro-Hungarian empires.
Had Stalin’s approach been accepted, it can only have changed the course of history – as such a union would have ensured, right from the beginning in the event of a conflict, that Hitler faced a nightmare war on two fronts.
This final Soviet offer of alliance with the West was snubbed, however, with the British in particular treating Moscow with disregard. Strong anti-Bolshevik feelings were widespread amongst the conservatives in the British government, and with Chamberlain himself.
