From The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William L. Shirer, 1960, 2011) p477
But if the first attempt to draw nearer in their economic relations had failed for the time being, there were other straws in the wind. On March 10, 1939, Stalin made a long speech at the first session of the Eighteenth Party Congress in Moscow. Three days later the attentive Schulenburg filed a long report on it to Berlin. He thought it “noteworthy that Stalin’s irony and criticism were directed in considerably sharper degree against Britain than against the so-called aggressor States, and in particular, Germany.” The ambassador underlined Stalin’s remarks that “the weakness of the democratic powers . . . was evident from the fact that they had abandoned the principle of collective security and had turned to a policy of nonintervention and neutrality. Underlying this policy was the wish to divert the aggressor States to other victims.” And he quoted further the Soviet dictator’s accusations that the Western Allies were pushing the Germans further eastward, promising them an easy prey and saying: “Just start a war with the Bolsheviks, everything else will take care of itself. This looks very much like encouragement . . . It looks as if the purpose . . . was to engender the fury of the Soviet Union against Germany . . . and to provoke a conflict with Germany without apparent reasons. . . .
In conclusion Stalin formulated the guiding principles:
1. To continue to pursue a policy of peace and consolidation of economic relations with all countries.
2. . . . Not to let our country be drawn into conflict by warmongers, whose custom it is to let others pull their chestnuts out of the tire.
This was a plain warning from the man who made all the ultimate decisions in Russia that the Soviet Union did not intend to be maneuvered into a war with Nazi Germany in order to spare Britain and France; and if it was ignored in London, it was at least noticed in Berlin.
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