Ribbentrop’s Folly: The Nazi Thesis of Soviet Thermidor and the Origins of WWII

Speaker: Philip Decker, Ernest May Research Fellow, Belfer Center

This talk examines the opening chapter of Decker's dissertation The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: A Cultural and Diplomatic History, exploring the emergence of an internally generated Nazi justification for rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Challenging the notion that the Nazi-Soviet alignment failed to produce a serious ideological crisis within the Nazi leadership, the chapter examines how perceptions of Soviet cultural transformation - and Stalin’s efforts to communicate this transformation to Berlin - shaped German thinking and contributed to the diplomatic realignment of 1939. More broadly, the research demonstrates how integrating cultural and geopolitical analysis can offer a more nuanced understanding of the Nazi-Soviet relationship and the origins of the Second World War.