The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939–1941

Outside of Poland and the Baltic States, Hitler's pact with Stalin during the early days of World War II is one of the more obscure events of the war. It allowed for the partitioning of Poland and the Soviet invasion and subsequent annexation of the Baltic States and Finland, as well as the Nazi occupation and invasion of Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and France. Moorhouse (Berlin at War) seeks to address this oversight by returning the Nazi-Soviet Pact to the more central place it deserves as a precursor to the outbreak of World War II. In this well-researched and well-written book, the author details how two of history's most notorious dictators collaborated in secrecy for a common cause—domination. This work is especially welcome, as there is virtually no research on the pact and what evidence exists is either fairly outdated or stems from writing about related subjects in which the pact is only a footnote.