Anglo-Soviet Agreement

The Anglo-Soviet Agreement was a formal military alliance that was signed by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany on July 12, 1941, shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Both powers pledged to assist each other and not to make a separate peace with Germany.[1] The military alliance was to be valid until the end of World War II.

Winston Churchill with Joseph Stalin and his interpreter at the 1945 Yalta Conference

Agreement

The agreement was signed on 12 July 1941 by Sir Stafford Cripps, British Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, and it did not require ratification.[2]

Text

The agreement contained two clauses:

(1) The two Governments mutually undertake to render each other assistance and support of all kinds in the present war against Hitlerite Germany.

(2) They further undertake that during this war they will neither negotiate nor conclude an armistice or treaty of peace except by mutual agreement.

Subsequent events

The Arctic convoys from Britain to the Soviet Union began the following month as did the joint Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran which opened up a supply route to the USSR. Rezā Shāh was removed from power and the new Shah, Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, signed a Tripartite Treaty Alliance with Britain and the Soviet Union in January 1942, to aid in the allied war effort in a non-military way.

The agreement was broadened to include a political alliance by the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942.[3]

Reactions

According to Lynn Davis, the United States perceived the agreement to mean that the Soviet Union intended to support the postwar re-establishment of independence of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

See also

References
  1. Chubarov, Alexander. Russia's Bitter Path to Modernity: A History of the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras, pg. 119
  2. Anglo-Soviet Agreement BBC radio broadcast 13 July 1941
  3. Slusser, Robert M.; Triska, Jan F. (1959). A Calendar of Soviet Treaties 1917-1957. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 144.
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