In April 1945, American GIs overran four chateaux in the remote village of Degenershausen in the Harz Mountains of  Germany. There they encountered a man named Baron von Griescheim who worked for the German Foreign Office. He had defied orders from Berlin to destroy a large stash of classified documents.”To fool a few stupid Nazis stationed here, I burned some old newspapers. But the documents I did not touch. I believe they must be saved so that the historians of the future may determine the facts and the responsibility for this terrible war.”

It took some time to go through the papers, but they eventually revealed the details behind the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact or the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and officially named the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The shocking agreement between implacable ideological foes was reached just days before Germany invaded Poland to begin the Second World War, and the announcement was major news at the time. But without this trove of documents that von Griescheim preserved, we would not have learned of the Secret Protocol.

The Secret Protocol anticipated Germany’s aggression against Poland and divided it, as well as Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland, into German and Soviet spheres of influence.

The public wouldn’t learn the details of these negotiations until the State Department released a 362-page volume on German-Soviet relations in the 1939-1941 period. The highlights were presented by the New York Times on January 28, 1948, by which time the Cold War between the United States and the USSR was in full bloom. It was a public relations disaster for Stalin.

This was in part because it showed his advanced complicity in the destruction of Poland, but also because it enhanced the sense that he’d been horribly gullible in accepting German promises of non-aggression.

It was also interesting to see how the Nazis courted the USSR at the time. While acknowledging their deep ideological differences, the Nazis emphasized their shared loathing of Western capitalist democracies.

This can easily be seen in a telegraph German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sent to the German ambassador Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg in Moscow on August 14, 1939 in which he gave instructions on what to personally communicate to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.

Here’s are points four and five:

4) It is true that Germany and the U.S.S.R., as a result of years of hostility in their respective world outlooks, today look at each other in a distrustful fashion. A great deal of rubbish which has accumulated will have to be cleared away. It must be said, however, that even during this period the natural sympathy of the Germans for the Russians never disappeared. The policy of both states can be built anew on that basis.

5) The Reich Government and the Soviet Government must, judging from all experience, count it as certain that the capitalistic Western democracies are the unforgiving enemies of both National Socialist Germany and of the U.S.S.R. They are today trying again, by the conclusion of a military alliance, to drive the U.S.S.R. into the war against Germany. In 1914 this policy had disastrous results for Russia. It is the compelling interest of both countries to avoid for all future time the destruction of Germany and of the U.S.S.R., which would profit only the Western democracies.

The instructions concluded with an offer for Ribbentrop to visit Moscow immediately, which was accepted. The details were hammered out, including the Secret Protocol, and less than three weeks later the war began with the Germans secure in the knowledge that the Soviets would take their share of Poland and offer no resistance.

Of course, less than two years later, believing that England had all but lost the war, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.

The parallels to today are obvious although the roles and ideologies are a bit different. On Tuesday, the Russians and Americans met at the Diriyah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. The U.S. was represented by national security adviser Michael Waltz, special Mideast envoy Steven Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The Russians were represented by Sergey Lavrov and Russian foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov. No Ukrainians or Europeans were present or invited.

As with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the public quickly learned some of the details of these negotiations.

In an interview with The Associated Press after the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals: to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation.

This turn of events was alarming enough to the excluded “capitalistic Western democracies” that have been resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine, but there’s the possibility, even the likelihood, that beneath the surface there are secret agreements under discussion.

As I detailed in my Day 31 piece, it’s long been obvious to clear-eyed observers that Trump and Putin are aligned in their fascist white nationalist ideology and supportive of far-right Neo-Nazi parties in Europe. This became clearer even before the Riyadh meeting when American vice-president J.D. Vance (see Day 26) attended the Munich Security Conference and used Orwellian language to accuse the “capitalistic Western democracies” of being the enemies of democracy.

US Vice-President JD Vance has launched a scalding attack on European democracies, saying the greatest threat facing the continent was not from Russia and China, but “from within”.

It had been expected that Vance would use his speech at the Munich Security Conference to address possible talks to end the war in Ukraine. Instead, he spent the majority accusing European governments – including the UK’s – of retreating from their values, and ignoring voter concerns on migration and free speech…

…He alleged European Union “commissars” were suppressing free speech, blamed the continent for mass migration, and accused its leaders of retreating from “some of its most fundamental values”…

…The address was met by silence in the hall, and later denounced by several politicians at the conference. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said it was “not acceptable”.

To add sting to his comments, Vance “decided to eschew meeting with mainstream contenders for Germany’s chancellorship in the upcoming elections and instead sat down with Alice Weidel, the leader of the Neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.”  To understand this, realize that the former head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Thomas Haldenwang, has expressed the opinion that the AfD is a major player in the spread of Russian propaganda in the Federal Republic.

For example, the story is being spread that the Kremlin is also waging war against Ukraine because its own security interests have been violated by the West. Such narrative patterns are being carried forward by parts of the AfD in Germany, said Haldenwang. “And you have good channels that reach large sections of the population. In this respect, Russian media are no longer needed. “By passing on Russian narratives from parts of the party, this contributes to right-wing extremism being able to expand in Germany and Putin’s song being sung in these circles too,” said Haldenwang on the ARD morning magazine.

This isn’t news to me. In November 2017, I wrote:

Putin has been buddying up to Europe’s far right, loaning them money, hacking their political opponents, providing clandestine assistance of all kinds, and promoting them quite openly in Russian media. Russia encouraged the Brexit movement in the United Kingdom, and they obviously sided with Trump.

Unfortunately, as the New York Times reports, this anti-Ukraine Russia propaganda is also being spewed directly by Trump:

When Russian forces crashed over the borders into Ukraine in 2022 determined to wipe it off the map as an independent state, the United States rushed to aid the beleaguered nation and cast its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a hero of resistance.

Three years almost to the day later, President Trump is rewriting the history of Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor. Ukraine, in this version, is not a victim but a villain. And Mr. Zelensky is not a latter-day Winston Churchill, but a “dictator without elections” who somehow started the war himself and conned America into helping.

It’s easy to see why this behavior from Trump and Vance is seen as unacceptable to German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius. The official name the German domestic intelligence agency is “the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.” They consider Putin and AfD as mortal threats to the Constitution, and that opinion is shared by all mainstream German politicians. It’s far worse to realize that the American administration is now fully aligned with both.

I wrote in January 2024, in my Vladimir Putin Owns the Republican Party and Its Nominee piece, that “It’s been obvious forever that Trump is in the pocket of Putin and will do anything he can to help Russia subjugate Ukraine.” All of these recent events are just confirmations of what I have been reporting for a decade now.

The only thing that isn’t clear is how much of Trump’s behavior is driven by kompomat and blackmail and how much is due to a true affinity for Putin’s dictatorial white Christian nationalist ideology. We see plenty of evidence of both factors being in play, especially now in Trump’s second term with his lawlessness and pretenses of being a king.

If I had to guess about a Secret Protocol it involves Ukraine’s natural resources. To begin with, I strongly believe that Putin’s first invasion into Ukraine in April 2014 was aimed at securing the energy resources of the Donbas region. He has no intention of giving up that territory as part of any agreement to end the war, and it does not appear that Trump is asking Putin to give up any territory at all. What Trump has done is demand that Ukraine “relinquish half of the country’s mineral resources in exchange for U.S. support.”

While Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky initially rejected that exorbitant extortion, he came around on Thursday, according to the New York Times, after Trump expressed real fury at his refusal.

What I suspect is that Trump and Putin are aiming to divide Ukraine’s mineral resources between them, and in exchange Russia will simply keep the mineral-rich territory is has captured, as well as Crimea, but promise to stop seeking more territory or the overthrow of the government in Kiev.

If Trump were to accept this Secret Protocol, he would be in the role of Stalin, while Putin would be in the role of Hitler. There is simply no evidence or good reason to believe that Putin will keep his promises or abandon his desire to reconstitute the Soviet Union and recapture its lost territories, very much including Ukraine.

What he could use, however, is a break from the fighting so he can rebuild and arm his military. He also needs sanctions relief and to have Russia accepted back into the international community, and these are all things Trump offered in Riyadh without receiving anything non-secret in return.

Ukraine’s fate appears sealed. They will lose their natural wealth and much of their territory, and they will not get any meaningful or lasting security guarantees in return. But Ukraine is only the frontline country at risk. Trump and Putin aim to divide the rest of Western world between them, too, in their vision for a non-Democratic white Christian ethno-empire. While Trump may want to secure Greenland’s resources against Putin’s predation, that’s probably more driven by greed than prudence. First up, is their joint effort to get Neo-Nazis elected in next week’s German elections.

The biggest difference I see between the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 and the Rubio-Lavrov Pact of 2025 is that the U.S. and Russia seem better aligned than Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R ever were. But I still see a giant sucker. In 1939, that sucker was Stalin. In 2025, that sucker is Trump.

These things will continue until the fascist regime is defeated.

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