The status and the future of Baltic States and Romania in the strategy of Western Allies in the early years of the Second World War: a comparative view

Abstract

The fate of Lithuania and Romania as well as future of the whole Central and Eastern European region was determined in the years of the Second World War. The common origin of their tragic and painful history was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – the secret deal between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which divided Central and Eastern Europe between two totalitarian regimes. In June 1940 the three Baltic States and a part of Romania were directly occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union. The main objective of this paper is to identify, analyze and compare the attitudes of the United States and Great Britain with respect to the annexation of the Baltic States and the Romania territory and discussed the post-war future reserved to them. During the early years of the Second Word War (1940-1942) few interesting international discussions about possible post-war arrangement plans existed. The analysis of the Western attitude would enable us to give answers to certain questions: What could have been done by the Western states for the benefit of Central and Eastern European region; what have they, in fact, done and what did they avoid doing? The year 1943 witnessed the consolidation of the Western attitude with regard to Soviet Union’s western borders, which resulted in the fundamental fact that Moscow did not intend to retract its interests in the Baltic States, Eastern Poland, North Bucovina and Bessarabia while the West did not intend to fight for these territories. Considering the fact that at the Teheran conference (1943) the Western states agreed upon turning the Baltic states into a Soviet interest sphere, the United States and Britain entered the Yalta conference (1945) with no illusions as to the fate of Central and Eastern Europe in general.