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Curated playlist

World War II treaties

  • Anglo-Soviet AgreementBritain and the Soviet Union signed a two-clause alliance in Moscow on the 12th of July 1941.
  • Moscow Peace TreatyFinland's president signed the Moscow Peace Treaty in 1940 wishing his own hand would wither.
  • Franco-Polish allianceFrance's secret 1921 pact with Poland did not require sending troops. It asked France to keep Germany in check.
  • Pact of SteelThe Pact of Steel assumed no war would come for at least three years.
  • Moscow ArmisticeFinland leased the Porkkala peninsula to the Soviet Union for fifty years but got it back in 1956.
  • Soviet–Japanese Neutrality PactStalin personally saw off Japan's foreign minister at a train station.
  • Armistice of 22 June 1940Hitler had a railway carriage pulled from a museum to stage France's 1940 surrender.
  • Potsdam AgreementThe Potsdam Agreement was a communiqué, not a peace treaty, yet it shaped Germany until 1990.
  • Treaty of CraiovaThe Treaty of Craiova is the one Nazi-brokered territorial deal that was never undone. Bulgaria kept Southern Dobruja.
  • Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to GermanyThe Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany was signed in Moscow on the 12th of September 1990. Most people know it by a shorter name, the Two Plus Four Agreement. The two were West Germany and East Germany. The four were…
  • Anti-Comintern PactThe Anti-Comintern Pact had a secret clause naming the Soviet Union. The public text did not.
  • Molotov–Ribbentrop PactHitler decided Stalin looked like a man he could do business with. Their 1939 pact split Eastern Europe in secret.
  • Armistice of CassibileThe battleship Roma sank with nearly 1,400 men after Italy's surrender. German bombers hit it at sea.
  • Tripartite PactYugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact, and a coup overthrew its government two days later.
  • Treaty of Paris between Italy and the Allied PowersItaly's 1947 peace treaty ordered all its submarines scuttled. It also banned new battleships and aircraft carriers.
  • Destroyers-for-bases dealThe destroyers-for-bases deal of 1940 sent fifty American warships to the Royal Navy, and Admiral Bertram Ramsay did not think much of them. He called them the "worst destroyers I had ever seen." Britain took them anyway. The United States…
  • Treaty of San FranciscoCeylon gave up its right to war reparations from Japan at the 1951 San Francisco peace conference.

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