Twenty Years of Russo-German Relations, 1919–39

Abstract

The relations between Russia and Germany (or Prussia) for the past 200 years have been a series of alienations, distinguished for their bitterness, and of rapprochements, remarkable for their warmth. Who, for example, could have foreseen in 1761, when Russian troops had overrun Prussia, occupied Berlin and humbled Frederick the Great, that the sudden death of the Empress Elizabeth would bring to the throne Peter III, the inveterate admirer of Frederick and of Prussia, and that he would promptly make peace with his hero ? Or that, nine years after this reprieve, Russia, Prussia and Austria would — in Frederick’s blasphemous phrase — ‘take Communion in the one Eucharistic body which is Poland’?