The End of Rapallo, 1933

Abstract

News of Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany on the 30 January 1933 came as an unpleasant surprise to the Russians as to almost everyone else in Europe.¹ The widespread assumption in Moscow and abroad that the Nazis were a spent force had proved unfounded.² This false assumption — apparently borne out by the fall in the Nazi vote at the elections in the autumn of 1932 — had hitherto silenced a fundamental division of opinion as to whether Hitler’s accession to power would present a serious threat to Soviet interests. These differences resurfaced. After the initial shock, registered by the German embassy in Moscow, only a minority in the Soviet capital saw what Hitler really portended.