half a million tons of iron ore, plus chromium and other raw materials. Mid-1941 relations In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on April 13, 1941, the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Axis power Japan. While Stalin had little faith in Japan's commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism, to reinforce a public affection for Germany. Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union. Stalin did not know that Hitler had been secretly discussing an invasion of the Soviet Union since the summer of 1940, and that Hitler had ordered his military in late 1940 to prepare for war in the east regardless of the parties' talks of a potential Soviet entry as a fourth Axis Power. Further development During 1940, Nazi Germany pursued its conquest of western Europe: On April 9, 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. On May 15, the Netherlands capitulated. By June 2, Germany had occupied Belgium. On June 14, Wehrmacht entered Paris. On June 22, France surrendered. The British historians Alan S. Milward and W. Medicott show that Nazi Germany — unlike Imperial Germany — was prepared only for a short war (Blitzkrieg). According to Andreas Hillgruber, without the necessary supplies from the USSR and strategic security in the East, Germany could not have succeeded in the West. Had the Soviet Union joined the Anglo-French blockade, the German war economy would have soon collapsed. If Germany had been forced to rely on its own raw materials as of September 1939, those resources would have lasted a mere 9 to 12 months. According to Mr. Rapoport, "one of Stalin's first gifts to the Nazis was to turn over some 600 German Communists, most of them Jews, to the Gestapo at Brest-Litovsk in German-occupied Poland." The Soviets also offered support to the Nazis in official statements: Joseph Stalin himself emphasized that it was the Anglo-French alliance that had attacked Germany, not the other way around, and Molotov affirmed that Germany had made peace efforts, which had been turned down by 'Anglo-French imperialists'. By invading Poland and annexing the Baltic States, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union eliminated the buffer states between them and magnified the threat of war. Volksdeutsche in the Soviet Union Ethnic Germans in Soviet Russia of the 1920s enjoyed a