1944, İsmet İnönü made a speech in which he condemned Pan-Turkism as "a dangerous and sick demonstration of the latest times" going on to say that the Turkish Republic was "facing efforts hostile to the existence of the Republic" and those who advocate these ideas "will only bring trouble and disaster". Nihal Atsız and other prominent pan-Turkist leaders were tried and sentenced to imprisonment for conspiring against the government. Zeki Velidi Togan was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and four years in internal exile, Reha Oğuz Türkkan was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison and two years in exile, Nihal Atsız was sentenced to six years, six months and 15 days in prison and 3 years in exile. Others were sentenced to prison terms which only ranged from a few months to four years in length. But the defendants appealed the convictions and in October 1945, the sentences of all the convicted were abolished by the Military Court of Cassation. While Erkilet discussed military contingencies, Nuri Pasha told the Germans about his plan to establish independent states which would be allies (not satellites) of Turkey. These states would be formed by the Turkic-speaking populations which lived in Crimea, Azerbaijan, Central Asia, northwestern Iran, and northern Iraq. Nuri Pasha offered to assist Nazi Germany's propaganda efforts on behalf of this cause. However, Turkey's government also feared for the survival of the Turkic minorities in the USSR and it told von Papen that it could not join Germany until the USSR was crushed. The Turkish government may have been apprehensive about Soviet might, which kept the country out of the war. On a less-official level, Turkic emigrants from the Soviet Union played a crucial role in negotiations and contacts between Turkey and Germany; among them were prominent pan-Turkic activists like Zeki Velidi Togan, Mammed Amin Rasulzade, Mirza Bala, Ahmet Caferoĝlu, Sayid Shamil and Ayaz İshaki. Several Tatar military units which consisted of Turkic speakers from the Turco-Tatar and Caucasian regions of the USSR who had previously been prisoners of war of the Germans joined them and fought against the Soviets, the members of these Tatar military units generally fought as guerrillas in the hope that they would be able to secure the independence of their homelands and establish a pan-Turkic union. The units, which were reinforced, numbered several hundred thousand. Turkey took a cautious approach at the government level,