files show that western historians have been mistaken in assuming that the Merekalov-Weiszäcker meeting of April 1939 was the occasion for Soviet signals of a desire for détente with Nazi Germany. His point of view, supported by Derek Watson and Jonathan Haslam, is that it was not until the end of July 1939 – August 1939 that the policy change occurred and that it was a consequence rather than a cause of the breakdown of the Anglo-Soviet-French triple alliance negotiations. It must have been clear to Molotov and Stalin in August 1939, that an agreement with Germany avoided an immediate war with that country and could satisfy Soviet territorial ambitions in eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and Bessarabia; whereas an alliance with Britain and France offered no territorial gains and risked a war with Germany in which the USSR was most likely to bear the brunt of a German attack. Soviet ambassadors (chargés) to Berlin Adolf Ioffe (1918) Nikolay Krestinsky (1921–1930) Lev Khinchuk (1930–1934) Yakov Surits (1934–1937) Konstantin Yurenev (1937) Alexey Merekalov (1938–1939) Georgy Astakhov (1939) Alexey Shkvartsev (1939–1940) Vladimir Dekanozov (1940–1941) German ambassadors to Moscow Wilhelm Mirbach (1918) Karl Helfferich Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau (1922–1928) Herbert von Dirksen (1928–1933) Rudolf Nadolny (1933–1934) Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg (1934–1941) See also Foreign relations of the Soviet Union Germany–Russia relations International relations (1919–1939) Timeline of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact Notes References External links Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939–1941 @ Avalon Project Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939–1941 @ All World Wars Пронин А.А., Советско-германские соглашения 1939 г. Истоки и последствия//Международный исторический журнал, №№ 10–12, 2000 Further reading Carr, Edward Hallett. German-Soviet Relations between the Two World Wars. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1951. Ericson, Edward E. Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941. New York: Praeger, 1999. Everett, Rob. "The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend: Soviet Foreign Policy in Europe, 1933-1939." Wittenberg History Journal 43 (2014): 53–64. online Gorodetsky, Gabriel. "The impact of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact on the course of Soviet foreign policy." Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique (1990): 27–41. online Hill, Alexander. "Soviet Planning for War, 1928–June 1941." in by Thomas W. Zeiler and Daniel M. DuBois, eds. A Companion to World War II (2013): 93–101. Himmer, Robert "Rathenau, Russia, and Rapallo." Central European History 9#2 (1976): 146–183. Hoppe, Bert, and Mark Keck-Szajbel. "Iron Revolutionaries and Salon Socialists: Bolsheviks and German Communists in the 1920s and 1930s." Kritika: Explorations