on August 15, 1939. Instead, the Soviets turned to Germany, signing the non-aggression pact with Germany barely a week later. Documentary evidence of early Soviet-German rapprochement In 1948, the U.S. State Department published a collection of documents recovered from the Foreign Office of Nazi Germany, that formed a documentary base for studies of Nazi-Soviet relations. This collection contains the German State Secretary's account on a meeting with Soviet ambassador Merekalov. This memorandum reproduces the following ambassador's statement: "'there exists for Russia no reason why she should not live with us on a normal footing. And from normal the relations might become better and better." According to Carr, this document is the first recorded Soviet step in the rapprochement with Germany. The next documentary evidence is the memorandum on the May 17 meeting between the Soviet ambassador and German Foreign Office official, where the ambassador "stated in detail that there were no conflicts in foreign policy between Germany and Soviet Russia and that therefore there was no reason for any enmity between the two countries." The third document is the summary of the May 20 meeting between Molotov and German ambassador von der Schulenburg. According to the document, Molotov told the German ambassador that he no longer wanted to discuss only economic matters, and that it was necessary to establish a "political basis", which German officials saw as an "implicit invitation." The last document is the German State Office memorandum on the telephone call made on June 17 by Bulgarian ambassador Draganov. In German accounts of Draganov's report, Astakhov explained that a Soviet deal with Germany better suited the Soviets than one with Britain and France, although from the Bulgarian ambassador it "could not be ascertained whether it had reflected the personal opinions of Herr Astakhov or the opinions of the Soviet Government". This documentary evidence of an early Nazi-Soviet rapprochement were questioned by Geoffrey Roberts, who analyzed Soviet archival documents that had been de-classified and released on the eve of the 1990s. Roberts found no evidence that the alleged statements quoted by the Germans had ever been made in reality, and came to the conclusion that the German archival documents cannot serve as evidence for the existence of a dual policy during first half of 1939. According to him, no documentary evidence exists that the USSR responded to or made any overtures to the Germans "until the end of July