On 7 June 1939, in Berlin, Germany and Latvia sign the Non-Aggression Pact — the bilateral instrument that, with the German–Estonian pact the same day, ties the Baltic states to Ribbentrop’s diplomacy before the war.

Signatories: Latvian Foreign Minister Vilhelms Munters and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Ratifications were exchanged on 24 July 1939; the text was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on 24 August, for ten years.

Context: Germany’s April 1939 offer to Estonia, Latvia, Finland and the Nordic states; Sweden, Norway and Finland refused. The Baltic governments, suspicious of the USSR, accepted.

The pacts aimed to block Western or Soviet influence in the Baltics and form a barrier before a German–Polish war. Diplomatic liturgy was followed by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (23 August).

For Latvia, 7 June 1939 meant a non-aggression link with Berlin months before the 1940 Soviet occupation.

The text appears in LNTS vol. 198.

The German–Latvian Pact of 7 June 1939 remains a marker of Baltic diplomacy on the eve of the Second World War.

Image: Berlin 1939; Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: German–Latvian Non-Aggression Pact. Treaty text: League of Nations Treaty Series — German–Latvian Non-Aggression Pact.