The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Chapter 15: The Nazi-Soviet Pact Summary

By the middle of August 1939, Ribbentrop was proposing a visit to Moscow to discuss German-Russian relations.
Ribbentrop's proposal had insinuated that Germany would be willing to divvy up Eastern Europe, including Poland, with the Soviets if it was conquered.
In Shirer's view, Hitler was confident that the Soviets would take the bait.

The Military Conference at Obersalzberg: August 14

In a mid-August conference with his top Army and Navy brass, Hitler assured his worried audience that Britain and France weren't going to intervene when Germany attacked Poland.
Hermann Goering had recently been given good reason to believe that Britain would intervene if the Nazis attacked Poland, but he didn't raise any objection to Hitler's plans.
By now, the mobilization of soldiers and arms was already underway, and other plans were in the making, too.
The Nazis had devised a plan to give themselves a justification for an invasion of Poland. They'd dress up concentration camp inmates in Nazi uniforms and have them stage an attack on a German radio station near the Polish border. Cute.
By the middle of August, Hitler had ordered the German Navy to send 21 submarines and 2 battleships toward British waters. Just in case.

Hitler's command to the Navy came only after the Russians agreed to a non-aggression pact.
The Russians knew that they had the upper hand, and they used it to their advantage.
Finally, after Hitler humbled himself before Stalin, the discussions progressed and the Germans were given a promise that a formal non-aggression pact would soon be signed by their two nations.

Another military conference took place in late August 1939.
It began with a lecture by Hitler about how awesome he was—a description that Shirer supports with ample evidence from captured transcriptions of the meeting itself.
Hitler then went on to discuss the Italians and the Spanish (whom he described as being not as great as him, of course), then provided his top Army and Navy brass with his rationale for the war he was about to lead them into.
Finally, he revealed his trump card: the new relationship he'd engineered with the Soviet Union.
The the conference broke for lunch at this point, and when it resumed, the lecture focused on encouraged the military chiefs for the task ahead.
Finally, Hitler informed his men that his official order for the beginning of hostilities would probably be given on August 26. The very next day, that date was confirmed.

By the middle of August, the military talks between the Western democracies and the Soviet Union had pretty much stopped.
The Russians were unpleasantly surprised to learn that the British and French armies were much smaller than they had supposed.
Another sticky issue was the fact that the Polish government was dead-set against allowing Russian troops to cross Polish borders in the event of war, despite the fact that it would be the best and easiest way for Russian troops to meet the enemy.
Shirer offers his analytical take on the Russians' frame of mind at this point, and asks if they were really negotiating in good faith. Ultimately, he seems to conclude that they were... or at least, they were in the beginning.

The final round of negotiations that took place between Germany and Russia in late August 1939 seemed to go off without a hitch. The delegates and their hosts spent quite a lot of their time in a friendly discussion about the world's political situation at genteel parties and soirées where the Nazi and Soviet statesmen mingled.
The non-aggression pact that the two nations signed on August 23 gave Hitler exactly what he wanted: an immediate agreement not to join up with Britain and France if they honored their treaty obligations to aid Poland in case Germany invaded.
Shirer examines the "price" that Hitler paid for the treaty, noting the states and territories that Germany had agreed to recognize as Soviet spheres of interest once the invasion had begun. In the same way, he discusses what the Soviets got out of the deal.
Shirer argues that Joseph Stalin's actions in August 1939 could seem understandable in certain lights, but shouldn't be condoned.
He believes the Soviet dictator made the biggest mistake of his life in allowing Hitler to begin a war that would escalate into a global conflict.