In July 1940, Stafford Cripps the British Ambassador in the Soviet Union, stressed to Stalin that Germany was a threat to Moscow and thus asked him to consider a military alliance with Britain. However, Stalin denied. He insisted that the non-aggression pact still held high importance to the interests of both Germany and the USSR. After this meeting, Stalin told Molotov to send the minutes of the discussions that took place to Berlin. This was an attempt to reassure Hitler of Stalin’s continuous loyalty. However the attempt failed. It was three weeks after receiving this memorandum that Hitler first acknowledged to his leading generals that an attack on the Soviets would be sooner than expected. Hitler believed that if the Soviets could be destroyed, Britain’s last hope would be diminished (Ward 1999). Stalin had become too comfortable with the new taste of territorial expansion that the Pact allowed him to have. The Soviets believed that Germany’s endeavours in the west were not going as well as planned and that they would need to rely on Soviet support just as much as they had at the time of the signing of the Pact. They knew that Germany did not want to partake in a war on two fronts and with Britain’s…show more content… Rothwell claims that Stalin had shown more foresight in the signing of the Pact than Hitler because Hitler had been convinced that after it was signed Britain would desert Poland (2001). However, after the invasion, as if it had almost come full circle, Britain had ended up gaining a new, once unwanted ally in Stalin (Adams 1969). It is said that on receiving the news of the attack on the Soviet Union, Stalin fell into a state of absolute shock and collapsed (Axelrod 2008). However, Davies believes that although Stalin did suffer on hearing the news, it is more likely that his nerves must have been strained before the attack, realising the scale of his miscalculations in the short time between 1939-41