A microfilm of secret protocols detailing how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union colluded to seize Poland and the Baltic states has survived and is in West German archives, officials said Friday.
Information Minister Hans Klein told reporters the film has been inspected by two Soviet historians investigating the Soviet Union's 1940 annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.Foreign Ministry officials said the Nazis destroyed documents deeding the Baltic nations to the Soviet Union but that an unidentified diplomat saved a copy on microfilm.
On Thursday, the new Soviet Congress approved a Kremlin inquiry into the non-aggression pact that paved the way for the takeover of the independent Baltic states and the Nazi invasion of Poland.
Independent groups challenging Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to prove the sincerity of his reforms are pressing the Kremlin to admit it has been lying for more than 40 years with its claims that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania willingly joined the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev himself requested Bonn's help last fall when he met with Chancellor Helmut Kohl and asked if the West Germans had a copy of the secret protocols.
Klein told reporters Friday the original pact signed Aug. 23, 1939, by the wartime foreign ministers, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, remains in Bonn's Foreign Ministry archives.
But the secret protocols detailing the Baltic takeover and Polish invasion were destroyed by Nazi officials in the last days of World War II, Klein said.
"However, a microfilm copy of this and other documents was preserved by a diplomat," Foreign Ministry spokesman Juergen Chrobog said.
The officials said they do not know who preserved the microfilm or why.
"It's not just presumable, we believe that it is authentic," Klein said. "I cannot imagine how or why anyone at that time would reproduce the documents and then make a microfilm of them."
Klein said two Soviet historians traveled to Bonn a few weeks ago to examine the documents, which include a map showing the territories divided between the two nations.
Chrobog declined to detail the statements included in the secret protocols.
Gennady I. Gerasimov, the Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in Moscow in August that the Kremlin has no copy of the protocols.
The so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement has come under close scrutiny in the past year as Soviet reforms have allowed open discussion.
It freed German troops to attack Poland in September 1939. The Germans agreed not to defend the Baltics, to which they were closely allied, leaving the Soviets to seize eastern Poland, attack Finland and then take the Baltic states in July 1940.