Character Analysis
Maxim Litvinov
Maxim Litvinov was the Soviet Foreign Commissar in the years leading up to the Second World War, but in May 1939 he was replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov.
Shirer characterizes Litvinov as "the archapostle of collective security, of strengthening the power of the League of Nations, [and] of seeking Russian security against Nazi Germany by a military alliance with Great Britain and France" (3.14.160). Litvinov had worked hard to guide Soviet Foreign Policy in those directions throughout the late 1930s, and his sudden dismissal in the spring of 1939 was a clear sign that Josef Stalin was about to make a major shift in Soviet international relations (3.14.160).
In short order, Stalin did just that.
Vyacheslav Molotov
The man, the myth, the maker of explosive cocktails.
In May 1939, Vyacheslav Molotov replaced Maxim Litvinov as the Foreign Commissar of the Soviet Union. At the time, Molotov was also Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (the equivalent to being the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union), and he continued to hold that post until May 1941, when Josef Stalin decided to step into the role himself as German-Soviet relations began to deteriorate (4.23.284).
In 1939, Molotov was thought to be Stalin's "most intimate friend and closest collaborator," and so his appointment was seen as "a guarantee that foreign policy [would] be conducted strictly on lines laid down by Stalin" (3.14.159).
Molotov was savvy in his early negotiations with the Nazis, and far less easily duped than other international statesmen. Shirer describes him as being an "expert diplomatic poker player" (3.15.39), and although Stalin seems to have blamed Molotov for the eventual break-down in German-Soviet relations, Shirer argues that the Foreign Commissar had nothing to do with it.
Although Molotov continued to play an important historical role throughout the years of the Soviet Union's engagement in World War II, he fades from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich soon after receiving Germany's declaration of war. We don't even get to hear about those famous cocktails of his.