The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It is always a challenge to make sense of the shifting sands of eastern Europe’s place names. For this book, in which frontiers move and rival languages intrude, I have employed a policy of using names appropriate to the period under scrutiny.

So, to take the example of what is today the Ukrainian city of L’viv: In discussing September 1939, when it was the Polish city of Lwów, I use the Polish name. However, after the city passed to Soviet control and its name was Russified to Львов, I use the transliterated form, L’vov. Incidentally, the modern Ukrainian version, L’viv, only came into official use with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

Where there exists an accepted Anglicized form—such as Warsaw, Brest, or Moscow—then I have naturally used it throughout.