The “Black Trinity” and the Cold War

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is not to adjudicate the actual motives of the participants or to discuss the effects of the Munich, Molotov-Ribbentrop, and Yalta agreements on Eastern Europe, but rather to demonstrate the ebbs and flows of the “black trinity” discourse throughout the Cold War era. During these 50 years, the agreements became deeply ingrained into the Western political discourse. They were often evoked on anniversaries and other commemorative occasions for their historical and emotional value. Many politicians also utilized them as mental shortcuts. The “black trinity” images were sometimes uprooted from their historical contexts and superimposed on events of the day in order to make sense of an infinitely complex and constantly changing set of variables. While many historians rightfully criticized this reductionist and sometimes revisionist approach, the ubiquity of the discourse throughout the Cold War demonstrates the inherent appeal of heuristics under the conditions of uncertainty.¹ Furthermore, many scholars argued that the perceptions and interpretations of these events framed the political perspective toward the Soviet bloc and well beyond its borders.²