Russia Germany Afghanistan

23 Aug 1939 Russo-German pact of non-aggression signed
Chapter 4 – Australia Enters the War, September 1939–April 1940
168
"The Middle East and India are regarded as possible danger areas if Russian aggression and propaganda developed. It is essential to build up a reserve in the Middle East to meet the possible contingencies".
172
Russia might also stir up trouble and perhaps advance into Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan.
Appendix 3 – The Banning of the Communist Party
1
The Communist Party was a minority group which itself claimed only 5,000 members in 1940, but, for a time, working on the idealism, confusion, sectional selfishness and lethargy of far greater numbers, it had a marked effect both on the shaping of the attitude of Australians to the war and in impeding effective Australian participation in the war.
The Australian Communist Party had been formed originally in October 1920 from among those little rebel groups of Australian socialists who, since the eighteen-nineties, had always been found on the edges of the Labour Party, taking their socialist doctrine more seriously than their politics; and it developed through schisms and much internal bickering into a militant body preaching the class struggle, ridiculing the "reformism " of official Labour and looking towards the abolition of "capitalism" by force.
585
When the Soviet Union signed the non-aggression pact with Germany on 23rd August 1939, the party accepted the view that the "ruling circles of Britain and France" had been trying to "bring Germany and the Soviet Union into a collision", and the Soviet Union, by concluding the nonaggression pact with Germany, had "frustrated the insidious plans of the provokers of war" and ensured peace between the two largest States of Europe. Henceforward, Britain and France were regarded as war-makers and the German-Soviet treaty as a "barrier against the extension of the imperialist war". When war broke out between Germany and the Western Powers it was seen as "a struggle between two groups of imperialists for the repartition of the world". But at this point a little confusion crept into the argument. On the one hand it was said to be the duty of the workers to obstruct the waging of war by Britain. Labour Party leaders who supported the national war effort were draped with adjectives like "filthy" and "criminal". Yet, on the other hand the war was seen as not wholly deplorable. The capitalist world was "blowing itself to bits “while the Soviet Union, as the result of the pact—"one of the most brilliant acts of policy in working-class history"—was consolidating its economic, political and military might. The antagonisms of the imperialist states had been used to safeguard the Soviet Union, the base of world socialism, from capitalist attack.
Then came the partition of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Soviet invasion of Finland, and the Soviet treaties with Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. The first was seen as the liberation of the oppressed minorities from a wicked Poland. The second was necessary to remove dangerous anti-Soviet bases of international capitalism and imperialism.
The third was a measure to protect the independence of small States.
Appendix 3 – The Banning of the Communist Party
587
At the outset of the war the attitude of the Australian Government to Communist activities was tender, considering all the circumstances. The information before the Government during the early months of the war pointed to the possibility of war with Russia, either as the result of the German-Soviet pact or of an independent attack by Russia on the Middle East, South-Eastern Europe, or Afghanistan. Russian invasion of Finland, coupled with speculation about Germany’s interest in Scandinavia, raise d a further risk that the Allies and the Soviet Union might become involved in hostilities against each other. Until Hitler struck in the East in 1941, there was never any certainty as to which side would gain Soviet aid. The Communist propagandists themselves had in mind the possibility that Great Britain and the Dominions might fight the Soviet Union.