Diplomatic manoeuvers continued in the spring and summer of 1939, but in their final attempts, the Franco-British talks with the Soviets in Moscow on forming an anti-Nazi defensive military alliance failed. Warsaw's refusal to allow the Red Army to operate on Polish territory doomed the Western efforts. The final contentious Allied-Soviet exchanges took place on 21 and 23 August 1939. The regime of Joseph Stalin was the target of an intense German counter-initiative and was concurrently involved in increasingly effective negotiations with Hitler's agents. On 23 August, an outcome contrary to the exertions of the Allies became a reality: in Moscow, Germany and the Soviet Union hurriedly signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which secretly provided for the dismemberment of Poland into Nazi- and Soviet-controlled zones.