Poland

Poland declared independence upon the collapse of Russia, and the defeat of the Central Powers in 1918. France supported Polish claims for additional territory in order to strengthen the emerging state. Wilson remarked, “The only real interest of France in Poland is in weakening Germany by giving Poland territory to which she has no right."¹⁴¹ The French historian and political analyst Jacques Bainville observed, “The liberated peoples of the East have been entrusted with the task of serving as a counterweight to the German multitude."¹⁴²

At this time, the Bolsheviks under Lenin were consolidating their control of Russia. The Red Army invaded Lithuania, which had declared independence in January 1919. The Polish army drove the Bolshevik forces back. Poland’s popular military leader, Marshal Joseph Pilsudski, became head of state. An aggressive field commander, he invaded the Ukraine in April 1920 to destroy a Soviet troop concentration on the frontier. Believing that Poland must become “a power equal to the great powers of the world,” Pilsudski conquered territories where less than five percent of the population was Polish.¹⁴³ The Treaty of Riga ended the see-saw war against the Red Army on March 18, 1921, with Poland gaining Galicia.

On Poland’s western frontier in December 1918, the Polish secret military organization, Polska Organizacya Wojskova (POW), seized Posen, where Polish and German residents lived in harmony. German Freikorps militia launched a successful counterthrust. France’s Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch demanded that the Reich’s Government withdraw these troops from Posen. Too weak to resist the French ultimatum, German Prime Minister Friedrich Ebert complied. Polish insurgents continued attacking German villages in the region.¹⁴⁴

President Wilson proposed a plebiscite for Upper Silesia to allow the inhabitants to choose their country. 22,000 POW men staged an insurrection in August 1919 to take the region by force.¹⁴⁵ The Freikorps broke the revolt in less than a week. In February 1920, the Inter-Allied Control Commission assumed the administration of Upper Silesia. Over 11,000 French soldiers, supported by small contingents from the Italian and British armies, arrived to supervise the plebiscite. In the spring 1921 poll, 706,820 Silesians cast for union with Germany and 479,414 for Poland. Many Polish residents voted for Germany.¹⁴⁶

While the Allied commission fumbled with determining the ultimate boundaries, the POW staged another uprising in May 1921. Supplied with French weapons, the insurgents organized an army of 30,000 men. The Polish government officially denied supporting Wojciech Korfanty, the instigator of the revolts. The correspondent for the London Times observed ammunition trains passing regularly from Poland into Upper Silesia. The frontier was as “freely traversed as our London Bridge” he wrote on May 10.¹⁴⁷

Though outnumbered, 25,000 Freikorps volunteers counterattacked on May 21, and forced the Poles onto the defensive. Once the Germans began to advance, the French and British stepped in to restore order. In October, the League of Nations awarded nearly a third of the contested territory to Poland. Based on the plebiscite, the entire region should have fallen to Germany. In the portion granted Poland dwelled 40 percent of the Upper Silesian population. It contained six-sevenths of the zinc and lead production, all the iron, and 91 percent of the coal.¹⁴⁸

Among the lands Germany lost was a 6,300 square-mile vertical strip of West Prussia extending from the Baltic coast down to Upper Silesia. Poland required this corridor, the Allies reasoned, to permit her to have unrestricted access to the sea. Within the corridor was the German port of Danzig. Just 15,000 of the city’s 400,000 inhabitants were Polish. The people of Danzig overwhelmingly demonstrated for union with Germany, but the Peace Commission favored Poland. Lloyd George’s tenacious resistance forced a compromise: the town became a “Free City” under League of Nations jurisdiction, subject to Polish customs administration.

During the Weimar Republic, every German administration and most influential political parties had advocated Poland’s destruction. This attitude prevailed in the Reich’s Foreign Office and in the Reichswehr as well. In September 1922, General Hans von Seeckt wrote to Chancellor Joseph Wirth, “Poland’s existence is intolerable and incompatible with Germany’s vital interests. It must disappear, and will do so through its own weakness and through Russia with our aid."¹⁴⁹

The Polish government’s oppressive minority policy provoked the ire of other European states. Poland’s Jewish, Ukrainian, and German populations suffered legal persecution to disenfranchise them, strip them of political influence, or force their migration out. The regime dismissed German officials and employees from civil service. It confiscated German farms, closed ethnic schools and forced the pupils to enroll in Polish educational institutions. These measures compelled many Prussian and Silesian Germans to move into Germany. A quarter of the ethnic German population had left Poland by 1926.

Heinrich Brüning, German chancellor from 1930-1932, pursued a trade policy the Poles considered disadvantageous to their commerce. Pilsudski responded by conducting military maneuvers and massing troops near Germany’s border. The Polish army concentrated formations in a ring around East Prussia, geographically separated by the corridor from the Reich. In 1930, Mocarstwowiec (The League of Great Powers), a newspaper mirroring Pilsudski’s views, published this editorial: “We know that war between Poland and Germany cannot be avoided. We must prepare for this war systematically and energetically. ... In this war there will be no prisoners taken. There will be no place for humanitarian feelings."¹⁵⁰ The Polish general staff had been weighing options for invading the Reich since 1921.¹⁵¹ German diplomats considered the appointment to Polish foreign minister of Joseph Beck, an army colonel and confidant of Pilsudski’s, in November 1932 as indicative of a more militant policy.¹⁵²

Polish saber-rattling provoked resentment in Germany. The Reich’s Foreign Office refused to renew even minor compacts with Poland about to expire. When Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, relations with his eastern neighbor were strained to the utmost. The Polish press launched a campaign of vilification against the new chancellor. Pilsudski deployed combat divisions near Danzig and reinforced the 82-man garrison guarding the Westerplatte. This was an army depot situated on an islet bordering metropolitan Danzig. A Pilsudski subordinate wrote in the quasi-official Gazeta Polska, “for the western territories, Poland can and will speak only with the voice of her cannons."¹⁵³

In April 1933, Pilsudski asked Paris for the second time in less than two months to join in a “preventative war” to invade the Reich. The French showed no interest. The German representative in Warsaw, Hans von Moltke, discovered the plan and duly warned Hitler.¹⁵⁴ The Führer sidestepped a confrontation. During his first meeting with the Polish envoy on May 2, 1933, he proved gracious and reassuring. Hitler agreed to a public declaration that his government would observe all Polish-German treaties currently in force. In his foreign policy speech to the Reichstag on May 17, the German chancellor spoke of “finding a solution to satisfy the understandable demands of Poland just as much as Germany’s natural rights."¹⁵⁵

In November, Hitler offered Pilsudski a friendship and non-aggression pact. Only after another discreet, unsuccessful bid to enlist France for his “preventative war” hobbyhorse did the marshal agree. The two governments ratified a ten-year treaty the following January. New trade agreements provided a fresh market for Poland’s depressed economy. Hitler banned newspaper editorials addressing German claims in the East. Warsaw relaxed the anti-German tendency of its own press. The Führer directed Danzig’s National Socialist senate to cease complaining to the League of Nations about Polish violations of legal compacts there.

The German public disapproved of Hitler’s rapprochement toward Poland. U.S. Ambassador William Dodd reported that even convinced National Socialists were disillusioned that the Führer had concluded a pact with Warsaw.¹⁵⁶ Prussian nobles in the general staff and foreign office harbored anti-Polish sentiments and likewise rejected the change of policy. In October 1935, Moltke cabled from Warsaw, “Today the German minority in Poland feels left in the lurch by the German Reich."¹⁵⁷ Hitler stayed on course. Warsaw’s new emissary in Berlin, Joseph Lipski, experienced a warmth and popularity among his hosts previously unimaginable for a Polish diplomat.

After Pilsudski’s death in May 1935, two government officials assumed virtual autonomy in their respective ministries, much to the detriment of Polish-German relations. These were Foreign Minister Beck and the army commander-in-chief, Marshal Edward Rydz-Smigly. Both were disciples of an expansionist foreign policy.

The friendship treaty with Germany evoked little sense of obligation on Poland’s part. From Warsaw, Moltke informed his superiors, “The Poles think that they no longer need to restrict their steps against the German minority. They must be gaining the impression from the lack of any reaction in the German press, that all infringements will be accepted by German public opinion without objection."¹⁵⁸ In February 1936, the German consul general in Thorn, Kiichler, wrote Berlin about the disproportionate transfer of German farms into Polish hands through government-implemented land reform: “As much German property as possible is supposed to be broken up before expiration of the ten-year agreement."¹⁵⁹ Consul Nöldeke in Katowice described how on March 15, “In Königshiitte, an assembly of the German Farmers Union was dispersed by a mob armed with sticks and clubs, during which German performers of the Upper Silesian country theater who were uninvolved bystanders were physically abused."¹⁶⁰

Diplomatic relations between Poland and the Reich further deteriorated due to a simultaneous tariff dispute. Dissatisfied with Germany’s compensation for coal trains crossing the corridor from the Reich to supply East Prussia’s energy needs, Warsaw announced in January 1936 that it would curtail 50 to 80 percent of German rail traffic there. The Polish Ministry of Transportation threatened to block it completely during negotiations.¹⁶¹ In March, Beck informed the French that Poland was ready to join France in a war against Germany.¹⁶² Marshal Rydz-Smigly visited Paris in September. He persuaded the French to loan Poland $500 million in cash and war materiel to upgrade the Polish army. Warsaw already devoted over a third of the budget to armaments, even though the country suffered one of the highest illiteracy rates in Europe and much of the population lived in poverty.¹⁶³ Rydz-Smigly ordered General Tadeusz Kutrzeba to draft a war plan against Germany. Completed in January 1938, the study envisioned a war with the Reich for 1939. To date, Hitler had never made a threatening gesture to Poland.

Of all territories robbed from the Reich after World War I, the German people felt most keenly the loss of Danzig and the lands taken by Poland. To placate his own public and remove one more obstacle to improving relations with Warsaw, Hitler required at least a nominal correction of the Versailles arrangement. He limited his proposal to two revisions. First, he asked to construct an Autobahn and railroad line across the corridor to connect Germany with East Prussia. The German diplomat Julius Schnurre had already suggested this to Beck in 1935 without receiving an answer.¹⁶⁴ Secondly, Hitler wanted Danzig to come under German sovereignty. In return, he was prepared to acknowledge Germany’s eastern border fixed by the Allied Peace Commission as final, something no Weimar administration had hitherto done, and offer Poland a 25-year non-aggression pact.

The Autobahn plan meant that Hitler was willing to renounce an entire province in exchange for a strip of real estate wide enough to accommodate a highway. Financed by the Reich, the project would utilize Polish labor and construction materials to help relieve unemployment in Poland. The recovery of Danzig required even less of Warsaw. The Danzig territory, encompassing 730 square miles, was under League of Nations, not Polish, jurisdiction. Regarding the city’s value as a harbor, the Poles no longer needed it for nautical export; further up the coast they had constructed the port city of Gydnia, which opened in 1926. Offering economic incentives to shippers, they had taken more than half of Danzig’s commerce by 1930.

Hitler’s package called for the Reich’s forfeiture of Upper Silesia with its valuable industry, Posen and West Prussia. These provinces had been German for centuries and had belonged to Germany less than 20 years before. Nevertheless, it would abandon nearly a million ethnic Germans residing there to foreign rule, despite the fact that since March 1933, the Reich’s Foreign Office had documented 15,000 cases of abuse against Poland’s ethnic German colony.¹⁶⁵ The Führer was willing to publicly announce that no more territorial issues exist with Poland. No Weimar administration could have survived such an offer.

Meeting in Berchtesgaden with Polish Ambassador Lipski on October 24, 1938, Ribbentrop brought the German revisions to the table. His guest disputed the Reich’s perception of Danzig’s status as a “product of Versailles.” Only Poland’s rise, Lipski contended, had lifted the city from “insignificance.” He told Ribbentrop that public opinion would never accept the city’s transfer to Germany.¹⁶⁶ Warsaw reaffirmed Lipski’s position in writing on October 31. The letter conceded that Poland was prepared to guarantee the right of “Danzig’s German minority” to preserve its national and cultural identity.¹⁶⁷ Describing the population of a city that was 96 percent German as a minority was a studied provocation which Hitler decided to overlook. The Polish press campaign against Germany resumed.

On January 5, 1939, Beck visited Germany to negotiate with Hitler. The Führer insisted that Danzig’s return to Germany must be a part of any final settlement with Poland. He reassured Beck that the Reich would never simply declare that the city has returned to Germany and present Warsaw with a fait accompli. He pledged that no final arrangement would deprive Poland of her access to the sea. Beck asked for time to weigh the situation carefully.

In mid-January, Beck told Rydz-Smigly of his decision to reject the German proposals, though two weeks later he mendaciously reassured Ribbentrop that he was still contemplating the matter. A wave of fresh persecution swept over the ethnic German minority. On February 25, the British ambassador there, Sir Howard Kennard, reported to Halifax on a dialog with Moltke concerning farmhands and industrial workers in Poland who “were being dismissed because they happened to be Germans.” In addition to the forced closing of German schools, it was becoming practically impossible for a German living in Poland to earn enough to exist. Kennard concluded that there was “little likelihood of the Polish authorities doing anything to improve matters."¹⁶⁸

An unrelated episode aggravated tensions. On March 22, the Germans recovered Memel from Lithuania. This was a narrow, 700-square mile strip of northeastern Prussia which the Lithuanians seized by force in 1923. The League of Nations demanded that the territory be governed according to democratic principles. In the 1925 elections, 94 percent of the voters – including many Lithuanian residents – cast for German parties. The Lithuanian government in Kaunas refused to recognize the results. The entire country fell under a dictatorship the following year. The authorities began jailing Prussian residents found guilty of “preserving German heritage."¹⁶⁹

After the Austrian Anschluss, Memel-Germans organized public demonstrations. In November 1938, Kaunas offered to negotiate with Berlin over the region’s future. In an internationally supervised plebiscite in December, 87 percent of voters decided for union with Germany. Ribbentrop promised Lithuanian Foreign Minister Juozas Urbsys economic incentives for his country. Upon the transfer of Memel back to Germany, the Lithuanians employed their own dock workers and administrative personnel at the harbor there. They also operated a railroad across the now-German strip of Memel territory directly connecting the port to Lithuania. This was the same solution that Hitler had proposed to Warsaw regarding Danzig and the corridor.

During the weeks before the final settlement with Kaunas, Berlin deployed the three army divisions garrisoned in East Prussia on the border with Memel. Rydz-Smigly declared this to be evidence that Germany was about to annex Danzig.¹⁷⁰ On March 23, 1939, he accordingly mobilized a large part of Poland’s army reserve. Since Memel was at the opposite end of the province from Danzig, the three divisions were actually moving away from the city that Rydz-Smigly claimed they were about to seize. The Memel affair coincided with Germany’s occupation of the Czech rump-state on March 15. Beck exploited the occasion to negotiate with London to form an alliance against Germany. On March 24, Beck told Lipski and senior members of his staff that Hitler was losing the faculty to think and act rationally. Poland’s “determined resistance” might bring him to his senses. Otherwise, Beck proclaimed, “We will fight!"¹⁷¹

Hitler maintained a conciliatory posture. His army commander-in-chief, General Brauchitsch, noted, “Führer does not want to settle the Danzig question by force.” Hitler cancelled a March 24 directive that the diplomat Ernst von Weizsäcker had prepared for Moltke as a guideline for resuming negotiations. The Führer considered it “somewhat harshly formulated” and objected to its tenor “confronting the Poles with a sort of friend-or-foe option."¹⁷²

Returning to Berlin, Lipski delivered a letter to Ribbentrop on March 26 formally rejecting the Danzig-Autobahn proposal. Lipski bluntly told his host, “Any further pursuit of these German plans, especially as far as the return of Danzig to the Reich is concerned, will mean war with Poland."¹⁷³ This threat, together with Rydz-Smigly’s partial mobilization against Germany, violated the 1934 non-aggression and friendship treaty: The pact stated word for word, “Under no circumstances will (the signatories) resort to the use of force for the purpose of settling issues in controversy."¹⁷⁴

The British responded favorably to an alliance with Poland. The western democracies had just lost Czechoslovakia as an ally flanking the Reich. Her military-industrial resources were now at German disposal. The British army chief of staff warned Chamberlain that in the event of war against Germany, it would be better to have Poland on the Allies' side. On March 30, Kennard received instructions from London to present the British offer to guarantee Poland. Beck accepted immediately. The next day, Chamberlain explained the details in the House of Commons: “In the event of any action which clearly threatens Polish independence and which the Polish government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish government all support in their power."¹⁷⁵

Beck visited London to conclude details for the alliance on April 3. On the 23^rd, Warsaw mobilized another 334,000 army reservists, again in the absence of threats from Germany.¹⁷⁶

Hitler addressed the Reichstag on April 28. He explained how the Anglo-Polish agreement obligated the Poles to take a military position against the Reich, should it enter into an armed conflict with any state guaranteed by England. Hitler continued, “This obligation contradicts the agreement I previously made with Marshal Pilsudski; since the (1934) agreement only takes into account obligations already in existence at that time, namely Poland’s commitments regarding France. To belatedly expand these commitments is contrary to the German-Polish non-aggression pact. Under these circumstances, I would never have concluded this pact back then; for what sense does it make to have a non-aggression pact, if it leaves a number of exceptions for one partner practically wide open?"¹⁷⁷ Hitler voided the compact. He added in his speech that he would welcome a Polish initiative to negotiate a new treaty governing Polish-German relations.

Warsaw’s agreement with London opened a floodgate of war scares and hostile editorials in the Polish press. The German consul general in Posen reported to Berlin on March 31, “Scarcely a day goes by in which Posen newspapers don't publish more or less aggressive articles or insulting observations about Germans."¹⁷⁸ Although Hitler had personally instructed his foreign office that there must be “no talk of war” in the negotiations, the French ambassador in Warsaw, Leon Noel, reported to Paris, “Patriotic sentiment among the Poles has reached a zenith in all parties and classes, thanks to the German threats."¹⁷⁹

Poland’s ethnic German community suffered the backlash of media-generated Polish chauvinism. On April 13, the German consul in Danzig cabled to Berlin that rural Germans in the corridor “are so cowed that they have already buried their most valuable possessions. They no longer risk traversing roads and fields by daylight. They spend their nights in hiding places beyond the farms, for fear of being attacked."¹⁸⁰

The May 11 edition of the Polish newspaper Dziennik Bydgoski {Bromberg Daily News) published an editorial asserting that the Germans in Poland “know that in case of war, no indigenous enemy will escape alive. The Führer is far away but the Polish soldier close by, and in the woods there’s no shortage of limbs.” The previous month, the Polish mayor of Bromberg, a town with a comparatively large German population, told journalists that if Hitler invaded there, he'd be stepping over the corpses of Bromberg’s Germans.¹⁸¹

Beck explained his policy to the Polish parliament on May 5. He claimed that Danzig was not German, but has belonged to Poland for centuries. He attributed the city’s prosperity to commerce conducted by Poland ferrying export wares into Danzig via the Vistula River, omitting the fact that the waterway was no longer navigable, thanks to 19 years of improper maintenance under Polish administration. Beck disparaged Hitler’s offer to recognize Polish sovereignty over the corridor, Posen, and Upper Silesia in exchange for Danzig. Since the provinces were already incorporated into Poland, he argued, Hitler was giving nothing in return. “A nation with self-respect makes no one-sided concessions,” he crowed.¹⁸²

Historians praise Beck for defiantly defending his country from becoming a German satellite. Since Hitler’s proposal included an offer for Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, reaching a Danzig settlement with the Reich would have supposedly drawn the Poles into an alliance with Germany against the USSR. Warsaw would then have eventually become embroiled in Hitler’s planned military crusade against Russia. Beyond the fact that no German documents exist to support this theory, it overlooks the essence of the Anti-Comintern Pact. Its purpose was to promote cooperation among civilized nations to prevent internal Communist subversion. Governments would share intelligence, much in the same way that Interpol affiliates do to combat global terrorism today. Also, Hitler had expressed his often-quoted ideas about invading Russia when he wrote Mein Kampf during the previous decade. After the Bolsheviks consolidated power in the former Czarist empire, the Führer no longer advocated such an option.

Through personal observation and discussions with diplomats in Berlin, Henderson was able to convey to London a realistic picture of German opinion. He wrote Halifax in May, “It must be borne in mind that Danzig and the corridor was the big question prior to 1933. One of the most unpopular actions which Hitler ever did was his 1934 treaty with Pilsudski. He had the whole of his party against him. Today the most moderate Germans, who are opposed to a world war, are behind him in his present offer to Poland.” Henderson added that foreign emissaries in Berlin also consider Hitler’s proposals justifiable: “According to my Belgian colleague, practically all the diplomatic representatives here regard the German offer in itself as a surprisingly favorable one."¹⁸³

Henderson grasped that Hitler’s package was not a demand for Polish territory but accepted a significant loss of formerly German lands to Poland. In a May 17 dispatch to Halifax, Henderson wrote, “The fact that what was regarded here as a generous offer of a 25-year German guarantee of the existing Polish frontier in exchange for a satisfactory settlement of the Danzig and Corridor problem had been rejected out of hand by Poland has not only incensed Herr Hitler personally, but has made a deep impression on the country as a whole."¹⁸⁴

The ambassador also referred to “the traditional German feeling of hatred for Poland, particularly in the army, and Polish ingratitude for Germany’s past services.” On May 16, Henderson summarized a conversation with Weizsäcker in a letter to Sir Miles Cadogan, the undersecretary in the Foreign Office: “He like all Germans feels bitterly about the Poles. They grabbed what they could after Vienna and Munich and then bit the hand that fed them on these occasions. That is the German view nor is there a single German who does not regard Hitler’s offer to Poland as excessively generous and broadminded."¹⁸⁵

Hitler understood that he could never normalize relations with Poland without a Danzig settlement. The British guarantee for Poland had robbed Hitler of the opportunity to withdraw his demands without losing face. On April 3, 1939, he ordered the OKW to draft a study for combat operations against Poland. He stipulated that the military solution would only be exercised “if Warsaw revises its policy toward Germany and assumes a posture threatening to the Reich."¹⁸⁶

Berlin continued to receive reports from its consulates in Poland regarding harsh treatment of the German colony there. On May 8, on instructions from Hitler, press chief Otto Dietrich directed newspaper editors to “practice a certain restraint in reporting such incidents” and not publish them on the front page.¹⁸⁷ Regarding the Polish media, Henderson observed, “The fantastic claims of irresponsible Polish elements for domination over East Prussia and other German territory afford cheap fuel to the flames."¹⁸⁸

In June, Hubert Gladwyn Jebb and Sir William Strang of the British Foreign Office visited Warsaw. Jebb sent back a report on the 9^th that summarized the discussions with Polish government ministers and army officers. He quoted a Polish economist in Warsaw’s foreign ministry as describing how Polish farmers anticipated generous grants of German land after the war with Germany.¹⁸⁹ Jebb opined that the Polish general staff was “overly optimistic” and that officials in Warsaw had become “amazingly arrogant” since the British guarantee.¹⁹⁰ The following month, British General Sir Edmund Ironside visited Poland. Rydz-Smigly told him that war with Germany is unavoidable.¹⁹¹ None of the British emissaries said anything to the Poles to mollify this bellicose attitude.

Since June, as reported by Moltke, 70 percent of the Germans in Upper Silesia were out of work, compared to Poland’s national unemployment rate of 16 percent. The Reich’s Government registered 70,000 ethnic German refugees who had recently fled Polish sovereign territory. Another 15,000 had taken refuge in Danzig. Among the acts of brutality inflicted on those still in Poland were five

documented cases of castration. Kennard protested to the Polish government about the abuse of the German minority. The complaint “did not appear to have had any definite results,” he notified his superiors.¹⁹²

The crisis also focused on Danzig, still administered by League of Nations Commissioner Carl Burckhardt but under Poland’s customs union. The city’s senate was embroiled in a perpetual controversy over the conduct of the Polish tariff inspectors. Originally numbering six, in 1939 the roster had climbed to well over 100. Polish officials performing these duties roamed areas beyond their jurisdiction, primarily interested in potential military details.¹⁹³ They rendezvoused at Danzig’s rail terminal, which was under Polish administration. A transmitter there relayed intelligence to Warsaw. In the event of war, the inspectors were to lead irregular troops, supplied from arms caches concealed in the city, to hold positions in Danzig until the Polish army arrived.¹⁹⁴

Danzig’s senate president, Arthur Greiser, protested to the Polish commissioner in Danzig, Marjan Chodaki, on June 3, 1939, about the customs inspectors. Chodaki replied that the number of his customs agents was still insufficient, because German inspectors were not doing their job. He threatened economic sanctions against Danzig. In another note on August 4, Chodaki stated that Polish customs officials would henceforth be armed. Interference with their activity would result in an immediate reprisal against Danzig; the Poles threatened to block the import of foodstuffs. Beck informed Kennard that Poland would intervene militarily if the Danzig senate failed to comply with Polish terms.¹⁹⁵

On August 9, Weizsäcker met with the Polish chargé de affaires in Berlin, Michael Lubomirski. He protested the Polish ultimatum to Danzig of August 4. Sanctions against the “Free City", Weizsäcker warned, may result in Danzig seeking stronger economic ties with Germany herself. The next day, an undersecretary in Warsaw’s foreign ministry told the German chargé de affaires that any involvement by the Reich’s Government in the Danzig issue would be regarded by Poland as an act of war.¹⁹⁶ Rydz-Smigly contributed to tensions with remarks made in a public speech: “Soon we'll be marching against the hereditary German enemy to finally knock out his poison fangs. The first step on this march will be Danzig. . . . Keep ready for the day of reckoning with this arrogant Germanic race!"¹⁹⁷ Burckhardt described Poland’s intentions as “excessively belligerent."¹⁹⁸

Warsaw issued an official press release detailing how Greiser had withdrawn his demands after the note exchange with Chodaki. According to the Polish press, a single, mildly harsh note had “forced Hitler to his knees."¹⁹⁹ The Anglo-French media triumphantly reported that the Führer had had to “climb down.” Hitler told Burckhardt on August 11, “The press said I lost my nerve, that threats are the only way to deal with me. That we backed down when the Poles stood firm, that I had only been bluffing last year, and my bluff flopped thanks to Poland’s courage that the Czechs didn't have. I've read idiotic remarks in the French press that I lost my nerve while the Poles kept theirs."²⁰⁰

Hitler asked Burckhardt, “Could you go yourself to London? If we want to avoid catastrophes, the matter is rather urgent."²⁰¹ Halifax, certainly no friend of Germany, cabled Kennard on August 15, “I have the impression that Hitler is still undecided and anxious to avoid war."²⁰² The day before, Roger Makins in the British Foreign Office wrote England’s delegate in Geneva, Frank Walter, that the Führer wanted to open negotiations to prevent an armed clash.

Historians assert that Hitler was determined to invade Poland. However, had this been his intention, he could have instructed the Danzig senate to pass a resolution abolishing League of Nations jurisdiction and returning the city to the Reich’s sovereignty. This would have provoked the Polish military response Beck warned of, and Germany could then intervene with her own army in order to defend the Danzig population’s right to self-determination. Given the sensitive issue of democratic principles, and the fact that Poland was striking the first blow, it would then have been difficult for Britain to justify support for Poland under the provisions of the guarantee.

The Polish government rounded up “disloyal” ethnic Germans and transported them to concentration camps.²⁰³ Authorities closed daily traffic between Upper Silesia and Germany, preventing thousands of ethnic Germans from commuting to their jobs in the Reich. Polish coastal anti-aircraft batteries fired on Lufthansa passenger planes flying over the Baltic Sea to East Prussia.²⁰⁴ The Luftwaffe provided fighter escorts for the airliners. In Danzig, the police chief formed his law enforcement personnel into two rifle regiments. In defiance of the League of Nations charter, the city re-militarized. The Germans transferred a battalion from SS Death’s Head Regiment 4 to Danzig. The 1,500-man “SS Home Guard Danzig” paraded publicly on Danzig’s May Field on August 18. The Poles evacuated the families of their civil servants, fortified public buildings and installations with armor plate or barbed wire and posted machine gun nests at bridges.²⁰⁵

In his directive to the armed forces the previous April, Hitler had cited isolating Poland as a prerequisite for the military option. On August 23, Germany concluded a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. The pact, signed in Moscow, contained a secret clause defining mutual spheres of interest. It stated, “The question of whether or not maintaining an independent Polish state will appear desirable for both parties' interests, and how this state should be divided, can be clarified in the course of further political developments.” In return for roughly half of Poland, the Soviet dictator gave Germany a free hand to invade. The Germans hoped that news of Soviet-German rapprochement would demonstrate to Beck that his country’s position had become precarious, compelling him to return to the conference table.²⁰⁶ Beck however, dismissed the alliance as untenable, because Russia and Germany harbored a serious ideological rivalry. A Warsaw communiqué stated, “The conclusion of the non-aggression pact has no influence on Poland’s situation or policy."²⁰⁷

On August 23, Hitler told his armed forces adjutant that the military must be ready to invade Poland by the morning of the 26^th . The Führer then postponed the attack, explaining to General Keitel that he needed to “gain time for further negotiations,” still seeking a “solution without bloodshed."²⁰⁸ The Poles, without provocation from Germany, closed Danzig’s borders. Since the metropolis imported much of its foodstuffs, this created a critical situation for the population.

Hitler and Göring requested British mediation to help persuade Warsaw to resume talks. From Warsaw, Kennard cabled London on August 25 that, were Beck or Lipski to seek an audience with Hitler, the Führer would consider this a “sign of weakness” and respond with an ultimatum.²⁰⁹Chamberlain concluded the alliance with Poland the same day.

Along the German-Polish frontier, Polish border guards fired on ethnic German refugees attempting to flee into Germany. German infantry patrols crossed into Poland and fought to free them. On the 26^th, a Polish cavalry unit rode boldly through German villages near Neidenburg in East Prussia. The German army’s Artillery Regiment 57 engaged the horsemen on sovereign Reich territory. The Poles withdrew, leaving 47 dead on the battlefield.²¹⁰ Hitler told Ribbentrop, “I would like to think that Beck and Lipski have good intentions. But they are no longer in control of the situation. They are captives of a public attitude that has become white-hot through the excesses of their own propaganda and the bragging of the military. Even if they wanted to negotiate, they aren't in a position to do so. This is the real root of the tragedy.” Ribbentrop handed Hitler a telegram describing three further incidents of Polish gunners firing on German commercial aircraft. The Führer responded, “This is pure anarchy. What are we supposed to do?"²¹¹

On August 29, Hitler received a half-hearted pledge from London to urge the Poles to enter negotiations, without, however, stating when. Tired of these dilatory tactics, Hitler wrote back that he expected a Polish diplomat empowered to negotiate by the following day. Examining the note in front of Hitler that evening, Henderson protested that it “has the ring of an ultimatum.” The Führer retorted, “This sentence only emphasizes the urgency of the moment. Consider that at any time it could come to a serious incident, when two mobilized armies are confronting one another.” Henderson insisted that the deadline was too short. Hitler responded, “We've been repeating the same thing for a week. . . . This senseless game can't go on forever.... My people are bleeding day after day."²¹² In Warsaw, Beck, Rydz-Smigly and the defense minister, Tadeusz Kasprzycki, conferred. They decided to declare general mobilization the next morning.

German diplomats and lawyers spent the morning of August 30 preparing the 16-point Marienwerder proposal as a basis for discussions with the Poles. The salient points were Danzig’s immediate return to the Reich, a German transit route linking East Prussia to Germany, Gydnia remaining under Polish sovereignty, a minority protection treaty, and a plebiscite for the population of the northern corridor region. Göring emphasized that the Führer is trying to avoid infringement of Poland’s vital interests.²¹³ Henderson confessed to London that Hitler is considering how generous he can be.

Chamberlain’s cabinet concluded that the proposal does not harm Poland’s interests nor threaten her independence. Even the suggested corridor plebiscite should not have concerned Warsaw, since it claimed that the population there was 90 percent Polish.²¹⁴ The French government recommended to the Poles that they negotiate. London telegraphed Kennard, instructing him to formally protest Poland’s recent practice of shooting at German refugees.

The Polish Foreign Office assumed that Hitler would interpret any willingness on its part to negotiate as a sign of weakness. In reality, simply receiving the German 16-point plan represented no threat to Poland. It would have opened a dialog, and at the very least postponed the outbreak of war. The Poles could have broken off the discussions if Berlin imposed an ultimatum. They could then have fully relied on the support of the Western powers. Beck however, wanted no negotiations. On August 31, he cabled Lipski with instructions to inform Ribbentrop that Warsaw will “weigh the recommendation of the British government (to negotiate) in a favorable light and give a formal answer to this question in a few hours."²¹⁵

In the same message, Beck instructed his ambassador not to discuss anything with the Germans, and that he is not authorized to receive their proposals. That morning, Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes tried to give a copy of Hitler’s 16-point program to Lipski at the Polish embassy in Berlin. The Pole refused, replying that “in the event of war, civil strife will break out in this country and Polish troops will march successfully to Berlin."²¹⁶

The radio monitoring station in the Reich’s Air Ministry intercepted Beck’s transmission ordering Lipski not to accept a copy of Germany’s Marienwerder proposals. Hitler now knew that Poland would not compromise over Danzig and the corridor. He nonetheless postponed the military operation once more, upon Göring’s request for a last-minute conference with Henderson and the Swedish mediator Birger Dahlerus.²¹⁷ Later that day, Göring’s conference took place. He showed Henderson a transcript of Beck’s instructions sent to Lipski. Henderson wrote Halifax, “The highly efficient German intelligence system proved its worth that afternoon in Berlin. Beck’s telephone call, including the secret message, was instantly decoded. Here was proof to the German Government of Poland’s delaying tactics and refusal to negotiate seriously."²¹⁸

The meeting between Henderson and Göring was cordial, but failed to reach a solution. A session between Lipski and Ribbentrop the same evening was also fruitless. Hitler summoned Keitel at 9:00p.m. The directive he gave the general began, “Now that all political possibilities for relieving the intolerable conditions for Germany on her eastern border by peaceful means are exhausted, I have decided for a solution by force.” ²¹⁹ Less than eight hours later, the German armed forces invaded Poland.

Historical documents reveal that the attack on Poland was not a step in a long-planned, systematic program to expand Germany’s living space. Hitler ordered the offensive upon the failure to achieve a negotiated settlement. Among the most important issues was the welfare of the ethnic German colony beyond the Reich’s borders, though to wage war for the sake of people related by blood, but no longer by nationality, may today seem unjustified. The present-day “global community” concept rejects the notion that a nation can be defined more by its race than by geographical boundaries. During the 1930’s, however, pride of ethnic heritage was a powerful force in the consciousness of the European peoples.

The 1938 Munich Accord, by which Germany regained the Sudeten territory populated by ethnic Germans under foreign rule, was regarded by the Reich’s Foreign Office as a legal precedent: “The right of protection from the mother state was fundamentally acknowledged once and for all, through an international act in which the four Great Powers and three other states took part."²²⁰ In August 1939, Hitler confronted a serious situation regarding Danzig and the German minority in Poland. Blockaded by the Poles since August 24, the Free City’s German population faced economic ruin and potential starvation. During the month’s final days, Polish radicals murdered over 200 ethnic German residents of western Poland.²²¹ “German intervention was completely legitimate in accordance with on one hand, the right of the mother state to protect its ethnic families living under foreign rule, and on the other hand, with respect to their right to self-determination,” as a German diplomat asserted.²²² Hitler wrote Daladier on August 27, “I would despair of an honorable future for my people, if under such circumstances we were not resolved to settle the matter no matter what."²²³

Beyond the moral and legal issues was that of national security. As mentioned, the Germans had discovered documents in Vienna and Prague revealing a covert policy of the British Foreign Office to weaken Germany. Chamberlain’s arbitration of the 1938 Sudetenland crisis had satisfied Hitler’s demands but also had rescued Czechoslovakia; at that time, Britain and France had not been equipped to wage war to defend this small but useful ally. Once Czechoslovakia collapsed in March 1939, the Anglo-French lost an integral component of their “collective security” alliance system. London’s public guarantee of Poland followed immediately. Hitler surmised that Chamberlain’s purpose for this declaration was to turn Poland against Germany, to replace one hostile state on the Reich’s eastern frontier with another. The Führer told his architect, Hermann Giesler, that he believed that the coalition forming against Germany wanted war: “I must strive to prevent the encirclement of Germany or punch through it, regardless of what direction."²²⁴

On August 9, 1939, Henderson had written Undersecretary Cadogan in London that both the Germans and the Italians believed that Poland would attempt to settle the dispute with the Reich by force that year, before British support becomes lukewarm.²²⁵ In Warsaw, army commanders and certain Polish politicians recommended challenging Germany soon, since the cost of indefinitely maintaining so many soldiers on active duty was too great a strain on the national budget.²²⁶ The general mobilization Poland announced on August 30 was another ominous sign for Hitler. Feeling threatened both to the east and to the west, he opted to strike first. One could perhaps judge his decision in the spirit of a maxim of Prussia’s 18th Century monarch Friedrich the Great. He declared that in war, the real aggressor is he who forces the enemy to fire the first shot.