Poland's War Calculation in 1939

Reasons, Hopes and Aims

Stefan Scheil

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783744822572
• Edition: 2
• eBook ISBN:
  9783744860079
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Poland's Reasons, Hopes and Aims in 1939 - Get a new view on the origins of the war between Poland and Germany which eventually became World War II. How Poland became the "betrayed ally" of the Western Powers

Execution – Western offensive
guarantee and Eastern backing

„Whatever they all say, everybody, openly or secretly, is hoping the Poles will come down again. But the whole House expects war.“

Henry Channon (Diary entry regarding the mood in the British Parliament, 24 August 1939)⁴³

German-Polish cooperation at the expense of Czechoslovakia did not in any way change Poland’s basic position or the guidance of its foreign policy. When, in October 1938, the Berlin government attempted to win over Poland as a partner by offering a long-term agreement including the recognition of the existing Polish border with Germany – heretofore refused by all German governments since 1919 – Warsaw refused. Berlin had not asked Warsaw for a joint action against the USSR as has often been claimed. At first, Beck drew out the negotiations without really saying no. In late 1938 and early 1939, he at last received messages indicating a possible decision on the part of the Western powers.

The Polish ambassador at Washington, Jerzy Potocki, had for a year been hinting at an increased U.S. readiness to go to war against Germany. By the end of 1938, his reports had become so antisemitic that they could by taken to be products of German propaganda – in the end, after the occupation of Warsaw, they were effectively used in this manner. Potocki confirmed repeatedly German prejudices against the way in which foreign policy decisions were arrived at in Washington and the influence which Jewish groups and personalities in these matters:

“The American public is exposed to a permanent alarmist propaganda which is under Jewish influence and incessantly conjures the specter of a war; compared to last year, the Americans have thus strongly changed their attitude towards problems of foreign policy”.⁴⁴

More or less, Potocki stated that the American public was in Jewish hands, and attempted, in this report, to prove his point by means of polls. Three days later, he derided the ongoing campaign against Germany and the “totalitarian states” because the Soviet Union was completely excluded from this campaign and was presented to the public as belonging to the democratic camp.⁴⁵ A psychosis of war was being intentionally fomented. Potocki correctly and clearly separated cause and effect, however saying that it was German policy which became increasingly more and more radical:

“Furthermore, it is the German actions against the Jews and the problem of the immigrants, which continue to stir up the hatred of anything connected to National Socialism. Individual Jewish intellectuals have taken part in this movement, e.g. Bernard Baruch, or the governor of the state of New York, Lehmann, the newly appointed judge of the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter, Treasury Secretary Morgenthau and others who are personal friends of president Roosevelt. They want the president to become an active promoter of human rights, of religious freedom and freedom of expression and want him to start punishing troublemakers.”⁴⁶

These reports – the existence of which became known in Berlin in January 1939 – had a considerable effect on the outbreak of the war in late summer of that year. Poland could base her decisions on the enmity of the USA against the present German regime. Reports from London and Paris found in Warsaw confirm that in those countries as well, the US ambassadors, ordered to do so by the president, acted massively in favor of a war against Germany and were increasingly effective in this. In London this was supported by Winston Churchill and his companions and by the Admiralty – they “favored war at any price”, in the words of the former German chancellor Brüning in exile in Britain.⁴⁷

Thus, the ground had been prepared for a development which Warsaw had envisioned for years. If the “West” moved against Germany, Poland had to be part of it. Accordingly, when the German foreign minister came to Warsaw with new proposals on 24 January, he was diplomatically snubbed. “Because of an illness”, Josef Beck called off a dinner speech that had already been prepared and began to arrange his trip to London in February. One of the items on the agenda were the rewards for Poland’s war plans against Germany. The official British documents contain Beck’s message to stating that Beck wanted to talk about “colonies, Jews, and Danzig”.⁴⁸

He thus announced the anti-Jewish feelings of most of the Polish parties, in addition to those of his government which “openly embraced Antisemitism”, including, last not least, foreign minister Beck himself.⁴⁹ This was very much in the tradition of the countrywide anti-Jewish boycott of 1912; the ultimate goal was the emigration of most, if not all Jews from Poland. Furthermore, Poland eyed a large piece of the former German colonial possessions in Africa and, of course, sovereignty over Danzig.

There may well have been more that was discussed in London at the time. In his London exile, Heinrich Brüning was informed of a British-Polish agreement on partition (of Germany) which he mentioned in several private letters and to which he attributed a great share of the responsibility for the outbreak of the war: “Do you think that any one of us, after the summer of 1940, would have been able to change in any way the fact that Poland risked a war on account of the promise by the British government that she would receive not only East Prussia but Upper Silesia as well?”⁵⁰

Both objectives had been announced to the Western powers by Polish agencies as early as 1919. It is obvious that this had now been reiterated and agreed on, while Brüning, as a potential representative of a new democratic German Government, had been informed that this was the price to pay for a peace agreement. He declared that he would not sign anything like that. Actually, Polish requests went far beyond this, as was expressed by the president of the Polish national-democratic party, Kowalski, who had demanded the Oder-Neisse line in a speech in April 1939 and had thought it to be a good idea to put this down on paper.⁵¹

During the war, the Polish underground government printed a map in the form of a postage stamp, labeled “This is what we are fighting for”. It showed the Polish state stretching from the Baltic down to the Black Sea, including Germany east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, Slovakia, Lithuania, White Russia, the western Ukraine, but also the former German colonies Cameroon and East Africa.⁵² In addition, the French island of Madagascar was shown to be Polish; since the mid-1930s, it had been eyed by Beck’s government as a “Devil’s island for the Jews” (Shlomo Aronson). The phrase “colonies, Jews, and Danzig” was not used haphazardly.

Josef Beck was very pleased when he went back home. He could now decide whether a war would take place or not. Britain had pledged her help if Poland had to take up arms because of a “direct or indirect” threat. An attack by a foreign country was not needed for the guarantee to be activated; moreover, a further amendment extended the casus foederis to conflicts between third countries if “this is an obvious threat to the security of one of the contracting parties”. Such a situation could thus occur if Poland felt threatened and went to war. For the first time in British history, a decision of this magnitude had been placed into the hands of a foreign power, as Alexander Cadogan, permanent Undersecretary of the British Foreign Office declared somewhat emotionally.⁵³

The metaphor of a British “blank cheque”, occasionally used in this connection, describes the situation correctly, from a formal viewpoint. Poland had become the master of a British war against Germany which “any gesture of Germany” could unleash. Precisely this clause was invoked by the Warsaw government for Danzig on 10 August 1939 after the German foreign office had expressed its “astonishment” on the subject of a previous Polish ultimatum addressed to the Danzig municipality:

“The Polish government will … regard any future interference of the German government, prejudicial to the rights and interests [at Danzig, author], as an act of war.”⁵⁴

Any future German letter concerning Danzig could thus be construed, in an extreme case, to be an act of war calling for the British guarantee. In the same way, the conditions of the French Polish military agreement would be fulfilled; precisely this Danzig scenario had been described there in May 1939 as a case in point. A major French attack would take place as guaranteed and decide the war against Germany on the battlefield. Danzig scenario had been described there in May 1939 as a case in point. A major French attack would take place as guaranteed and decide the war against Germany on the battlefield.

In the East, the Soviet Union did everything in its power to reassure the Polish republic. In November 1938, both sides had, in a joint declaration reiterated the validity of the 1932 non-aggression pact. To underline this, the assistant Soviet foreign minister, Potemkin travelled to Warsaw. He declared that in the case of a German attack, Poland had nothing to fear from the Soviet Union. On the contrary, Poland could count on Soviet friendship and on the supply of ammunition and other war material. Josef Beck and the Pilsudskites in Warsaw government circles had every right to feel that ...

Table of contents

• About the book
• Epigraph
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• The Basis: the new Polish nationalism
• Europe’s seminal catastrophe seen as a chance – the First World War from the Polish point of view
• Poland’s phantom dilemma after 1919: Empire or failure
• Poland’s war calculation - The necessary international constellation
• Execution – Western offensive guarantee and Eastern backing
• Summary – Questions and answers
• Literature
• List of Abbreviations
• The Author
• Copyright