Among the ‘new’ countries of eastern Europe, Poland occupied an unenviable position. As the largest country in the region, she aspired to Great Power status yet was too weak economically and militarily to fulfil such a role. Sandwiched between two weakened but yet potentially powerful countries, Germany and the Soviet Union, Poland struggled to find a satisfactory and long-lasting way to ensure her security. Poland’s rebirth had been a difficult struggle and had left her largely surrounded by hostile neighbours: only Rumania, with which Poland had a treaty of friendship, and Latvia were on good terms. Germany was angered by the existence of the Polish Corridor which separated East Prussia from the rest of the Reich. The Soviets had been thwarted in their ambition to spread world revolution through their defeat in the Polish-Soviet War. The Lithuanians were outraged by the Polish seizure of Wilno, the city the Lithuanians coveted as their capital. The Poles themselves were furious with the Czechs for having taken the opportunity of the distraction of the Polish-Soviet War to seize the majority of the Duchy of Teschen, including areas where the Poles were in a clear majority.
Poland was restored as an independent country at the time of the prostration of the countries which had partitioned her during the eighteenth century. Two of them, Germany and the Soviet Union, were united in their hatred of this new Polish state. In 1922 their representatives met at Rapallo in Italy, and signed a treaty by which they renounced territorial claims against each other. The rationale behind this treaty, however, eerily foreshadows the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. As the head of the German Army, General Hans von Seeckt explained to the chancellor, Joseph Wirth:
When we speak of Poland, we come to the kernel of the eastern problem. Poland’s existence is intolerable and incompatible with Germany’s vital interests. It must disappear, and will disappear through its own weakness and through Russia with our aid … The attainment of this objective must be one of the firmest guiding principles of German policy, as it is capable of achievement – but only through Russia or with her help. A return to the frontier of 1914 should be the basis of agreement between Russia and Germany.1
Throughout the interwar period, the German foreign ministry followed a strongly anti-Polish line. This policy reflected the sentiments of German statesmen even before Hitler came to power. For example, in August 1930, a minister without portfolio, Gottfried Treviranus, spoke emotionally in front of the Reichstag: ‘In the depth of our souls we remember the torn land of the Vistula, the bleeding wound on the eastern border, this crippled split in the Reich’s lungs’, and added an ominous warning: ‘Frontiers of injustice will not withstand the right of the nation and the national will to live.’2
If Poland was to withstand the expansionist plans of her two neighbours, she needed allies. On the face of it the defensive alliance signed with France in 1921 afforded some degree of security, but it was deeply flawed. In the first place, the French viewed the alliance as only one part of its policy of constructing a ‘Little Entente’ of the ‘new’ countries in the east to act as a counterweight against the resurgence of German power. Indeed, the creation of the ‘Little Entente’ can be seen as a purely temporary measure, necessary only because France’s former long-standing ally, Russia, was in disarray. Secondly, the French worked hard to befriend Czechoslovakia, efforts which the Polish diplomats deplored. But the fundamental weakness of the alliance was over what could be considered a casus belli, a reason for war. The treaty clearly stated that an unprovoked attack on the territory of one country by Germany would be a pretext for a declaration of war by the other. This meant, for example, that any German attack on the Polish Corridor would bring the alliance into play. But what of Danzig? It was by no means clear whether a German attack on Danzig and its reabsorption into the Reich would be a casus belli because the situation was complicated by Danzig being a League of Nations city. It seemed most likely that the French would demand that the matter be referred to the League of Nations for settlement. Certainly they would not attack Germany.3
French policy towards Danzig was shared by the British: in 1925 the foreign secretary, Austen Chamberlain, made public his opinion that ‘no British Government will or ever can risk the bones of a British Grenadier’ for Danzig.4 Polish concern about the trustworthiness of its western ally was reinforced by the 1925 Treaty of Locarno.5 It guaranteed Germany’s western frontiers but deliberately excluded her eastern ones, thereby suggesting that these might be subject to future negotiation, probably at Poland’s expense, with the blessing of the Great Powers.
While France and Britain were most concerned about the resurgence of Germany, Poland’s attention was firmly fixed eastwards, towards the Soviet Union. The Poles found it difficult to forget that the Soviets had reached the gates of Warsaw in 1920 and nearly crushed their independence only two years after it had been restored. The Treaty of Riga had left the populations in the east split between the two countries: Poland had a large minority of Ukrainians, as well as a significant number of Belorussians and a smaller minority of Lithuanians, whereas over 1,000,000 Poles were left in the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1920s, each country engaged in a significant amount of espionage against the other. Both used Ukrainian nationalism as a tool in their policy. In 1924 the Comintern’s 5th Congress passed a resolution calling for the incorporation of East Galicia into the Soviet Union, and the Soviets flooded the eastern provinces of Poland with literature inciting the national minorities to rise up against their Polish rulers. The Poles retaliated by sending numerous spies across the frontier and training Ukrainian military units for action in the Soviet Ukraine. They also created a Border Protection Corps (Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza, KOP).6
Given the undoubted hostility between Poland and the Soviet Union, it may seem surprising that in 1932 the two countries signed a treaty of non-aggression. The rationale behind the treaty was the weakness of both. The Soviet Union was engaged in a massive programme of collectivisation which led to famine, especially in the Ukraine. Polish border guards were besieged by starving Ukrainian peasants seeking refuge in Poland and begging the Poles to come to the rescue of the Ukraine. Poland was in no position to intervene militarily in the Soviet Union, nor did she ever plan to do so. Indeed, she only ever had purely defensive plans against a Soviet invasion. But Stalin did not know this, and had actually convinced himself that the Polish spies, now mostly captured, were evidence of Polish aggressive plans. Thus the non-aggression treaty suited both parties. The Soviet Union gained most from the treaty. Despite appeals by its own Ukrainian population, Poland did not publicise its extensive knowledge of the man-made famine in the Soviet Union lest this be seen as an unfriendly act. The result was that the Soviet Union continued to be viewed by the international community as a country that should be wooed back into the fold. In 1933 the United States extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union, and in 1934 the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations. The Polish failure to publicise the catastrophic consequences of forced collectivisation had extremely serious consequences for Poland. It meant that when international efforts were being made before the war, and indeed during the war, to woo Stalin, the reluctance of the Poles to accede to this policy was seen as unreasonable obstruction and not as a defence against the justifiable fear of the consequences of an extension of Soviet power westwards.7
In January 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany with the avowed policy of overturning the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. Poland’s worst nightmare had come true and she now had powerful and hostile neighbours to the east and west. Polish foreign policy during the 1930s has been subject to criticism, largely because of the diplomacy of her foreign minister Colonel Józef Beck, who was appointed to his post in 1933 and remained in place until Poland’s defeat in 1939. Beck himself justified his policy in his memoirs, written while in internment in Rumania during the war:
Polish policy rests on the following elements: it follows from our geographical position as well as from the experiences of our history that the problems to which we must attach decisive importance are those posed by the relations with our two great neighbours, Germany and Russia. It is therefore to these problems that we must devote the greatest part of our political activity and of our modest means of action. History teaches us: 1) that the greatest catastrophe of which our nation has ever been victim has been the result of concerted action by these two Powers, and 2) that in this desperate situation there was not to be found any Power in the world to bring us assistance … Another conclusion which imposes itself is that the policy of Warsaw should never be dependent upon Moscow or Berlin.8
This policy was open to misinterpretation, seen often as being too pro-German and anti-Soviet. Beck’s pursuit of an independent foreign policy led to isolation and opprobrium, until at last, in March 1939, a form of redemption was attained with the announcement of the British guarantee to Poland.
The non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union had drawn no international comment but the signature of a non-aggression treaty with Germany in January 1934 drew fierce criticism. For example, in his memoirs, the former Czech president Eduard Beneš claimed that: ‘It increased the tension between France and Poland, caused fresh tension between ourselves and Poland and between the Soviet Union and Poland. In addition, it accelerated the already patent withdrawal of France from the whole of Central Europe.’9 Beneš clearly believed that the pact had led directly to the 1938 Munich crisis. Yet from the Polish point of view it can be argued that the treaty was a high point of Beck’s diplomacy, and a necessary reaction to existing events. French weakness was already evident. In 1933, after Germany had left the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference, Piłsudski had used private contacts in Paris to sound out the French on the prospects of opposing Hitler in some form, short of a preventative war. He learned that the French were too weak to take any action.10 He was also suspicious of the motives behind the plans for the formation of a Four Power Pact of Italy, Germany, France and Britain, which he suspected might be detrimental to Polish interests. There was also evidence of increased anti-Polish propaganda in Germany and aggressive posturing. The Nazis dominated the Senate in Danzig and unilaterally repudiated the harbour police agreement, at Poland’s expense. The Poles responded by reinforcing their tiny garrison on the spit of land adjacent to Danzig, Westerplatte. This action led to international condemnation for the Poles while the German provocation was overlooked. Piłsudski urged his ambassador in Berlin, Józef Lipski, to negotiate an agreement with Germany.11
Hitler was willing to override the objections of the German foreign ministry and negotiate with Poland quite simply because he wanted to secure Germany’s eastern flank while the country was rearming. The negotiations led to the settlement of various outstanding issues between the two countries. Germany had been financing Ukrainian nationalists in Poland to undermine Polish authority and it was agreed that this would end. This volte-face was immediately tested when after assassinating Bronisław Pieracki, the Polish minister of the interior, the Ukrainian nationalist Mykola Lebed fled to Germany using a new passport issued by the German legation in Danzig. The Gestapo agreed to arrest him but then put obstacles in the way of his extradition to Poland. Ultimately Lebed was returned to Poland, where he was tried and sentenced to death; this sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and the Germans released him during their occupation of Poland.12 The second benefit of the treaty was that it ended the nine-year-long tariff war between Germany and Poland, which had been damaging to the economies of both countries. The third issue to be settled was the treatment of the national minorities. Poland had abandoned the Minorities Treaty in 1934 because of fears of how the Soviet Union might manipulate it now that it was a member of the League. This effectively left the German minority in Poland as unprotected as the Polish minority in Germany always had been. Ultimately no agreement was reached on this issue because of the problem of Danzig. Hitler’s policy towards the Free City fluctuated wildly: he was perfectly capable of demanding the inclusion of Danzig within the Reich one moment, and then ordering the Nazi leader in Danzig, Albert Forster, to limit his anti-Polish agitation the next. At present, in 1934, it suited his purpose not to unsettle the Poles too much while he turned his attention towards rearmament, the militarisation of the Rhineland and the Anschluss with Austria.13
The Polish-German non-aggression pact did not damage Poland’s relations with the Soviet Union nor with France. Beck visited Moscow in February 1934 and received a warm welcome. France had already demonstrated her preoccupation with her own security by beginning the construction of the Maginot Line in 1930. Indeed, it is possible to claim that France had already abandoned eastern Europe and preferred to see Poland and other eastern countries as within the Soviet Union’s defensive realm. This policy is best illustrated by the sponsorship of an ‘Eastern Locarno’ by the French foreign minister, Louis Barthou, which saw the Soviet Union as the defender of eastern Europe. While Czechoslovakia warmly supported the proposal, Poland did not, and the proposal was quietly dropped after Barthou’s assassination and his replacement by Pierre Laval. Further evidence of the important and favourable position that the Soviet Union held in the eyes of powers other than Poland is supplied by the signature of two alliances in May 1935: between France and the Soviet Union, and between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Far from shifting into the German camp as Poland’s detractors have suggested, Beck was actually willing to act to prevent German revisionism. In March 1936, when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, Beck informed the French ambassador in Warsaw, Leon Noël, that if France were to fight Germany then Poland would fulfil her treaty obligations and attack Germany. The French foreign minister, Pierre-Étienne Flandin, did not even inform the French cabinet of this offer. It was clear, in any case, that France was not prepared to resist Germany’s deliberate breach of the Versailles Treaty without British support and this was not forthcoming. In March 1938, the Anschluss, the union of Austria and Germany, took place. This deliberate breach of the Versailles Treaty was ignored by the Great Powers. Britain and France appeared to be determined to appease Hitler and, in such circumstances, Poland had to find her own way to security.14
It is Beck’s conduct over the Czech crisis that has led to the most opprobrium. At worst, Poland was viewed as a German collaborator in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia: at best, as an opportunist power. There can be no doubt that Beck was hostile to Czechoslovakia. In August 1938, his instructions to Lipski included the statement that, ‘We do not believe that this country is capable of existing’, and in September, ‘We consider the Czechoslovak Republic to be an artificial creation.’15 But this does not mean that Beck was prepared to connive at Hitler’s dismemberment of it, rather the evidence points to his policy being one of independently advancing the rights for the Poles in Teschen whenever Germany sought more rights for the Sudenten Germans. Hitler was content to see Prague squeezed between two jaws of a vice and encouraged the Poles, but did not seek collaboration with them. Some voices in Warsaw urged Beck to leave negotiations over Teschen until the Sudetenland question had been settled, but he forged ahead regardless. When, at Berchtesgarten, Neville Chamberlain and Hitler agreed to solve the Sudetenland question through a plebiscite, Poland requested the same treatment for Teschen. Then on 19 September, Britain and France decided that the Czechs should cede the Sudetenland to Germany, so Poland similarly demanded the cession of Teschen. The Great Powers were not interested in the Polish demands, and Hitler knew this. At the Godesburg meeting, he raised the question of the Polish and Hungarian minorities in Czechoslovakia, not at the request of those governments, but solely to raise the level of threat behind his demands. The result was that Chamberlain returned from the Munich conference on 29 September boasting of having secured ‘peace in our time’ and the Sudetenland was ceded to Germany. Accordingly, on 30 September, Poland delivered an ultimatum to Czechoslovakia demanding the Czech evacuation of Teschen. The Czechs did not comply, and between 2 and 13 October Polish troops and civil authorities occupied Teschen.16
The Munich crisis was the apogee of appeasement. Britain and France were not prepared to go to war to save Czechoslovakia. Nor was Poland. The Polish ambassador in Paris, Juliusz Łukasiewicz, told the French Government that if a war with Germany broke out because of French military assistance to Czechoslovakia, then the Franco-Polish alliance might not necessarily be applied. The Soviet Union warned Poland that any attack on Czechoslovakia would lead to a denunciation of the Polish-Soviet non-aggression pact, and backed up its warning by mobilising its armies along Poland’s eastern frontier. The Soviet Union later claimed that it was the only country that was prepared to intervene to save Czechoslovakia, but in fact was waiting to see what France would do. If France did not act, then the Soviet Union would do nothing. In any case the Soviets could not actually do anything unless Poland and Rumania granted the Red Army passage to reach Czechoslovakia. The Poles naturally were not forthcoming, not trusting the Soviets to leave once invited on to Polish territory, and not believing that the Soviet Union was in reality any more prepared to go to war over Czechoslovakia than were Britain and France.17
Poland emerged from the Munich crisis with its reputation badly damaged because of the seizure of Teschen. Anthony Eden wrote in his diary: ‘I left Raczyński [Polish ambassador in London] in no doubt as to what I thought of present Polish behaviour, and in mitigation he maintained that once we had legalised Germany’s seizure of Sudetenland, Poland could hardly be blamed.’ Eden had to concede that Raczyński had a point.18 In his memoirs, Raczyński set out the extent of Poland’s isolation after Munich: ‘Parliament and the press treat us with restraint, but the atmosphere has become cold and hostile. This is true at the Foreign Office also. From the public I have been receiving both anonymous and signed letters of bitter reproach, insult or derision. The chief political leaders avoid meeting me.’ Even personal friends such as Samuel Hoare and Winston Churchill ignored him.19
On 24 October 1938, the Polish ambassador in Berlin, Lipski, was invited to what he expected to be a routine meeting with German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. To his shock he learnt that Poland had become the next target of Hitler’s aggression. Ribbentrop presented Lipski with a list of German demands: the return of Danzig and the construction of an extraterritorial motorway and railway across the Corridor. Poland was offered an extension of the non-aggression pact for a further twenty-five years, various other minor concessions, and was invited to join the Anti-Comintern Pact.
Poland quite simply could not agree to the German demands. At Versailles it had been agreed that Poland should have free access to the sea, and this was why the predominantly German port of Danzig had been made a Free City, with guarantees for Polish trade, and rights for the German population. The Polish Corridor had been created specifically to give Poland access through her own territory to Danzig. The Poles recognised the danger implicit in Ribbentrop’s demands: if they agreed to the return of Danzig to the Reich, then there was a real danger that the entire Polish Corridor would lose its rationale and become the next target for German expansion. As the 1930s had progressed the authority of the League of Nations had declined through its failure to construct firm policies towards the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. Therefore it seemed that the days of free cities like Danzig, guaranteed by the League of Nations, were numbered. Poland could not rely on Britain and France for help over Danzig, given the readiness of both countries to appease Hitler. Nor could they agree to give up Danzig since that would mean that the majority of Polish trade would become subject to the whims of the Germans, allowing them to strangle the country they despised by economic means. The Polish response, made on 31 October, reflected these fears, proposing a bilateral Polish-German agreement to ‘guarantee the existence of the Free City of Danzig so as to assure the freedom of national and cultural life to its German minority and also guarantee all Polish rights’. Beck refused to consider joining the Anti-Comintern Pact because this would put an end to his careful balancing act between Germany and the Soviet Union.20
Isolated from the western powers after Munich, Poland now had to look for allies elsewhere. One possibility was Lithuania, a country with which Poland had historic links prior to the partitions of Poland, and with which diplomatic relations had been restored in March 1938. However, Lithuania resented the high-handed manner in which the Polish Government had demanded the restoration of relations in response to an incident on the frontier during which a Polish soldier had been killed by a Lithuanian border patrol. The Lithuanians were also still smarting from the loss of Wilno, and, furthermore, were warned by the Soviet Union, which considered the Baltic States as within its sphere of interest, not to become too close to Poland.
Hungary, a country with which Poland historically had had good relations dating back to medieval times, was a more likely candidate. Poland wooed Hungary by offering her political – but not military – support if Hungary took over the region of Sub-Carpatho-Ruthenia, which Hungary had possessed until the Treaty of Trianon had assigned it to Czechoslovakia. This impoverished region contained a very mixed population with different nationalist aspirations. Germany hoped that by encouraging the Czech Government to grant it self-government, an upsurge in Ukrainian nationalism would serve Germany’s eastern policy by weakening both Poland and the Soviet Union. Poland, on the other hand, hoped that the takeover of the province by Hungary, which would give them a common frontier, would prevent German advances.
Beck also sought Rumanian collaboration by suggesting that Rumania should take over the easternmost part of the region, which had a sizeable Rumanian population. Rumania declined for a number of reasons: she did not want to antagonise her ally Czechoslovakia by participating in its further dismemberment, and Rumania did not want to strengthen Hungary in case the latter, now more powerful, should begin to agitate for the return of Transylvania. The deciding factor, however, in Beck’s ultimate failure to gain Rumanian and Hungarian support was German economic, diplomatic and military strength. The First Vienna Award in November 1938 by Germany and Italy gave Sub-Carpatho-Ruthenia to Hungary, drawing her closer to German policy in eastern Europe. Hungary also joined the Anti-Comintern Pact. Rumania also began to move closer to Germany with the negotiations of long-term and wide-ranging agreements whereby Germany would buy the majority of Rumanian exports and assist in the exploitation of her natural resources, especially oil.21
Thus by the start of 1939 Polish foreign policy was in tatters and German demands were growing more menacing. Poland was diplomatically isolated, and her attempts to woo Hungary and Rumania were viewed as evidence of further collusion with German plans in eastern Europe. Indeed, it has been suggested that during this period ‘Britain feared a German-Polish deal whereby Poland was either drawn into the German orbit or persuaded to adopt a policy of benevolent neutrality towards Germany.’22 Yet in Poland events were viewed differently. She was trying to reach a bilateral agreement with Germany over Danzig, but German responses and demands were becoming more aggressive, and Poland had good reason to fear that the city’s future might be settled by the Great Powers seeking to appease Hitler. On 9 December, the head of the Foreign Office Central Department, William Strang, informed Raczyński of Halifax’s intention to withdraw the League’s protection from Danzig by the middle of January 1939. Beck managed to get this decision postponed, yet the pro-German conduct of the British as Rapporteurs to the League of Nations in Danzig made him fearful for the future.23
So why was Poland’s diplomatic isolation brought to a close in March 1939 when the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced the British guarantee to Poland? The answer lies in the events of that month, which seemed to leave the policy of appeasement in ruins. German troops entered Prague, and Slovakia was given autonomy guaranteed by a German treaty of protection. Hitler wrested the port of Memel from Lithuania, thereby extending German influence in the Baltic. This move caused considerable alarm among the politicians in Warsaw, who undeniably drew parallels between Memel’s former status as a city under international protection until the Lithuanians had seized it in 1923, and Danzig. At the same time, further alarm was raised in Polish circles when Hungary, despite now having a common border with Poland as Poland had long wanted, appeared to be leaning clearly towards the German camp, as demonstrated by the news that the Hungarian Government was prepared to allow German troops passage across its territory on the way to the Rumanian oilfields. Hitler had broken the agreement he had made at Munich with Chamberlain six months earlier. Germany was now quite clearly assuming a dominant position in eastern Europe and securing access to vital raw materials. This in turn would make Britain’s principal weapon against Germany – blockade – worthless.24
Rumania’s rich resources, particularly of oil, made her attractive to Germany: an interest which concerned Britain and France. So, when, on 17 March, the Rumanian minister in London, Viorl Tilea, asked the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, for a British loan to finance rearmament and for British support to create a bloc of Poland, Rumania, Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia against German advances he met with a warm reception. During a conversation between Beck and the French premier, Edouard Daladier, on the following day, Beck’s request for French support for Poland should Germany seize Danzig was judged acceptable on the condition that Poland extended the 1931 Polish-Rumanian treaty of mutual support against the Soviet Union to cover German aggression as well. As the French foreign minister, Georges Bonnet, told Halifax on 21 March, Poland was the only country in a position to offer real and immediate assistance to Rumania.25
Beck, however, was not convinced that the Rumanian plan for a large bloc against Germany was feasible since too many of the countries involved had territorial disputes with each other. Nor did he react any more favourably to a British proposal made by the British ambassador in Warsaw, Sir Howard Kennard, to him, and by Halifax to Raczyński, that Poland should join Britain, France, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Greece, Rumania and the Soviet Union in issuing a joint declaration of their intention to oppose any further German aggression in south-east Europe, in the form of consultation and not necessarily military action. To Beck this proposal appeared to be the last gasp of appeasement and, moreover, he resented the inclusion of the Soviet Union. Instead, Beck proposed a bilateral Polish-British agreement. This would be linked to a Polish declaration of the resoluteness of its policy and a definition of the limit to the concessions Poland was prepared to offer Germany over Danzig.26
The British Government believed that it had to act to stop German aggression in the east. Lord Halifax considered: ‘We had to make a choice between Poland and the Soviet Union; it seemed clear that Poland would give greater value.’ On the afternoon of 30 March, Chamberlain, Halifax and the permanent under secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan, sat down to draft a reply to a parliamentary question to be posed the next day, asking what the British Government would do if Germany attacked Poland.27 On the afternoon of 31 March, Chamberlain stunned the House of Commons with his response:
I now have to inform the House that during that period, in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly consider 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. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect.28
This guarantee has been described as: ‘An emotional response by British politicians to the rapid progress of German aggression in March 1939 … To the Poles it served the purpose of adding a card in a game of bluff against Germany – a game in which the Poles felt themselves to be increasingly in a weak position.’29 Or as extraordinary because it meant: ‘The decision for war or peace was entrusted to another country and, in effect, was placed in the hands of a man who was not trusted in London or Paris.’30
Cadogan wrote in his diary that Britain hoped to gain a reciprocal guarantee with Poland to ensure that Germany would have to fight on two fronts:
We have been told that this is essential. Germany is unable at the moment to embark on a war on two fronts. If she were free to expand eastward and to obtain control of the resources of central and Eastern Europe, she might then be strong enough to turn upon the Western countries with overwhelming strength.31
Beck visited London on 3 April and he and Raczyński had meetings with Halifax, who stressed to Raczyński that the fate of Danzig should not be allowed to escalate into conflict and urged the Poles to remain open to new German proposals. Raczyński replied that, by stressing negotiations, ‘the British government exhibits its ignorance of the actual state of affairs’. Beck remained determined to solve the question of Danzig directly with Germany.32 He did not trust the British: the breakup of Czechoslovakia was an example of how Hitler was prepared to dismember a country piece by piece once he had received international approval for the first step. In Beck’s opinion the British guarantee was ‘the last preventative move, or otherwise a decisive action to assure a powerful ally for our country should Germany not want to withdraw from the aggressive plans against us’.33 He believed that Czechoslovakia had been dismembered because it had been weak, had not made it clear to Hitler that it would fight to retain its territorial integrity, and had tamely allowed the international community to decide its fate. Poland was different, she would fight, and she now had the guarantee of a major power to back her up. Beck told the Sejm on 5 May that although Poland wanted peace, she did not believe in peace at any price and was prepared to fight: ‘There is only one thing in the life of men, nations and states which is without price, and that is honour.’34
This was a brave statement given that Poland was now virtually surrounded by Germany and by countries within the German sphere of influence. Whereas the Poles had gained confidence from the British guarantee, Hitler had been greatly angered by it: on 3 April, he ordered his military leaders to prepare for war against Poland, and on 28 April he abrogated the Polish-German non-aggression pact and the 1935 Anglo-German naval agreement. The American ambassador to Warsaw, Anthony Drexel Biddle, was told by a leading official of the Danzig Senate: ‘Danzig and the Corridor represented only a part of the question in Germany’s mind vis-à-vis Poland – there was Upper Silesia as well, and even the matter of Poznań.’35 In fact Hitler wanted much more: on 23 May, he stated that with Poland there would be war and no such peaceful solution as had been made over Czechoslovakia since ‘Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a question of expanding our living space in the East, of securing food supplies, and of settling the Baltic problem.’36 Nevertheless, talks continued between Poland and Germany throughout the summer.37
When the British guarantee was announced in Parliament, a number of politicians immediately voiced their opinion that the guarantee was largely pointless unless the Soviet Union was also a guarantor of Poland. For example Lloyd George said:
If we are going in without the help of Russia we are walking into a trap … If Russia has not been brought into this matter because of certain feelings the Poles have that they do not want the Russian there, it is for us to declare the conditions, and unless the Poles are prepared to accept the only conditions with which we can successfully help them, the responsibility must be theirs.
This opinion echoed that of Churchill, who said that, ‘To stop here with a guarantee to Poland would be to halt in No-man’s Land under fire of both trench lines and without the shelter of either.’38 But Poland had good reasons for not cooperating with the Soviet Union. On 7 May, the Polish ambassador in Moscow, Wacław Grzybowski, held talks with the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov. In return for signing an agreement with Britain and France, the Soviet Union wanted Poland to grant the right for Soviet troops to pass through Polish territory, the end of the Polish-Rumanian alliance, and the limitation of Britain’s guarantee to Poland to cover only Poland’s western frontier with Germany. Knowledge of these talks determined Beck’s stance throughout the period of Anglo-French approaches to the Soviet Union.39 He firmly believed that once on Polish territory the Soviet troops would never leave again, suspecting ‘that Marshal Kliment Voroshilov was attempting today to reach in a peaceful manner what he had attempted to obtain by force of arms in 1920’. Beck told the French ambassador to Poland, Leon Noël: ‘Nothing assures us that, once they are installed in the eastern parts of our country, the Russians will participate effectively in the war.’ He concluded that cooperation with the Soviet Union was ‘a new partition which we are asked to sign; if we are to be partitioned, we shall at least defend ourselves’.40
Ultimately Anglo-French negotiations with the Soviet Union failed not because of Polish intransigence but because the Soviets saw Germany as a more valuable ally. Britain and France did not realise that the Soviets were conducting negotiations with Germany at the same time as they were holding talks with them, but the Poles did. The Polish military attaché in Moscow was aware that the Soviets seeking transit visas across Poland were high-ranking military officers.41 On 23 August, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed and in a secret protocol the Fourth Partition of Poland was agreed upon.
Poland believed that Britain and France were the two most powerful allies that she could have hoped to gain. After all, Britain had a powerful navy and France had a large, modernised army. But the political guarantee to Poland would be largely meaningless unless she could secure commitments of economic and military assistance. In May 1939, military negotiations took place in Paris between Polish and French officers. Poland sent high-ranking army, navy and air force officers under the minister for war, General Tadeusz Kasprzycki, and the French party was led by the supreme commander designate, General Maurice Gamelin, backed by the commander-in-chief of the army, General Alphonse Georges, and the chiefs of staff of the navy and air force. The military agreement signed on 19 May committed France to start immediate air operations against Germany and a limited ground offensive on the third day after mobilisation, to be followed by a major offensive with the bulk of her troops on the fifteenth day. During this time Poland would wage only a defensive campaign. The air agreement signed on 27 May also stipulated that three French bomber squadrons would be despatched to Poland and that a special air mission under General Paul Armengaud would be sent to Poland to command the squadrons and to coordinate their efforts with the Polish Air Force. The French promised to consider Germany as the principal enemy should Italy also declare war. These agreements appeared to bode extremely well for Poland: she seemed to have gained the firm commitment of an ally with a large, well-trained army. Yet simultaneously political negotiations were being carried out. These did not run smoothly because Poland wanted a German occupation of Danzig to be a casus belli while the French, following the British lead, did not. It was only on 4 September, the day after France had declared war on Germany and three days after German forces had entered Poland, that this now worthless political agreement was signed.42
However, although it was unknown to the Poles then, it now appears clear that the French never had any intention of mounting an offensive against Germany. Even during the Munich crisis General Georges had told the French cabinet that an offensive against the German defences on the Siegfried Line was impossible. In the middle of July 1939, General Gamelin spoke privately to Lord Gort, the British Chief of Imperial General Staff (CIGS), and confided to him: ‘we have every interest in the war’s beginning in the east and becoming a general conflict only little by little. We shall thus have the time necessary to put on a war footing all Franco-British forces.’43 The British politicians knew of the French unwillingness to fight too: Churchill learnt of the French plans for a strictly limited offensive from meeting Georges and other senior French officers during a visit to France in August. General Edmund Ironside, the inspector-general of overseas forces, noted in his diary: ‘The French have lied to the Poles in saying that they are going to attack. There is no idea of it.’44
The British chiefs of staff had informed Chamberlain, even before the British guarantee to Poland was given, that Britain could offer no practicable help to Poland in the event of a German attack. In May 1939, a British military mission arrived in Warsaw to discuss war plans with the Poles. The relative low ranks of its members should have been a warning of the British lack of commitment. The mission was led by Lieutenant-Colonel Emilius Clayton. He had been Britain’s first military attaché to Poland after the First World War and knew the country and the Poles, but he was brought out of retirement and raised to the rank of brigadier specially to lead the mission. The other British officers were a naval captain and a Royal Air Force (RAF) group captain. The talks revealed that Britain would give no military or naval support to Poland. Because the Baltic would be easily dominated by the German Navy it was proposed to send three Polish destroyers to Britain on the outbreak of war to aid the British naval effort against Germany. The air discussions were more fruitful: the RAF would bomb German military targets, and Clayton further intimated that if the Germans bombed Polish civilian installations then the RAF would bomb Germany at will. Although the Polish military liked Clayton on a personal level, they had hoped to meet someone more senior who could reveal Britain’s war plans, and therefore they were delighted when General Ironside visited Poland in July. Yet Ironside had been despatched by the War Office to ‘obtain better information than we had hitherto been able to obtain as to the direction in which Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz’s mind was moving’.* After discussing the state of Poland’s forces, Ironside was convinced that the ‘Poles were strong enough to resist’ and that ‘you might take Poznania in a couple of months, but you couldn’t overrun the whole country in a couple of months’. Back in Britain more promises were made to the Poles. On 3 August, Air Vice-Marshal A. Boyle wrote to Lieutenant-Colonel Bogdan Kwieciński, the Polish military attaché, ‘to ask the Polish defence authorities for their permission and assistance in preparing an advanced base in Poland, from which bombers of the British Metropolitan bomber force could operate temporarily in the event of war, and in laying down stocks of materiel and equipment in Poland, which would be essential for this purpose’. The plans were detailed and would take a month to put into effect once Polish permission had been received. But Poland did not have a month left.45
Poland was a desperately poor country, so another method by which Britain and France could assist her was in the form of loans for domestic rearmament and for the purchase of armaments abroad. Under the terms of the 1936 Franco-Polish loan agreement France could grant Poland export credits up to the value of 430,000,000 francs. Yet as the military and political negotiations dragged on through the summer of 1939, it became clear to the Poles that France was unwilling to sell its armaments to the Poles or to grant loans for Poland to build up its own defence industry. The British were equally unhelpful, giving Poland only £8,000,000 in export credits under humiliating terms. Poland placed orders for military hardware immediately but found few sellers. Indeed, as the Labour MP Hugh Dalton told the House of Commons:
Nothing has been arranged whereby Poland can obtain purchasing power to obtain from other countries, including the United States and the Scandinavian countries, arms and equipment which she cannot obtain from us, not because we cannot supply them, but because all that we are producing we require ourselves.46
Both Britain and France were preparing for a long war for which economic strength would be crucial, and were also naturally prioritising their own security requirements. Consequently France was unwilling to sell any equipment to Poland, and Britain only offered 100 Fairey Battle light bombers and fourteen Hurricane fighters. After the war began Britain gave Poland another 5,500,000 złoty in cash credits.47
Beck had made it quite clear to the world that Poland would fight to defend her soil against German encroachments. The question as yet unanswered was whether Poland actually could do so. Geographically Poland was a difficult country to defend, with only a few natural barriers. On her eastern border, the impenetrable Pripet marshes formed a natural defensive barrier that would at least force an invading enemy to split its forces. To the south, the Carpathian mountains provided a natural frontier with Czechoslovakia. There were, however, no natural barriers between Polish and German territory either in Upper Silesia, East Prussia or along the Corridor. The three great rivers, the Narew, Vistula and San, flowing from south to north across Poland, were the only natural obstacles on the wide plains of Poland, which provided ideal tank territory, and the deep forests could be bypassed by armour.48
The Polish armed forces were commanded by Marshal Rydz-Śmigły. The French ambassador in Warsaw, Leon Noël, described him as:
Honest, upright and at the same time not lacking in finesse, cultivated, possessing, for example, a deep knowledge of the Napoleonic era, he was far from being without merits, but Piłsudski’s favour and events laid upon him responsibilities which he certainly did not seek and for which he was not prepared.49
On paper at least, the Polish Army was reasonably strong: on 1 September 1939, Poland had about 1,000,000 men organised in 37 infantry divisions, 11 cavalry brigades and 2 armoured brigades plus artillery, and there were another 1,000,000 men in the reserve. Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Sword, the British military attaché in Warsaw, realised that Poland’s ‘comparative poverty is directly responsible for the material inferiority of her air force and limits the equipment of land forces, particularly as far as artillery and mechanisation are concerned’.50 In 1938–9 over 1 billion złoty had been spent on Poland’s armed forces, a significant proportion of the national budget. This was a sum that Poland could ill-afford and which was partly raised by ‘voluntary’ donations of a portion of their salaries by army officers and public servants. Even schoolchildren were asked to donate their sweet money towards buying armaments.* To put Poland’s spending in context: the figure was about 10 per cent of the Luftwaffe’s budget for 1939 and fifty times less than Germany’s defence spending as a whole.51
Poland’s relative poverty also had a detrimental effect on the fighting abilities of the army. The conscripts lacked technical training with modern weapons, although the non-commissioned officers and junior officers were better trained. Poland’s meagre industrial resources meant that her armaments were of a mixture of Polish, French, Russian, Czech and British manufacture. There was an overall shortage of light and heavy machine guns. There were over 300 medium and light tanks in the motorised armoured brigades and a further 500 light reconnaissance tanks, or ‘tankettes’, were attached to infantry divisions and brigades. Since independence Poland had greatly improved her road network and as a result the number of lorries had increased. Nevertheless, although the army needed 12,000 lorries for transport, there were only 6,000 in the whole of Poland by 1937. As a result the infantry, like much of the German Army, was still largely dependent on horse-drawn transport. The signals units were well equipped with telephones, but their radios had been purchased from the French after the First World War and were obsolete.52
Mobility had been a feature of the Eastern Front during much of the First World War and during the Polish-Soviet War, and hence Piłsudski and his followers in the Polish general staff viewed the cavalry as an important component in the armed forces. As in Britain, the cavalry was seen as the elite force and most of the officers came from the aristocracy and wealthy landowning gentry. Poland did recognise that the days of the cavalry charge had passed. The principal role of the cavalry was now to be reconnaissance and not offensive action. In case they had to fight to defend themselves then they were armed with rifles, pistols and machine guns and trained to fight dismounted like mounted infantrymen. Poland was in the process of forming armoured units but her poverty delayed this. Despite all this, it has to be said that the Polish armed forces underestimated the extent to which armoured formations had changed the nature of warfare. In 1937 Major-General Władysław Anders held a field exercise with the Nowogródzka Cavalry Brigade in which a large cavalry formation was ordered to defend itself against attack by a large armoured group. The results alarmed him and provided an ominous portent of what would happen in 1939. The officers showed that they had little idea of how to mount a defensive operation in the face of armour. They also appeared to have failed to carry out a basic requirement of the cavalry or indeed of any armed group: adequate reconnaissance of the terrain.53
Poland never managed to develop a true military doctrine of its own. Polish operational doctrine, such as it was, was based on mobility. But this was mobility at the speed of cavalry troops and not of the mechanised formations of the German Army. The senior officers had learned their trade as junior officers in the armies of Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary. Between the wars French military doctrine had been closely studied and copied. Sword’s reports to London hinted at the impact this had: ‘as far as training is concerned, the Army possibly suffers from a certain conflict between French and German doctrine, together with a lack of appreciation of the power of modern weapons’. While he had little doubt as to the powers of leadership of the senior officers nor of the powers of endurance of the rank and file, he noted that there appeared to be a demonstrable failure to understand or comprehend the speed with which Panzer formations could advance.54
In 1932 Poland established a native aeronautical industry by bringing existing aircraft factories into government ownership and by constructing a Czech Škoda engine plant on Polish soil. The fighters produced by the Polish Aircraft Works, PZL, were modern: indeed, when its production began in 1934 the P-11 was the most modern fighter in the world. Its successor, the P-24, was better armed and faster and earned Poland valuable foreign currency with its export to Rumania, Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. Therein lay the problem caused by Poland’s poverty. On the eve of the war the P-24 was still being exported, forcing the Polish Air Force to rely on the by-now-obsolete P-7 and P-11 fighters. In real terms this meant that Polish fighters were capable of only 300 kph against the Messerschmitt 109 with 407 kph, and also the Messerschmitt could fly higher and was better armed. Added to that, the Poles only had 392 combat planes against the Luftwaffe’s 1,941 fighters. Only in bombers was the Polish Air Force comparable to the Luftwaffe. The Łós bomber was faster and carried a heavier bomb load than the Heinkel HE-111. The Polish Government had purchased 160 Morane 406 fighters from France and 100 Fairey Battle light bombers from Britain, but none arrived before the war. The role of the air force units, part of the army and navy, was to support the army groups to which they were attached. Reserve airfields were constructed to prevent the air force being bombed out of existence on the outbreak of hostilities, but supplies of spare parts and aviation fuel were not concentrated there and were vulnerable to destruction by German bombers.55
Between 1920 and 1936 Polish military planners had concentrated exclusively on defence against invasion from the east by the Soviet Union. Consequently, Poland built fixed defences in the east while the main supply centres were built in the west, out of reach of an invading Soviet army. In 1936, following the announcement of conscription in Germany, Rydz-Śmigły ordered the preparation of plans for defence against German attacks from the north and west. Basically these plans envisaged a rerun of 1914: the main German thrust would come from East Prussia and Pomerania, with a subsidiary attack to the south-west through Silesia. The Polish defence plan aimed at preventing the two main attacking forces from joining up and mounting a joint attack on Warsaw. Polish forces also aimed to keep the Germans out of Polish Silesia, so as to protect Poland’s main industrial areas. The planners also sounded a warning alarm: against Poland’s 37 infantry divisions and 11 cavalry brigades the Germans would probably despatch 70 of their one hundred divisions. Polish defence plans were altered radically by the events of March 1939 when, as a result of the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, Poland now had to defend a total of 1,000 miles of frontier against Germany. Plan Z (Zachód) moved the axis of Polish defence to the south-west where it was now thought the main German attack would be made. This late change in plans had a detrimental effect. Commanding officers were called to Warsaw to be briefed individually on the tasks for their sector, but they were given little idea of what their neighbouring units would be doing. In fact one senior officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Stanisław Mosser, chief of staff of Army Poznań, shared his commander’s plans with his neighbouring commanders and was disciplined and removed from his post. Supply dumps were to have been moved east of the Vistula but little had been done about this.56
Plan Z was known to Poland’s western allies: indeed, even the American ambassador in Warsaw knew the details. Plan Z envisaged: ‘When circumstances made it advisable, [order a] gradual retirement of the main body of Polish troops under the cover of delayed action to a main defensive position along the line of the Narew, Bug, Vistula and San rivers.’ This was to be a holding action while the British and French attacked in the west, and the Polish planners hoped ‘to be able to keep intact a central reserve for use in a counter-offensive especially if the Germans start drawing troops from the east to reinforce the west’.57 The Poles were under the impression that the British and French understood their plan and the absolute necessity of mounting an effective offensive in the west within the previously agreed time period, but as indicated above, neither of Poland’s allies had any intention of mounting an offensive. ‘The idea that Britain and France could complacently plan on the assumption that Poland would succumb to a German attack, without being galvanised into action, simply did not enter into Polish calculations.’58
A British military mission under the energetic and eccentric Polonophile General Carton de Wiart arrived in Poland on 24 August, and the French mission led by the elderly General Louis-Augustin-Joseph Faury arrived on 23 August. Their purpose was to give moral rather than real support to the Poles. The mission leaders pointed out one fundamental weakness of Plan Z – the intention to defend the whole of western Poland. For example, Carton de Wiart urged Rydz-Śmigły to withdraw the troops from the frontier so that they would not be overrun, but he ‘held the view that if he retired at all, he would be accused of cowardice’. There were two other reasons why it was seen as essential to defend the western frontier. First, if the Poles did not defend Polish Pomerania and the Poznań region then, if Hitler ordered a halt to offensive operations once German troops had occupied these areas and taken Danzig, the chance existed that the British and French would place immense pressure on the Poles to end the fighting. Indeed, Hitler was so convinced that neither Britain nor France wanted to go to war for former German territory that his reasoning was along the lines: ‘The isolation of Poland will be all the more easily maintained, even after the outbreak of hostilities, if we succeed in starting the war with sudden, heavy blows and in gaining rapid success.’ The second reason was economic. Despite great strides having been taken between the wars in the construction of the Central Industrial Region which straddled the Vistula, Poland’s economic strength, such as it was, largely depended on the resources of Silesia. Therefore, Poland had to concentrate her strength on defending this area against the expected main German attack, and the anticipated attacks in the north were now viewed as less important. In fact, confusion reigned on the eve of the war as troops were moved into and then withdrawn from the Corridor, because on the one hand Poland wanted to defend all her territory, but on the other hand troops in the Corridor would be on a suicide mission sandwiched between the pincers of two advancing German armies.59
Throughout August the Germans increased their pressure on Poland. It now became clearer that Germany would not be satisfied just with the return of Danzig to the Reich and the extraterritorial motorway and railway, but demanded also the return of the portion of Poland that had formed the German partition. Polish customs officers in Danzig were subjected to attacks by the Nazis. German press and radio thundered about the alleged mistreatment of Germans in Poland. The British ambassador in Berlin, Sir Neville Henderson, was inclined to believe the stories, convinced that Polish intransigence was about to bring Britain and France into a conflict with Germany, while Sir Howard Kennard, the British ambassador to Warsaw, investigated some of the German claims and ‘found that these allegations were characterised by exaggerations, if not complete falsification’, and made this clear in his telegrams to London.60 Hitler was becoming increasingly determined to separate Poland from her western allies, and the British Government was attempting to find some way to prevent the Polish-German dispute from becoming a war. In line with the British guarantee and subsequent talks, on 25 August, an Anglo-Polish alliance was signed in London stipulating: ‘Should one of the Contracting Powers become engaged in hostilities with a European Power in consequence of aggression by the latter … the other Contracting Power will at once give the Contracting Power engaged in hostilities all the support and assistance in its power.’61
The signature of this alliance should have convinced the Poles and indeed Hitler that Britain was sincere in her intentions. However, as Raczyński noted: ‘The ink had scarcely dried on it when Lord Halifax started unfolding to me fresh ideas for a compromise with Germany!’62 Three days before the invasion of Poland Chamberlain told Hermann Goering’s special envoy, Birger Dahlerus, that the Poles would concede Danzig, subject to the retention of certain Polish rights, and would allow the extraterritorial link across the Corridor subject to international guarantees. The Poles were not informed that Chamberlain was conceding what the Poles had refused. Had they known, then it would have confirmed to the Polish Government that Britain was prepared to begin the process of dismembering Poland as it had done at Munich in the case of Czechoslovakia. It is therefore also not surprising that Hitler did not believe that Britain would really go to war with Germany over Poland.63
The Poles were well aware of the build-up of German troops on their frontier during August 1939. The Wehrmacht could be mobilised completely without a public announcement of general mobilisation. The Polish mobilisation plan, Plan W, envisaged that only 75 per cent of the infantry and the whole of the cavalry could be secretly mobilised. The timing was therefore crucial, but British and French diplomats pressurised the Polish Government to delay mobilisation while they sought a peaceful solution to the Polish-German problem. On 24 August, orders were sent off for a secret mobilisation. As far as Jan Karski, a second lieutenant in the artillery, was concerned, it was secret only in so far as there were no posters or public announcements. When he arrived at Warsaw station to join the train to take him to his depot, he noted that ‘it looked as though every man in Warsaw were there’. On the night of 25–26 August, German and Slovak troops attacked the Jabłonka railway tunnel in the Carpathians. This attack, premature only because Hitler had postponed the invasion of Poland originally planned for 26 August, was repelled, but it was one of an alarming series of German border incursions. Rydz-Śmigły now urgently needed to order a general mobilisation and prepared the relevant orders to be issued on 29 August, but British and French pressure again forced him to cancel these plans and on 27 August he issued more secret mobilisation orders and ordered his army commanders to their headquarters. Eventually the Polish Government lost patience with its allies and on 30 August ordered a general mobilisation to begin on the following day. On the 29th Hitler had demanded the arrival in Berlin by 30 August of a Polish emissary with full powers to make the required concessions. On 31 August, he refused to see Lipski, who had not been granted the necessary powers by the Polish Government. Instead, Ribbentrop read out the list of demands to Henderson so fast that he could not take notes: he was not allowed to read the document.64
On the evening of 31 August, German radio reported that Polish soldiers had attacked the German radio station at Gleiwitz (Gliwice) in Upper Silesia and killed several Germans. In fact the attackers were SS soldiers dressed in Polish Army uniforms and the ‘victims’ were concentration camp inmates who had been killed earlier. On 1 September, Germany launched its invasion of Poland. The delays to Polish mobilisation meant that not all reservists had reached their depots, and many of those who had arrived had not received their equipment and weapons. In all, 10 Polish divisions were unprepared for the onslaught that was about to hit them.