Officials signed a German-Polish agreement on January 26, 1934, which was a relief to their neighbors as the threat of warfare between the two would disrupt all of Europe. Hitler, viewing the unrealistic and deliberately debilitating stipulations of the Versailles Treaty, sought to eliminate the underlying friction and create a friendly political relationship with Poland to preserve the peace and security between the two countries. This agreement, he thought, would allow them to possibly renegotiate the boundaries in a manner that both countries would find acceptable. Certainly, unresolved problems existed but this agreement at least provided an opportunity to develop some mutually-beneficial conditions between the contiguous countries.
Hermann Göring met with Pilsudski and proposed an alliance against the Soviets. Pilsudski had been the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army in its fight against the Soviet Union after World War I, not because he was against its ideology, but because he desired more land in the east. He was dictatorial and subjected his country to totalitarianism through a constitution that he authored. He was also a warmonger, who wanted Poland to be a great world power. Instead of accepting Göring’s proposal, he began playing Germany and the Soviets against each other. Poland and Germany, together, could have destroyed the criminal cabal in Russian while Stalin was conducting his paranoid purges in the 1930s. 922
The Death of Jozef Pilsudski
Pilsudski died on May 12, 1935. Before his death, he encouraged President Ignacy Moscicki, Finance Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski and Jozef Beck to maintain “friendly relations at all costs with Germany.” 923 Instead, the government, a military junta, discarded any efforts to treat the Germans humanely. It favored an aggressive domestic and foreign policy, initiated policies devised to permanently eliminate the Germans and seize their properties. Domestic policies caused numerous strikes by the peasants and workers (1935-1938). In October 1920, Poland had seized the Vilnius Region including Vilna, the capital of Lithuania and in 1922, annexed the area causing Lithuania to cut its diplomatic relations with Poland unless the Poles returned Vilna. 924
Following Pilsudski’s death, Moltke, Germany’s envoy, reported that Beck and Edward Rydz-Śmigły, both internationalists and expansionists ignored any obligation to the friendship agreement. In January 1936, the Polish government wanted to reduce Germany’s rail traffic from the Reich to East Prussia across the Corridor by fifty to eighty percent. In February, according to the German consul, Georg von Küchler, officials were transferring or dismantling German properties in favor of Polish interests under new land reforms. In March, Beck told French officials that Poland was prepared to go to war, with them, against Germany. In September, Rydz-Śmigły requested a $500 million loan from France for munitions and to enhance their military. The country already spent a third of its budget on armaments while Poland experienced the highest illiteracy rate in Europe and the majority of the population lived in poverty. 925
In January 1938, Rydz-Śmigły would direct General Tadeusz Kutrzeba, head of the Poznań Army, to devise a war plan against Germany. Hitler had never militarily threatened Poland but certainly had issues, one being that Danzig was under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations. Hitler offered to fund the construction of an Autobahn and railway line across the Corridor to link Germany with East Prussia. Germany would pay the construction costs and hire Polish workers for the project, dramatically decreasing unemployment in Poland, which would then have complete managerial control over the transportation systems. He also agreed to guarantee Poland’s western border. Negotiations would go along very smoothly for about six months until March 1939 when Polish authorities, influenced by the British, suddenly ended all talks, 926 although British officials initially appeared to support the proposal. 927 The Poles had built another harbor at Gydnia, opened in 1926, and therefore did not require the use of the Danzig harbor, the initial reason that Wilson allowed Poland to appropriate Danzig. 928
William C. Bullitt, FDR’s Special Envoy
Although Pilsudski was warlike, tyrannical and coveted more land, he initially seemed open to negotiating with Germany as demonstrated by the fact that he endorsed the friendship pact (1934). The internationalists now leading Poland literally took their marching orders from William C. Bullitt, Roosevelt’s European agent. Further, British officials persuaded Poland to provoke a war and promised to come to their rescue if Germany took the bait and attacked. After Germany invaded and Poland surrendered, Winston Churchill referred to Poland as “the heroic defender of right and goodness against the Nazi hordes” then later called them “stupid Pollacks, who didn’t know how to fight.” 929
Bullitt (CFR), a Yale graduate, a member of Scroll and Key, was with Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference, where he first advocated America’s recognition of the Soviet Union after he had personally visited with Lenin when he was in Russia (1919). In addition to his other affiliations, Bullitt was a Pilgrims Society member. 930 Bullitt, whose mother was Jewish, resigned from the State Department during Wilson’s presidency because Wilson failed to recognize the Soviet Union. 931 Roosevelt appointed Bullitt as the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1933-1936) and then as ambassador to France (1936-1940). He was FDR’s operative in Europe and talked almost daily with him by phone. He urged Polish authorities to harass Danzig’s Germans in order to incite a reaction from Hitler, something that Stalin also desired. After all, Hitler responded when Czech officials threatened military force against the Sudeten Germans. Bullitt promised the Poles that if they could provoke a German attack, then Britain and France would come to their rescue. 932
On November 7, 1937, FDR told French officials that he wanted to depose Hitler but other Americans disagreed. 933 Germany was unsuccessful in its continued attempts to improve its relationship with Poland. Polish authorities, not in control of their own country, voided and violated every provision in the German-Polish pact, and habitually breached the basic principles regulating the protection of minorities according to the reciprocal minority agreement that Poland had signed on November 5.
Bullitt went to Poland and met with Jozef Beck on November 16, 1937. There was an American Embassy report by Anthony J. Biddle, dated November 17, indicating that Beck attended a dinner at the U.S. Embassy on that day. On November 26, Biddle sent a confidential summary report to Secretary Cordell Hull. On November 5, just before Bullitt arrived in Poland, officials in Berlin and Warsaw, friendly with each other, had just negotiated a mutually beneficial minority agreement. Hitler visited with Polish diplomats, including President Ignacy Moscicki (1926-1939), along with a delegation representing Poland’s German minority. 934
On February 9, 1938, the Polish Ambassador in Washington, Count Jerzy Potocki, reported to the Foreign Minister in Warsaw on the influences surrounding U.S. foreign policy. He said, “The pressure of the Jews on President Roosevelt and on the State Department is becoming ever more powerful… The Jews are right now the leaders in creating a war psychosis which would plunge the entire world into war and bring about general catastrophe. This mood is becoming more and more apparent. In their definition of democratic states, the Jews have also created real chaos: they have mixed together the idea of democracy and communism and have above all raised the banner of burning hatred against Nazism. This hatred has become frenzy. It is propagated everywhere and by every means: in theaters, in the cinema, and in the press. The Germans are portrayed as a nation living under the arrogance of Hitler which wants to conquer the whole world and drown all of humanity in an ocean of blood.” 935
On March 14, Morgenthau, without congressional oversight or approval, notified officials in Paris that America supported the actions of the Socialist French government under Léon Blum, the first Jewish Prime Minister. He said officials would support a financial freeze even if it affected the international financial policy of America. He wanted Blum to stay in office as he would most likely thrust France into a war with Germany. However, due to financial failures, Blum’s
government floundered. The anti-German American media subtly shifted the population against Germany. 936 On the same day, Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles, in talking with Potocki, applauded the Polish treatment of the Jews versus the alleged German treatment of them even though Polish policies were much harsher. Potocki knew that “the Jewish problem in Poland was a very real problem.” The U.S. Government fabricated the entire Jewish persecution issue in order to advocate a dispute against Germany for any conceivable reason. 937 Poland also eyed their other neighbors as targets.
Beck met with officials on the evening of March 16, 1938, introducing an ultimatum he intended to issue to Lithuania. He envisioned an Eastern Europe based on a Warsaw-dominated Polish-Baltic-Scandinavian bloc free of Soviet or German influence. 938 Apparently, the Soviet Union, France and Britain applied pressure on Polish officials to prevent the conflict from erupting into a full-blown war. On March 17, Lithuania, under the threat of force by Poland, accepted the ultimatum two days later and recognized Poland. Lithuanian officials restored diplomatic relations, opened their county to trade, rail, water and postal traffic. Poland ordered the establishment of diplomatic relations with Warsaw within forty-eight hours, demanding that they finalize the terms before March 31. However, Lithuanian officials would not agree to the loss of Vilnius. Poland then placed 50,000 troops at Lithuania’s border, strengthened by one hundred aircraft, armored vehicles, and the Polish fleet just off the coast. 939
Treatment of Jews in Germany
On April 27, 1937, The Times reported how the whole community of 3,000,000 Jews in Poland was afraid that the government would disenfranchise them and seize all of its rights. By 1939, there would be little difference in the way that Germany and Poland viewed their Jewish citizens. Partisan Polish groups actually massacred Jewish groups that they encountered after Germany occupied Poland. Essentially, Britain engaged in warfare to protect one anti-Semitic country against another anti-Semitic country so obviously it was not a battle to stench anti-Semitism and assist the Jews in their plight. In November 1944, in support of that assumption, Anthony Eden declined an offer to exchange Jews who had South American passports who were then incarcerated at Bergen-Belsen for Germans who were incarcerated in South America. Eden did not want the Jews to immigrate to Palestine as the British had enough trouble with those that were already there. 940
On March 22, 1938, Joseph Goebbels told U.S. Ambassador Hugh R. Wilson that he objected to what amounted to hate-mongering against Germany. Wilson admitted that “the most crucial thing that stood between any betterment of our Press relationship was the Jewish question.” On April 30, Ribbentrop defied Wilson to find any criticism of FDR in the German press. 941 Wilson wrote, “In these conditions anti-Semitism reared its ugly head. Millions of returning soldiers out of a job and desperately searching for one, found the stage, the press, medicine and law crowded with Jews. They saw among the few with money to splurge, a high proportion of Jews. A number of the leaders of the Demokratische Partei, that fraction of the Reichstag most closely identified with the type of government in power, were Jews. The leaders of the Bolshevist movement in Russia, a movement desperately feared in Germany, were Jews.” 942
In early 1938, Jewish doctors and dentists were still benefitting from Germany’s insurance program, which assured them of a certain number of patients. Germany also accorded similar advantages to Jewish lawyers, comprising ten percent of all German attorneys even though Jews made up only one percent of the population. Wilson informed Secretary of State Cordell Hull of these statistics. Nevertheless, throughout 1938, the State Department, unlike other nations, sustained its fallacious complaints about Germany’s treatment of Jews. On May 10, Wilson reminded Hull of the damage created by this official attitude. American officials opposed Germany’s law, of March 30, of removing the Jewish church as a recognized institution. Thereafter, it would no longer receive taxpayer money as did the Protestants and Catholics. This was no different from England, where taxes went to the Anglican Church, but not to Jewish synagogues. 943
Ethnic Germans and the Munich Pact
The Reich’s Foreign Office used the 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.” On August 24, 1938, Poland blockaded Danzig’s German population which now faced starvation and economic ruin. During the last days of August, Polish radicals killed more than 200 ethnic Germans in western Poland. Given the Reich’s legal policy, it was certainly with its prerogative to intervene to prevent further slaughter. On August 27, Hitler wrote to French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier saying, “I would despair of an honorable future for my people, if under such circumstances, we were resolved to settle the matter no matter what.” 944
It was difficult for Hitler to avert a German-Polish disaster given the Pole’s lengthy record of brutality. Now Poland was occupying the Teschen district. Göring counseled Ernst von Weizsäcker, at the Foreign Office against allowing the Poles to seize the southeastern German Silesian area, except if they agreed to return Danzig to Germany. Göring was not opposed to obtaining the area for Germany or letting the Czechs retain it. They just wanted to keep the Poles out of the industrial center of Witkowitz and out of Oderberg. Göring and Weizsäcker agreed. However, Lipski was enraged and insisted that Hitler and Göring had promised to give the predominantly German Oderberg to Poland. 945
On September 13, 1938, during the Sudeten crisis, Polish authorities commended Hitler on a speech he gave the preceding day. He desired peace and wanted to alleviate the Sudeten German question by having the Czech officials make internal changes such as granting self-determination to the German minorities. He emphasized the importance of the 1934 friendship agreement with Poland. On September 17, Polish officials said, “Poland is a country that is interested in the Czechoslovakian problem, and that any concession made to the Sudeten Germans must also have application for the Polish ethnic group in Teschen.” On September 20, Lipski told Hitler that Berlin and Warsaw were in agreement regarding the Czechoslovak issue. On September 22, Polish officials asked for volunteers to liberate the Poles in Czechoslovakia. 946
On September 27, Polish officials demanded that Czechoslovakia revise the border. Edvard Beneš and the Czech government conceded on October 1, after the Munich Pact. Warsaw and Prague devised a treaty very similar to the aforementioned treaty, including the release of Polish political prisoners. They agreed to settle the border dispute by November 30. There was a border incident on November 26-27, in which the Czechs wounded two Polish officers which prompted Poland to occupy an area that the pact conferred upon her. The four heads of state that participated in the Munich Pact included Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, Hitler and Mussolini, respectively representing Britain, France, Germany and Italy. They allotted three months to Czechoslovakia to resolve the minority’s issue. Otherwise, they would convene another meeting. 947 The Munich Pact allowed Germany to recover the Sudeten territory peopled with ethnic Germans under the jurisdiction of the Czechs.
The NSDAP published some essays about England, Das ist England, one of which stated, “England no longer regards herself as a member bound by fate to the European community, but as the motherland of an overseas colonial empire.” Another German study noted that “English diplomacy strives for a balance of power among the nations and states of the mainland, but not… to create tranquility, security, living space and peace for them. On the contrary, it is purely to square them off against one another in as equal, long and lingering a struggle as possible…” Das ist England stated, “It was never a matter of protecting the weak, but always of securing their own power.” In 1919, the British opposed France’s procurement of German territory, including its occupation of the Ruhr in 1923. Britain also disapproved of France, seeking superiority, joining Pilsudski to engage in warfare against Germany who only sought uniformity. Many British journali
sts supported Germany’s efforts to rearm. 948
In late fall of 1938, Poland forced Czechoslovakia to relinquish the German city of Tschechisch-Teschen (Sachsenberg), along with three other territories. Militant Polish officials relied on the British guarantee, of March 1939. Meanwhile, Germany, exercising her power, took control of the Sudetenland, Austria, Bohemia and Moravia. Poland increased their persecution of the German minorities. 949 Britain and France, with the Munich Pact allowed Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland, which conformed to their appeasement policy. The Polish ultimatum would take effect on September 30. Czech officials signed it on October 1 and then had twenty-four hours to evacuate the area. Polish soldiers and officials entered and annexed the city on October 2, renaming it Cieszyn Zachodni.
Provoking Germany
On October 4, 1938, Lipski warned Wörmann, of the German Foreign Office, that he was making an official report for Beck. He said that reneging on a promise would influence German-Polish relations. He was also sending copies of the official report to Moscicki and other Polish dignitaries. If Polish officials could not trigger a German response one way, they would just keep hammering away. Hitler was bound to react at some point. Maybe the Oderberg issue would be the spark to ignite a war. On October 5, Hitler opted to allow Poland to take Oderberg as he was not going to haggle with the Poles about every single city, but would be generous toward those who were modest in their demands.” 950
The Poles then initiated an undeclared war against the ethnic Germans of the Teschen district. Poles daily conducted terrorist activities against the Germans who then complained about the harsh treatment. Hitler acted promptly to impose some form of constraints. He elected not to publicize the incidents. His policy, in a directive, was “to release nothing unfavorable to Poland; this also applied to incidents involving the German minority.” Then, Poland targeted Morava-Ostrava, the key North Moravian industrial city and railway center. On October 12, Weizsäcker spoke with Lipski concerning Poland’s actions. Germany had already acquiesced to their demands regarding Oderberg. On October 12, Weizsäcker told Lipski that Germany was not going to relinquish Morava-Ostrava. He offered to have an international agency conduct a vote to determine if residents of Morava-Ostrava wanted to live under Polish jurisdiction. They both knew that Poland could never win under such circumstances. Hitler adopted a watchful attitude and waited to see how the Poles would handle the Morava-Ostrava question. 951
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