The Polish Review, Vol. LVI, Nos. 1-2, 2011:111-152
©2011 The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America
ANNA M. CIENCIALA
THE FOREIGN POLICY OF JÓZEF PIŁSUDSKI AND JÓZEF BECK,
1926-1939: MISCONCEPTIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS1
Interwar Poland is hardly mentioned in current American textbooks
on the history of twentieth-century Europe, and even then the information is
generally sparse and often misleading. Poland makes an appearance with the
Versailles Treaty of 1919, generally considered a bad treaty whose GermanPolish
settlement is sometimes judged as contrary to the principle of selfdetermination.
Polish armed resistance against the Germans in September
1939 generally goes unmentioned and the Soviet attack on Poland is often
explained as dictated by Soviet security. There is usually very little mention
of Polish foreign policy, yet it should be studied as a factor in international
politics in the interwar period, especially in the years from Hitler‘s rise to
power in Germany to his attack on Poland, sparking the outbreak of WW II.
The pre-Hitler period is often passed over lightly although it contains the
roots of Western attitudes toward Nazi Germany. In fact, before adopting the
policy of appeasement toward Hitler, Britain, whose decisions ultimately
determined French policy, assumed that German demands for the revision of
the Versailles Treaty of 1919, particularly the German-Polish settlement,
must be satisfied to secure lasting peace. One should bear in mind that
despite her defeat in November 1918, Germany was still the greatest
industrial power in Europe; France feared Germany but needed her coal and
steel, while Britain needed the German market for her goods. Britain also
needed peace in Europe to devote her limited armed forces to the defense of
her overseas Empire. Finally, Eastern Europe was not seen as a sphere of
vital British interests. All these factors contributed to the belief of all British
governments that the Polish-German frontier — not recognized by Germany
— should be revised in her favor. This meant, above all, the return to
1
This is a much expanded version of the paper read in my absence by Dr. Patrice
Dabrowski at the panel ―Commemorating Piłsudski II: Military and Diplomatic
Themes,‖ at the ASEEES annual convention in Los Angeles, November 17,
2010. I wish to thank her for reading it and the panelists for their comments. I
also ask the indulgence of readers for including some background material
which is familiar to them, but not to most American historians of twentiethcentury
Europe and their students, to whom this paper is dedicated.
To the reader:
This offprint contains italics in the notes, which did not appear in the printed version of the article.
Also, the pagination of the offprint pages are not an exact match with the printed journal article.
Please note one correction on page 122 (p. 121, line 5 from bottom in the printed version).
If you notice any other errors, please write to me directly at: hanka@ku.edu or annamaria@sunflower.com
AMC 05/10/11
112 The Polish Review
Germany of the preponderantly German port city of Danzig — made a selfgoverning
Free City by the Treaty of Versailles — and also the
preponderantly Polish-speaking Polish Pomerania, awarded by the treaty to
Poland. The Germans called it the Polish Corridor because this narrow neck
of land separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. French
governments came to accept the British view and saw the Franco-Polish
alliance (1921) as less an advantage than a burden. Few people realized at
the time that all German statesmen before Hitler aimed at the return not just
of Danzig and the Polish Corridor but also most, and if possible all the
territory of Prussian Poland as well as eastern Upper Silesia, even though the
vast majority of the inhabitants of these territories were Polish.
At the same time, Poland was often criticized for taking too much
former Russian territory after its victory over the Red Army in 1920, a view
shared by the Soviet leadership with émigré Russian politicians, most of the
European Left, most Western governments, and most Western and Russian
historians today. While Moscow officially recognized the Polish-Soviet
frontier established in March 1921 by the Treaty of Riga, the Comintern
(Communist International) claimed to support the principle of selfdetermination
and questioned Poland‘s right to both her western and eastern
frontiers, but especially the eastern, Polish-Soviet frontier. Few AngloAmerican
historians of twentieth-century Europe mention Józef Piłsudski‘s
original aim of establishing a Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian federation allied
with an independent Ukraine. When this goal proved unrealistic due to the
Lithuanian and Ukrainian desire for independence and the Polish-Soviet
War, he aimed at a strategically defensive frontier. The Treaty of Riga gave
Poland less than Piłsudski wanted, but even so the majority of the population
east of the Bug and San rivers — roughly equivalent to the Curzon Line of
July 1920 and the eastern frontier of Poland since 1945 — was Ukrainian
and Belarusian, plus a significant number of Jews. Nevertheless, Poles
formed an overall minority of about 40% with majorities in the cities and
regions of Białystok, Lwów (Ukr. Lviv), and Wilno (Lith.Vilnius). In view
of all the factors mentioned above, every Polish foreign minister had a very
difficult task before him: how to secure the existence of an independent
Poland between her two traditional enemies, neither of whom viewed its
frontiers with her as acceptable, while her Western ally France agreed with
the British view on the need to revise the Polish-German settlement
established by the Versailles Treaty of 1919 and also concluded an alliance
with the USSR in 1935.
In this paper, I will discuss two key features of Polish foreign
policy in the period 1933 — 1939, both of which were strongly criticized or
even condemned at the time, and are still criticized or condemned by
historians and journalists today. These two features are: (1) the PolishGerman
Declaration of Non-Aggression of January 26, 1934, which was the
joint achievement of Piłsudski and Foreign Minister Józef Beck, and (2)
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 113
Polish foreign policy during the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1938, culminating in
the annexation of two-thirds of western Cieszyn (Teschen) Silesia, known in
Polish as Zaolzie (the land across the Olza river), after the Munich
Conference of September 29, 1938. At this conference, the leaders of
Britain, France and Italy agreed to Adolf Hitler‘s annexation of a part of
Czechoslovakia, the highly industrialized, mainly German-speaking
Sudetenland (formerly, with the rest of Czechoslovakia, part of the AustroHungarian
Empire), but postponed for three months decisions on Polish and
Hungarian claims to Czechoslovak territory.
Before discussing Polish foreign policy, however, a few words are
needed about Western perceptions of Piłsudski (1867-1935). He directed
Polish foreign policy in the first years of independence as well as after his
seizure of power in May 1926. A socialist leader in the struggle for
independence before 1914, organizer of Polish legions in World War I, head
of state in 1918-22, victor over the Red Army in 1920, and in power from
1926 to his death, he is recognized by most Poles as the greatest Polish
statesman of the twentieth century. In English-language historical literature
and reference works, however, his policies are generally criticized and he is
often described as a dictator.2
In fact, he was not a dictator, but developed an
authoritarian form of government after seizing power in May 1926 and
aimed for good relations with both of Poland‘s great neighbors. It is also
worth noting that the Polish victories over the Red Army in 1920, which
prevented the further spread of Soviet communism westward, are generally
ignored in Anglo-American histories of twentieth-century Europe, while
Piłsudski‘s previous march with Simon Petliura‘s Ukrainian divisions to
Kiev (April–May 1920), if mentioned at all, is generally condemned.3
The
2
For a discussion of negative views of Piłsudski, see Cienciala, ―Józef Piłsudski
w Anglo-Amerykańskich informatorach i podręcznikach historycznych po
drugiej wojnie światowej. Zagadnienie mitu-stereotypu negatywnego‖ [Józef
Piłsudski in Anglo-American Reference Works and History Textbooks after
World War II. The Problem of the Negative, Mythical Stereotype], in Wojciech
Wrzesiński, ed., Polskie mity polityczne XIX i XX wieku [Polish Political Myths
of the 19th and 20th Centuries] (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu
Wrocławskiego, 1994), 167-194. For a positive but often ignored Englishlanguage
study of Piłsudski‘s seizure of power, see Joseph Rothschild,
Pilsudski’s Coup d’Etat (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966).
3
See: Cienciala, ―Historiografia anglosaska o wojnie polsko-sowieckiej i
zwycięstwie polskim nad Armią Czerwoną w 1920 r.‖ [English-language
Historiography on the Polish-Soviet War and the Polish Victory over the Red
Army] in: Anna M. Cienciala, Piotr Wandycz, eds., Wojna Polsko-Bolszewicka
1919-1920 w ocenach historyków [The Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920 as
Evaluated by Historians] (Warsaw: Instytut Józefa Piłsudskiego, 2003), 41-54.
A recent world history handbook states that Piłsudski ―led an unsuccessful
114 The Polish Review
exception to this general condemnation is the textbook on European history
by the best-known Western historian of Poland, Norman Davies. His work
on the Polish-Soviet War is excellent although partly outdated, while some
of his statements about Piłsudski and the Bolsheviks are somewhat strange.4
Another exception is the balanced account given in Wikipedia under ―PolishSoviet
War‖ (accessed November 2010), which has a good reading list.
Anglo-American historians of twentieth-century Europe also
generally ignore the fact that Piłsudski originated the policy of ―equilibrium‖
— that is, balancing between Germany and the USSR — a policy carried out
by his disciple, Beck, deputy foreign minister, 1930-1932, and minister from
December 1932 until September 1939. The policy of equilibrium stemmed
from Piłsudski‘s view, expressed to then Foreign Minister August Zaleski in
May 1926, that the two canons of Polish diplomacy were ―one, strict
neutrality between Germany and Russia, so that each of them would be
absolutely certain that Poland would not go against it with the help of the
other, and two, alliance with France and Romania as a guarantee of peace.‖5
attack on the USSR in 1920.‖ See Józef (Klemens) Piłsudski, 1867-1935,
Dictionary of World History, (NTC Pocket References, NTC Publishing Group,
Linconlnwood, Illinois, 1997), 287. In a highly praised book, The Age of
Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 (New York: Pantheon Books,
1994), the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm writes that the war was ―provoked
by the territorial ambitions of Poland‖ which ―now demanded its eighteenth
century frontiers [!]… Yet the Polish workers failed to rise and the Red Army
was turned back at the gates of Warsaw‖ (p. 70).
4
Davies gives a very good, brief account of the war and its significance in his
textbook, Europe: A History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
1996), 934-937. In White Eagle-Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, 1919-1920
(London: Macdonald, 1972; reprinted, London: Pimlico, Random House, 2003),
Davies compares Piłsudski to a ―rhinoceros‖ … ―indestructible, myopic,
unpredictable‖ (p. 66). He also compares the Bolsheviks, after their arrival in
Poland, to ―unruly toddlers who had strayed from curiosity out of their political
nursery and into the street‖ (p. 159). For a more recent study of the PolishSoviet
War, see Adam Zamoyski, Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of
Europe (London: Harper Press, 2008). See also Piotr S. Wandycz‘s excellent
diplomatic study, Soviet-Polish Relations 1917-1921 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1967). For a detailed study of the negotiations leading to the
Treaty of Riga, see Jerzy Borzęcki, The Soviet-Polish Peace of 1921 and the
Creation of Interwar Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008);
Cienciala review, Slavic Review 68, no. 3 (2009): 667-668.
5
Cited by Piotr S. Wandycz in his article ―The Place of the French Alliance in
Poland‘s Foreign Policy,‖ in Bâtir une Nouvelle Sécurité. La coopération
militaire entre la France et les États d’Europe centrale et orientale de 1919 à
1929 [Building New Security : The Military Cooperation between France and
the States of Central and Eastern Europe from 1919 to 1929] (Château de
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 115
The policy of equilibrium was based on Poland‘s agreements with her two
great, predatory neighbors: (a) The Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of
July 25, 1932, valid for three years, and (b) The Polish-German Declaration
of Non-Aggression of January 26, 1934, valid for ten years. In the PolishSoviet
Pact, both sides agreed on the peaceful resolution of international
disputes as well as that existing obligations were not obstacles to the
peaceful development of their relations. They renounced the use of war and
undertook not to aid the state committing aggression against the other party
to the pact, or to participate in any clearly aggressive agreements against the
other party.6
In the Polish-German Declaration of Non-Aggression (not pact,
because the German Foreign Ministry objected to the word as implying
recognition of the Polish-German frontier), each party recognized the other‘s
international commitments as well as the Pact of Paris (Kellogg-Briand Pact,
1928) that renounced wars of aggression and agreed to settle disputes by
direct negotiations; if these failed, they would use other available
procedures. The Polish-German declaration was, in turn, balanced in May
1934 by the extension of the Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact until
December 31, 1945.7
Vincennes : Centre d‘Études d‘Histoire de la Défense et Service Historique de
l‘Armée de Terre, 2001), 189. The Franco-Polish alliance and military
conventions were signed in Paris on February 19 1921; they concerned mutual
aid against German aggression. The Polish-Romanian defensive alliance and
military conventions were signed in Bucharest on March 3 1921; they concerned
mutual aid in case of Soviet aggression and were renewed twice in the 1930s.
6
For the Polish text of the Polish-Soviet Pact of 1932, see Tadeusz Cieślak, I.A.
Chrienow et al., eds., Dokumenty i materiały do stosunków polsko-radzieckich,
Tom V, Maj 1926-Grudzień 1932 [Documents and Materials on Polish-Soviet
Relations, vol. V, May 1926-December 1932] (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza,
1966), doc. 322; parallel Russian volumes were published in Moscow. For the
English translation, see Stanisław Biegański et al., eds., Documents on PolishSoviet
Relations 1939-1945, vol. 1. 1939-1943 (London: Heinemann, 1961),
doc. 6. The pact was to be automatically extended for two years, unless
denounced by one of the two parties; for its extension in May 1934, see n.6
below.
7
For the Polish text of the Polish-German Declaration of 1934, see Tadeusz
Jędruszczak and Maria Nowak-Kiełbikowa eds., Dokumenty z dziejów polskiej
polityki zagranicznej 1918-1939, tom II, 1933-1939 [Documents on the History
of Polish Foreign Policy 1918-1939, vol. 2, 1933-1939] (Warsaw: Instytut
Wydawniczy PAX, 1996), doc. 8. For the English translation of the equally
valid German text, see Documents on German Foreign Policy, ser. C, v. II
(published jointly by His Majesty‘s Stationery Office, London, and The
Department of State, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1959),
doc. 219; the same volumes in both series, C and D, were published in French
and German. For the extension of the Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, see
116 The Polish Review
These two agreements were the basis of Polish foreign policy until
war loomed on the horizon in spring 1939; they were also based on the
principle that Poland could never be dependent on either Germany or Russia.
A concise statement defining Polish foreign policy was made in January
1935 by Beck to French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval, to whom he repeated
what Piłsudski had told former Foreign Minister Louis Barthou during the
latter‘s visit to Poland in April 1934:
Polish policy is based on the following elements: I. Our
geographical location and historical experience both show that our
decisive problems consist of Poland‘s neighborly relations with
Germany and Russia. These problems absorb most of our political
work and our limited means of action. History teaches us that the
greatest catastrophe to affect our nation resulted from the activity of
those two states. And secondly, in the desperate situation in which
we then found ourselves, no state in the world could be found to
hasten with help to us.
Therefore, our key interests depend on the solution of this
basic problem. A further conclusion is the conviction that Warsaw‘s
policy can never depend either on Moscow or Berlin. I am recalling
this conversation [between Piłsudski and Barthou] because these are
the limits of what is politically possible for us. Facts and concepts
that go outside these principles will always force us to say: non
possumus [we cannot].
In re-born Poland — just as at the end of the eighteenth
century — it was clear that we had to achieve good fortune with
these two partners by ourselves.
In this concise statement, Beck explained why Poland could not participate
in multilateral agreements that would endanger her bilateral agreements with
Germany and the USSR. On this occasion, Beck also disagreed with Laval‘s
flattering statement that Poland was a Great Power; he said she was not such
because she conducted a regional, not a global policy.8
Dokumenty z dziejów, 2, doc. 22; English text in Documents on Polish-Soviet
Relations, 1, doc. 10.
8
―Notatka z rozmów Pana Ministra Spraw Zagranicznych Becka z Ministrem
Spraw Zagranicznych Francji, Lavalem, dnia 16 i 19 stycznia w Genewie‖ [Note
on the conversations of Foreign Minister Beck with French Foreign Minister
Laval, 16 and 19 January 1935 at Geneva], Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych,
sygn. 108, Archiwum Akt Nowych [Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ref. no. 108,
Archive of Modern Documents], Warsaw; translated by Cienciala. I thank Dr.
Hab. Docent Marek Kornat for making this document available to me. Louis
Barthou paid a state visit to Poland in April 1934; on his policy aims, see Piotr
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 117
The first of the two bilateral agreements mentioned above, the
Polish-Soviet pact of July 1932, was in line with the budding Franco-Soviet
rapprochement of the time, so it was welcome to Poland‘s ally, France. This
was not, however, the case with the Polish-German Declaration of NonAggression
which, negotiated independently of France, was a shock to Paris,
arousing suspicions of Poland that grew stronger over time. It was described
by British historian Hugh Seton-Watson as the first breach in the French
alliance system, that is: the Franco-Polish alliance and military convention
signed in Paris, February 19, 1921, and the Franco-Czechoslovak alliance,
signed in Paris, January 25, 1924. France signed these alliances to restrain
Germany in the East after the Anglo-American guarantee to aid her in case
of German aggression in the West fell through with the U.S. rejection of
membership in the League of Nations and thus the Versailles Treaty.
According to Seton-Watson, the declaration began a period of PolishGerman
cooperation that helped Hitler rearm, isolate Austria, and finally
dismember Czechoslovakia. Beck‘s policy allegedly aimed at the German
destruction of Bolshevik Russia, with some territorial gains for Poland, and
then Polish neutrality in a war between Germany and the Western Powers.
Seton-Watson wrote the classic statement of British interwar left-wing
intellectuals‘ views of Polish foreign policy of the time. Part of this
statement reads:
The basis of Polish policy, then, was not love of Germany but a
combination of territorial greed, fear of revolution on the part of the
landowners and colonels, mistrust of the strength and will to
resistance of the Western Powers, and the supreme confidence of
Colonel Beck in his own Machiavellian genius. This policy played
an important part in the preparation of German plans for Eastern
Europe.9
In 1962 Seton-Watson explained that his book — written during his military
service in World War II — reflected the British mood and hopes of the time,
which he shared. As it turned out, his description of what he called Polish, or
Beck‘s foreign policy, was to influence several generations of EnglishS.
Wandycz, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances 1926-1936 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1988), ch. 11. In January 1935, the French
government was trying to mount an ―Eastern Locarno‖ pact, involving the
USSR, Germany, and Poland. The aim was to use Moscow to check Berlin; the
project did not get off the ground because Germany rejected it, so Poland‘s
rejection was not decisive for its failure.
9
Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars, 1918-1941 (Hamden,
CT: Archon Books, 1962) (3rd
ed.), 389.
118 The Polish Review
speaking historians up to the present.10
The durability of these views is
evident in a textbook on interwar Europe written by a Canadian historian of
twentieth-century international relations and published in 2006. The author
claims that Piłsudski and Beck envisaged joining Hitler in a crusade against
the Soviet Union.11
Indeed, the European left-wing press saw the
Declaration of Non-Aggression, like the Soviet press which inspired it, as a
class-based anti-Soviet policy. Rumors or outright charges that it contained a
secret protocol directed against the USSR circulated for years to come. Not
only were they a staple of Soviet histories of the interwar period, but they
are still touted by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. An
alleged documentary film shown on a Russian state-owned TV channel in
late August 2009 depicted Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck as a German
agent.12
There was, of course, no secret protocol to the Polish-German
agreement of 1934, nor was it a breach in the French alliance system,
10
Seton-Watson, ibid., xii. For a critical study of interpretations of the
declaration, see Cienciala, ―The Declaration of Non-Aggression of January 26,
1934 in Polish-German and International Relations: A Reappraisal,‖ East
European Quarterly, 1, no. 1 (1967): 1-30, and idem, ―Polish Foreign Policy,
1926-1939. ‗Equilibrium:‘ Stereotype and Reality, ‖ in Alexander Korczyński
and Tadeusz Świętochowski eds., Poland Between Germany and Russia 1926-
1939: The Theory of Two Enemies (New York: Piłsudski Institute of America,
1975), 44-59. For a detailed study of contemporary reactions to the PolishGerman
declaration in Western and East European countries as well as by
Poland‘s German minority, see Mieczysław Wojciechowski, ed., Deklaracja
polsko-niemiecka o niestosowaniu przemocy z dnia 26 stycznia 1934 r. z
perspektywy Polski i Europy w siedemdziesiątą rocznicę podpisania [The
Polish-German Declaration on Excluding the Use of Force of January 26, 1934,
from the Perspective of Poland and Europe on the Seventieth Anniversary of its
Signing] (Toruń: Centrum Edukacji Europejskiej, 2005).
11
Martin Kitchen, Europe Between The Wars (New York and London:
Pearson/Longman, 2006) (2nd
ed.), 187. For a repetition of Seton-Watson‘s view
of Beck‘s policy without citing the source, see Adrian Webb, The Routledge
Companion to Central and Eastern Europe since 1919 (London and New York:
Routledge, 2008), 11.
12
On the charges of a secret protocol directed at the USSR, as recorded in
diplomatic documents, see Marek Kornat, ―Pakt, którego nie było...(Pogłoski o
rzekomym tajnym układzie polsko-niemieckim w latach 1934-1938)‖ [The Pact
which did not exist…(Rumors about an alleged, secret Polish-German Pact in
the years 1934-1938)], in idem, Polityka równowagi 1934-1939. Polska między
Wschodem a Zachodem [The Policy of Equilibrium 1934-1938. Poland between
East and West] (Kraków: Arkana Historii, 2007), 229-306. The Russian TV
documentary was titled ―Sekrety Tainykh Protokolov‖ [The Secrets of Secret
Protocols]. The film was shown on channel ―Rossiya‖ on August 21, 2009.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 119
although French diplomats and military leaders saw it as such. In fact, this
was hardly the case because the alliances hardly constituted a ―system.‖
France‘s allies, Poland and Czechoslovakia, were deeply divided by a
territorial dispute as well as very different perceptions of the USSR.
Furthermore, France had been trying to water down the Polish alliance for
years. The beginnings of this French policy were described and analyzed by
Piotr S. Wandycz in 1962 but it did not become more widely known, at least
to French speakers, until 1981. The author of a masterly French analysis of
this process traced it to the victory of the ―Cartel des Gauches‖ (Left-Wing
Coalition) in June 1924, followed by French negotiations for the Locarno
Treaties of October 1925.13
In fact, the roots of Polish policy leading to the
German-Polish agreement of 1934 go back to the Locarno Treaties, when
Germany recognized her post-World War I western frontiers, which were
then guaranteed in a Treaty of Mutual Guarantee, signed by Belgium,
Britain, France, and Italy. To balance this, France signed separate Treaties of
Mutual Assistance with her allies, Czechoslovakia and Poland, but French
military aid to each country was now dependent on the machinery of the
League of Nations: France could only come to their aid if they were the
victims of unprovoked aggression and the League of Nations Council failed
to reach unanimous consent in identifying the aggressor. Germany signed
arbitration treaties with all her neighbors, including Poland, but frontier
issues were excluded in its arbitration treaty with the latter, and Germany
also rejected a French guarantee of the treaties.14
It is worth noting that the
Soviet government saw the Locarno Treaties as directed against the USSR,
evidently assuming that the signatories would aid Poland or/and Romania in
a war with Soviet Russia, which was most unlikely given the wording of the
formula on aid to be extended by League members to victims of unprovoked
aggression. Furthermore, German-Soviet relations, established by the
13
See Georges-Henri Soutou, ―L‘Alliance franco-polonaise 1925-1933 ou
comment s‘en débarasser?― [The Franco-Polish Alliance 1925-1933, or How to
Get Rid of it?], Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, 2/3/4 (1981): 295-348. For a
succinct description of the French alliance system up to 1936, see Piotr S.
Wandycz, Twilight, 3-16. For a well-documented study of French security
policy as well as French views of Polish-Czechoslovak relations and efforts to
establish military cooperation between them, see Isabelle Davion, Mon voisin,
cet ennemi. La politique de sécurité française face aux relations polonotchéchoslovaques
entre 1919 et 1939 [My Neighbor, that Enemy: French
Security Policy in the Face of Polish-Czechoslovak Relations between 1919 and
1939] (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009).
14
On the Locarno Treaties, see Wandycz, France and her Eastern Allies, ch. 13,
and idem, Twilight, ch. 1; also Anna M. Cienciala and Titus Komarnicki, From
Versailles to Locarno: Keys to Polish Foreign Policy 1919-1925 (Lawrence,
KS: University Press of Kansas, 1984), chs. 9 and 10.
120 The Polish Review
Rapallo Treaty (April 1922), were excellent at this time. Reinforced by the
Treaty of Berlin (April 1926), they included secret Soviet-German military
cooperation, especially the development of war planes, tanks, and parachute
troops — which allowed Germany to bypass the Versailles Treaty
prohibition of offensive weapons for German armed forces.15
Gustav
Stresemann, who supported this policy, received the Nobel Peace Prize for
the Locarno Treaties, together with French Prime Minister Aristide Briand
and British Prime Minister Austen Chamberlain. German-Soviet military
cooperation was a constant threat to Poland until Hitler ended it in 1933 as
part of his anti-communist policies.
The clear discrimination of Poland and Czechoslovakia in the
Locarno Treaties was mainly due to British policy, for Britain had refused to
include Poland and Czechoslovakia in a Franco-British security agreement
as proposed by the French in December 1921. She also refused to sign ―The
Geneva Protocol‖ in 1924. The protocol, worked out by Polish Foreign
Minister Aleksander Skrzyński and Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Edvard
Beneš, mandated compulsory arbitration; if this failed, League of Nations
members were to come to the aid of any member who was the victim of
aggression. A year later, Skrzyński signed the Locarno Treaties for Poland,
believing that she must be part of the European political system. Piłsudski
(out of government since May 1923) was outraged. Beck noted that the
marshal condemned the Locarno Treaties for consolidating the unequal
balance between East and West [in Europe] and set himself the goal of
redressing it.16
15
German Foreign Minister Stresemann obtained a formula on aid to victims of
aggression that allowed Germany to safeguard its relations with the USSR. It
stated that each member of the League of Nations was to extend aid as far as its
geographical and military position allowed; see Cienciala and Komarnicki,
From Versailles to Locarno, 265. For the Soviet interpretation of the Locarno
Treaties as directed against the USSR, see Istoriia Diplomatii (2nd
ed.)
(Moscow, 1965) vol. 3, and The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Moscow, 1979),
both cited by D. Asanov, in http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Locarno
Treaties of 1925 (last accessed November 25, 2010). On German-Soviet military
cooperation in the 1920s and early 1930s, see Yuri Dyakov and Tatyana
Bushuyeva, The Red Army and the Wehrmacht: How the Soviets Militarized
Germany and Paved the Way to Fascism, 1922-1933 (Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 1995).
16
On Skrzyński, see Piotr S. Wandycz, Aleksander Skrzyński. Minister Spraw
Zagranicznych II Rzeczypospolitej [Aleksander Skrzyński: Foreign Minister of
the Second Polish Republic] (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw
Międzynarodowych, 2006); Cienciala review, TPR, 52, no. 1 (2007): 115-120.
For Piłsudski‘s comment on Locarno, see Polska polityka zagraniczna w latach
1926-1932*. Na podstawie tekstów min. Józefa Becka opracowała Anna M.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 121
Redressing the balance in Poland‘s favor, however, was not feasible
for several years after Locarno because neither Weimar Germany nor the
USSR accepted its frontiers with Poland, even though Moscow had
recognized them in the Treaty of Riga of March 18, 1921.17
Weimar
Germany aimed at the recovery of most — and if possible, all — of former
Prussian Poland, especially the preponderantly German Danzig, as well as
the Polish-speaking ―Polish Corridor‖ separating East Prussia from the rest
of Germany, both established by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Piłsudski
and Beck, as well as most Poles, considered both as vital to Polish
independence, and both were to figure prominently in the approach to war in
1939. Some Anglo-American historians of twentieth-century Europe,
however, do not seem to know the origins of these settlements and their
primary importance to Poland, so it is useful to summarize the main facts.
Danzig had been the port city of pre-partition Poland; it was taken by Prussia
in 1793, despite strong resistance by its German-speaking citizens, who
revolted unsuccessfully against Prussian rule in 1797. The American,
British, and French members of the Commission on Polish Affairs at the
Paris Peace Conference of 1919 had advocated awarding Danzig, as well as
Polish-speaking regions in the southern part of East Prussia and the railway
from Warsaw to Danzig, to Poland. They argued that it was more equitable
to give twenty million Poles free access to the sea at the expense of two
million Germans (estimated to live in future Poland) than to satisfy the
Germans by leaving Danzig and the Polish Corridor to an aggressive
Germany. This, it was argued, would make Poland a vassal state, and in any
case most of the population in the Polish Corridor was Polish. However,
when the French government agreed to accept an Anglo-American guarantee
in case of German aggression against France, it also agreed to a compromise
solution for Danzig in the shape of a self-governing Free City, with Polish
rights therein and under the protection of the League of Nations. A
contributing factor to this decision was President Woodrow Wilson‘s desire
to have a precedent for the port city of Trieste, which he did not want
awarded either to Italy or to Yugoslavia. Also, it was decided that plebiscites
would be held in southern East Prussia. They took place as the Red Army
Cienciała, [Polish Foreign Policy in the Years 1926-1932,* edited by Anna M.
Cienciala, based on the texts of Minister Józef Beck] *printing error: the end
date should be 1939 (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1990), 25-26. An unauthorized
Polish edition appeared as Ostatni Raport [Final Report] (Warsaw: Państwowy
Instytut Wydawniczy, 1987). For the French translation with extensive
appendices, edited by Jadwiga Beck et al., see Józef Beck, Dernier Rapport
(Neuchatel: Éditions de la Baconnière, 1951), 5-6; the English version, Final
Report (New York: Speller & Sons, 1957), has only skeletal appendices but
some interesting photographs.
17
For the Treaty of Riga, see n. 3 above.
122 The Polish Review
was advancing on Warsaw in 1920 and, as the mostly Protestant Poles were
promised extensive cultural rights, the majority voted for Germany. The
―Polish Corridor‖ (annexed by Prussia in the First Partition of Poland, 1772)
was awarded to Poland on ethnic grounds. Indeed, according to the Prussian
Census of 1910, 42.5% of the population was German (a percentage
probably lower in reality because the census did not include children, and it
shrank rapidly after 1918 when many Germans opted to leave). Despite
these facts, some Anglo-American historians state today that the Polish
Corridor was preponderantly German, so awarding it to Poland violated the
principle of self-determination.18
Another German grievance against the
Versailles Treaty was the division of Upper Silesia. President Wilson and
the Peace Conference experts had advocated the award of the whole of this
heavily industrialized province on an ethnic basis to Poland, but British
Prime Minister David Lloyd George persuaded Wilson and French Prime
Minister Georges Clemenceau against it so the Versailles Treaty mandated a
plebiscite, which took place in March 1921. After three Polish uprisings, the
League of Nations awarded the eastern part of Upper Silesia (East of the
Oder River) to Poland in 1922, mainly on the basis of the plebiscite results
there, although the overall vote including the preponderantly German
western part of the region (not claimed by the Poles) gave a majority for
Germany. Special arrangements were made to preserve the economic unity
of the province, allowing Germany to import 500,000 tons of coal a year
duty free; she ceased to do so in 1925 when she began a tariff war with
Poland.19
18
On arguments in 1919 for leaving Danzig and the Corridor in Poland, see
Cienciala, ―Danzig and the Polish Corridor at the Paris Peace Conference,‖ in
Paul Latawski, ed., The Reconstruction of Poland, 1914-23 (London:
Macmillan, 1992), 72-75; also idem and Komarnicki, From Versailles to
Locarno, ch. 4. In the 1921 Polish census the Germans accounted for 29.5% in
the Polish Corridor and 6.0% in 1931; see census and plebiscite tables for
Prussian Poland and East Prussia in Richard Blanke, Orphans of Versailles: The
Germans in Western Poland, 1918-1939 (Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 1999), 244-245, reproduced in Cienciala, Hist.557, Nationalism and
Communism in East Central Europe,” http://web.ku.edu/~eceurope
/hist557/index.htm, Lecture Notes 11. On the Polish Corridor as mainly German,
thus violating self-determination, see William R. Keylor, The Twentieth-Century
World: An International History (3rd
ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press,
1996), 83; Anita Prażmowska, Ignacy Paderewski: Poland (London: Haus,
2009), 103; and Peter Neville, Tomáš Masaryk and Eduard Beneš:
Czechoslovakia (London: Haus, 2010), 79.
19
For an excellent summary and analysis of Polish issues at the Paris Peace
Conference, see Piotr S. Wandycz, ―The Polish Question,‖ in The Treaty of
Versailles. A Reassessment After 75 Years, ed. Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D.
could not, of course,
include unborn children
in 1910-1918, but given
of the time, the German
percentage would be
lower still by 1919.
AMC 5/10/11
Please note the
correction:
the high Polish birthrate
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 123
These settlements, probably the most equitable that could be made
at the time, were highly resented by Germany, whose claims for their return
enjoyed much sympathy in the West, especially in Britain, which
traditionally viewed Eastern Europe as a sphere of German and Russian
interests and — in the interwar period — only of German interests. In a
letter written after the Munich Conference to the British Ambassador in
Paris, Sir Eric Phipps, British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax wrote that
Germany could now do what she wanted in the region and it was none of
Britain‘s business, adding: ―Incidentally, I have always felt myself that, once
Germany recovered her normal strength, this predominance was inevitable
for obvious geographical reasons.‖ He also thought that Danzig and the
Corridor were the most harmful decisions of the Versailles Treaty. Indeed, a
Foreign Office paper of February 1933 had suggested the best solution
would be the return of Danzig to Germany and a German corridor through
the ―Polish Corridor.‖20
This was totally unacceptable to the Poles because it
Feldman and Elisabeth Glaser (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute,
and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 313-336. For details on
working out the Danzig, Polish Corridor and Upper Silesian settlements in 1919,
see Cienciala and Komarnicki, From Versailles to Locarno, chs. 2-4, and Kay
Lundgreen-Nielsen, The Polish Problem at the Paris Peace Conference: A Study
of the Policies of the Great Powers and the Poles 1918-1919 (Odense,
Denmark: Odense University Press, 1979). See also James Headlam-Morley, A
Memoir of the Peace Conference 1919, ed. Agnes Headlam-Morley, Russell
Bryant and Anna M. Cienciala (London: Methuen, 1972). For census and
plebiscite figures in Upper Silesia, see Blanke and Cienciala in n.17 above.
James Headlam-Morley was an expert on Germany in the British Delegation,
1919, and worked out the Free City of Danzig articles of the Versailles Treaty
(100-108) with American expert Dr. Sidney, E. Mezes. He was later Historical
Advisor to the Foreign Office.
20
On British sympathy for German claims to Danzig and the Corridor, see
Cienciala, ―German Propaganda for the Revision of the Polish-German Frontier
in Danzig and the Corridor: Its Effects on British Opinion and the British
Policy-Making Elite in the Years 1919-1933, Antemurale 20 (1976): 77- 129.
Halifax to Phipps, November 1 1938, cit. Cienciala, ―The Munich Crisis of
1938: Plans and Strategy in Warsaw in the Context of the Western Appeasement
of Germany,‖ in Igor Lukes and Erik Goldstein, The Munich Crisis, 1938:
Prelude to World War II (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999), 69;
Halifax on Danzig and the Polish Corridor, May 1938, cit. Cienciala, Poland
and the Western Powers 1938-1939: A Study in the Interdependence of Eastern
and Western Europe (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul; Toronto, University of
Toronto Press, 1968), 87-88; R.M.A. Hankey, ―Memorandum regarding Danzig
and the Polish Corridor,‖ 1 February 1933, The National Archives, London,
F.O. 417, 33, pt. XXVII. Robert Maurice, Alers Hankey (1905-96) was First
Secretary at the British Embassy, Warsaw, 1936-39; acted as the F.O. expert on
124 The Polish Review
would have left their access to Danzig and the nearby port city of Gdynia
dependent on (nonexistent) German good will. German policy was directed
at revising the Versailles Treaty and, as stated earlier, this generally meant a
return to the German eastern frontier of 1914.21
By the mid-nineteen thirties,
the bulk of Polish foreign trade went through Danzig and Gdynia. The latter
was a Polish port city built in the Polish Corridor, beginning in 1923, to give
her port of her own and to supplement Danzig; it carried about half of the
trade by 1938. Thus, the existence of the Free City of Danzig, with
guaranteed Polish economic and cultural rights therein, as well as the
existence of the Polish Corridor were, for the vast majority of Poles,
synonymous with Polish independence. As noted above, the Allied experts
in the Commission on Polish Affairs at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919
had agreed and even advocated the award of Danzig to Poland.
Piłsudski saw his chance to redress the imbalance created by the
Locarno Treaties after Hitler came to power in early 1933. The Führer had
earlier issued the same vituperations and claims against Poland as the
German statesmen before him. Therefore, on March 6, the day after the Nazi
electoral victory in Germany, Piłsudski sent additional Polish troops to
strengthen the garrison at the Polish arms depot serving Polish warships at
Westerplatte in the Bay of Danzig. This was a warning to Hitler that Poland
would fight if he tried to seize the Free City, where the Nazis were very
active. Hitler took note of the warning and showed interest in improving
relations with Poland, aiming to draw her away from France. Piłsudski, who
had signed the Franco-Polish alliance in 1921, never thought of giving it up
but was glad to improve relations with Germany. Polish-German talks began
after Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations as well as the
Disarmament Conference in October 1933, which led to negotiations for the
Polish-German Declaration of Non-Aggression signed on January 26, 1934.
Now the Western Powers had no more incentive, at least for a while, to
discuss the return of Danzig and the Corridor to Germany. An anecdote
attributed to Piłsudski at the time had him say that Poland had moved on the
Western menu from the place of hors d‘oeuvres to that of dessert.22
The
Polish affairs in WW II; and had a distinguished diplomatic career. The solution
he proposed had been discussed in the Foreign Office since 1919, especially in
1925 in connection with Stresemann‘s proposal of a Western security pact,
which led to the Locarno Treaties; see Cienciala and Komarnicki, From
Versailles to Locarno, ch. 9.
21
On German revisionist goals and tactics at this time, see Harald von Riekhoff,
German-Polish Relations, 1918-1933 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
Press, 1971), ch. 9; favorable review by the then dean of Polish diplomatic
historians of the interwar period, Henryk Batowski, Przegląd Zachodni, 1973,
no. 4: 353-358.
22
Cit. Cienciala, Poland and the Western Powers, 16 and n. 37.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 125
view he expressed to his closest military and foreign policy advisers was,
however, pessimistic. According to a politician close to Piłsudski, in March
1934 the marshal said he thought good Polish-German relations might last
for perhaps four years and he could not guarantee more. According to a
general, in April that year Piłsudski said: ―Having those two pacts [with
Germany and Russia] we are sitting on two stools — that can‘t last long. We
must know… which one we will fall off first and when.‖23
This is
remarkably similar to the opinion of an American historian, Henry L.
Roberts, who called the policy of equilibrium (which he attributed to Beck) a
dubious proposition of ―riding two horses at once.‖ The policy of
equilibrium, given Poland‘s predatory neighbors was, however, the only one
she could pursue as long as it was possible to do so, while maintaining her
alliance with France. It is also clear that Piłsudski‘s distrust of Soviet Russia
did not blind him to the threat of Nazi Germany.24
The policy initiated with the Polish-German Declaration of NonAggression
did not — as per Seton-Watson and others — aim at cooperation
with Nazi Germany against the USSR and gaining territory in Soviet
Ukraine. Both Piłsudski and Beck refused to take up such German
suggestions. In fact, Beck told the U.S. ambassador in Warsaw, Anthony J.
Drexel Biddle, in June 1938 that Poland would never agree to a German
march through Polish territory to Soviet Ukraine. On the contrary, said
Beck, Poland would resist such a German move because a German
occupation of Ukraine would threaten Poland‘s peace and independence. He
also said that in such a case Poland would face possible defeat, but she
23
For Piłsudski in March 1934, see Kazimierz Świtalski, Diariusz 1919-1935
[Diary 1919-1935] (Warsaw, 1992), 660-661, cit. by Kornat, Polityka
równowagi, 313. For April 1934, see General Kazimierz Fabrycy in Tytus
Komarnicki, ed., Diariusz i teki Jana Szembeka (1935-1945) [Diary and
portfolios of Jan Szembek (1935-1945)] (London: Polish Research Centre,
Orbis, 1964), 1: 155 [henceforth Szembek]. This volume contains documents for
the years 1934-1935 and the 1935 diary of Jan Szembek, Under Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs in 1935-39.
24
On two horses at once, see H.L. Roberts, ―The Diplomacy of Col. Beck,‖ in
Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert, eds., The Diplomats: 1919-1939 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1960 [2nd
printing]), 599. For a series of excellent
studies of the policy of equilibrium, see Kornat, Polityka równowagi 1934-1939.
For the claim that Piłsudski‘s ―ingrained hostility to Russia blinded him and his
followers to the growing threat of Nazi Germany,‖ see Jan Palmowski, Oxford
Dictionary of Contemporary World History: From 1900 to the Present Day
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003 [2nd
ed.]), 513.
126 The Polish Review
would ―bleed‖ Germany while war between Britain and France in the West
would prevent the Germans from reaching their goal.25
After Piłsudski‘s death on May 12, 1935, Beck continued the
Marshal‘s foreign policy goals and methods. Since Beck was presented
mainly as a pro-German statesman in Soviet, East European Communist-era
historical as well as in post-Soviet studies, and is still presented as such in
many Anglo-American studies, a brief biographical-political sketch is in
order. Born in Warsaw on October 4, 1894, Beck was, against his parents‘
wishes, baptized in a Russian Orthodox Church because his mother belonged
to the Uniate or Greek Catholic Church, which had been forcibly
incorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church, but was baptized in a
Catholic Church several years later. Beck‘s father, an active socialist but not
a revolutionary, was sentenced for illegal activity, imprisoned for a few
months in Russia, and then exiled to Riga, whence he moved with his family
to Austrian Poland and settled in Limanowa. Young Beck grew up in a
patriotic Polish household. He completed high school in Kraków; briefly
studied engineering at the Lwów Politechnic, but transferred to the Export
Academy in Vienna in 1913-1914. When war broke out, he immediately
volunteered for Piłsudski‘s Legion (part of the Austro-Hungarian army),
serving in the artillery; he was decorated for bravery in a battle with the
Russian army in 1916. When Piłsudski broke with Germany and AustriaHungary
in summer 1917 and was interned in the German fortress of
Magdeburg, Beck was interned in Sopron, Hungary. He left (on a holiday
pass!) in early 1918 to work for Piłsudski‘s secret Polish Military
Organization [Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, P.O.W.] in revolutionary
Russia; its job was to find Polish soldiers and officers formerly in the
Russian army as well as prisoners-of-war from the German and AustroHungarian
armies, and bring them home to join the Polish armed forces
there.
Beck‘s reports from Russia impressed Piłsudski, who assigned him
to in the Polish military intelligence service in 1920; sent him on special
missions; and appointed him Military Attaché in Paris (also Brussels), where
he served in 1922-1923 and was recalled to Warsaw in the fall of that year.
The charge that Beck had been removed because he was caught trying to
steal French military secrets for the Germans in Vienna was proved a
25
For German attempts to discuss Polish-German cooperation against the USSR,
see Cienciala articles listed in note 9 above as well as references to Göring,
Hitler and Ribbentrop in her book, Poland and the Western Powers. For
Ambassador Biddle‘s report of 19 June 1938 on his conversation with Beck, see
Phillip V. Cannistraro et al., eds., Poland and the Coming of the Second World
War: The Diplomatic Papers of A.J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., United States
Ambassador to Poland 1937-1939 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University,
1976), doc. 4, cit. Cienciala, in Lukes and Goldstein, Munich Crisis, 59.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 127
fabrication at the time, for the French newspaper that printed it had to recant
and apologize. Information on this matter has been available for years but
the charge is still repeated by some Western historians and by Russian
media, which even cast him as a German agent as late as August 2009.26
Most Western historians are also ignorant of the fact that Polish military
authorities congratulated Beck for improving Polish-French relations, that he
was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in April 1923 and an
officer of the same in 1927 — hardly decorations for a German spy. After
obtaining a diploma from the Higher School of Military Studies for general
staff officers in Warsaw (in which he obtained top ranking together with his
colleague, Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski), Beck received the rank of
colonel of horse artillery. He worked as Piłsudski‘s chef de cabinet [CEO]
when the marshal was minister of defense and later premier, in 1926-30; was
briefly deputy premier in 1930 when Piłsudski was premier again, and
deputy foreign minister to Zaleski in 1930-32, succeeding the latter as
minister in November 1932.27
Thus, while Beck had little diplomatic
experience, he had intimate knowledge of the marshal‘s goals and methods.
He was devoted to Piłsudski and determined to continue his policy of
balancing between Germany and the USSR while maintaining the alliance
with France. He also continued the marshal‘s policy of seeking closer
relations with Britain and, like him, did not expect Austria and
Czechoslovakia to survive unless supported by France and Britain, which
26
A recent textbook states: ―The arrogant and vulpine [sic] Beck had served as
military attaché in France, whence he had been expelled on charges of spying
for Germany.‖ (Martin Kitchen, Europe Between The Wars, 106.) Its author
evidently failed to read Piotr S. Wandycz‘s article, ―Colonel Beck and the Roots
of Animosity,‖ The International History Review 3 (1981): 115-127. Until 2010,
this periodical was published at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia,
Canada, where Kitchen, the author of several books on twentieth-century
international relations and now Professor of History Emeritus, taught for many
years. On the same charges in the Russian media, August 2009, see Mariusz
Wołoś, ―Józef Beck niemieckim agentem? O historii pewnej plotki w
retrospektywnym ujęciu… Inne oblicze historii‖ [Józef Beck a German Agent?
On the history of a certain rumor… Another view of history], supplement to
Wiedza i Życie nr. 6, (2009): 12-16; French version, ―Józef Beck: espion
allemand? Histoire d‘une rumeur,‖ Revue Historique des Armées, Paris, nr. 260
(3/2010) : 45-53 (http://rha.revues.org/index7045.html). For Russian TV film,
see n. 11 above.
27
This brief biography of Beck is based on Marek Kornat, ―Józef Beck — Zarys
biografii politycznej (1894-1932)‖ [Józef Beck — Outline of a Political
Biography, 1894-1932], Niepodległość 55 (2005): 36-106. See also short
biographical-political sketch of Beck covering his life and policies up to
September 1939, in Cienciala, ed. Beck, Polska polityka zagraniczna, 17-44.
128 The Polish Review
both statesmen considered doubtful. (Czechoslovak statesmen expressed the
same opinion about Poland and did not want any alliance with her to avoid
involvement in a Polish-German war.) Piłsudski, for his part, had a high
opinion of Beck. The marshal rarely praised any person who worked for
him, but a former prime minister recalled his statement to Beck at a meeting
of former prime ministers in spring 1934: ―In my work on Poland‘s foreign
policy I found an especially able and intelligent co-worker in the person of
the foreign minister. I cannot compliment you enough, Mr. Beck.‖28
There is no document specifying Piłsudski‘s instructions to Beck on
what policy to follow after his death. Beck notes, however, that at the turn of
1931-1932 the marshal agreed with his view that the outstanding issues to be
settled were the following: Danzig, the Minorities Treaty, Lithuania, and
Teschen Silesia.29
Beck handled these problems according to Piłsudski‘s
wishes. The Polish-German Declaration of Non-Aggression of January 1934
was followed by better relations between Poland and the Free City of
Danzig, which the marshal called the touchstone of Polish-German relations
and Beck always considered as such.30
The formal German recognition of
the Free City‘s status and of the Polish-German frontier was the perennial
goal of Polish foreign policy. The Nazis won the city elections in 1935 but
were generally kept in check by Berlin until spring 1939, while Poland
quietly granted asylum to anti-Nazi refugees. The Minorities Treaty, which
all new East European states had to sign in 1919, safeguarded minority
28
For Piłsudski and Beck on Austrian and Czechoslovakian survival, as well as
T. G. Masaryk‘s and Edvard Beneš‘s statements on Poland, see Cienciala in
Lukes and Goldstein, Munich Crisis, 53-55. Piłsudski‘s praise of Beck was cited
in a letter to him by former Premier Janusz Jędrzejewicz dated February 27,
1940, when Beck was interned in Romania, cit. Cienciala, Beck Polska polityka
zagraniczna,108; English translation, Cienciala; text also in Wacław
Jędrzejewicz, ed., Kronika życia Józefa Piłsudskiego 1967-1935. Tom Drugi.
1921-1935 [Chronicle of the Life of Józef Piłsudski. Vol. 2. 1921-1935]
(London: Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, 1977), 476.
29
See Cienciala, Beck, Polska polityka zagraniczna, 54-55.
30
For Piłsudski on Danzig as the touchstone of Polish-German relations, see, for
example, Beck‘s instruction of March 25, 1939, to Ambassador Józef Lipski on
the latter‘s forthcoming conversation with German Foreign Minister Joachim
von Ribbentrop, in Stanisław Żerko, ed., Polskie dokumenty dyplomatyczne
1939. Styczeń –sierpień [Polish Diplomatic Documents 1939. January —
August] (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2005), doc. 137;
English translation in Wacław Jędrzejewicz, ed., Diplomat in Berlin, 1933-
1939: Papers and Memoirs of Józef Lipski, Ambassador of Poland (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1968), 506-507; same in Włodzimierz Borodziej,
Sławomir Dębski, eds., Polish Documents on Foreign Policy, 24 October 1938
— 30 September 1939 (Warsaw: The Polish Institute of International Affairs,
2009), doc. 67.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 129
rights in these states while Germany, with a Polish minority of about one
million (approximately the same as the number of Germans in Poland), did
not have to sign it. Members of the German minority in Poland were
encouraged by pre-Nazi governments to use the League of Nations as a
forum to protest real or imagined violations of their rights, while the Polish
minority in Germany had no such recourse and had a difficult existence even
after the Declaration of Non-Aggression.31
In November 1937, however, the
Polish and German governments signed a declaration on the rights of their
respective minorities.32
The Polish government could do nothing to aid its
minority in the USSR, which numbered about two million after the Treaty of
Riga, tens of thousands of whom managed to repatriate to Poland. It was
greatly reduced during the years of forced collectivization in 1930-32,
mainly in Ukraine, and was to suffer greatly during the Stalin Terror.33
Moscow did not sign the Minorities Treaty and the Comintern supported the
inclusion of Poland‘s eastern territories in the Belorussian and Ukrainian
Soviet Republics. It is not surprising, therefore, that Beck declared Poland‘s
abrogation of the Minorities Treaty when the USSR joined the League of
Nations in September 1934, while confirming the constitutional rights of
minorities in Poland. Lithuania had broken off all relations with Poland after
the Polish seizure of Wilno in 1920, although in a plebiscite boycotted by
the Lithuanian minority, the Polish majority in the region voted for union
with Poland in 1922. Lithuania, whose constitution named Wilno as the
country‘s capital, rejected all efforts, including Piłsudski‘s, to re-establish
normal relations. When Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938, the Polish
Government feared he might annex the preponderantly German port city of
Klaipėda (German: Memel) in Lithuania and place German troops on the
Polish-Lithuanian border. Beck then decided to send an ultimatum to the
Lithuanian government demanding the establishment of normal relations.
The pretext was the accidental shooting of a Polish soldier by a Lithuanian
31
On the Minorities Treaties of 1919, see Carole Fink, ―The Minorities Question
at the Paris Peace Conference: The Polish Minority Treaty, June 28, 1919,‖ in
Boemeke et al., The Treaty of Versailles, 249-274; also Fink, Defending the
Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority
Protection, 1878-1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
32
For the Polish text of the Polish-German declaration on minorities of
November 5, 1937, see Jędruszczak and Nowak-Kiełbikowa, Dokumenty z
dziejów, 2, doc. 60; English translation of the equivalent German text,
Documents on German Foreign Policy, D, vol. 5 (London, Washington, D.C.,
1953), doc. 18.
33
The Polish minority in the USSR suffered the greatest losses of all national
minorities during the Stalin Terror; see Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe
Between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010), ch. 3; National
Terror, 89 ff; figures, 103.
130 The Polish Review
frontier guard. The ultimatum (with a forty-eight hour limit) was used
because it was clear that only the threat of force would persuade the
Lithuanian government to re-establish normal relations while Wilno
remained in Poland. The Lithuanian government acquiesced.34
This left the
issue of Danzig and the Polish Corridor and that of Cieszyn Silesia or
Zaolzie, which Piłsudski, like most Poles, aimed to unite with Poland. In
1932, it was agreed that no political relaxation was possible in relations with
Czechoslovakia without an improvement of the fate of Poles in Zaolzie.
While carrying out Piłsudski‘s foreign policy objectives, Beck never
wavered in observing the marshal‘s key principles of foreign policy. Aside
from the priority of Poland‘s relations with Germany and Soviet Russia, the
marshal also held that there should be no bowing unless it was necessary.
This was directed at what the marshal considered Polish servile behavior
toward France and translated as insistence that the Polish nation and its
representatives be treated with dignity. Beck expressed this by being stiff
and sometimes abrupt when subjected to patronizing treatment by French
statesmen, and such behavior was often seen as arrogance. Of course,
Piłsudski did not need to stress the old Polish slogan Nic o nas bez nas
[―Nothing (is to be decided) about us without us‖]. It was the rallying call of
both Polish nobles against the king in pre-partition Poland — meaning he
could decide nothing without their consent in the Sejm [Parliament] — as
well as Polish workers and their supporters in the Solidarity movement of
1980-1981 and Solidarity underground structures in 1981-89. To Piłsudski
and Beck this principle meant that Poland would not accept any decisions
made by the Great Powers in matters that involved her interests. Beck‘s
insistence on this principle was misread, especially by the French, as a
pretension to Poland‘s great power status — a claim he denied while
admitting that she was a regional power. Finally, there was the principle of
―Honor.‖ The old Polish military motto, inscribed on army sabers, was: Bóg,
Honor i Ojczyzna [―God, Honor and Fatherland‖]. Honor meant honorable
behavior according to the traditional noble code and holding others to the
same standard. Above all, however, honor meant that Poles were bound to
defend their independence; to give it up without a fight was considered
dishonorable and shameful.
We now come to the most frequently condemned feature of interwar
Polish foreign policy, condemned not only by Soviet, Russian, and most
Western historians but also by many Polish historians today, that is, the
method used to gain Zaolzie from Czechoslovakia on September 30, 1938.
This policy should be viewed in both the international and national contexts
34
For the Polish text of the ultimatum of 17 March 1938, see Marek Kornat, ed.,
Polskie dokumenty dyplomatyczne 1938 [Polish Diplomatic Documents 1938]
henceforth PDD 1938 (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych,
2007), doc. 56.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 131
of the time. In the first — and decisive — international context, Britain and
France wanted to avoid war with Nazi Germany. Therefore, they followed
the policy of ―appeasement,‖ allowing Hitler to begin openly rearming
Germany in 1935. The following year, they allowed him to militarize the
Rhineland, which had been demilitarized to provide security for France. This
demilitarized area was also crucial for France‘s immediate aid to her Eastern
allies, if attacked by Germany, since France could start military action in
German territory bereft of German troops and without having to cross the
Rhine. Finally, French, British, and Italian leaders agreed at the Munich
Conference of September 29, 1938, to Hitler‘s annexation of the
Sudetenland, the predominantly German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia.
Poland, and Beck personally, were and still are excoriated for using an
ultimatum, that is, the threat of force, to annex the western part of Zaolzie,
after the Munich Conference. This action is still widely condemned as Polish
cooperation with Hitler, and even as initiated by him.35
In evaluating Polish policy toward Czechoslovakia in 1938, one
must bear in mind the national context, that is, the history of Zaolzie and its
place in Polish-Czechoslovak relations. The area east and west of the Olza
River, formerly known as the Duchy of Teschen, was part of the region of
Moravská Ostrava. The duchy had been part of Poland in the twelfth
century; from the mid-fourteenth century it was part of Bohemia, which was
defeated and annexed by Austria in 1620. Meanwhile, the duchy was ruled
by the Silesian branch of the Polish Piast dynasty until it died out in 1625,
when it came into the possession of the Austrian Habsburgs and stayed as
such to November 1918. At that time, Zaolzie, covering two thirds of the
western part of the duchy, had a clear Polish majority, a fact recognized in
the agreement concluded by local Polish and Czech councils to divide the
area into Polish and Czech administrative regions. The Czechoslovak
government, however, did not recognize the local agreement; it claimed
Zaolzie as part of the historic lands of the Bohemian Crown. It also claimed
that Czechoslovakia needed the region‘s Karvina coal mines, which
provided high-grade coking coal for the steel and engineering industries of
the region, as well as the town of Cieszyn because it was the key railway
junction between Bohemia and Slovakia. Piłsudski sent a special delegation
35
Winston Churchill expressed general British opinion — and general Western
historical opinion today — when he wrote of the Poles: ―We see them hurrying,
while the might of Germany glowered up against them, to grasp their share of
the pillage and ruin of Czechoslovakia.‖ (Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering
Storm [Boston and London: Houghton Mifflin, 1948, reprint 1983], 323.)
Harrison Keylor writes that the Polish government added its demand for
Teschen ―at Hitler‘s urging‖ and acted ―as a silent partner of Germany, to
acquire economically valuable territory at Czechoslovakia‘s expense.‖ (Keylor,
The Twentieth-Century World, 82.)
132 The Polish Review
to Prague to negotiate an agreement with the Czechoslovak government in
December 1918, but the delegates found it unwilling to do so. In early 1919,
just before elections to the Polish parliament, and while most Polish troops
were fighting the Ukrainians over Eastern Galicia and resisting the Red
Army elsewhere, Czech troops moved into the region and, after some
bloodshed, took it over. They were forced to leave by the Western Allies,
but the latter awarded the region to Czechoslovakia in late July 1920, as the
Red Army was advancing on Warsaw. Furthermore, at that time, French
military supplies for the Polish army were denied transit through
Czechoslovakia, and a Hungarian proposal to send troops through
Czechoslovak territory to help the Poles was rejected. The Allied decision
and the Czechoslovak actions noted above were bitterly resented in Poland,
as was the Czechoslovak government‘s support of massive Czech settlement
in the predominantly Polish areas of Zaolzie and its policy of assimilating
the Poles, especially through the schools.36
All the above factors made Zaolzie a very emotional issue in
Poland, poisoning Polish-Czechoslovak relations. These were worsened by
the asylum granted in Czechoslovakia — mainly in Subcarpathian Ruthenia
— to Ukrainian nationalists who had fought against the Poles in East Galicia
in 1918-1919, as well as to those who later actively opposed Polish rule.
Every political leader and party in Poland, except the communists, believed
that Zaolzie must be united with Poland. Even General Władysław Sikorski,
a bitter opponent of the Beck-Piłsudski policy of good relations with
Germany, was ready to offer Prague an alliance with Warsaw if he came to
power — but only if Zaolzie went to Poland.37
The Poles also resented the
Czechoslovak-Soviet Alliance of May 1935, which was the eastern pendant
to the Franco-Soviet Alliance concluded at that time.
It was, however, the international context which was decisive for
Polish policy in 1938. An important factor to be noted before the
Czechoslovak crisis began in earnest (in May 1938) is that Beck knew of
British willingness to accept border changes favoring Germany in East
Central Europe which would, of course, affect Poland. In early December
36
For the best account of the Teschen/Zaolzie issue in the first postwar period,
see Wandycz, France and Her Eastern Allies, ch. 3. For the next ten years, see
idem, Twilight. For the first five years of Czech rule in Zaolzie, see Ellen I. Paul,
Conflict and Cooperation: Poles and Czechs in Czech Teschen Silesia, 1920-
1926 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, 1999). Map: Wikipedia, Śląsk
Cieszyński.
37
On Polish political leaders, including General Sikorski, supporting the cession
of Zaolzie to Poland, see the report of the Czech journalist Vaclav Fiala to
President Beneš on his talks in Poland in April 1938, per Cienciala, Poland and
the Western Powers, 66-69; brief mention by idem in Lukes and Goldstein, ed.,
Munich Crisis, 58.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 133
1937, the German Foreign Ministry informed a member of the Polish
embassy in Berlin of Lord Halifax‘s statements to Hitler at their meeting in
Berchtesgaden on November 19, 1937. Halifax, then Lord President of the
Council, spoke for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he told Hitler
that Britain would not insist on maintaining the status quo of 1919 (that is,
the Versailles Treaty). Therefore, changes were possible — provided they
were carried out peacefully. Here Halifax mentioned Austria,
Czechoslovakia and Danzig.38
It was in the dual international and national context described above
that Beck set out Polish policy on Czechoslovakia in early January 1938. At
this time, the Nazi Sudeten German Party (SGP) was growing ever louder in
its resentment of Czech rule. (It was not known at the time that Hitler
planned to use the principle of self-determination, identified with the SGP,
to destroy Czechoslovakia, the ally of France and of the USSR, and then
proceed to attack France and conquer Western Europe.) Beck stated that any
Czechoslovak decision favoring one minority would be viewed by Poland as
an unfriendly act if not applied to the Polish minority.39
A few days later, on
January 14, 1938, he learned from his conversation with the Führer in Berlin
that the latter planned to move against Austria, which he planned to unite
with Germany; also that he viewed Czechoslovakia as being under Soviet
influence, but would seek a peaceful agreement with it on the treatment of
the German minority — unless compelled to do otherwise. Hitler also
declared that Polish rights in Danzig and its legal status would not be
diminished. At this time, Beck also spoke with Hermann Göring, marshal of
the Luftwaffe and head of Germany‘s Four Year [Rearmament] Plan, who
said he considered the further existence of Czechoslovakia in its present
shape as impossible. When Beck learned of German plans to takeover
38
On Halifax‘s statements to Hitler, see report by Stefan Lubomirski, counselor
at the Polish Embassy, Berlin, on his conversation with Ernst von Weizsäcker,
German secretary of state for foreign affairs, December 2, 1937, in Z. Landau
and J. Tomaszewski, eds., Monachium 1938. Polskie dokumenty dyplomatyczne
[Munich 1938. Polish Diplomatic Documents] (Warsaw: PWN, 1985) doc. 1
[henceforth Monachium]. For Halifax‘s report on his conversation with Hitler,
19 November 1937, see Documents on British Foreign Policy, 2nd
ser., v. 19
(London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1982), doc. 336, p. 345; see also Halifax‘s
account and later thoughts taken from his diary in The Earl of Birkenhead,
Halifax. The Life of Lord Halifax (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1965), 368-374;
the photo of Halifax meeting Hitler at Berchtesgaden, facing p. 370, is misdated
as 1938.
39
Beck speech to the Sejm [modern spelling of Seym] Commission on Foreign
Policy, January 10, 1938 in Józef Beck, Przemówienia, deklaracje, wywiady
[Speeches, Declarations, Interviews] (Warsaw, 1939), 331-340.
134 The Polish Review
Austria, he did not oppose them since it was obvious that Britain and France
would not oppose Hitler.40
Beck welcomed Hitler‘s assurance regarding Danzig because he
feared the status of the Free City might be revised or even abolished at the
forthcoming meeting of the League of Nations on account of Nazi violations
of the Danzig constitution, whose official protector was the League of
Nations, while its real guarantors were France and Britain. Therefore, at the
same time as keeping in touch with Berlin, Beck continued Piłsudski‘s
policy of seeking closer relations with London. At the League of Nations
meeting in Geneva on January 26, 1938, when told by British Foreign
Secretary Antony Eden that, except for France, Belgium and Holland,
Britain could only act through the League, Beck repeated to him what he had
said to Chamberlain in London in 1937: that Poland was the only country on
the Continent which could extend aid on land to these countries [by
attacking Germany if it attacked France]. He also said that Poland had
confirmed her commitments to France as an ally, that future European
arrangements must allow France and Poland full freedom to carry out their
alliance obligations, and inquired about possible Polish purchases of heavy
anti-aircraft artillery from Britain. In view of his knowledge of Halifax‘s
statement to Hitler and what he had heard from Eden, it is not surprising
that, on February 28, Beck told Göring that Poland was interested in a region
of Czechoslovakia, Moravská-Ostrava, which included Zaolzie.41
Nevertheless, as H. L. Roberts wrote, Beck and key Polish decisionmakers
did not plan to help Hitler dismember Czechoslovakia.42
It is also
clear that, assuming Czechoslovakia would collapse without Western
support (as Czechoslovak leaders had assumed earlier about Poland), the
Polish government did not want Germany to absorb or otherwise dominate
the whole country. Many Polish diplomatic documents were destroyed or
lost in September 1939, but among the survivors is one that outlines Beck‘s
policy aims, at least as they existed in the spring of 1938. In a letter of April
12, 1938, the Polish Under-Secretary of State, Jan Szembek, wrote that the
worst solution for Poland would be German domination of all of
40
For the Polish record of the Hitler-Beck conversation, Berlin, January 14,
1938, see Monachium, doc. 6; Kornat, PDD 1938, doc. 10; English translation in
Jędrzejewicz ed., Diplomat in Berlin, doc. 77; for the Beck-Göring conversation
of January 13, 1938, see Monachium, doc. 6; PDD 1938, doc. 9; Eng. trans.,
Diplomat in Berlin, doc. 76.
41
For the Beck-Eden Conversation, Geneva, January 26, 1938, see PDD 1938,
doc. 14, cit. in Cienciala review article of same, TPR, 54, no. 2 (2009): 250.
Beck had confirmed Poland‘s obligations to France as an ally during the visit of
French Premier Yvon Delbos in Warsaw in late 1937. For the Beck-Göring
conversation of February 28, 1938, see Monachium, doc.10; PDD 1938, doc. 37.
42
H.L. Roberts, The Diplomats 1919-1939, 611.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 135
Czechoslovakia. Therefore, German annexation of the Sudetenland was
acceptable to Warsaw, provided it was accompanied by the separation of
Slovakia from the Czech lands and its union with Hungary, the return [to
Poland] of Silesia [Zaolzie], and the establishment of a Polish-Hungarian
frontier.43
At the same time, however, Polish decision-makers believed, as
did the army and the majority of Polish public opinion, that Poland could not
be on Germany‘s side in a European war. In late May, as Hitler was stoking
the Czechoslovak crisis (which burst out in full force after the Czechoslovak
Army mobilized in May on faulty intelligence of an impending German
attack), Beck rejected French Foreign Minister George Bonnet‘s request that
Poland support a British (but not French) warning to Berlin not to sharpen
the German-Czechoslovak dispute, which might lead to war. At the same
time, however, while re-stating the Polish demand for equal treatment of the
Polish minority with other minorities in Czechoslovakia, Beck reaffirmed
Poland‘s readiness to fulfill her treaty obligations to France and proposed a
discussion ―of new phenomena‖ with Bonnet. This proposal was, however,
rejected by the French Foreign Minister, a staunch appeaser who favored
loosening French ties with Poland.44
Beck summed up his view of the situation at two special
conferences, probably in late May or sometime in June 1938. In his later
report on ―The Political Preliminaries to 1939,‖ Beck wrote that at these
conferences he stated his view that the Czechs would not fight; the Western
countries were not morally or materially prepared to intervene to the Czechs‘
advantage; and that Russia [sic] was conducting an action rather in the
nature of a demonstration. It seemed, he said, that she was more interested in
poisoning Czech-German relations than helping the Czechs. In any case,
careful observation of Soviet territory did not show any military preparations
to intervene, while the ―purge‖ of the Red Army officer corps left the army
in very bad shape. Finally, Beck wrote, he always added that Poland should
not be the first to undertake any action against the Czechs. He also said that
if his hypothesis should prove mistaken, Polish policy must change within
43
PDD 1938, doc. 86, cit. in Cienciala review of same, TPR, 54, no. 2 (2009):
249. Later, Beck envisaged an autonomous Slovakia within Hungary.
44
Beck‘s instructions of May 24 to Polish Ambassador Juliusz Łukasiewicz, in
Paris, PDD 1938, doc. 118; Łukasiewicz report on his conversation with
Bonnet, May 27 [should be 26], Monachium, doc. 87, PDD 1938, doc. 126;
English translation of the Bonnet-Łukasiewicz conversation in Wacław
Jędrzejewicz, ed., Diplomat in Paris: Papers and Memoirs of Juliusz
Łukasiewicz, Ambassador of Poland (New York and London: Columbia
University Press, 1970), 91-99; see also Cienciala in Lukes and Goldstein eds.,
Munich Crisis, 59.
136 The Polish Review
twenty-four hours because, in case of a real European war with Germany,
Poland could not be, even indirectly, on Germany‘s side.45
Indeed, at around this time Beck tried to sound out the French and
British attitudes toward German expansion in Eastern Europe through the
U.S. ambassador to Poland, Biddle. In mid-June, in the same conversation in
which Beck told Biddle that Poland would not agree to German transit to
Soviet Ukraine, he also told the ambassador that the armies of Poland,
Romania, and perhaps Yugoslavia, could offer effective resistance to
Germany — but only in conjunction with the Western Powers. As he put it,
if France and Britain engaged German armies in the West, ―Poland would
march not for Czechoslovakia but against Germany.‖ Biddle also reported
Polish hopes that, after the current crisis was resolved, France and Britain
would support an East European bloc to check German expansion.46
There
was, however, no Western response to these suggestions, nor could there be
since both France and Britain wanted to avoid war with Germany.
It would take too much time and space to list all the developments
in the period from May to late September 1938.47
Suffice it to say that Beck
made Polish claims to Zaolzie clear to the Czechoslovak government as well
as to the British, French, German and Italian governments, especially when
the crisis heated up in the second half of September. He also warned Hitler
that Poland would stand by its demand for a key railway junction in the
northern part of Zaolzie, where the German minority demanded union with
Germany. In fact, as the Poles learned from the French on September 27, on
a German map given to Chamberlain when he met with Hitler at Godesberg
on September 22-23, Bohumin was marked for immediate German
annexation while a large part of Zaolzie was marked for a plebiscite. Beck
immediately instructed Ambassador Józef Lipski to present Polish claims to
Hitler.48
Meanwhile, on September 22-23, the Sudeten German Party also
45
Summary of Beck‘s account, Cienciala in Lukes and Goldstein, Munich
Crisis, 56; Polish text in Cienciala, Beck, Polska polityka zagraniczna, 217-218.
46
See Ambassador Biddle‘s report of June 18, 1938, in Cannistraro et al.,
Poland and the Coming of the Second World War, doc. 4, pp. 208 ff., cit.
Cienciala in Lukes and Goldstein, Munich Crisis, 59.
47
These developments are described in many studies of the Czechoslovak crisis,
for example, Lukes and Goldstein, Munich Crisis. For Polish policy
adjustments, see Cienciala, Poland and the Western Powers, chs. 2-4;
documents in Monachium and PDD 1938.
48
For this information, see Beck‘s instructions to Ambassador Lipski to present
Polish demands to the German government according to the attached map [not
preserved but marking territory claimed by Poland]; Lipski did so the same day,
see Monachium ,docs. 388, 390; PDD 1938, docs. 314, 316; Eng. trans.,
Diplomat in Berlin, docs. 108, 109; see also Cienciala in Lukes and Goldberg,
Munich Crisis, 60, 63.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 137
claimed the region. News of the SGP claim, as well as the expectation of
Western acceptance of German claims, were connected both with the
stationing of Polish troops on the border with Czechoslovakia and the Polish
government‘s attempt to stage a local Polish uprising in Zaolzie, which
fizzled out. It should be noted that on the first day of the Godesberg meeting,
Hitler demanded the withdrawal of Czech troops and the entry of German
troops by September 28, but extended the date the next day to October 1 and
sent his demands to Prague. Chamberlain was willing to accept them, but the
British government decided to take a stand and put the navy on alert, while
the French army called up the reservists. There was an international crisis
and the Czechs, who had accepted the cession of the predominantly German
part of the Sudetenland under Western pressure a few days earlier, were now
told they could mobilize. France and Britain, however, only wanted to save
face and sought a peaceful resolution of German claims, so they gratefully
accepted Mussolini‘s proposal of a conference. Thus, on September 29, at
Munich, the British Prime Minister Chamberlain, the French Prime Minister
Eduard Daladier, and the Italian head of state, Benito Mussolini, agreed to
Hitler‘s demand for the cession of the predominantly German part of the
Sudetenland to Germany. The German Army was to come into the area
beginning on October 1. An ―International Commission‖ — composed of the
German Foreign Secretary, the British and French ambassadors in Berlin and
a representative to be named by the Czechoslovak government, which had
not been consulted on these terms — was to oversee the occupation as well
as the plebiscites to be held in ethnically mixed areas. Britain and France
agreed to participate in an international guarantee of the new Czechoslovak
frontiers against unprovoked aggression, while Germany and Italy undertook
to guarantee it after the Hungarian and Polish claims had been settled. The
Czechoslovak government was simply informed of the Great Powers‘
agreement. (In fact, there were no plebiscites and no international guarantee
of the remaining Czechoslovak state.)
With the announcement of the Munich Conference decisions on the
morning of September 30, 1938, it was clear that German troops would enter
the Sudetenland beginning on October 1, while Poland (which claimed
Zaolzie) and Hungary (which claimed southern Slovakia and Subcarpathian
Ruthenia) were to wait three months for the examination of their claims
unless separate agreements were reached in the meanwhile. Everything now
depended on the decision of President Beneš: would he reject the Munich
verdict and fight — in which case France was bound to come into the war as
an ally of Czechoslovakia, and so would Poland as an ally of France — or
would he accept it? Beck discussed with the chief of the Polish General
Staff, General Wacław Stachiewicz, possible military aid to Czechoslovakia
if the latter fought, but Beneš accepted the Munich verdict at noon on
September 30. Three days earlier, the Polish government had made its
second explicit proposal tending to the same end: a plebiscite in the part of
138 The Polish Review
Zaolzie inhabited by a strong proportion of Poles — the areas were marked
on a map — followed by its immediate cession to Poland and a plebiscite on
disputed territories. This was to be the basis of a bilateral agreement on
Polish-Czechoslovak relations. The Polish envoy in Prague, Kazimierz
Papée, was empowered to begin preliminary negotiations, but there was no
answer until September 30. The Czechoslovak answer, handed to the Polish
envoy in Prague an hour after Beneš accepted the Munich decisions, was
received in Warsaw sometime in the afternoon of that day. It was judged
inadequate because, while accepting the need to rectify the frontier, it
rejected plebiscites and the immediate transfer of some territory. Instead, it
proposed the establishment of a Polish-Czechoslovak commission that
would begin its work on October 5, completing it between October 31 and
December 1.49
That same afternoon, Beck spoke at a special conference held at the
Royal Castle and proposed drastic Polish action. According to the notes of
Deputy Premier Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, Beck said that what happened at
Munich was reminiscent of the Four Power Pact projected four years earlier.
[This is a reference to the agreement by Britain, France, Germany and Italy
to revise disputed frontiers, signed in July 1934 but not implemented.] Beck
said he believed that one must quickly, and as drastically as possible, oppose
such methods of settling territorial disputes. Only determined action could
save Poland from another Munich. Speaking of Zaolzie, he warned that
immediate action was necessary because ―if we hesitate and delay, Germany
may seize this valuable and highly industrialized patch of land, eliminating
Polish claims to Zaolzie for a long time to come.‖ He then mentioned that
the Polish government had demanded, and received, the Czechoslovak
government‘s agreement in principle to equal treatment with the German
minority. Since Prague was to cede territories inhabited by Germans to
Germany, Poland must demand the same for her claim, and he proposed
sending an ultimatum to Prague. Kwiatkowski wrote that he was the only
person to disagree, suggesting a diplomatic procedure instead, but was
overruled. As for Beck himself, he wrote later that in view of the expansion
of German territory very near to the Polish frontier and especially to Zaolzie,
which was so valuable for Poland, also in view of the violation by the four
Powers of the sovereign rights of nations and the integrity of national
territory, he was convinced that Poland must immediately react to both these
developments. Therefore, he stated that in view of the above circumstances,
General [Władysław] Bortnowski ―must march into Zaolzie and against
Munich.‖ That evening, Beck told Szembek that the British ambassador told
him the Czechs had informed London they had agreed to the Polish demands
49
For the Polish demands to Prague of September 27 and the Czechoslovak
reply three days later, see Monachium, docs. 374, 439; PDD 1938, doc. 307
(Polish note of Sept. 27).
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 139
and would cede the counties of Cieszyn and Frysztat to Poland, while the
French ambassador said his government had told the Czechs they should
send a reply more in line with Polish demands.50
Consequent to the decision, an ultimatum was sent to Prague in a
coded radio message, also carried by a pilot dispatched in a special plane,
demanding the Czech evacuation and transfer of two western counties of
Zaolzie [Cieszyn and Frysztat] within twenty-four hours, while other issues
raised by the Polish note of September 27, including plebiscites in other
areas, would be left to a later understanding between the two governments.
The ultimatum had a time limit of noon, October 1. The French and British
ambassadors in Warsaw pleaded for Polish acceptance of the Czechoslovak
offer to negotiate; Chamberlain offered his mediation, President Franklin
Roosevelt appealed for a peaceful settlement of Polish claims, and the
French government was already pressing the Czechoslovak government to
accept Polish demands. By the evening of September 30 it was, however, too
late to stop the Polish action. The ultimatum was sent; it was presented in
Prague a little after midnight and accepted the next day, October 1, at 11.30
a.m. with a request for a one-hour extension for the formal acceptance (that
is, 1 p.m. on October 1), which was granted.51
Polish troops moved into the
counties of Cieszyn and Frysztat the next day, and the annexation of Zaolzie
was supported by all political parties as well as the vast majority of Poles.
Western public opinion condemned the Polish action, although the British
and French governments had advised the Czechs to accept the Polish
demands. Now, however, their media, along with Soviet media, had a field
day. Beck‘s name has been blackened by this action ever since,
50
For the Polish text of Kwiatkowski‘s notes of the castle conference of Sept.
30, 1938, see Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, ―Józef Beck,‖ Zeszyty Historyczne, Paris,
Institut Littéraire, 1986, nr.76, p.27; this was a reprint of the original published
in a Polish underground periodical, Arka, no. 12, Kraków, 1985; English
translation, Cienciala; see also same in Lukes and Goldberg, Munich Crisis, 66.
For Beck‘s version, see Cienciala, Beck, Polska polityka zagraniczna, p. 223,
trans. Cienciala. That day, Secretary of State Jan Szembek noted the ―special
conference‖ held at the President‘s office and the decision reached by its
members: the President [Ignacy Mościcki], Minister Beck, Marshal [Edward]
Śmigły [-Rydz], Premier [Felicjan] Sławoj-Składkowski and Kwiatkowski. He
also noted that the Czechoslovak reply was received just when the Polish
ultimatum was being drafted in his office, and was judged inadequate; see
Szembek 4: 284.
51
For the Polish ultimatum to Prague, see Monachium, docs. 446-450; PDD
1938, docs. 352, 353. On Western appeals to Poland and Czech acceptance of
the ultimatum, see Cienciala in Lukes and Goldstein, Munich 1938, p. 67; Polish
documents: Monachium, docs. 455-458; PDD 1938, docs.359 ff; Szembek 4:
440- 444.
140 The Polish Review
overshadowing the Western Powers‘ betrayal of Czechoslovakia,
particularly by its ally, France. This condemnation also came to overshadow
Beck‘s success in turning the British guarantee of Polish independence
(March 31, 1939) into a provisional mutual aid agreement (April 6, 1939)
and then alliance between the two countries (August 26, 1939).
What did Poland gain with Zaolzie? In economic terms, in the
period October 1938-September 1939 the region produced 52.2% of Polish
coking coal, 67% of its pig iron and 38% of its steel. Production in all three
categories was more than Poland needed but, given time, it would have
allowed a major increase in her armaments instead of strengthening Hitler,
while in the short term she could, of course, export the surplus. The PolishCzechoslovak
negotiations led to the cession of a few areas in Orava as well
as Spis and Čadca in the Tatra mountains, deemed important for military
reasons (mountain passes). Although most of the land gained was Polish, it
included some Slovak villages, which led to great Slovak resentment. All in
all, Poland gained a significant increase of its industrial production, 869,000
km. of land and 258,000 mostly Polish-speaking people.52
The Polish use of the ultimatum in demanding Zaolzie from
Czechoslovakia is known; what is less known is, as mentioned earlier, that
Beck also tried to achieve three other goals on 1938. The first was the
creation of a common Polish-Hungarian frontier in Subcarpathian Ruthenia,
which failed then due to regional rivalries (see below), to be annexed six
months later in mid-March 1939. The second was the inclusion of an
autonomous Slovakia within Hungary. As it turned out, Hitler established an
―independent‖ Slovakia at the same time as he seized the Czech lands in
mid-March 1939, but minus the predominantly Hungarian-speaking areas
granted earlier to Hungary. Beck‘s third and most important goal was
Hitler‘s formal recognition of the status of the Free City of Danzig and of
the Polish-German frontier. When, however, Ambassador Lipski presented
all these proposals to the Führer on September 20, Chamberlain had already
52
For the economic and population figures, see Piotr S. Wandycz, The Price of
Freedom. A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present
(London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 208. For a detailed description of the
industry of Zaolzie as well as Austrian and Czech census figures and ethnic
maps, see Dr. B[ogusław] Kożusznik, The Problem of Cieszyn Silesia: Facts &
Documents (London, October 1943). (The back cover has the address: Central
Depot, 91Queen‘s Court, Queensway, London, W.2.) The author, a physician
from Zaolzie, was at the time — as stated on the cover — a member of the
Polish National Council, an advisory body consisting of the leaders of political
parties. For maps of Zaolzie as annexed by Poland in early October 1938, as
well as the Spis, Beskid, Pieniny mountains, and Orava areas annexed on the
basis of agreements signed on November 30, 1938, see Monachium, 519-522,
Wikipeda, Śląsk Cieszyński.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 141
signified his agreement in principle to Hitler‘s demands for the cession of
the preponderantly German-speaking Sudetenland on the basis of selfdetermination;
the British and French leaders had agreed to this and
mandated the cession to Czechoslovakia. Thus Poland had no leverage in
Berlin. Indeed, Lipski‘s proposals, made on Beck‘s express instructions,
elicited Hitler‘s reply that Danzig was covered by the Polish-German
declaration of 1934 — but also the suggestion of a 30 meter-wide German
Corridor through the Polish Corridor to accommodate a superhighway
connected with railways.53
This was the opening shot in German diplomatic
pressure on Poland to agree to the return of the Free City to Germany, with
guaranteed Polish rights, and to an extra-territorial German Corridor through
the Polish Corridor. Later German proposals included compensation for
Poland in Soviet Ukraine. The Polish government played for time and finally
rejected the German demands on March 25, 1939, five days before being
offered, and accepting, the British guarantee of Poland‘s independence.54
As mentioned earlier, Beck‘s major regional goal during the
Czechoslovak crisis of 1938 was to secure a common frontier with Hungary
in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. This was to be the keystone of his projected
Polish-Hungarian-Romanian (and possibly also Yugoslav) bloc, which he
had briefly mentioned to American Ambassador William Bullitt in June
1938. The goal of ―The Third Europe‖ was to stem further German
expansion in Eastern Europe. Beck worked for this together with the
Hungarians and tried to secure Romanian support. He discussed it with King
Carol II of Romania in mid-October 1938, but the project failed to get off
the ground. This was partly due to Romanian reluctance to give up receiving
military supplies from Czechoslovakia, and partly to the clash of Hungarian
and Romanian claims– not to speak of the Hungarian revisionist demand
regarding Transylvania — but most of all due to the lack of any Western
53
Lipski report on conversation with Hitler, September 20, 1938, Monachium,
doc. 246; Kornat, PDD 1938, doc. 248. For the English translation, see
Jędrzejewicz, ed., Diplomat in Berlin, 408-412. The author of this article erred
in her book, stating that Hitler proposed a thirty mile–wide German Corridor
through the Polish Corridor, see Poland and the Western Powers, 119.
54
On German demands, Beck‘s play for time and the British guarantee, joined
by France, of March 31, 1939, see Cienciala, Poland and the Western Powers,
ch. 6, 7; also idem, with the benefit of French and British archival and published
documents unavailable earlier, ―Poland in British and French Policy in 1939:
Determination to Fight — or Avoid War?‖ TPR 34, no. 3: 199-226; slightly
abbreviated reprint in Patrick Finney, ed., The Origins of the Second World War
(London: Arnold, 1997), 413-433.
142 The Polish Review
support for this endeavor. Mussolini, who wanted to expand Italian influence
in the Balkans, had been inclined to support the project but backed out.55
Thus, all that Poland gained from the Czechoslovak crisis was
Zaolzie. Could Beck have satisfied Polish territorial claims on
Czechoslovakia — claims that had the support of the majority of Poles at the
time — in some way other than by the threat of force? On the one hand, the
Czechoslovak government‘s agreement of September 30 to the rectification
of the frontier along with an offer of negotiations seemed to offer Poland an
acceptable way of obtaining the territory both without Western mediation
and without incurring the black public image that has stuck to Beck ever
since. On the other hand, the procedure proposed by the Czechs would take
some time, which Hitler could use to pressure the Polish government into
accepting German demands regarding Danzig and the Corridor. These were,
in fact, formulated officially to Lipski as ―suggestions‖ by Ribbbentrop in
late October 1938. In exchange, Ribbentrop offered the possible extension of
the Polish-German agreement (1934) for twenty-five years. He also
proposed that Poland join the Anti-Comintern Pact (Germany, Italy, Japan)
and suggested a joint German-Polish policy toward the USSR. Lipski
warned Ribbentrop that he did not see the possibility of a Polish-German
understanding on the basis of reuniting Danzig with Germany. He did not
speak about the Corridor issue, and the Polish government never took up the
Anti-Comintern proposal. It should be noted that at this time there was more
talk by Danzig Nazis about the city‘s return to the motherland and therefore
more friction with Poland.56
Hitler might well have found a pretext to move
German troops into Zaolzie — perhaps in answer to an appeal by the local
German minority, supported by the Sudeten German Party — and then offer
it to Poland. In his conference speech of September 30, Beck had mentioned
not only the danger of German expansion very near the Polish frontier,
especially Zaolzie, but also that only drastic Polish action could prevent
another Munich. He presumably had in mind a meeting of the same Western
55
For ―The Third Europe‖ project, see Kornat, Polityka równowagi, ch. 7; also
Cienciala, Poland and the Western Powers, ch. 5.
56
See Lipski‘s note on his conversation with Ribbentrop at Berchtesgaden on
October 24, 1938, full Polish text in PDD 1938, doc. 400, 729-730. English
translation in Jędrzejewicz, ed., Diplomat in Berlin, doc. 124, 452-453; partial
reprint in Włodzimierz Borodziej, Sławomir Dębski, eds., Polish Documents on
Foreign Policy, 24 October 1938-30 September 1939 (Warsaw: The Polish
Institute of International Affairs, 2009), doc. 1, p. 3, henceforth PDFP. On
Danzig Nazis and calls for the return to Germany in late October 1938, see Jan
Szembek‘s note on his conversation with the Polish Commissioner General in
the city, Marian Chodacki, October 28, 1938, Szembek 4: 333. Ambassador
Lipski viewed the tense situation in Danzig as part of a German offensive to
regain the city, ibid., 334.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 143
heads of state in three months‘ time to examine — and settle — Polish and
Hungarian claims if no agreements had been reached in the meantime. They
might even consider settling Hitler‘s demands on the Danzig-Corridor issue
— in his favor.
Ultimately, even though Polish-Czechoslovak negotiations on the
transfer of remaining territory were concluded and agreements were signed
on November 30, 1938, the form of presenting its demands to Prague two
months earlier, that is, the ultimatum, gave Poland a very bad public image
both at the time and in the history books. Beck has been charged recently by
a Polish historian with ruining Poland‘s reputation, or at least strengthening
its image as a de facto ally of Germany, isolating it from its French ally and
other Western states.57
One may note, however, that Poland‘s reputation was
already bad, due to accusations regarding the Polish-German Declaration of
Non-Aggression as well as the formally good relations between the two
countries since that time, which were suspect to and greatly resented by
France. As noted earlier, the declaration was interpreted as a secret alliance
by most communist sympathizers and socialists in Western Europe, not to
mention the USSR. Beck also knew that if Hitler publicized German
demands regarding Danzig and the Polish Corridor, they would meet with
general Western support, particularly in Britain. Finally, one may assume
that, since Western governments and public opinion welcomed the Munich
Conference decisions on Czechoslovakia as saving the peace, they would
very likely have accepted peaceful Polish-Czechoslovak negotiations for the
transfer of Zaolzie. Therefore, it was not the official principle of Poland‘s
demand for equal treatment of the Polish and German minorities of
Czechoslovakia on the basis of self-determination, but rather the method
chosen to secure the territory that proved unacceptable to Western
governments and public opinion. In hindsight, it seems that Beck should
have accepted the Czechoslovak offer of September 30, even at the risk of a
sudden German takeover. It would be unrealistic, however, to expect such a
decision from the contemporary Polish decision-makers, led by Beck, so the
ultimatum can be judged as regrettable, but it must be viewed in the context
of the Munich agreement as well as Polish interests, public opinion, and the
dramatic conditions of the time.
The Polish ultimatum to Prague certainly led to frosty Polish
relations with France and Britain. Relations with France soon recovered,
however, and Beck worked successfully to improve relations with Britain.
At the end of November, he instructed the Polish Ambassador in London,
57
For these charges, see Stanisław Żerko, Stosunki polsko-niemieckie 1938-1939
[Polish-German Relations 1938-1939] (Poznań: Instytut Zachodni, 1998), 464,
and idem, ―Dylematy Józefa Becka‖ [The Dilemmas of Józef Beck] in 1939. Jak
rozpętała się II wojna światowa,‖ in Polityka, wydanie specjalne [How the
Second World War Broke Out. Special edition of Polityka] 3/2009, 67-68.
144 The Polish Review
Edward Raczyński, to see British Foreign Secretary Halifax and explain
Polish foreign policy aims to him. With regard to Czechoslovakia, the
ambassador was to say that Poland had been ready to settle her demands
regarding that country together with the Western Powers [that is, at Munich].
Since that proved unfeasible, she did so independently ―without any debts of
gratitude to anyone, including Germany.‖ (The ambassador carried out
Beck‘s instruction on December 15). 58
The Beck initiative began a period of
improved relations which accompanied Hitler‘s destruction of the
Czechoslovak State in mid-March 1939, leading to the British guarantee of
Polish independence at the end of that month, to a provisional mutual aid
agreement a few days later, and finally to a treaty of alliance in late August
1939.
Soviet-Polish relations also improved after a short period of tension
caused by the Soviet threat of September 23, 1938, to abrogate the PolishSoviet
Non-Aggression Pact if Polish troops moved into Czechoslovakia.
Beck answered the same day that the Polish government was not obliged to
explain its policy to anyone.59
This was in keeping with his belief that Soviet
policy had the character of a demonstration rather than action, that is, for
show. It should be noted, however, that on September 27 visible Soviet
military preparations were reported by Polish diplomats in the Minsk region,
and there was a Polish protest against Soviet planes over-flying the
frontier.60
It was no coincidence that the Czechoslovak reply, dated
September 22, to the Polish demand of September 21 for an immediate
decision on Polish inhabited territories analogous to the Czechoslovak
decision on the German problem — i.e., the cession of Zaolzie — arrived in
Warsaw on September 26, just before Soviet military activity on the PolishSoviet
frontier was observed. In fact, Beneš had asked for Soviet pressure on
Poland.61
Soviet as well as some Western historians have claimed that the
58
PDD 1938, docs. 435, 448; English translation of Beck‘s instruction, PDFP
doc. 19; see also Cienciala, ―Minister Józef Beck i Ambassador Edward
Raczyński a zbliżenie polsko-brytyjskie w okresie październik 1938 — styczeń
1939‖ [Minister Beck, Ambassador Raczyński and the Polish-British
Rapprochement in the Period October 1938 — January 1939] in Henryk Bułhak
et al., eds., Z dziejów polityki i dyplomacji polskiej. Studia poświęcone pamięci
Edwarda Raczyńskiego, Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na wychodźstwie
[From the History of Polish Policy and Diplomacy. Studies in Memory of
Edward Raczyński, President of the Polish Republic in Exile] (Warsaw:
Wydawnictwo Sejmowe,1994), 348-363.
59
See PDD 1938, docs. 268, 273.
60
PDD 1938, docs. 297, 317.
61
Czechoslovak letter to President Mościcki, Sept. 22, 1938, Szembek 4: 438-
439; Monachium, doc. 360; on Beneš appeal to Moscow, see Cienciala in Lukes
and Goldstein, Munich Crisis, 61-62.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 145
Soviet Union stood ready to help the Czechs if only the Red Army could
transit through either Poland or Romania,62
although it seems more likely
that the Red Army might have moved into Poland. There is, however, no
documented Soviet request to the Polish Government to agree to the Red
Army‘s transit through Poland to Czechoslovakia, nor is there a documented
plan of Soviet military operations. Also, it seems rather unlikely that Stalin
would have tangled with Hitler even if France and Britain had done so —
and from reading their diplomatic correspondence he knew that they did not
want to fight Germany but sought a peaceful satisfaction of Hitler‘s
demand.63
If the Western Powers had given strong indications of readiness
to fight Germany, it seems possible that Stalin could have sent the Red
Army into southeastern Poland. In fact, according to the memoirs of General
Maurice Gamelin, then head of the French General Staff, on September 26
62
Hugh Ragsdale shows, on the basis of declassified Soviet documents, that the
Red Army vastly increased its forces on the Soviet frontier with Poland in late
September 1938 (when Britain placed her navy on alert and France called up her
reservists), suggesting they could have marched into Bessarabia (now Moldova
and Transdnistria). See Ragsdale, The Soviets, the Munich Crisis, and the
Coming of World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); for
the author‘s earlier statements on this topic and comments by Mark Kramer, see
―Soviet Actions during the Munich Crisis,‖ Kennan Institute Report 15, no. 18
(1998). On Red Army concentrations on the Polish frontier, see also M.I.
Myeltukhin, ―Krasnaya Armya w uslovyakh narastaniya mezhdunarodnogo
krizisa 1938-1939‖ [The Red Army in Conditions of the Growing International
Crisis, 1938-1939] in N.S. Lebedeva, Russian Academy of Sciences, and M.
Wołoś, Permanent Representative of The Polish Academy of Sciences, Y.K.
Korshunv compiler, Myukhenskoye Soglashenye 1938 goda: The Munich
Agreement of 1938: History and Modernity [Moscow: Russian Academy of
Sciences, Institute of World History, 2009], 231-232. For a rejection of the
claim of Soviet readiness to help Czechoslovakia in 1938, see Igor Lukes,
―Stalin and Czechoslovakia in 1938-39: An Autopsy of a Myth,‖ in Lukes and
Goldstein, Munich Crisis, 13-47; critical review by Milan Hauner, International
History Review 23 (March 2001): 195-196.
63
On diplomatic correspondence from and to London, Paris, and Prague,
available to Stalin and Molotov in the 1930s, see Vasili S. Khristoforov, Chief
of Registration and Archival Fonds (Collections), Department of the Federal
Security Service of Russia, in the Russian-language volume edited by
Myukhenskoye Soglashenie, 342-343. On the five former Cambridge students,
then members of the Foreign Office, who supplied Soviet agents with
intelligence on British policy, see Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin,
The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the
KGB (New York: Basic Books,1999), ch. 4; on a Soviet agent in the F.O. cipher
department, see D. C. Watt, ―Francis Herbert King: A Soviet Source in the
Foreign Office,‖ Intelligence and National Security, 3, no. 4 (1988): 62-82.
146 The Polish Review
— that is, during the crisis — the Soviet military attaché in Paris spoke of
thirty divisions and cavalry units on the frontier with Poland, as well as
tanks and most of the Soviet air force.64
As mentioned earlier, no military
plan for such action has surfaced so far, but the pro-Soviet Czechoslovak
envoy in Moscow, Zdenek Fierlinger, reported the expectation that in case of
―a favorable development,‖ the USSR would try to establish a common
border with Czechoslovakia.65
This would, of course, have meant Soviet
annexation of at least part of southeastern Poland (former East Galicia).
Indeed, as Richard Raack has shown, Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign
Affairs Vladimir P. Potemkin wrote, under an assumed name, about a new
partition of Poland in Pravda before the Munich Conference in 1938; he also
told a French diplomat in October 1938 that it was inevitable. Stalin, of
course, shared Lenin‘s view that there would be a second ―imperialist‖ war,
and saw it as the prime occasion for Soviet action and expansion. As he said
at a party conference in 1925, if such a war broke out, the USSR would
come in to add the decisive weight to the scales — the weight that would tip
them.66
In Potemkin‘s article and his later statement, Stalin might have been
advertising his terms for aligning either with Hitler or the Western Powers in
the expected ―imperialist‖ war. Ultimately, he chose Hitler.
Some historians and other authors writing on the history of the
immediate prewar period claim even today that Hitler‘s demands were
reasonable and should have been accepted by the Poles, thus preventing the
outbreak of the World War II. This claim ignores the fact that Hitler was not
a reasonable and responsible statesman and that his aim was to build a great
German empire. In mid-March 1939, he broke his word, given at Munich,
that he would not seek territory with non-German populations, by annexing
the Czech lands and destroying the Czechoslovak state. It is also known that,
on hearing of the Polish rejection of his demands for Danzig and a German
Corridor through the Polish Corridor, the Führer issued a directive on March
25 to the head of the German General Staff. He wrote that, not wishing to
drive the Poles into the arms of Great Britain, he did not want to resolve the
Danzig issue by force. He would consider a military occupation of the city
only if the Polish government indicated it could not justify a voluntary
surrender to its people and would therefore welcome a [German] ―fait
accompli.‖ After citing the above statement, the British historian A. J. P.
64
See Maurice Gamelin, Servir ( Paris: Plon, 1946) 2: 356, cit. Cienciala,
Poland and the Western Powers, 132.
65
For Fierlinger‘s report of September 23, 1938, see Cienciala in Lukes and
Goldberg, Munich Crisis, 62-63.
66
On Stalin and the second imperialist war; his plans for Poland; Potemkin‘s
article and oral statements on the partition of Poland and Soviet-German
negotiations in 1939, see R.C. Raack, ―His Question Asked and Answered.
Stalin on ‗Whither Poland?‘‖ TPR 55 (2010), no. 2: 195- 216.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 147
Taylor concluded that ―Hitler‘s objective was alliance with Poland, not her
destruction.‖67
He did so by omitting the next paragraph where the Führer
wrote that a resolution of the problem in the near future required favorable
political conditions. Poland would then be so beaten down that she would
not count as a political factor for decades. Hitler envisaged extending the
German frontier from the eastern coast of East Prussia to the eastern tip of
[Upper] Silesia, but noted that out-settling [Poles] and resettling [Germans]
were still open questions.68
Indeed, although Hitler repeated his allegedly
reasonable demands in his speech to the Reichstag of April 28, 1939, his
primary goal was always to gain Lebensraum for the German people, which
he envisaged in Poland and the USSR. As he told Göring and high German
army officers on May 23, 1939, Danzig was not the objective — it was to
gain Lebensraum in the East, and settle the land with Germans to secure
nourishment for the German people.69
Despite the fact that the above documents have been available in
print for over fifty years, some Anglo-American and Russian historians still
express the view that Hitler‘s demands should have been accepted and that,
by rejecting them, Poland bears responsibility for outbreak of World War II.
Taylor also called the Poles ―political gamblers‖ and opined that sober
statesmen would have surrendered, seeing the dangers confronting them and
their country‘s inadequate means to deal with them.70
This view was then
67
A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1961; Atheneum, New York, 1961), 210. This was also the theme of
Patrick J. Buchanan‘s book Churchill, Hitler and Unnecessary War: How
Britain Lost its Empire and the West lost the World (New York: Basic Books,
2008). The best critique of Taylor‘s treatment of Polish foreign policy is by Piotr
S. Wandycz, ―Poland Between East and West,‖ in Gordon Martel, ed., The
Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: The A.J. P. Taylor debate after
twenty-five years (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 187-209.
68
Documents on German Foreign Policy, D (London, Washington, D.C. 1956),
6, doc. 99. Hitler‘s proposed annexation line indicates he meant to recover
Prussian Poland as it existed in 1914, plus all of Upper Silesia, which was also
part of Prussia at that time.
69
See Documents cit. above, doc. 433. For the most authoritative interpretation
of Hitler‘s foreign policy, see Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of
Hitler’s Germany: Starting World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1980), and idem, Germany, Hitler and World War II: Essays in Modern
German and World History (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1995).
70
Taylor, Origins, 251. For a recent Russian claim that Poland was to blame for
the outbreak of World War II, see Sergei Kovalev‘s article on the Russian
government website, May 25, 2009, Window on Eurasia, June 4, 2009, and the
report in Gazeta Wyborcza, June 6, 2009; it was removed after a protest by the
Polish government.
148 The Polish Review
extrapolated into a Polish tendency to commit national suicide. One
American historian even cites Balzac‘s statement ―You only have to show a
Pole a precipice and he will throw himself over it.‖71
Niall Ferguson also
writes in this vein, stating that in 1939 the Poles ―were suicidally determined
to fight.‖ 72
Poles were not suicidal in 1939 — after all, at that time they had
alliances with Britain and France — but Poland‘s terrible fate inspired even
some Polish historians to argue that Poland should have joined Hitler in
attacking the USSR, thus avoiding the enormous losses she suffered in
World War II. One of them even imagined Beck and Hitler presiding over a
victory parade in Red Square.73
Beck, however, understood what Hitler had
in mind for Poland if she bowed to his demands. The Polish foreign
minister‘s comment on the idea of a Polish-German war against the USSR
— recorded when he was interned in Romania — reads: ―We would have
defeated Russia, and afterwards we would be taking Hitler‘s cows out to
pasture in the Urals.‖74
Although Beck did not know it, Nazi plans
envisaged, after victory over the USSR, deporting much of the Polish
population to Siberia and settling the land with Germans.
As mentioned earlier, Beck managed to turn the British guarantee of
Polish independence of March 31, 1939, into a provisional agreement on
mutual aid, signed on April 6, which became a treaty of mutual aid — that
is, an alliance — on August 25, 1939. Diplomatic historians of this period
know that the British and French governments sought not to help or
safeguard Poland as such, but rather to prevent or at least delay German
71
For the quotation from Balzac (without giving the source), see Roland N.
Stromberg, Europe in the Twentieth Century, 4th
ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1997), 239.
72
See Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and
the Descent of the West (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 379; reviewed by
Cienciala in TPR 53, no. 1 (2008): 97-103.
73
See ―Rozmowa w Profesorem P. Wieczorkiewiczem‖ [A Conversation with
Prof. P. Wieczorkiewicz] Rzeczpospolita, 17 September 2005. Grzegorz Górski
pursued the same train of thought in his book Wrzesień 1939, rozważania
alternatywne [September 1939; Alternative Considerations] (Warsaw: Bellona,
2000).
74
Beck statement, as recorded in the unpublished memoirs of Polish diplomat
Jan Bociański in The Józef Piłsudski Institute, London, Collection 50, p. 57, cit.
Marek Kornat, ―Polska między Niemcami a Związkiem Sowieckim (1938-
1939)‖ [Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union, 1938-1939], in
Sławomir Dębski and Mikhail Narinski, eds., Kryzys 1939 roku w
interpretacjach polskich i rosyjskich historyków [The Crisis of 1939 in the
Interpretations of Polish and Russian Historians] (Warsaw: Polski Instytut
Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2009), 361.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 149
aggression against Poland, which would mean war. Beck, for his part,
believed that Poland‘s alliances would prevent a German attack, giving him
the chance to reach an agreement both satisfactory to Hitler and protecting
vital Polish interests. Both London and Paris, however, hoped for another
international conference — though this time with the loser, Poland, present
— to transfer Danzig and the Polish Corridor to Germany, and they made no
plans to attack Germany as they committed to do if she attacked their ally.
The Polish government, especially Beck, cannot be blamed for believing that
Poland‘s allies would carry out their commitments. It was, after all,
reasonable to expect them to attack Germany when she was fighting Poland,
rather than wait for Hitler to attack them with full force in their turn, which
is what actually happened. Nor can Beck and the Polish government be
blamed for preventing a Franco-British-Soviet alliance in 1939.75
Stalin was
clearly unwilling to go to war with Nazi Germany not only in 1938 and 1939
but also in 1941. He knew the Red Army was not ready to fight the German
Wehrmacht, so he refused to believe warnings of Hitler‘s plan to attack the
USSR and reports of German troop concentrations on the Soviet western
borders right up to June 22, 1941.
In conclusion, what kind of verdict does Józef Beck deserve?
Taylor‘s judgment that ―Beck, the foreign minister, always possessed
complete self-confidence, though not much else‖ indicates his ignorance of
Polish foreign policy. Furthermore, in his book he called the appeasement of
Germany at Munich ―the triumph of all that was best and most enlightened
in British life.‖ Few historians today know that Taylor, who had opposed
Munich in 1938, wrote this when he viewed war as the greatest of all evils
and was actively supporting the movement for unilateral British nuclear
disarmament.76
Beck must have been anathema to Taylor for rejecting
75
On French and British aims in 1939 and their dishonest military commitments
to Poland, see Cienciala, ―Poland in British and French Policy in 1939:
Determination of Fight — or Avoid War,‖ in Patrick Finney, ed., The Origins of
the Second World War (London: Arnold, 1997), 413-433; this is an abbreviated
version of the article published in TPR 34, no. 3 (1989): 199-226. On Poland
and the French, British-Soviet and German-Soviet negotiations preceding the
signature of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, see Cienciala, ―The Nazi-Soviet Pact
of August 23, 1939: When did Stalin Decide to Align with Hitler, and was
Poland the culprit?‖ in M.B.B. Biskupski, ed., Ideology, Politics and Diplomacy
in East Central Europe (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003),
147-226.
76
On Beck and Munich, see A.J.P. Taylor, Origins, 80, 189. On Taylor‘s
support for unilateral British nuclear disarmament while writing the book, see
A.J. P. Taylor, A Personal History (New York: Atheneum, 1983) 225-230.
When the author of this article met Taylor in London in 1968 and asked whether
150 The Polish Review
Hitler‘s proposals, then resisting German aggression, and thus setting off
World War II.
In view of the knowledge available to historians today, Beck can be
seen as a remarkable Polish statesman who did the best that could be done to
steer Poland between the Scylla of Nazi Germany and the Charybdis of the
USSR. He is charged with being misled too long by the belief that Hitler
intended to maintain good relations with Poland.77
This is, at best, a
misinterpretation. Like most statesmen of the time, Beck did not believe that
Hitler would risk another war with the Western Powers, which is not the
same thing as trusting in Hitler‘s good intentions toward Poland. Moreover,
in 1936-38 he tried to interest the British in Polish military help for France,
Belgium and Holland in case of war, and hinted in June 1938 at the
possibility of a Polish-Hungarian-Romanian bloc which could fight
Germany in the East if Britain and France fought her in the West. He did not
oppose a compromise solution to the Danzig problem as long as it did not
threaten vital Polish interests, but what Hitler wanted was the end of Polish
independence.77
Beck does not deserve the charge of cooperating with
Hitler, either in 1934 or in 1938.78
The Polish-German Non-Aggression
Declaration did not contain any secret, anti-Soviet protocols, nor did it ruin
or undermine the French alliance system in Eastern Europe, since France
had been trying to neuter or even get rid of her alliance with Poland at least
since the Locarno Treaties of 1925. In 1938, expecting the demise of
Czechoslovakia, Beck was a realist in preparing to gain Zaolzie for Poland
— acting parallel to but not with, or for Hitler — and in trying to obtain
German agreement to a common Polish-Hungarian frontier as the keystone
for a future anti-German bloc, while also seeking a formal German
recognition of the status of Danzig as a Free City and of the Polish-German
frontier. Finally, he always believed that Poland could never side with Berlin
in a European war.
In a rare, positive evaluation of Beck‘s policy, written almost fifty
years after opposing his proposal of sending an ultimatum to
Czechoslovakia, Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski wrote that the whole, layered
historical past and even tactical arguments favored Beck‘s policy toward
Czechoslovakia in 1938. He noted that Wincenty Witos, head of the Polish
he had written the book to provoke a reaction, he angrily replied: ―I meant every
word I said.‖
77
For a critical study of Beck‘s policies in 1938-39, see Żerko, Stosunki polskoniemieckie.
For a polemic with his views, see Marek Kornat, ―W związku z
książką Stanisława Żerki o stosunkach polsko-niemieckich 1938-1939‖ [In
Connection with Stanisław Żerko‘s Book on Polish-German Relations, 1938-
1939], Dzieje Najnowsze, 2000, nr. 4: 71-90.
78
See Gerhard L. Weinberg, ―A Proposed Compromise over Danzig in 1939?‖
in his Germany, Hitler and World War II, 121-128.
The Foreign Policy of Józef Piłsudski and Józef Beck 1926-1939… 151
Peasant Party, then in Czechoslovak exile, condemned Prague‘s policy
regarding Zaolzie, while Maciej Rataj, former speaker of the Sejm, told the
Czech journalist Vacláv Fiala he could not follow any other policy than
Beck. Kwiatkowski concluded with a judgment of Beck‘s foreign policy,
especially in 1939:
Finally, in the name of objectivity, one has to say that it is easy to
criticize Beck‘s actions because, like every active individual he
made many errors and mistakes. But it is very difficult even today,
after the great drama of war, to find another, fundamentally
different alternative to Polish policy at that time. Two such different
concepts were then hiding in dark, political corners of Poland. One
proclaimed the desire for a complete capitulation to the Soviets with
the alleged goal of defending Poland against the expected Nazi
aggression. The other suggested fraternization with Hitler against
the expansion of greedy Stalinist communism. Beck decisively and
categorically rejected these two depraved political options. He
chose a rocky, difficult road full of visible and hidden dangers, but a
simple and Polish road.79
Professor Adam Daniel Rotfeld, Polish Foreign Minister in 2005,
has also praised Beck. He reminded his fellow Poles on May 5, 2009, of
Beck‘s speech delivered in the Polish parliament exactly seventy years
earlier. On that day, Beck gave the Polish reply to Hitler‘s speech of April
28, in which the Führer had abrogated both the German-British naval
agreement of 1935 and the Polish-German Declaration of Non-Aggression
of 1934, while repeating his demands for the return of Danzig and a German
Corridor through the Polish Corridor. Beck ended his speech with the
statement:
Peace is a valuable and desirable thing. Our generation, which has
shed its blood in several wars, surely deserves a period of peace. But
peace, like almost everything in this world, has its price, high but
definable. We in Poland do not recognize the concept of ―peace at
any price.‖ There is only one thing in the life of men, nations and
states which is without price, and that is honor.80
79
On Witos and Rataj, see Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, ―Józef Beck,‖ Zeszyty
Historyczne nr. 76 (see n. 49 above), p. 27; conclusion on Beck, p. 32.
80
PDFR, doc. 108; reprint from The Polish White Book (New York: Greystone
Press and Wydawnictwo ―Rój‖ in exile, 1942), doc. 77. See also J.H. Harley,
The Authentic Biography of Colonel Beck (based on the Polish of Conrad
Wrzos, Introduction by Count Edward Raczyński) (London: Hutchinson &
Company, n.d.), 184-193, photograph facing p. 156. The book was most likely
152 The Polish Review
Rotfeld commented that Beck‘s great merit was not to give in to Hitler‘s
blackmail. His statement in the Polish parliament was welcomed by Poles; it
showed courage and reasonable political thinking. The Polish Foreign
Minister could not prevent Nazi aggression, but he was responsible for the
fact that the German invasion of Poland met with armed resistance.81
Historians might well consider the most likely results of the
alternative history consequent on the acceptance of Hitler‘s demands by
Beck in 1939. Germany was not ready to invade the USSR in the fall of
1939, even with a satellite Poland in tow, but she could have attacked France
as Hitler had planned to do after defeating Poland. His generals, however,
persuaded him to wait due to severe losses by the Luftwaffe, which also
used up its entire bomb stock in Poland. He would have defeated France
even faster than in 1940 and then demanded — as Hitler did in summer 1940
— that Britain accept German domination over Europe. In the fall of 1939,
Britain would have been much weaker than it was a year later, and who
knows if Churchill would have been as successful then in getting the
government to reject Hitler‘s proposals as he was in May 1940?82
As it
turned out, Poland‘s lonely fight against Nazi Germany gained precious time
for her allies. It was wasted by France, whose military leaders rejected the
idea of a repeat, successful German Blitzkrieg in the West, particularly in
France. But it was used to the full by Britain, which produced about 600
fighter planes per month between fall 1939 and fall 1940. Some of these
planes were flown by the Polish pilots who made up ten percent of RAF
pilots active in the Battle of Britain in mid-September 1940.83
Beck died of tuberculosis in a dilapidated village schoolhouse in
Romania on June 5, 1944, on the eve of the successful Allied landing in
northwestern France. He was buried in a Bucharest cemetery, but his
remains were repatriated and interred with honors in the Powązki Military
Cemetery in Warsaw on May 24, 1991. He deserves a fair reassessment for
continuing Piłsudski‘s policy of equilibrium between Nazi Germany and the
USSR, working to secure important gains for Poland in the Czechoslovak
crisis of 1938, and finally as the statesman who refused even to consider
Poland as a vassal state, let alone an ally of Germany.
printed in summer or early fall 1939; it was taken out of circulation by the new
Polish government established in Paris on September 30, 1939.
81
Report on Adam D. Rotfeld‘s speech, cited in Gazeta Wyborcza, May 5, 2009.
82
See John Lukacs, The Duel: Hitler vs. Churchill, 10 May — 31 July 1940
(London: Bodley Head, 1990).
83
For a recent work on Polish pilots and their service in World War II Britain,
see Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud, A Question of Honor: The Kościuszko
Squadron; Forgotten Heroes of World War II (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2003).