Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

Discussions on all aspects of Poland during the Second Polish Republic and the Second World War. Hosted by Piotr Kapuscinski.
michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#46

Post by michael mills » 19 Oct 2016, 01:12

The first threats, after several direct refusals, were made on March, 21 1939, during talks between Lipski and Ribbentrop:
Ribbentrop's words were hardly a dire threat. Rather they were a gentle admonition to the Polish Government not to pursue its aim of annexing Slovakia or partitioning it with Hungary, but accept that its separate existence independent of both Poland and Hungary was now guaranteed by Germany.

Ribbentrop was not threatening Polish independence, rather he was warning it not to pursue expansionist aims to the south, beyond those which it had already achieved with Germany's assistance (ie Cieszyn and bits of Slovak territory).

Germany of course had nothing against Polish expansion to the East, and had already unofficially proposed to it a division of a conquered Soviet Ukraine along the line of the Dnepr River.
Where is the line? It is our territory, but not only that.
The line also involves the non-acceptance by our state, regarding the drastic spot that Danzig has always been, of any unilateral suggestion to be imposed on us. And, regardless of what Danzig is worth as an object (in my opinion it may perhaps be worth quite a lot, but this is of no concern at the moment), under the present circumstances it has become a symbol.
Danzig did not belong to Poland, it was an independent state in which Poland had certain economic rights, in particular the free use of its port. the overwhelmingly German population of Danzig had freely expressed its desire for reunification with Germany, something that Poland should not have opposed provided that its legitimate economic interests were preserved, which Germany had undertaken to do in its offers to Poland.

The Polish Government's refusal to accede to the legitimate aspirations of the people of Danzig in 1939 was yet another example of how the major disasters that have befallen the Polish people in history have been a direct result of the delusions of grandeur of the Polish ruling class.
The overriding aim of the Polish state after over a hundred years of foreign occupation was the preservation of national sovereignty at all cost. This meant that no encroachment upon it, reminiscent of the events leading to the partitions, would be tolerated.
As I wrote above, the disasters that befell Poland were a result of the delusions of grandeur of its ruling class. In 1939 Poland's national sovereignty was in no way under threat from Germany, which was only asking Poland to make reasonable compromises over Danzig and access to East Prussia, in return for an alliance.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#47

Post by michael mills » 19 Oct 2016, 01:19

The threatened/non-threatened part was clearly to be decided by the British.
Historically incorrect.

In a discussion with the US Ambassador Kennedy, on the morning of 31 March 1939, before Chamberlain issued his open-ended guarantee to Poland in the Commons, the Permanent Head of the British Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan, told him about the forthcoming guarantee, and in response to a query from Kennedy advised him that it would be left to Poland to decide whether a threat to its independence existed.

The text of the discussion between Kennedy and Cadogan is published in FRUS, and I have posted it on this Forum a number of times. I guess I will just have to go to the trouble of doing so yet again.


User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#48

Post by wm » 19 Oct 2016, 01:54

Statements made to some foreign diplomat, but not included in the guarantee or the treaty were of little value. In time of need the British (perfidious Albion as some said) could have used the literally meaning to their advantage. Mr Kennedy certainly wouldn't come to the rescue.

GregSingh
Member
Posts: 3877
Joined: 21 Jun 2012, 02:11
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#49

Post by GregSingh » 19 Oct 2016, 02:07

The point is that those nationalist forces in Poland that desired westward expansion to the Oder-Neisse Line, essentially the opponents of Pilsudski's regime, saw in the Guarantee and the Agreement the possibility of waging a successful war against Germany that would permit them to achieve that aim.
These nationalist forces were not in power in Poland, but in "permanent opposition" and what they desired or not desired was not part of any Polish international policy.
That is why one of the first things Sikorski did when in 1940 he transferred to Britain the seat of the Polish Government-in-Exile headed by him, was to declare the expansion of Poland to the Oder-Neisse Line as a major Polish war aim, and to ask the British Government to endorse that aim.
Any documents to back up this statement?
Although a Polish newspaper suggested that in October 1941, it was not part of Polish Government-in-Exile policy at that time. Correct me if I'm wrong. But actually it was Stalin who officially suggested this to Eden in December 1941.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#50

Post by wm » 19 Oct 2016, 02:18

michael mills wrote:Ribbentrop's words were hardly a dire threat. Rather they were a gentle admonition to the Polish Government not to pursue its aim of annexing Slovakia or partitioning it with Hungary, but accept that its separate existence independent of both Poland and Hungary was now guaranteed by Germany.
He was referring to "Danzig, the motor road, and the guarantee". Slovakia wasn't threatened by Poland or Hungary anyway.

michael mills wrote:Danzig did not belong to Poland,
Actually Danzig mostly belonged to Poland. Basically it was a Polish protectorate.
It was within the Polish customs frontiers, foreign relations of the Free City of Danzig were conducted by Poland, Poland protected its citizens abroad.
Additionally Poland was given free use and service of all waterways, docks, basins, wharves and other works. And control and administration of the whole railway system, and of the river Vistula.

michael mills wrote:The Polish Government's refusal to accede to the legitimate aspirations of the people of Danzig in 1939 was yet another example of how the major disasters that have befallen the Polish people in history have been a direct result of the delusions of grandeur of the Polish ruling class.
Rather very illegitimate aspirations as the right to conduct foreign relations wasn't given to them.
And all rights and title over the territory was renounced by Germany in favor of the Allied powers - signatories of the Treaty of Versailles, only those powers could have helped the Danzigers and seems they had better things to do at that time.

michael mills wrote:As I wrote above, the disasters that befell Poland were a result of the delusions of grandeur of its ruling class. In 1939 Poland's national sovereignty was in no way under threat from Germany, which was only asking Poland to make reasonable compromises over Danzig and access to East Prussia, in return for an alliance.
Well, Poland didn't want any alliance, so Germany was clearly out of luck in this regard.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#51

Post by michael mills » 19 Oct 2016, 06:21

Rather very illegitimate aspirations as the right to conduct foreign relations wasn't given to them.
And all rights and title over the territory was renounced by Germany in favor of the Allied powers - signatories of the Treaty of Versailles, only those powers could have helped the Danzigers and seems they had better things to do at that time.
No treaty lasts forever, since conditions change. Even some British political leaders believed that Danzig would eventually have to be given back to Germany, and they considered the Polish rulers to be intransigent chauvinists for their refusal to compromise.

The Polish leaders would have been wise to agree to the German proposals, which would have avoided making an enemy of Germany. Instead, they acceded to British blandishments, which were designed to set Danzig up as a casus belli for war against Germany.

That is what had changed. As long as Germany was militarily and economically weak and could not challenge British informal domination of the global economy, Britain was inclined to revise the Treaty of Versailles to allow the return of some territory with a German population. Once Germany had regained its military and industrial strength to the point where it could again challenge British predominance, the British Government decided that it needed to be confronted militarily and was looking for a plausible casus belli, which could be created out of the impasse between Germany and Poland over Danzig.
Statements made to some foreign diplomat, but not included in the guarantee or the treaty were of little value. In time of need the British (perfidious Albion as some said) could have used the literally meaning to their advantage. Mr Kennedy certainly wouldn't come to the rescue.
You are right that the British Government had no intention of coming to the aid of Poland on the ground if it got into a war with Germany. Its strategy for war with Germany was to remain on the defensive in the West while using its overwhelming naval power to strangle that country by blockade.

The calculation of the British military commanders was that a war between Germany and Poland would last several months, at the end of which the German army, having defeated the Polish forces, would come up against a hostile Soviet Union on the Polish eastern frontier, and would have to leave the bulk of its forces in the East to defend that frontier, thereby being unable to launch an offensive in the West. In the best case scenario, actual hostilities would break out between Germany and the Soviet Union, thereby tying down the entire German armed forces in the East, and leaving Britain free to pursue its blockade and economic warfare strategy.

What calculation failed to take into account was that the apparent deadly enemies Germany and the Soviet Union could reach an agreement that would leave Germany to break out of the Allied encirclement by attacking in the West.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#52

Post by michael mills » 19 Oct 2016, 06:53

Any documents to back up this statement?
Although a Polish newspaper suggested that in October 1941, it was not part of Polish Government-in-Exile policy at that time. Correct me if I'm wrong. But actually it was Stalin who officially suggested this to Eden in December 1941.
I suggest you consult these books:

1. Sarah Meicklejohn Terry: "Poland's Place in Europe : General Sikorski and the Origin of the Oder-Neisse Line, 1939-1943", published by Princeton University Press, c1983

2. John Coutouvidis: "Poland 1939-1947", published by Leicester University Press, 1986

One of those books gives full details of Sikorski's approach to the British Government in 1940, asking it to endorse the Polish Government's policy of extending Poland to the West by annexing German territory east of the Oder-Neisse Line. I cannot remember precisely which one, but I think it was the book by Coutouvidis.

You need to realise that the idea of pushing Poland's western border to the Oder-Neisse Line had been expressed by Polish nationalists of the Tendencja Piastowska since before the First World War. Their justification for that ambition was that the German territory east of the Oder-Neisse Line had originally belonged to Poland, back in the 10th Century, when the Polish state was first established.

Stalin may well have suggested the Oder-Neisse Line to Eden in December 1941, but he was not the originator of the idea, rather he had got it from Sikorski during the latter's visit to Moscow. Although he was by no means a friend of the Poles, he decided to support Sikorski's idea of annexing German territory east of the Oder-Neisse Line, since he thought it would make the Poles more agreeable to abandoning their demand for the return of the Polish Eastern Territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939. In the case of Sikorski his calculation was correct; the Polish Prime Minister, who was a proponent of the Tendencja Piastowska and had been an opponent of Pilsudski, showed himself to be less interested in getting back the Polish Eastern Territories than in gaining territory in the West.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#53

Post by wm » 19 Oct 2016, 20:10

The only Sikorski's approach to the British Government in 1940 was the memorandum to Ernest Bevin, Britain's Minister of Labour. It didn't mention the Oder-Neisse Line, at all. And actually any other document issued by the Polish Government in Exile.
Tendencja Piastowska is just Piast Trend, such and or similar group/organization never existed.
That Stalin he had got it from Sikorski can't be proved, not even a shred of evidence supporting this speculation exists.
michael mills wrote:The Polish leaders would have been wise to agree to the German proposals, which would have avoided making an enemy of Germany. Instead, they acceded to British blandishments, which were designed to set Danzig up as a casus belli for war against Germany
Considering that a few years later the Nazi Germany would be wiped out from the map in the most spectacular manner, and fifty years later the Soviet Union would pathetically disintegrate (with some help from the Poles). That today Germany is a friendly country, dependent on Poland for demographic reasons, and Russia is a secondary power (with its GDP inferior to the State of California) separated from Poland by neutral/friendly states (exactly as Pisudski envisioned it) it was the best decision it could have been.

It was noted by Śmigły in 1940 that 1939 was the worst year possible for Hitler to start his antics, earlier the Allies most likely would do nothing, later they would be distracted by the Soviet aggression against Finland and the Baltic countries (later the Japanese aggression) - and again they would do nothing.
michael mills wrote:What calculation failed to take into account was that the apparent deadly enemies Germany and the Soviet Union could reach an agreement that would leave Germany to break out of the Allied encirclement by attacking in the West.
Not quite, these are just two of the warnings received:
17 January. Draft cable from the Assistant Under Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Bucharest about the possibility of a German-Soviet understanding
Polmission Bucharest
Received letter of 14 January.
[...]
Fears about the possibility of an understanding between Berlin and Moscow continue to be observed in French military circles.
Arciszewski.
3 July. Report of the Consul General in Berlin on rumours of a German-Soviet understanding
Berlin, 3 July 1939
To the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw Minister's Office
Alleged Russian-German negotiations. According to unverified information, during the next two weeks Russia and Germany are supposedly to conclude an accord of not only an economic nature, but also a political one.
[...]
Source: Indirectly from a high court official from Leipzig. This official is a silent opponent of the regime and supposedly informed my informer of the occupation of Prague three days before the fact.
Consul General
(Stanislaw Kara)
And the possibility was rather well known and expected as this Polish cartoon from the thirties shows:
niech sie swiat przekona.jpg

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#54

Post by michael mills » 23 Oct 2016, 03:21

The text of Ambassador Kennedy's report to the US Department of State, made on 31 March 1939, can be found here:

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bi ... 01&isize=M

After giving the text of the statement that Chamberlain was to make in the Commons on the afternoon of that day, which had been provided to him by Cadogan, Kennedy reported as follows:
I asked Cadogan whether this meant if Poland fights Britain fights. He said of course if Poland itself committed an act of aggression it would not mean that but for the first time in the history of Great Britain the latter has left the final decision as to their fighting outside of their own country to the other power.

I asked Cadogan could there be any hedging on the part of Great Britain as to whether Poland was fighting for "Polish independence"; he said absolutely not; that if Poland thought that any gesture of Germany's threatened their independence and they themselves are the judges of that, Great Britain commits itself to fight.
Cadogan's words to Kennedy show unequivocally that Britain had issued a "blank cheque" to Poland, which gave that country the power to create a state of war between Germany and Britain. They also show that Britain would not question any decision by Poland to send its armed forces into action against Germany on the basis that a threat to its existence existed, but would itself immediately join Poland in making war on Germany.

Note that Cadogan did not specify that the "threat to Poland's independence" did not need to consist of an actual armed invasion of Polish territory by Germany; any "gesture" by Germany would be enough to trigger war between it and Britain, provided that Poland claimed that that gesture represented such a threat and sent its armed forces into action against it.

In the context of the time, the "gesture" that Cadogan had in mind was almost certainly a unilateral declaration by Germany of its reintegration of Danzig. If Poland then sent its troops into Danzig to occupy it, and Germany tried to eject those troops, Britain would declare war on Germany on the basis that the German attempt to take possession of Danzig represented a threat to Poland's independence.

Without the British "blank cheque", and the subsequent military agreement between Britain and Poland, it is likely that the Polish Government would have eventually accepted the German proposals in regard to Danzig and the extraterritorial road and rail link to East Prussia, since the saner elements in that Government would have known that Poland could not possibly win a war against Germany by itself. In that case, there might well have been a military uprising against the Sanacja regime, similar to what happened in March 1941 in Yugoslavia, but that would have been an internal conflict within Poland, not a casus belli for Britain to declare war on Germany.
Considering that a few years later the Nazi Germany would be wiped out from the map in the most spectacular manner, and fifty years later the Soviet Union would pathetically disintegrate (with some help from the Poles). That today Germany is a friendly country, dependent on Poland for demographic reasons, and Russia is a secondary power (with its GDP inferior to the State of California) separated from Poland by neutral/friendly states (exactly as Pisudski envisioned it) it was the best decision it could have been.
You have neglected one of the the major benefits to Poland from the Second World War, namely that it no longer has a Jewish problem, a problem that the Polish Government and society were well aware of in the 1930s but were unable to solve for themselves. Ethnic Poles were able to move into the socio-economic niche vacated by the exterminated Jews, thereby greatly improving their own position and helping to solve the problem of rural overpopulation and underemployment.

User avatar
Guaporense
Banned
Posts: 1866
Joined: 07 Oct 2009, 03:35
Location: USA

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#55

Post by Guaporense » 26 Oct 2016, 01:35

wm wrote:That today Germany is a friendly country, dependent on Poland for demographic reasons, and Russia is a secondary power (with its GDP inferior to the State of California) separated from Poland by neutral/friendly states (exactly as Pisudski envisioned it) it was the best decision it could have been.
Russia's GDP still is bigger than California's at 3.6 trillion in 2015 vis 2 trillion for California, though. Anyway, GDP shouldn't be the measure but a combination of manpower, industrial output and per capita income (level of development). Russia still is a great power thanks to it's massive military capabilities (including, as of now, the world's most powerful ground forces and perhaps also it's nuclear arsenal (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10 ... out-uk-fr/)).
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#56

Post by michael mills » 26 Oct 2016, 06:13

From the Wikipedia article on the Oder-Neisse Line:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oder%E2%80%93Neisse_line
Between the wars, the concept of "Western thought" (myśl zachodnia) became popular among some Polish nationalists. The "Polish motherland territories" were defined by scholars like Zygmunt Wojciechowski as the areas included in Piast Poland in the 10th century.[4][5][6][7] Some Polish historians called for the "return" of territories up to the river Elbe.[7] The proponents of these ideas, in prewar Poland often described as a "group of fantasists", were organized in the National Party, which was also opposed to the then current government of Poland, the Sanacja.[8] The proposal to establish the border along the Oder and Neisse was not seriously considered for a long time[3]. After World War II the Polish Communists, lacking their own expertise regarding the Western border[clarification needed], adopted the National Democratic concept of western thought.[9]

The cited sources in the above passage:

3.Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej nr 9-10/2005, "Polski Dziki Zachód" – ze Stanisławem Jankowiakiem, Czesławem Osękowskim i Włodzimierzem Suleją rozmawia Barbara Polak, pages 4–28

4. Piskorski, Jan M. (2003). Traditionen – Visionen: 44. Deutscher Historikertag in Halle an der Saale 2002 (in German). Oldenbourg. ISBN 3-486-56769-1.

5.Hackmann, Jörg (1996). Ostpreussen und Westpreussen in deutscher und polnischer Sicht (in German). Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau/Niemiecki Instytut Historyczny w Warszawie. ISBN 3-447-03766-0.

6. Faraldo, José M. (2008). Europe, nationalism, communism: Essays on Poland. Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften. ISBN 9783631567623.

7. Fahlbusch, Michael; Haar, Ingo (2005). German scholars and ethnic cleansing, 1919–1945. Berghahn Books. ISBN 1-57181-435-3.

8. "Myśl zachodnia Ruchu Narodowego w czasie II wojny światowej" dr Tomasz Kenar. Dodatek Specjalny IPN Nowe Państwo 1/2010

9. Thum, Gregor (2011). Uprooted: How Breslau became Wroclaw during the century of expulsions. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14024-7.

The above passage appears to be well based on sound historical sources. It shows that the Oder-Neisse Line was not something invented by Stalin, but had been proposed by Polish nationalists of the "western School", in particular the National Democrats, before the Second World War, and even before the First World War. Stalin adopted the idea because it was something that Polish nationalists wanted, and he calculated that if he supported a Polish western frontier on the Oder-Neisse Line, the Polish Government might be more willing to give up its demand for the return of the Polish eastern Territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939.

The idea that Stalin imposed the Oder-Neisse Line in order to create lasting conflict between Germany and Poland is simply ridiculous, since it was something the Poles themselves wanted.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#57

Post by wm » 27 Oct 2016, 19:38

michael mills wrote:After giving the text of the statement that Chamberlain was to make in the Commons on the afternoon of that day, which had been provided to him by Cadogan, Kennedy reported as follows:
Wasn't Mr Alexander Cadogan a Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (PUS)?
Such PUSes were/are:
the non-political civil service heads (and "accounting officers") or chief executives of government departments, who generally hold their position for a number of years at a ministry as distinct from the changing political Secretaries of State to whom they report and provide advice.
Permanent secretaries are the accounting officers for departments.
Then, Joseph Kennedy Sr. was a businessman who bought himself ambassadorship to Court of St. James (Roosevelt owed him big time) - because he felt it would be fun. Both men had been nominated only recently.

So the question is, what is worth a statement of a man who didn't really represent his government (an accounting officer) to a man who didn't really represent his own government (a fun seeker regularly bypassed by Roosevelt in his dealings with Britain)? Did those men understand properly the importance of their own words? Dir Mr Kennedy Sr. properly note down them?
A statement made by Chamberlain or Viscount Halifax would be interesting, but this?

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#58

Post by wm » 27 Oct 2016, 19:43

Zygmunt Wojciechowski
Well, it actually doesn't show that the Oder-Neisse line wasn't something invented by Stalin, or even that he knew about the "Western School" or read their works. It wouldn't be possible because they didn't publish any. In Poland any serious questioning the Rydzelite group's foreign policy wasn't allowed. They had the administrative detention camp of Bereza Kartuska for such people.

Zygmunt Wojciechowski was just Zygmunt Wojciechowski. His ideas were known to a few of his colleagues, and maybe the concierge of the building he was working in. It is true he published this or that during the occupation but then everyone and their dog did. There were lots of angry, brutal and far reaching writings published at that time.
The point is he didn't represent the Polish Government in Exile or even the National Movement. He certainly was a courageous man but he only represented himself and his party - a couch party, meaning its entire membership could have been seated on a single coach.

It was just professor talk of a man detached as far as possible from reality. After all the Oder-Neisse line was a good method to evoke another Versailles syndrome (this time on steroids) among the Germans, and condemn Poland to be a Russian puppet for ever.

michael mills wrote:You have neglected one of the the major benefits to Poland from the Second World War, namely that it no longer has a Jewish problem, a problem that the Polish Government and society were well aware of in the 1930s but were unable to solve for themselves. Ethnic Poles were able to move into the socio-economic niche vacated by the exterminated Jews, thereby greatly improving their own position and helping to solve the problem of rural overpopulation and underemployment.
The Jewish problem wasn't a real one, it was like the Vietnam War - a proxy conflict between two groups. Reasonable people knew even then that the real problems: structural unemployment and poverty can't be solved by emigration, land reform or similar ideas. Poland barely could afford the capital flight associated with the normal Jewish emigration to Palestine. Only a rapid industrialization could have helped and this couldn't be done without the Jews.
After the war most of the Jews would emigrate for greener pastures anyway - exactly as some planned pre-war.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#59

Post by michael mills » 29 Oct 2016, 10:20

The only Sikorski's approach to the British Government in 1940 was the memorandum to Ernest Bevin, Britain's Minister of Labour. It didn't mention the Oder-Neisse Line, at all.
I have checked the book by Sarah Meiklejohn Terry, "Poland's Place in Europe: General Sikorski and the Origin of the Oder-Neisse Line, 1939-1943", and it shows that the above statement is factually incorrect. Sikorski's memorandum of November 1940 addressed to Bevin did propose the movement of Poland's western border to the Oder, although it did not specifically name the Oder-Neisse Line as such.

This is what she writes from page 85 onward:
Ironically it was just at this point - that is, November 1940 - that we find the first comprehensive statement of Sikorski's conception of a post-war settlement corresponding to Poland's interests and security, here in the form of a memorandum addressed to British Labour Party leader and minister of labour in the War Cabinet, Ernest Bevin. This was followed over the next two by three additional such statements, each consisting of a memorandum or set of memoranda prepared in connection with one of the general's three trips to the United States. For the first and second of these trips - in April 1941 and March 1943 - the documentation is incomplete and secondary accounts contradictory. However, for the third and most important visit, in December 1942, we have available the full texts of the several memoranda submitted as well as a variety of supporting primary and secondary materials.

While these four statements differed, often markedly, in detail, tone and emphasis - each reflecting the exigencies of the respective moments - nonetheless all were set in the conceptual framework of "real guarantees" which Sikorski had established in the closing months of 1939. All stressed the need for a compact regional organisation to enable the small nations of Central and East-Central Europe to resist German expansionism, in whatever form it might occur in the future; all projected either implicitly or explicitly a substantial shift westwards of Poland's boundary with Germany; all signalled, though in differing degrees, Poland's desire for a long-term reconciliation with the Soviet Union; and, finally, all posited the right of the Central European nations to participate in the decisions that would determine their fate.
Terry goes on to say that the Bevin memorandum contains the first mention in an official Polish document of the Oder River line. She quotes the relevant parts of the memorandum that propose the annexation by Poland of German territory.

Page 89:
....Twice - in the 18th century and presently - Germany has attempted to settle this quarrel by annexing the province of Pomerania to Germany. From the Polish point of view, the only solution that would prevent the perennial renewal of this quarrel would be the incorporation of East Prussia and Danzig into Poland, which among other things would put an end to constant German claims to the territory between the Reich proper and East Prussia......[and] would deprive Germany of the main German outpost in the east, whose only importance for the Reich is that it constitutes a springboard for expansion in the east of Europe.........In addition, Poland would not be, as in 1939, threatened by Germany on two fronts, west and north, with the northern front (East Prussia) dominating Poland's central provinces and lying scarce more than 100 km from the capital.
With regard to the question of Poland's western boundary with Germany, Terry quotes the memorandum as calling for "the strategic necessity of a shortening of that line, and "in particular of moving the German boundary away from the Polish ports of Gdynia and Gdansk as well as from the mouth of Poland's one great river, the Vistula". She then quotes the next sentence, which refers to the Oder:

Page 90:
A change of this kind would be justified by the existence on the border regions of Germany of a population either Polish by language or of Polish origin - as well as by the fact that the German territory to the east of the River Oder, in particular Prussian Pomerania- is sparsely populated.
Terry takes the view that the mentioning of the Oder immediately after the passage about moving the German border away from the mouth of the Vistula indicates that Sikorski was thinking of the Oder as the line to which that border should be moved, although he did not specifically ask for it.

Terry then quotes a passage in the memorandum which she sees as mounting a justification for a claim to all of Silesia, not just the Oppeln district which had been claimed by Poland in 1919:
In any event, from the Polish point of view, it is essential to draw attention to the fact that so-called Prussian Silesia is inhabited to a very significant degree by a population of Polish origin or language. In addition, the detachment from Germany of this region - a region that comprises one of the most important economic arsenals of German military potential - would be an effective blow to future German aspirations toward hegemony in Europe.
Although this memorandum from Sikorski to Bevin represented the first official approach by the Polish Government-in-Exile to the British Government suggesting a westward shift of the Polish-German border, it was not the first time it had intended to make such an approach. Terry describes how a secret meeting with the British and French in Angers (then the seat of the Polish Government-in-Exile was scheduled for 10 May, 1940, for which the Poles had prepared documentation making claims for major gains in the southern and northern sectors, including the Oppeln district and Eastern Pomerania up to a line running south from Kolberg, the so-called Kolobrzeg Line. However, before the Poles could present their proposal, the meeting was interrupted by news of the German offensive launched on that day.

Finally, Terry quotes the book by Leon Mitkiewicz, Sikorski's intelligence chief in the Government-in-Exile, "Z Gen. Sikorskim na obczyznie (fragmenty wspomnien", which suggests that the Poles were discussing even more far-reaching gains in the west as early as February 1940. The passage is in Mitkiewicz's diary entry for 10 February, on page 15 of the book, where he writes:

Footnote 41 on page 85 of Terry's book:
.....im Section III of the General Staff, they (Klimecki, Marecki, Noel) are already seriously pondering the problem of Poland's future boundaries and the solution of the question of East Prussia and Lower Silesia. Our western boundary has according to them several variants: the most extensive reaches to Szczecin and Frankfurt on the Oder as well as Wroclaw, while maintaining our eastern boundary.
The information from Mitkiewicz indicates that some elements in the Polish Government-in-Exile were considering a western border for Poland that essentially corresponded to the later Oder-Neisse Line, or a variant of it.

To my mind, Terry has demonstrated that the concept of pushing the German-Polish border to the west was not an initiative by Stalin, but had been adopted by Sikorski well before 1941, at a time when Stalin was still an enemy of the Poles and had had no need to do them any favours.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: Poland came close to making a concession over Danzig

#60

Post by wm » 29 Oct 2016, 15:11

So the Poles are such losers that in Polish "some parts of Germany are sparsely populated" means "give us the territory". I wonder what "incorporation of East Prussia and Danzig" means in Polish then? We don't want them?

What should the poor Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour have done facing such an opaque language? I know, he should have employed Ms Terry as a translator :)

Of course there were various discussions, internal memorandums written, fact-findings and analyses conducted. Some of them demanded the border as far as west of Berlin.
But the end result were the few documents sent to various politicians, and only those count.
If you want to know some government's official position you should read its official statements, not its trash.

All the documents and all the trash have been published for a half of century, and the fact is East Prussia, Danzig, the Oppeln district are there - clearly stated as the official demands, and nothing else.

It should be noted that "Szczecin and Frankfurt on the Oder as well as Wroclaw" is much less than the Oder-Neisse Line. Such ambiguities (there are more of them!) are usually used by British apologists of Churchill's failings and failures, in their efforts of shifting them to other people.

Post Reply

Return to “Poland 1919-1945”