Polish German collaboration 1938

Discussions on all aspects of Poland during the Second Polish Republic and the Second World War. Hosted by Piotr Kapuscinski.
Sid Guttridge
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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#46

Post by Sid Guttridge » 15 Sep 2010, 12:42

Bf109E - As far as I can see, neither Article 89, nor Article 98 make any mention of "extra-territoriality" for these links. Is it mentioned elsewhere? The fact of the matter is that Germany continued to enjoy rail and road links to East Prussia until the very moment war broke out. Indeed, a normal goods train was the vehicle by which the Germans attempted to seize the Dirschau Bridge by coup de main in the opening minutes.

I notice that Article 98 contains a means of resolving any disputes: ".....in case of difference, shall be settled by the Council of the League of Nations,". Who, I wonder, withdrew Germany from the League of Nations, thereby closing this avenue? It wouldn't, by any chance, be Hitler, would it?

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#47

Post by Sid Guttridge » 15 Sep 2010, 13:19

Mike - Below are comparitive statistics for Polish trade via Danzig and Gdynia.

1928 - Danzig 33.7% v Gdynia 7.6%
1938 - Danzig 31.3% v Gdynia 46.1%

Thus it is clear that there was no Polish boycott of Danzig. Indeed, Poland ordered merchant ships in Danzig's shipyards, some of which were still building when war broke out.

Surely, it is entirely up to the Poles what route they chose to send their own expanding exports by? And is not entirely understandable that they should prefer to use their only national commercial port rather than a Danzig run from the early 1930s by Nazis whose programme was to reunify Danzig with Germany? As we can see above, this did not result in the cessation of Polish trade via Danzig.

Danzig had 400,000 residents in 1929 and 397,000 in November 1937. In the intervening period much of its Jewish population had left. Certainly large parts of the Danzig government infrastructure and industry were subsidized by the Reich Government. For example, several of the Kriegsmarine's supply ships were built there under the guise of merchant construction. But then, as we have seen, Poland also ordered ships in Danzig.

So, "The port facilties of East Prussia, once it had been separated from the port of Danzig, were totally insufficient to handle the transport of all the traffic between it and the main part of Germany." Firstly, who says? Secondly, there is a universal precedent for dealing with such a situation - build more port facilities. The Poles did that in Gdynia. Are you suggesting that it was beyond the wit and resources of Germany to reproduce on a much smaller scale what Poland did at Gdynia? A Germany that managed to find the labour and material for thousands of kilometers of autobahn and 10,000 West Wall emplacements?

You are right that Danzig could not be used to supply East Prussia directly. Therre was no bridge and the only road and rail link was via Dirschau in Poland.

I fail to see how demands for the return of Danzig to the Reich and for an extra-territorial highway on hitherto sovereign Polish territory can be interpreted as an attempt "to secure Poland as an ally against the Soviet Union". To me and the Poles it looks a lot more like a threat!


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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#48

Post by Piotr Kapuscinski » 15 Sep 2010, 15:02

Indeed, a normal goods train was the vehicle by which the Germans attempted to seize the Dirschau Bridge by coup de main in the opening minutes.
There were two trains attacking against Tczew - one was a normal goods train (Transit Train No. 963 with German soldiers from Kampfgruppe "Medem" hidden inside) and the other one was an armoured train (Panzerzug No. 7):

Image

Also one ex-Czechoslovakian armoured trolley "Tatra" was supporting Panzerzug 7 in its combats:

http://www.weu1918-1939.pl/pancerne/dre ... tatra.html

The German attack failed and Panzerzug 7 was damaged by a Polish armoured train:

http://odkrywca.pl/pokaz_watek.php?id=421989

http://www.1939.pl/fn/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=858&start=30

And at the same time another German armoured train - Panzerzug No. 3 - supported German units by attacking from the other side of the Polish Corridor along the same railway line against Chojnice (German name: Konitz):

Image

Panzerzug No. 3 was announced as Passenger Train No. 702 to not raise suspicions among the Poles. Despite that mystification and the initial surprise effect, Panzerzug 3 also failed to accomplish its mission. It was seriously damaged by Polish artillery. One Sd.Kfz.231 armoured car converted into armoured trolley capable of moving along railway lines was supporiting Panzerzug 3 in those combats and it was also seriously damaged.

Here you can find some photos of knocked out Panzerzug 3 and that destroyed Sd.Kfz.231:

http://www.dws.org.pl/viewtopic.php?f=9 ... 0&start=25

http://www.1939.pl/uzbrojenie/niemiecki ... index.html

Short descriptions of those combats near Chojnice:

http://www.feldgrau.com/eisb3.html

http://www.prostki.yoyo.pl/?p=35
Eisenbahn-Panzerzug 3 (Feldpost Nr. 03841) (a standard gauge train) first saw action during the Polish campaign of 1939. Like most of the other German armored trains participating in the Polish campaign, Panzerzug 3 had a most dubious start. Having barely crossed the German-Polish border on September 1st, 1939, Panzerzug 3 quickly found itself near the town of Könitz, a point not missed by the Poles who proceeded to damage it extensively. The very timely arrival of III./Inf.Reg.90 insured the trains survival. It was then sent to Danzig for repairs and refitting.
Memoirs of a German soldier from Panzerzug 3 about combats near Chojnice on 01.09.1939 (in Polish):

http://www.pionier39.pl/soldat_chojnice1939.html

Also commander of Panzerzug 3 was Killed In Action during those combats near Chojnice:
Nachname: Euen
Vorname: Erich Albert Gustav
Dienstgrad: Oberleutnant
Geburtsdatum: 08.02.1914
Geburtsort: Schönebeck
Todes-/Vermisstendatum: 01.09.1939
Todes-/Vermisstenort: Bhf.Konitz
And finally a map of planned operations of Panzerzug 3 and Panzerzug 7 on 01.09.1939:

Image

Of course as I wrote above both trains failed to complete their tasks.

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#49

Post by Piotr Kapuscinski » 15 Sep 2010, 15:42

All of this clearly shows that railway connection from Germany to East Prussia was running normally until the very start of the war. There were both Passenger Trains and Transit Trains running smoothly between Germany and East Prussia. Insidious Germans even exploited this fact to camouflage both sudden attacks of their armoured trains.

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#50

Post by Steve » 16 Sep 2010, 02:28

How on earth did this topic move onto a discussion of Danzig? Polish German relations in 1938 were very good. The Poles did more than simply accept that the UK and France were not going to support Czechoslovakia and act in their own interests. They were hoping for the breakup of Czechoslovakia and co-operated in this.

The idea that Poland only took advantage of the situation because the allies were not going to support the Czechs and if the allies had been prepared to fight would have sided with them is incorrect. On May 22 the French minister Bonnet asked the Polish ambassador Lukasiewicz to a meeting in order to see if the Poles were going to support France. Bonnet was told that the Franco Polish defence treaty put Poland under no obligation in the event of war over Czechoslovakia. If France attacked Germany over Czechoslovakia France was the aggressor.

The French ambassador in Poland Noel reported that if Russia moved troops through Rumania the Poles would side with Germany.

Hitler was counting on at least Polish neutrality and German troops were moved away from the Polish border while Polish troops were moved to the border with Czechoslovakia. The Czechs aware of Polish troop movements asked the Soviets to warn Poland off and on September 23 they did. The Soviets also moved troops to the Polish border.

From “1939 The Alliance That Never Was And The Coming Of WW2” By Michael Carley.

I was hoping that the discussion would have looked at Polish foreign policy in the 1930s which must surely be regarded as a failure. Hitler had broken the armament restrictions imposed by Versailles, occupied the Rhineland, united Austria with Germany and then united the Germans of Czechoslovakia with Germany. Why would anyone think that after all this he was going to stop and do nothing over one of his main grievances Danzig. The only people who seem to have been surprised when Hitler made his demands over Danzig known were the Poles. Polish foreign policy was now shown to have been based on wishful thinking and opportunism. Poland needed an alliance with Czechoslovakia more than it needed Teschen. This admittedly may have been difficult to achieve as the Czechs expected trouble over Danzig one day.

The signing of an agreement with the UK probably made war inevitable and unless Poland was going to get substantial help it was a blunder of the first class. Hitler saw it as a challenge in his own back yard. To claim as Poland and the UK did that this was not meant against Germany is laughable but Hitler was not laughing. Just as the Polish leadership did not seem to understand what Hitler was working towards and that their turn would come they also did not grasp why the UK was offering this agreement. England had not earned the nickname in some quarters of perfidious Albion for nothing.

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#51

Post by michael mills » 16 Sep 2010, 03:49

Thus it is clear that there was no Polish boycott of Danzig.
I will quote the relevant secions from the book by Kimmich, "The Free City: Danzig and German Foreign Policy 1919-1934" which demonstrate that there was indeed a Polish boycott economic of Danzig, albeit an unofficial one that the Polish Government connived at.

I will give the word "boycott" emphasis to draw it to the attention of Sciburniensis and other readers.

Page 106
Reichard's investigations [comment by me - Ernst Reichard, an official of the German Finance Ministry, appointed Reich trustee for Danzig in 1929] in 1931 revealed that the situation had deteriorated drastically since 1929.................................Danzig's commerce suffered because the value of trade through the port was declining, and because in Poland discriminatory treatment, an unofficial boycott, and a whole array of rules and regulations which favored domestic commerce had constricted Polish markets.......................

Reichard feared that, in these straits, Danzig might seek economic releif from the Poles and allow them to return to acquire property in the Free City and to displace German Danzigers in the customs administration, the port, and the police - a disastrous prospect. To forestall such developments he urged that Germany increase and broaden her aid program................
Page 109:
The extensive German effort and Danzig's own attempts to economise might have doen much to tide the city over the depression if the depression had been the only cause of economic distress. But Danzig suffered from a problem which greatly exacerbated the effects of the depression and threatened the very life of the city - the competition of the Polish rival port at Gdynia.

..........................................................

The project at Gdynia enjoyed great popularity in POland, and the port experienced a spectacular rise. Its freight turnover climbed from 414,005 tons in 1926 to 3,628,331 in 1930. Companies wishing to settle in Gdynia received extensive credit at no interest, and the Polish government made it possible for them to construct such facilities as oil presses, rice mills, and capacious refrigerators at low cost. The syndicates which took their traffic to the new port were rewarded with bounties, and the new POlish merchant fleet, which was based at the harbor, was given a subsidy. The Polish Emigration Syndicate sent its charges by way of Gdynia. Foreign trade was attracted by means of low harbor fees, reduced customs duties, rebates, and preferential railway tariffs.
Kimmich goes on to describe how the Danzig Government approached the High Commissioner for Danzig to obtain a ruling that, under the Danzig Statute, Poland was obliged to make full use of Danzig and had no right to prefer a Polish port. The dispute was eventually taken to the Council of the league of Nations in December 1931, and in September 1932 a committee appointed by the Council concluded that the harbour at Danzig could deal with the combined traffic of both ports, and Poland should not apply administrative measures which benefitted Gdynia at the expense of Danzig.

Sciburniensis made this comment:
Surely, it is entirely up to the Poles what route they chose to send their own expanding exports by? And is not entirely understandable that they should prefer to use their only national commercial port rather than a Danzig run from the early 1930s by Nazis whose programme was to reunify Danzig with Germany?
That was quite reasonable. What was not reasonable was for Poland to claim that the maintenance of its control of Danzig's economy and foreign relations was necessary to its independence, given that it had its own port of Gdynia only 10 miles away from the port of Danzig, and moreover was directing an increasing proportion of its overseas trade through its own port.

To return to the book by Kimmich.

Pages 116- 118:
While the dispute over Gdynia dragged on, Poland harassed Danzig with unique vehemence.......

In march 1932 the Poles launched a campaign against Danzig's economy which brought the Free City close to collapse. It began when Poland, feeling the effects of the depression and wishing to protect her industries, sought safety in high tariffs and complained that Danzig was a gap in her tariff wall...................... The Polish Finnce Ministry decreed on 29 March that maximum duties (up to 300 percent of the established rate) would apply to German goods, whether for Danzig or for Poland. These tariffs were applied to the formerly duty-free import quotas, in effect nullifying the advantage of the concessions. At the same time, goods manufactured or processed in the city from material imported under the quotas were to be treated as foreign merchandise in Poland and subjected to prohibitive import duties.

....................................................

For the Danzig economy the measure was disastrous. Within tw omonths the new tariffs reduced the quantity of goods imported under the quotas by 80 percent and the value of these goods by more than 50 percent. Simultaneously a private boycott in Poland and various Polish regulations subjected Danzig's merchants to additional hardship. Trade, which the low purchasing power of Poland's depressed economy had made barely profitable, now became almost worthless, and even where the boycott did not apply, traffic was almost insuperably obstructed..........
Pages 124-125:
The yeear 1932 was the annus terribilis in the history of the Free City. Danzig had fallen into difficulties which even intensified assistance from Berlin could not relieve. To the Germans it seemed that the Free City's continued decline played into the hands of the POles; the whole edifice of Weimar's eastern policy was crumbling.

.............Also in November the High Commissioner decided that Danzig was entitled to market in Poland goods manufactured from material obtained under the [duty-free] quotas...............Poland.... curtailed their quantity by permitting products only from those firms which pledged not to avail themselves of the quota system or to buy from firms which did, and which agreed to permit Polish inspectors to check their premises and their records..........The boycott, which the POles had not curtailed despite their assurances in August [1932], but which they had officially lifted in November when the High Commissioner released his decision on the quota system, thus effectively remained in force. As Thermann commented, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Poland felt no obligation to take the League's decisions seriously and that she believed she could coerce the Free City into concessions (in return for economic survival) without fear of retribution. The year 1932 demonstrated that the Free City was "free: in the realm of abstract concept alone.
The above quotes demonstrate the falsehood of the claim by Sciburniensis that there was no Polish boycott of Danzig. They show that Poland, far from being a peaceful state seeking only to protect its own independence, was highly aggressive against Danzig, seeking to force it into surrender to a complete Polish takeover by measures that amounted to economic warfare.

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#52

Post by ljadw » 16 Sep 2010, 09:58

Steve wrote:How on earth did this topic move onto a discussion of Danzig? Polish German relations in 1938 were very good. The Poles did more than simply accept that the UK and France were not going to support Czechoslovakia and act in their own interests. They were hoping for the breakup of Czechoslovakia and co-operated in this.

The idea that Poland only took advantage of the situation because the allies were not going to support the Czechs and if the allies had been prepared to fight would have sided with them is incorrect. On May 22 the French minister Bonnet asked the Polish ambassador Lukasiewicz to a meeting in order to see if the Poles were going to support France. Bonnet was told that the Franco Polish defence treaty put Poland under no obligation in the event of war over Czechoslovakia. If France attacked Germany over Czechoslovakia France was the aggressor.

The French ambassador in Poland Noel reported that if Russia moved troops through Rumania the Poles would side with Germany.

Hitler was counting on at least Polish neutrality and German troops were moved away from the Polish border while Polish troops were moved to the border with Czechoslovakia. The Czechs aware of Polish troop movements asked the Soviets to warn Poland off and on September 23 they did. The Soviets also moved troops to the Polish border.

From “1939 The Alliance That Never Was And The Coming Of WW2” By Michael Carley.

I was hoping that the discussion would have looked at Polish foreign policy in the 1930s which must surely be regarded as a failure. Hitler had broken the armament restrictions imposed by Versailles, occupied the Rhineland, united Austria with Germany and then united the Germans of Czechoslovakia with Germany. Why would anyone think that after all this he was going to stop and do nothing over one of his main grievances Danzig. The only people who seem to have been surprised when Hitler made his demands over Danzig known were the Poles. Polish foreign policy was now shown to have been based on wishful thinking and opportunism. Poland needed an alliance with Czechoslovakia more than it needed Teschen. This admittedly may have been difficult to achieve as the Czechs expected trouble over Danzig one day.

The signing of an agreement with the UK probably made war inevitable and unless Poland was going to get substantial help it was a blunder of the first class. Hitler saw it as a challenge in his own back yard. To claim as Poland and the UK did that this was not meant against Germany is laughable but Hitler was not laughing. Just as the Polish leadership did not seem to understand what Hitler was working towards and that their turn would come they also did not grasp why the UK was offering this agreement. England had not earned the nickname in some quarters of perfidious Albion for nothing.
Was the Polish foreign policy in the 1930s a failure ?
That's not certain .
The aim of the Polish foreign policy in the 1930s was to get an independent Poland,a Poland not subordinate and not dependant on another state .
That could be realized only,if Poland's hostile neighbours were not uniting against Poland.That's why(IMHO) Poland was very happy when Hitler became chancellor:any danger of a rapprochement between Germany and the SU had disappeared:Poland was safe .
When Hitler was demanding Dantzig,Poland could afford to say no,because,without a deal with Stalin,Hitler could not attack Poland .
The fault of Poland (and Britain,France,...) was to believe Hitlerbeing honest,when he was parading as the saviour of the Western civilisation from the bolchevik danger .

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#53

Post by Sid Guttridge » 16 Sep 2010, 13:26

Mike - Remember, this thread concerns 1938.

I repeat, there was no Polish boycott of Danzig.

If your source is claiming that there was a Polish "boycott" of Danzig in 1938, or any time after Hitler's first year in power, then he is either guilty of exaggeration or, more likely, the word he uses has been mistranslated.

A "boycott" is to "withdraw from commercial or social relations (with a country, .....)" or "refuse to buy or handle (goods, .....)". Poland did not withdraw from commercial or social relations with Danzig and it did not refuse to buy or handle goods from Danzig, be it formally or informally. If there had been a "boycott" there would have been no Polish trade passing through Danzig at all, but as we have seen, a third (33.7%) of Polish trade passed through Danzig in 1928, and almost as high a proportion (31.3%) of an increased volume passed through it in 1938. Furthermore, in 1938 Poland had several merchant ships on order in Danzig, thereby supporting its main heavy industry.

What you are describing are general Polish protectionist measures that affected not just Danzig, but other trading partners as well during the Great Depression, and specific Polish discrimanatory measures in favour of developing Gdynia at the expense of Danzig. They certainly put Danzig under particular and deliberate Polish pressure in 1931-32, but this relaxed following a combination of the League of Nations ruling, the gradual easing of the depression and the 1934 Non-Agression Agreement with Germany. It was certainly not a burning issue in 1938.

You might have a point that Poland continuing to dominate Danzig's foreign affairs and customs regime was unreasonable - if there really was a Polish "boycott" of Danzig, or Gdynia had taken over Danzig's entire share of Poland's trade so that no Polish trade at all continued to pass through Danzig.

However, this was not the case. As of 1938 - the year this thread concerns - nearly a third of Poland's foreign trade still went through Danzig. Thus Danzig remained far more vital to Poland than it was to Germany, as virtually none of Germany's trade passed through the city.

Danzig was in a cleft stick. If Gdynia were successful in monopolising Polish overseas trade, it would undermine Polish claims to a special political and economic interest in Danzig. On the other hand, as Danzig's main purpose was to carry Polish trade from the interior it faced economic collapse were this to occur.

The Poles were no angels and certainly used various means of economic leverage in order to impose themselves on the Danzig administration before the Nazis gained power there and in Germany, but by 1938 economic relations were largely normalized.
Last edited by Scirburniensis on 16 Sep 2010, 15:44, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#54

Post by Sid Guttridge » 16 Sep 2010, 15:43

Steve - The phrase "Hitler saw it as a challenge in his own back yard." obscures a truth.

Poland was not Germany's "back-yard", it was the Poles' own house.

This phrase "back-yard" is widely used to mask interference by larger states in the affairs of neighbouring smaller states. How often has the idea that Central America and the Caribbean were "the USA's back-yard" been used to justify intervention? The USSR seems to prefer the euphemism "near abroad" to similarly claim a special right to interfere in the affairs of its smaller neighbours.

In fact these are all other peoples' countries to align as they see fit, not the "back-yards" of the big players.

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#55

Post by michael mills » 17 Sep 2010, 02:25

I did not claim that Poland was boycotting Danzig in 1938.

What I wrote when I first mentioned the POlish boycott of Danzig was:
.The historical fact is that the Polish Government created the port of Gdynia as a replacement for the port at Danzig, and it stimulated the development of that port by systematically boycotting Danzig and trying to strangle it economically. Hitler's proposals to the Polish Government left Gdynia and its surrounding territory in Polish hands, with totally adequate road and rail access over and under the proposed German link to East Prussia.
The point I was making is that Poland did not need Danzig for the purpose of maintaining its economic and hence political independence. It had its own port at Gdynia, and it demonstrated a clear intention of eventually directing all its overseas trade through that post, thereby making Danzig totally redundant to its economic needs.

The fact that for a period of some years before 1934 Poland boycotted Danzig and almost brought the Free City to economic collapse shows that the port at Danzig was not vital to its needs. Poland was progressively minimising its use of the Danzig port, and thereby minimising its need for it. Hence the argument that the return of Danzig to German sovereignty would have deprived Poland of the use of the port there and hence compromised its economic independence was a falsehood, and simply Polish propaganda to justify its intransigence on the Danzig issue.

In any case, the German proposals included continued Polish access to a free port in the Danzig harbour after hte return of the city to Germany, a proposal originally made by Julius Curtius as German Foreign Minister in the Bruening administration, and a measure that was included in the agreement with Lithuania under which Memel returned to Germany in March 1939.

If Poland was still using the port at Danzig between 1934 and 1939, as a supplement to its own port at Gdynia, that was just as a favour to Danzig in the context of the improved relations with germany brought about by a meeting of minds between Hitler and Pilsudski, and a compliance with the ruling by the League of Nations that it should not discriminate against Danzig. But the objective fact is that Poland could have chosen at any time to route its entire overseas trade through Gdynia and cut Danzig out completely.

Furthermore, that actions of the Polish Government in the period 1930-34 show that Poland was not the innocent vicitm of German aggression that Poles like to portray it as, but actually a highly aggressive state that was prepared to use all sorts of chicanery and bullying to achieve its long-term aim of bringing Danzig, and eventually East Prussia, under Polish control and replacing the German population with a Polish one.

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#56

Post by Sid Guttridge » 17 Sep 2010, 13:05

Mike - Looking through my dusty notes I find that I have the percentages for Polish trade through Danzig and Gdynia in 1922 and 1933 - the year Hitler came to power - as well.

1922 Gdynia (0%) Danzig (7.4%)
1928 Gdynia (7.6%) Danzig (33.7%)
1933 Gdynia (37.3%) Danzig (31.7%)
1938 Gdynia (46.1%) Danzig (31.3%)

It thus looks as though Danzig's share of Poland's trade was remarkably stable throughout Hitler's tenure of office in the 1930s. So, it would appear that the issue of any Polish "boycott" had been resolved before he came to power.

The 1922 figure was before construction of Gdynia was begun. The very low percentage of Polish trade carried through Danzig that year was apparently due to an embargo by Communist Danzig German dockers on transit trade to Poland out of solidarity with the USSR in its war with Poland. This was what triggered the creation of Gdynia in the 1920s and helps explain why the Poles were so intransigent on the issue of Danzig so long as a significant amount of their trade passed through the port, which it still was in 1938.

You write: "If Poland was still using the port at Danzig between 1934 and 1939, as a supplement to its own port at Gdynia, that was just as a favour to Danzig in the context of the improved relations with germany brought about by a meeting of minds between Hitler and Pilsudski, and a compliance with the ruling by the League of Nations that it should not discriminate against Danzig." It sounds as though the issue had been resolved.

You also write "But the objective fact is that Poland could have chosen at any time to route its entire overseas trade through Gdynia and cut Danzig out completely." This is not an "objective fact", not least because it presupposes that Gdynia had masses of spare capacity, which I have not seen contended, let alone confirmed, anywhere. What you describe is a German fear. The "objective fact" is that Poland did no such thing during Hitler's entire tenure of power.

I would agree that the Polish regime was not whiter than white in the early 1930s and several of its neighbours, such as Czechoslovakia and Lithuania, had undergone ultimata and war threats from Warsaw in 1938, but it was not "a highly aggressive state" towards Danzig at any time during Hitler's tenure of power. A modus vivendi had been reached between Poland and Nazi Germany that was only broken by Hitler again raising the issue of Danzig and introducing the new demand of an "extra-territorial" highway across the "Corridor".

Poland remained very much the victim of Hitler in 1939. Its main "crime" then was to try to uphold an internationally agreed, post-Versailles status quo that Hitler had always objected to and now had the power to do something about militarily.

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#57

Post by ljadw » 17 Sep 2010, 14:22

I should like to nuance
"an internationally agreed,post-Versailles status quo"
As far as I know,
there was no Locarno for Eastern Europe
the frontiers in Eastern Europe were disputed
in 1919,Britain had refused to guarantee these frontiers

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#58

Post by Sid Guttridge » 17 Sep 2010, 14:50

ljadw - ARTICLE 100 of the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany signed, however reluctantly, reads: "Germany renounces in favour of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers all rights and title over the territory comprised within the following limits....." and then proceeds to detail the inter-war boundaries of the Free City of Danzig in great detail.

British support for this was best illustrated by the fact that four of the first five League of Nations Commissioners of the Free City were British diplomats.

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#59

Post by ljadw » 17 Sep 2010, 20:49

Scirburniensis wrote:ljadw - ARTICLE 100 of the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany signed, however reluctantly, reads: "Germany renounces in favour of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers all rights and title over the territory comprised within the following limits....." and then proceeds to detail the inter-war boundaries of the Free City of Danzig in great detail.

British support for this was best illustrated by the fact that four of the first five League of Nations Commissioners of the Free City were British diplomats.
the so-called 'post-Versailles statu quo' was NOT internationally agreed:it was forced by the winners on the losers;the same happened in 1871,when France lost the Alsace;France never accepted this loss.
No German political party accepted the loss of the eastern provinces and the "forced secession" of Dantzig;neither did the SU accept the loss of territories to Poland .
Poland's eastern and western borders were disputed by its neighbours.
On Dantzig :the mini state of Dantzig was created because Britain refused the French an d Polish demands of annexation of Dantzig by Poland .

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Re: Polish German collaboration 1938

#60

Post by Halibutt » 17 Sep 2010, 21:44

michael mills wrote:I will quote the relevant secions from the book by Kimmich, "The Free City: Danzig and German Foreign Policy 1919-1934" which demonstrate that there was indeed a Polish boycott economic of Danzig, albeit an unofficial one that the Polish Government connived at.

I will give the word "boycott" emphasis to draw it to the attention of Sciburniensis and other readers.
(...)
In addition to what Scirburniensis wrote about Gdynia (+1 to his every word so far), the fragments you cited understate the meaning of the Great Depression for the Polish economy. 1929 was the year when the Great Depression started. For Poland, which was nowhere near as powerful as Germany in terms of industrial capacity - or industralisation - it meant roughly 50% drop in production (both industrial and agricultural). Between 1928 and 1932 coal production dropped by 27%, steel production by 61%, iron ore by 89% (Landau & Tomaszewski, Zarys historii gospodarczej Polski 1918-1939, Warsaw, 1962). And less goods produced meant less goods exported. Around that time the unemployment in Poland reached 43%, which meant that there was also practically no import, neither through Gdynia nor through Danzig.

What's more, until 1935 all Polish governments tried to maintain "high credibility", that is high value of the Polish zloty. While this was a noble strategy, it also meant that what was still being produced in Poland was even less attractive to foreign buyers. Which meant even less export. And less goods shipped from Danzig.

The other important fact is that the source mention "private boycott". In response to the crisis, numerous journals and newspapers in Poland started encouraging people to buy Polish products rather than imported goods ("Kto ma głowę kupuje krajowe" - "If you have a head on your shoulders, you'll buy home-made products" - was a popular slogan back then). I'm not sure what was the extent of such actions or whether they were successful, but you surely can't blame them on the government, as such actions were neither organised or supported by the authorities. They were not part of the Polish foreign policy, rather one of the reactions to the crisis.
Cheers

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