Was Churchill a good friend to Poland?

[Steve]

Churchill was determined that Poland would not stand in the way of good relations with Stalin and he insisted that Stalin have his way over the issue of the Curzon line. Chamberlain is regularly castigated for allowing Hitler to have the Sudeten land but Churchill gets away with insisting that Stalin have eastern Poland.

In October 44 at a meeting in Moscow with Mikolajczyk Churchill made it plain he did not care about Polish feelings on the Curzon line they were to accept it. When Mikolajczyk asked why nothing was being said about territorial compensation from Germany Churchill told him that to announce what they intended would cause German fury. At a further meeting he said “You are callous people who want to wreck Europe ..........you have only your own miserable selfish interests in mind. I will have to call on the other Poles and this Lublin Government may function very well. It is a criminal attempt on your part to wreck, by your “Liberum Veto,” agreement between the allies”. It was of course a longer conversation but all of it was in a similar vein. If Chamberlain had spoken to Benes the way Churchill had spoken to Mikolajczyk he would be accused of the worst bullying tactics in order to get the Czechs to give way to Hitler. Churchill though comes away with no stain on his character and is never called an appeaser.

If Churchill had won the 1945 British election Poland could be a smaller country than it is today. In 1945 at Yalta he said that he was prepared to concede a frontier to the east of the Oder but a frontier on the western Neisse was out of the question. At the fifth session of the Potsdam Conference he said that he was opposed to the Polish Soviet plan of the Oder Neisse frontier. At the sixth session he said the British could accept a transfer of Germans from East Germany equal to the number of Poles transferred from east of the Curzon line. Maybe two or three million Poles but a figure of eight or nine million Germans to be transferred was too many and wrong. On July 24 he told Bierut at Potsdam that the western allies thought Polish territorial demands were excessive. On July 25 he told Bierut that Polish was asking too much and the USA and UK would oppose these demands.

In 1944 he was not prepared to stand up to Stalin over nearly half of Poland being stolen but in 1945 he was prepared to stand up to Stalin because he thought Poland was receiving to much German territory.

From:- Nemesis At Potsdam by Alfred M.de Zayas

[Maurice Laarman]

Steve, thanks for this interesting post. I also (still) wonder, but perhaps I see things to naive, why the UK declared war on Germany because of the occupation of Poland, but not on the USSR. If the freedom of Poland was that important, it should have done it. In my opinion this shows that holding Germany back in the race towards world power was the true goal, not the freedom of individual states. Furthermore, after a tragic war Poland was still occupied - where it officialy was started on. Poland suffered a lot.

Kind regards,

Maurice

[michael mills]

....why the UK declared war on Germany because of the occupation of Poland, but not on the USSR....

Because Britain only ever promised to aid Poland against direct or indirect aggression by Germany, not by the Soviet Union.

The Polish-British treaty on mutual military support concluded on 25 August 1939 provided that each party would aid the other against a direct or indirect threat to its independence by a third party. A secret appendix to the treaty stated that the "third party" was Germany.

Since Britain had not promised or contracted to aid Poland against the Soviet Union, there was no legal obligation on ito take military action against the Soviet Union for the latter's invasion of Polish territory on 17 September 1939.

The treaty between Britain and Poland was concluded two days after the announcement of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, so the British Government must have been aware that if a conflict broke out between Poland and Germany, the latter would almost certainly be assisted by the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Britain did not include the Soviet Union in the appendix to the treaty as a party against which it undertook to aid Poland; only Germany was named.

The conclusion must be that Britain's motive in first giving a unilateral guarantee to Poland aimed against Germany, and then making the guarantee bilateral in the treaty, was not so much to defend Poland against aggression from any quarter, but to provide a casus belli against Germany.

[Led125]

The Britih declaration of war had little to do with blocking German aggression against Poland per se; it was about forestalling German aggression wherever it would occur. Remember Poland wasn't the only country to receive guarantees from Britain in 1939.

British foreign policy has always been based on the idea that were one power to comletely dominate the continent then this would be disastrous for Britain's independence. In up to 1939 there were wild rumours circulating about German thrusts against the low countries, Romania, Poland and even Britain itself. Poland was judged to be the most imortant country in eastern Europe and so would need to be a keystone of a coalition to resist German aggression.

The reason Britain didn't declare war on the USSR in 1939 is obvious - Britain had her hands full dealing with Germany. The war was expected to be a long attritional slog and Britain had no intention of adding to her difficulties by involving the Soviet Union. This was understood by the Polish Ambassador in London.

However, Britain's policy up to 1941 was anti-Soviet and aimed at combatting the Soviet Union. Remember the plans to provide support to Finland in the Winter War which (in part) provoked the German invasion of Denmark and Norway and to bomb the oil fields in the Soviet Union.

See the book Oeration Pike: Britain Vs the Soviet Union, 1939-1941 by Patrick R. Osborn.

[Led125]

As for Churchill personally, whilst he had nothing against Poland he wasn't particularly fond of it either and Sikorski aside he didn't really enjoy warm relations with any Polish statesman.

[Michael Kenny]

He was a better friend than any of the other nations who had a hand in deciding Poland's future.
Pre-war Poland was not a beacon of democracy and she also joined in Hitlers pre war land grabs so I think we can despense with the hand wringing over this beacon of freedom being the bulwark against Soviet expansion.
During the Polish-Soviet wars Poland proved just as capable of 'war crimes' as othe nations and the lesson might be 'if you crap on your neighbours be sure thay do not get the chance to get some payback'. As Germany found out this does not bode well for your borders.
Anyway I always see this subject as the opening move of a campaign to prove the UK as the puppet master manipulating poor old Hitler into a war he didn't want and thus showing Churchill (once more) as the most evil man of the century!

[michael mills]

British foreign policy has always been based on the idea that were one power to comletely dominate the continent then this would be disastrous for Britain's independence.

Indeed. That is the essential reason why the British Government decided to confront Germany militarily in 1939. The unilateral guarantee given to Poland on 30 March was designed as the trip-wire to trigger that confrontation, by creating an encirclement of Germany that the latter would either have to break out of or surrender to.

The British Government believed that the German economy was on the verge of collapse due to the strains of re-armament. It hoped that the mere threat of a military confrontation with Britain, which would involve economic warfare that Germany could not win, given Britain's greater resources, would bring about the overthrow of Hitler by his conservative allies, and the abandonment of German ambitions to create a European "Grossraumwirtschaft" (large regional economy) under German hegemony, from which Britain would be excluded. Such a surrender by Germany would allow Britain and France to reassert their previous role as the economic masters of Europe, with Germany as Britain's economic junior partner.

Even if that best-case scenario did not come about, the British Government believed that its superior economic resources would enable it to win a war of attrition lasting up to three years. That war of attrition would be waged primarily by naval blockade and other means of economic warfare, without the need for British forces to be heavily involved in land warfare leading to heavy casualties.

The British military strategy from March to August 1939 was based on the presumption that the military conflict would begin with hostilities between Germany and Poland, which would keep the German armed forces fully occupied for a few months before Poland's inevitable defeat, after which they would find themselves confronting a hostile Red Army along the Polish-Soviet frontier,which would require Germany to keep a large part of its forces in the East to guard that frontier and prevent it from deploying all of its forces to the West against France and Britain.

In the best case, the confrontation of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army along the Polish-Soviet frontier would escalate into an armed clash, keeping the German forces fully occupied and allowing Britain to wage its economic warfare unhindered while France sheltered behind the Maginot Line.

That whole strategy was frustrated by the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact and the subsequent Borders and Friendship Treaty, which allowed Germany to throw its entire force against Britain and France after the elimination of Poland as the eastern arm of the Allied encirclement.

[waldzee]

....why the UK declared war on Germany because of the occupation of Poland, but not on the USSR....

Because Britain only ever promised to aid Poland against direct or indirect aggression by Germany, not by the Soviet Union.

The Polish-British treaty on mutual military support concluded on 25 August 1939 provided that each party would aid the other against a direct or indirect threat to its independence by a third party. A secret appendix to the treaty stated that the "third party" was Germany.

Since Britain had not promised or contracted to aid Poland against the Soviet Union, there was no legal obligation on ito take military action against the Soviet Union for the latter's invasion of Polish territory on 17 September 1939.

The treaty between Britain and Poland was concluded two days after the announcement of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, so the British Government must have been aware that if a conflict broke out between Poland and Germany, the latter would almost certainly be assisted by the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Britain did not include the Soviet Union in the appendix to the treaty as a party against which it undertook to aid Poland; only Germany was named.

The conclusion must be that Britain's motive in first giving a unilateral guarantee to Poland aimed against Germany, and then making the guarantee bilateral in the treaty, was not so much to defend Poland against aggression from any quarter, but to provide a casus belli against Germany.

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Excellent Scholarship!
One quick query- if Germany had simply re-occupied the Free State of Danzig in 1939, would Britain or France declare war?

[michael mills]

One quick query- if Germany had simply re-occupied the Free State of Danzig in 1939, would Britain or France declare war?

Almost certainly yes.

Both the Anglo-Polish Agreement on Mutual Assistance of 6 April 1939 and the subsequent Treaty of Mutual Assitance signed on 25 August provided that Britian would come to the aid of Poland if that country used its armed forces to resist an act of direct or indirect aggression that it considered as a threat to its independence.

Thus, the written agreements between Britain and Poland left it entirely to the discretion of Poland to decide whether a particular action by Germany, whether direct or indirect, constituted a threat to its independence. If Poland then sent its armed forces to resist that direct or indirect act of aggression, Britian was bound to take military action against Germany.

The Treaty of Mutual Aid of 25 August 1939 specifically defined "indirect aggression" as any German action aimed at taking control of Danzig. Hence, if Germany had occupied Danzig with its forces in 1939, and Poland had responded by sending in its own armed forces to oppose that occupation, then Britain was bound to come to the assistance of Poland.

Britain might first have given Germany an ultimatum to withdraw its forces from Danzig, and then declared war if it failed to do so.

Here is a link to the text of the Agreement of Mutual Assistance of 25 August 1939:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Agreement ... ndon_(1939)

Note in particular this part of the text of the Agreement:

ARTICLE 2.

(1) The provisions of Article I will also apply in the event of any action by a European Power which clearly threatened, directly or indirectly, the independence of one of the Contracting Parties, and was of such a nature that the Party in question considered it vital to resist it with its armed forces.

Then compare that part of the text with this part of the Secret Protocol:

2. (a) The two Governments will from time to time determine by mutual agreement the hypothetical cases of action by Germany coming within the ambit of Article 2 of the Agreement. (b) Until such time as the two Governments have agreed to modify the following provisions of this paragraph, they will consider: that the case contemplated by paragraph (1) of the Article 2 of the Agreement is that of the Free City of Danzig;

The effect of that article was that if Poland sent its armed forces into the territory of the Free City of Danzig under the pretext that an action by Germany in relation to Danzig represented a threat to Poland's independence, then Britain was obligated to take action against Germany.

Note that the action by Germany did not need to involve any actual use of armed force. For example, if the Danzig Seante declared itself to be reunited with Germany, and the German Government accepted that declaration and itself declared Danzig to be part of its sovereign territory, then that would be enough for Poland to claim the existence of an indirect threat to its independence, and send its own troops into Danzig to occupy and suppress the Danzig Senate. Under the terms of the Article 2 Paragraph (1), Britain would then be obligated to take armed action against Germany, even though Germany had not actually violated Polish territory in any way.

In the above scenario, the British Government under Chamberlain might well have tried to wriggle out of its obligation with the argument that the reunification of Danzig with Germany without the use of force did not really constitute a threat to Poland's independence. However, the War Party in Britain led by Churchill and Eden, and supported by the Labour Party, would certainly have put pressure on Chamberlain to issue an ultimatum to Germany, demanding it agree to the Polish occupation of Danzig or face war with Britain.

[Michael Kenny]

However, the War Party in Britain led by Churchill and Eden, and supported by the Labour Party

As I predicted earlier the apologist blame everything on Churchill.

[Led125]

Indeed. That is the essential reason why the British Government decided to confront Germany militarily in 1939. The unilateral guarantee given to Poland on 30 March was designed as the trip-wire to trigger that confrontation, by creating an encirclement of Germany that the latter would either have to break out of or surrender to.

Nope, not at all. I guess you are continuing to ignore the large body of evidence that myself and other posters have presented to you in the past.

I have no intention of going over this again. I just completed a bachelor dissertation on Polish dilomacy in 1939 and I've already gone through long rebuttals to your ahistorical point of view and I have no intention of going over this subject again. Posters who are unaware of these events are advised to look over some of my earlier posts, particularly the thread entitled 'Hitler's Decision to Attack Poland'.


Except to note one thing:

Note that the action by Germany did not need to involve any actual use of armed force. For example, if the Danzig Seante declared itself to be reunited with Germany, and the German Government accepted that declaration and itself declared Danzig to be part of its sovereign territory, then that would be enough for Poland to claim the existence of an indirect threat to its independence, and send its own troops into Danzig to occupy and suppress the Danzig Senate. Under the terms of the Article 2 Paragraph (1), Britain would then be obligated to take armed action against Germany, even though Germany had not actually violated Polish territory in any way.

You ignore that in that scenario Germany has violated Polish interests, interests judged to be essential to Poland's independence by Poland, Britain, France and Germany. In fact by recognising a coup it has taken the same action, in effect, as if it marched troops into Danzig. Of course, in April the Polish government decided not to respond militarily to an internal coup in Danzig, so it would require Germany exacerbation of the situation to bring things to a head, and there isn't any indication that this policy changed.
Again, interested readers should consult my earlier posts.

[michael mills]

I am glad to see that Led125 has finally accepted the historical reality that the Anglo-Polish Agreement on Mutual Assistance of 6 April 1939 made it possible for a war between Britain and Germany to be triggered even without an actual German invasion of sovereign Polish territory, or even without an occupation of Danzig by German troops.

He now recognises that any action by the Danzig Senate and the German Government that reunited the Free State with the Reich, even if entirely peaceful and without any use of force, would be treated by Poland as an aggression to which it was entitled to respond with the use of its own armed forces, thereby triggering war between Germany and Britain.

On a number of occasions in the summer of 1939, the Polish Government openly declared that any attempt to change the status of Danzig unilaterally, eg by taking control of the Danzig-East Prussian border away from the Polish customs officials, would be treated by it as an act of war, and responded to accordingly. In other words, the Polish Government was threatening to send in its armed forces, which would automatically trigger armed action by Britain against Germany, in accordance with the provisions of the Agreement of 6 April.

[Led125]

I understand a drowning person will try to grasp onto anything if he thinks it will save his life. It appears that the same is true of pseudohistorians. I am well aware that Michael's favourite technique for 'proving' a point is to take a statement from a primary or secondary source, strip it from all its context and then deliberately misinterpret its contents, but I am impressed that you would do so with my own words in the knowledge I would smack you down for it.

that the Anglo-Polish Agreement on Mutual Assistance of 6 April 1939 made it possible for a war between Britain and Germany to be triggered even without an actual German invasion of sovereign Polish territory, or even without an occupation of Danzig by German troops.

Pardon me but when was this even an issue, and when did it only come into play after April 6? You are deliberately moving the goal posts here. A day ago you claimed:

The unilateral guarantee given to Poland on 30 March was designed as the trip-wire to trigger that confrontation, by creating an encirclement of Germany that the latter would either have to break out of or surrender to.

And now the emphasis is on April. Do yourself a favour and attempt to be consistent. Either the declaration of March 30th was wide enough and art of a policy to provide an excuse to go to war or the April 6th Agreement was the excuse. Just to note before this is taken out of context, that statement should not be read in any way as lending succour to your inane and ahistorical theories.

The Poles had decided prior to Aril 6th that in the event of any coup in Danzig, this would be treated as a purely dilomatic incident and they would not respond militarily. In the event of German recognition of this coupthen Germany has violated Polish interests just as if she had invaded Danzig.. This seems to be a nuance you are incapable of understanding. Poland in 1939 had no reason to believe that Britain would back her in a dispute over Danzig; she made the decision to resist any German attempt to unilaterally alter the status of Danzig well before March 1939; Poland did not regard herself as being involved in anything more than a game of bluff with Germany. These facts together destroy your argument that Poland regarded itself as being given a blank cheque (either on March 31st, April 6th or August 25th - regardless of what the words on the paper might suggest if one discounts context views them in a vacuum. Such context includes the British pressure on Poland not to reject outright German offers, to hold off on mobilization and to consult before taking any action) and that Poland was to blame for the outbreak of the Second World War.

[waldzee]

Indeed. That is the essential reason why the British Government decided to confront Germany militarily in 1939. The unilateral guarantee given to Poland on 30 March was designed as the trip-wire to trigger that confrontation, by creating an encirclement of Germany that the latter would either have to break out of or surrender to.

Nope, not at all. I guess you are continuing to ignore the large body of evidence that myself and other posters have presented to you in the past.

I have no intention of going over this again. I just completed a bachelor dissertation on Polish dilomacy in 1939 and I've already gone through long rebuttals to your ahistorical point of view and I have no intention of going over this subject again. Posters who are unaware of these events are advised to look over some of my earlier posts, particularly the thread entitled 'Hitler's Decision to Attack Poland'.


Except to note one thing:

Note that the action by Germany did not need to involve any actual use of armed force. For example, if the Danzig Seante declared itself to be reunited with Germany, and the German Government accepted that declaration and itself declared Danzig to be part of its sovereign territory, then that would be enough for Poland to claim the existence of an indirect threat to its independence, and send its own troops into Danzig to occupy and suppress the Danzig Senate. Under the terms of the Article 2 Paragraph (1), Britain would then be obligated to take armed action against Germany, even though Germany had not actually violated Polish territory in any way.

You ignore that in that scenario Germany has violated Polish interests, interests judged to be essential to Poland's independence by Poland, Britain, France and Germany. In fact by recognising a coup it has taken the same action, in effect, as if it marched troops into Danzig. Of course, in April the Polish government decided not to respond militarily to an internal coup in Danzig, so it would require Germany exacerbation of the situation to bring things to a head, and there isn't any indication that this policy changed.
Again, interested readers should consult my earlier posts.

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I've come to agree with Michael Mills- on this point. Poland should have pulled out of Danzig. They had a fast developing transit corridor to Romania -- & a new port in Glydia.
If Germany invaded, they couldn't hold the Corridor in any case. Danzig was in rapid decline.

[henryk]

http://www.thenews.pl/9/7/Artykul/91533 ... Solidarity

Thatcher considered backing communists against Solidarity?
PR dla Zagranicy Peter Gentle 27.02.2012 16:12

In 1981, then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher considered supporting the communist regime in Warsaw in suppressing the Solidarity trade union, a previously confidential German Foreign Ministry document reveals.

The Der Spiegel magazine writes that Thatcher's foreign secretary at the time, Lord Peter Carrington, told diplomats in New York that year, as the communist regime contiplated a crackdown against Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement, that the British Conservative government only backed Solidarity out of “respect for public opinion”, but from a more rational position, they would actually be, "on the side of the Polish [communist] government".

Thatcher's government was apparently concerned that too radical demands by Solidarity could trigger a Soviet invasion of Poland and destabilise the region.

If true, then the revelation that Thatcher was suspicious of Solidarity and Walesa and considered backing a communist regime in suppressing the movement would be a severe dent to her 'Iron Lady' image, which inspired the Oscar winning film of the same name.

In 2009 it was revealed that Prime Minister Thatcher was “deeply impressed” by the courage and patriotism that General Jaruzelski showed as the communist fell from power in 1989.

Previously classified Soviet documents showed that Thatcher had a positive attitude to Polish communist leader General Jaruzelski, who imposed martial law in Poland in December 1981, describing him as a “Polish patriot”.

The papers, previously part of the Mikhail Gorbachov foundation’s collection, reported that the then British prime minister, in a meeting with Gorbachov in the autumn of 1989, expressed her admiration for how calmly the Russian leader had taken the June elections in Poland, which brought the Mazowiecki government to power and toppled communism. (pg)