Lebensraum

[Boby]

The Poles felt threatened by the sharp change of Hitler's attitude and by the 1939 conquest of Czechoslovakia. Earlier the were showered by Hitler and other leading Nazis with love, understanding, and promises everything would be all right, because the Chancellor had no territorial claims in Europe. This suddenly stopped at the beginning of 1939.
But still even in March it wasn't more the usual Polish efforts to find a better ally/allies and a better defensive agreement than the uninterested France and the unreliable 1926 Polish French agreement than fear.
The Poles always felt vulnerable, alone in their plight and were trying to do something about it.

The road, the reunification wouldn't be accepted by the Poles themselves. The Polish leaders wouldn't be able to sell it to them without destroying themselves and their party politically. It simply wasn't doable for internal political reasons.

It could be done for a good price, but recognition of the border and renouncing all claims weren't considered a good price at all, because the territories were a part of Poland anyway - it didn't matter the Germans liked or not.
If the had problem with it - well, it was their problem.

There was a secret Meeting on 8 January 1939 in the Royal Castle in which German demands were rejected and the possibility of war was discussed.

[wm]

There was a meeting and Beck informed his colleagues about the latest developments, but really nothing more happened there.
Poland started preparations for war in March. Earlier nothing was done, even any plan of defense against Germany basically hadn't existed till then.
But even then Beck thought it would be a local dust up around Danzing at worst, nothing more.

[wm]

Recognition by Germany of the German-Polish border and renunciation of its claims to former German territory were something that the Polish Government had been seeking in vain ever since 1920, so those things were valuable to Poland.

If course it was a major goal, but they expected it would be given to them for free, like the French in Locarno.

It is interesting that when Pilsudski seized power in 1926, some Endecja politicians in Wielkopolska, the former Posen Province of Germany, for a time were considering secession from Poland because they feared that Pilsudski would give that territory back to Germany in order to achieve détente.

There was lots of paranoia floating around at that time, and people were saying strangest things about their political opponents. It was Trump-Clinton race on steroids all the time.

I doubt that the Polish Government was particularly concerned about Hitler's crushing of Czechoslovakia. After all, it had always been hostile to the Czech rulers, regarding them as too friendly to the Soviet Union.

Czechoslovakia, a caricature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as they were calling it, was expected to fail, so when it failed nobody shed a tear for it. But there were spontaneously organized anti-German demonstrations in Polish cities, so it seems the people themselves strongly disapproved what just had happened.
The Poles weren't hostile, it was the other way round, the Czech rules were consistently hostile to Poland and consistently rejected Polish offers of any defensive agreement. For an agreement the Poles were ready even to forget Teschen.

What the Polish leaders did not like was the German guarantee of the independence of Slovakia, since they would have preferred a partitioning of that country with Hungary, or else Hungarian annexation, which would have established the Polish-Hungarian border that had long been a Polish aim. However, the Hungarian annexation of Ruthenia (Carpatho-Ukraine), with Hitler's consent, had established just such a border, albeit a short one.

Poland wouldn't partition Slovakia, the Slovaks were considered friends. Beck personally blocked naive plans of some deluded Polish generals that wanted to annex a large part of Slovakia.
Even Hungary was very reluctant to act against Slovakia.

[michael mills]

Poland wouldn't partition Slovakia, the Slovaks were considered friends. Beck personally blocked naive plans of some deluded Polish generals that wanted to annex a large part of Slovakia.

What the Polish rulers did not like was the existence of a state that separated them from Hungary, which was the East European state most friendly to Poland. It was irrelevant whether that state was Czechoslovakia or a separate Slovakia.

The crucial factor is that it was a foreign-policy aim of the Polish rulers to re-establish the border with Hungary that had existed until the partitions of Poland. That aim had been frustrated by the excision of Slovakia from Hungary after the First World War and its joining to the newly independent Czech State.

Even Hungary was very reluctant to act against Slovakia.

There was actually a short border war between Hungary and the autonomous Slovakia in March 1939, immediately after Slovakia had gained its independence as a result of the German occupation of Czechia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak%E2 ... garian_War

[wm]

It was the other way round. The Poles loved Czechoslovakia, and they would have forgotten even Teschen for a good defensive agreement.
It was Czechoslovakia (or rather the Czechs, and their leader Beneš) which didn't reciprocate the feelings, was impeccably hostile or at best indifferent.
So, as she didn't want to become the part of the solution, she eventually became the part of the problem.

The Poles were forced to implement a substandard solution to their problems, i.e. to seek defensive agreements with countries hostile to Czechoslovakia.

As to the Slovaks, they and their independence efforts, were helped and encouraged by the Poles all the time.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

I read somewhere, sorry I can't find the book right now, that it was to be mostly farmland colonized by German settlers with the few remaining Slavs as slaves working in the fields. There were planned cities as various strategic locations for trade and defense, much like medeviel castles, with the local gauleiter as the king. Hitler had planned to raze all Russian cities to the ground. The population that wasn't to be used as slaves were to be driven past the Ural mountains and kept there by the Army and the SS.

Yes, it seems that the Nazis believed that Proto-Slavic Urheimat was in areas to the east of the Ural Mountains, in Asia.

That was the reason why they wanted to expel Slavs where they supposedly belonged - "back" to Asia, behind the Ural.

The truth is that all Europeans - including Slavs (contrary to that propaganda about Asiatic origin of Slavs) - are basically a mixture of three ancestral prehistoric populations - namely 1) Western Hunter-Gatherers, 2) Early Neolithic Farmers and 3) Bronze Age Steppe Herders.

Recently I tested my own genetic ancestry with Family Tree DNA and GEDmatch (including Eurogenes Steppe K10 admixture calculator). Here you can see my Eurogenes admixture results compared to some other persons (with ancestry proportions typical for their ethnic groups):

The first four rows and the last seven rows are some of Prehistoric and Modern people who can be used as reference populations:

My admixture proportions are typical in East-Central Europe; the only atypical thing is my relatively high percent of "Hindu Kush":

Click the attachment to enlarge it:

[Boby]

There was a meeting and Beck informed his colleagues about the latest developments, but really nothing more happened there.
Poland started preparations for war in March. Earlier nothing was done, even any plan of defense against Germany basically hadn't existed till then.
But even then Beck thought it would be a local dust up around Danzing at worst, nothing more.

Beck retrospective views was that he saw the "red light" about Hitler's methods during the Berghof visit. It seems Hitler said something about Danzig in such wording that Beck became highly suspicious about him.

It is taken from DBFP. I would look for the exact documents (I read the explanation in two of them, talking to the British ambassador or to the cónsul in Danzig).

Boby,

[wm]

The problem is Beck's chef de cabinet Michał Łubieński (who actually was there) wrote in his unpublished report that Beck saw nothing, and even his refusal was rather weak, certainly not as thunderous as it's claimed.
That he was merely annoyed, and wanted to make some waves, to get even by contacting the French or the British.
On the other hand he wasn't the brightest chef de cabinet on this planet, as he wrote a few times he didn't understand what his boss was doing, for example in Czechoslovakia. So who knows.

[Boby]

For Beck comments of his Berghof Meeting see:
https://archive.org/stream/DocumentsOnB ... 9/mode/1up

Doc. 224 and 482.

[wm]

Nice find. You've read them all? That's heroic

From the documents:

Letter from Mr. Norton {Warsaw) to Sir A. Cadogan
BRITISH EMBASSY, WARSAW, July 3, 1939

There are a good many paradoxes and imponderabilia about this Danzig situation.

For instance, the evident anxiety in London and Paris during the last three days, contrasted with the watchful calm that pervades Poland. The Polish press has drawn fairly freely on alarmist reports from France and the United Kingdom, having no sensational news from anywhere nearer home.
[...]
I want to explain what I think he [Beck] is getting at. One of his key sentences was 'There is a moderation that comes from fear and weakness, and a moderation based on courage and strength. The result achieved by both these moderations may appear to be the same but in fact it will be different.'

Apply this to Danzig, If he had accepted Hitler's terms in March it would have been due to weakness. Polish morale would have been destroyed and the stranglehold of Germany on Poland would have been accomplished.
But if Poland's strength is built up, if the balance of power in Europe turns definitely against the aggressors, even without a war, it might not be impossible for Beck to get his country to see that various changes in Danzig can be made without giving Germany that stranglehold.

Letter from Mr. Norton {Warsaw) to Sir 0. Sargent
BRITISH EMBASSY, WARSAW, July 3, 1939

[...]
It is of course rubbish to say that the Polish Government is liable to be more extreme owing to our guarantee. On the contrary we have given them the strength and confidence to be reasonable despite perpetual pin-pricks.
In the official acts and statements of the leaders of the people there is a dignity compared with which the utterances of Goebbels (who got very drunk at Danzig) are the bawling of a guttersnipe.
[...]
Over the vodka one evening Beck told me that it was on January 4 at Berchtesgaden that he realised that Poland and Germany had reached the parting of the ways. At previous interviews Hitler had said 'Ich möchte', but on January 4 he used the expression 'Es muss sein'.

Hitler tried in vain to retrieve it for he realised by some tightening of Beck's facial muscles that it had been a slip. Beck's unspoken comment had been 'Was ist das, dass ich höre?'

Letter from Mr. Norton {Warsaw) to Sir O. Sargent
BRITISH EMBASSY, WARSAW, July 28, 1939

[...]
But I have also heard on very good authority that Ribbentrop, after seeing Beck, said to the German Ambassador here: 'You see, you were quite wrong The Poles are not intransigent, and we can do a deal with them.'

We must remember that Ribbentrop is very stupid and Beck very clever Beck probably wrapped his negatives up in such friendly phraseology that Ribbentrop completely misunderstood the situation. Beck is now firmly convinced that he saw the red light when he went to Berchtesgaden in January, and that he then decided that Hitler's intentions and methods were incompatible with Polish independence.