On March 26 1936 Joseph Lipski had a talk with the US ambassador to Germany William Dodd at the Polish embassy. Lipski explained the latest problem between Poland and Germany. Germany owed Poland $15,000,000 for freight and passenger services between Germany and E.Prussia i.e. crossing the Polish Corridor. This is about $267,000,000 in today’s money. Schacht (head of the Reich bank) was saying that Germany could only pay in goods while the Poles were insisting on gold or foreign exchange. The dispute had been going on for two months and had now been referred to Hitler.
Hitler gave way over various problems to do with trade then finally over the transit issues and agreement came in April. The Poles had been offered military equipment and armaments but they stuck to their demands and got their cash.
That Poland charged Germany for trains crossing the corridor came as a surprise to me. Perhaps someone can shed some light on what were the road and rail arrangements and charges for German goods and people. How did Polish authorities handle the sensitive matter for Germans of crossing the corridor?
Source is – Between Hitler and Stalin by Archibald L Patterson 2010 - pages 108/109
Polish Charges on German Trains Transiting Corridor
Re: Polish Charges on German Trains Transiting Corridor
Hi Steve
If you read Polish, then the text of the regulations governing transit established by the treaty of Paris (21 April 1921), are contained in Polish Statute Book Dz.U.24.72.704 of 1922. These regulations were periodically reviewed, one of the more important milestones being the agreement signed on 27 March 1926 in Berlin, governing the technical aspects and scales of charges between the three states (the third being Danzig, of course).
In brief, this entitled passengers and goods to cross Polish territory on prescribed routes without being subject to control (such as passport control in the case of passengers) provided the trains remained sealed during transit. With respect to passengers this meant that, for example, passenger doors remained closed throughout and windows had to be closed on station stops. For this privilege the German side paid a transit charge - in effect an expensive road tax. However, hopefully, that answers one of your questions: the Polish authorities did not have to handle the sensitive matter of Germans crossing the corridor because the Transit agreement ensured they didn't have to - that was the point of the exercise. Over time these restrictions were relaxed and later transit passengers were even allowed to get off the trains at stations and purchase refreshments and newspapers etc. without the need for a passport.
I have been unable to locate the actual scale of charges (and will try to find), however, given the volume of traffic, this represented a tidy sum. Depending on source, it is claimed that it either amounted to 15% of Polish foreign exchange income or otherwise 15% of the TOTAL state income. Because of galloping inflation in both countries, the payments were to be made in exchangeable currency (Swiss Franks? US Dollars?). This then created a problem for Germany who had limited foreign exchange reserves. For these reasons the Germans, on the one hand, were keen to avoid the financial burden of the arrangement and, on the other, why the Poles were keen to keep it!
For that and (no doubt) political reasons Germany was chronically in arrears with payments which created continuous friction between the two countries throughout the interwar period because for the Polish Government, whether the Germans paid on time, could mean the difference between balancing the books or otherwise. The 1936 crisis Lipski refers to, was probably the worst in a long series of such, when Poland suspended transit virtually completely on 7th February for about 3 months to force payment of continuously growing arrears. Incidentally I would not discount that some payment was, in later years, delivered in military kind. This has been suggested as a possible reason for the otherwise mysterious appearance of large numbers of Czechoslovak-made Praga RV trucks in the Polish Armed Forces in the months preceding WW2.
Contrary to what one may think, this type of arrangement is not that unusual. A similar one exists today not a million miles away from where the one we are discussing once was, albeit concerning a North-South axis and Poland's eastern neighbours. It too is the cause of some, for the time being at any rate low-level, friction.
If you read Polish, then the text of the regulations governing transit established by the treaty of Paris (21 April 1921), are contained in Polish Statute Book Dz.U.24.72.704 of 1922. These regulations were periodically reviewed, one of the more important milestones being the agreement signed on 27 March 1926 in Berlin, governing the technical aspects and scales of charges between the three states (the third being Danzig, of course).
In brief, this entitled passengers and goods to cross Polish territory on prescribed routes without being subject to control (such as passport control in the case of passengers) provided the trains remained sealed during transit. With respect to passengers this meant that, for example, passenger doors remained closed throughout and windows had to be closed on station stops. For this privilege the German side paid a transit charge - in effect an expensive road tax. However, hopefully, that answers one of your questions: the Polish authorities did not have to handle the sensitive matter of Germans crossing the corridor because the Transit agreement ensured they didn't have to - that was the point of the exercise. Over time these restrictions were relaxed and later transit passengers were even allowed to get off the trains at stations and purchase refreshments and newspapers etc. without the need for a passport.
I have been unable to locate the actual scale of charges (and will try to find), however, given the volume of traffic, this represented a tidy sum. Depending on source, it is claimed that it either amounted to 15% of Polish foreign exchange income or otherwise 15% of the TOTAL state income. Because of galloping inflation in both countries, the payments were to be made in exchangeable currency (Swiss Franks? US Dollars?). This then created a problem for Germany who had limited foreign exchange reserves. For these reasons the Germans, on the one hand, were keen to avoid the financial burden of the arrangement and, on the other, why the Poles were keen to keep it!
For that and (no doubt) political reasons Germany was chronically in arrears with payments which created continuous friction between the two countries throughout the interwar period because for the Polish Government, whether the Germans paid on time, could mean the difference between balancing the books or otherwise. The 1936 crisis Lipski refers to, was probably the worst in a long series of such, when Poland suspended transit virtually completely on 7th February for about 3 months to force payment of continuously growing arrears. Incidentally I would not discount that some payment was, in later years, delivered in military kind. This has been suggested as a possible reason for the otherwise mysterious appearance of large numbers of Czechoslovak-made Praga RV trucks in the Polish Armed Forces in the months preceding WW2.
Contrary to what one may think, this type of arrangement is not that unusual. A similar one exists today not a million miles away from where the one we are discussing once was, albeit concerning a North-South axis and Poland's eastern neighbours. It too is the cause of some, for the time being at any rate low-level, friction.
Re: Polish Charges on German Trains Transiting Corridor
Many thanks gebhk, while I can hold a simple conversation in Polish I am unfortunately illiterate in Polish. I had no idea that the transit traffic was such an important source of income for the Polish state. If for no other reason than this the German proposal for an extra-territorial road and rail link must have gone down like a lead balloon.