The Polish decision to reject Germany's demands in 1939

[LWD]

I'm not buying a lotto ticket today. If I did and won I would definitly be better off however that doesn't mean that my best decision is to buy a lotto ticket. Saying that it is "icredibly stupid" of me not to do so would be way off base. Just as your critiques above are.

Nowhere did I say it was "best" or "enevitable". I am saying it's a possible outcome and would have been a better outcome than the one provided by the results of Britain's "guarantee"...

I have no disagreement with that. On the other hand you also said something to the effect that what Chaimberland did was "incredibly stupid". You simply have not made a case for that. See my analogy above.

[szopen]

Nowhere did I say it was "best" or "enevitable". I am saying it's a possible outcome and would have been a better outcome than the one provided by the results of Britain's "guarantee".

Handing the fate of your Nation over to another country was and is incredibly stupid, no matter what nonsense you write.

Tony

Tony,
Do you contest the speech of Hitler, in which he said, that he first wanted to go against the west, and only then Polish stance changed his position? If indeed Hitler wanted go west, was it better for England to have Poland as ally (without the hindsight we have now), or as enemy?

[tonyh]

On the other hand you also said something to the effect that what Chaimberland did was "incredibly stupid". You simply have not made a case for that.

If the party of the first offers a bluff in an effort to influence the decision making of the party of the second and also offers a "guarantee" to the party of the third, in the hope that the parties of the second and third do exactly what the party of the first wants and if we further take it that the party of the first's decison may have incredibly dire consequences for the party of the first and others if failure ensues...then that is an extremely stupid move on the behalf of the party of the first.

If you think that Britain's handing her immediate destiny over to another Nation's decision makers is not a stupid move...then I cannot help you.

I believe Anthony Eden called it "Lunacy".



Tony

[tonyh]

Nowhere did I say it was "best" or "enevitable". I am saying it's a possible outcome and would have been a better outcome than the one provided by the results of Britain's "guarantee".

Handing the fate of your Nation over to another country was and is incredibly stupid, no matter what nonsense you write.

Tony

Tony,
Do you contest the speech of Hitler, in which he said, that he first wanted to go against the west, and only then Polish stance changed his position? If indeed Hitler wanted go west, was it better for England to have Poland as ally (without the hindsight we have now), or as enemy?

Since Mein Kampf Hitler had been talking about expansion EAST, not West. Hitler never wanted a repeat of WWI or conflict with Britain and was VERY cautious about a war in Western Europe.

Hitler's eyes were always facing toward Russia, unfortunately, Poland and Czechoslovakia were in the way and either had to come onside or be incorporated into the Reich.

Hitler may have considered a possible early campaign in the West first, if the West forced this path, but HIS option was always a war in the East.


Tony

[szopen]

Tonyh:

"It was clear to me that a conflict with Poland had to come sooner or later. I had already made this decision in Spring. [Apparently this referred to (L-79).] But I thought I would first turn against the West in a few years, and only afterwards against the East. But the sequence cannot be fixed. One cannot close one's eyes even before a threatening situation. I wanted to establish an acceptable relationship with Poland, in order to fight first against the West, but this plan which was agreeable to me could not be executed, since essential points have changed."

"It became clear to me that Poland would attack us, in case of a conflict in the West."

I will repeat this again:
"I thought I would first turn against the West in a few years, and only afterwards against the East."
"It became clear to me that Poland would attack us, in case of a conflict in the West."

And on another occasion:

"The Pole is no 'supplementary enemy'. Poland will always be on the side of our adversaries. In spite of treaties of friendship, Poland has always had the secret intention of exploiting every opportunity to do us harm.

"Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a question of expanding our living space in the East and of securing our food supplies, of the settlement of the Baltic problem. Food supplies can be expected only from thinly populated areas. Over and above the natural fertility, thorough- going German exploitation will enormously increase the surplus.

DO you contest both those quotes?

I know they have nothing to do with Polish decision - I am providing those easily recognisable quotes just to say, that other decision would NOT lead to better option. IF Poland would enter German camp (unlikely) war would still follow, but with far more disastrous effect. For one, one may wonder what would be the impact of say 50 Polish divisions and border several hundreds km closer to Moscow on the result of the war.

[szopen]

Or, Tonyh, let's me ask a different question.

Say, Britain and FRance agree to Germany and Poland still fights (Because we would fight, no matter the odds). Germany conquers Poland, erases us from the map and implements General Plan Ost, and then invades and destroy USSR. Millions of people dies in the process.
Is this better "outcome" for you? I mean, are you of opinion that lives of Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and other barbarians living in the east are not something one should cry about? Let me remind you that VAST majority of lives lost were in the east, and that war would happen anyway. With more disastrous effects, probably - with half of Europe under hand of Hitler, instead of hand of Stalin.

PS: note for other readers: This was already discussed in http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... &start=105. Tonyh and several other already pretended, that despite Hitler clearly said that "I wanted to establish an acceptable relationship with Poland, in order to fight first against the West", he really didn't mean it. Also "Everybody shall have to make a point of it that we were determined from the beginning to fight the Western Powers" did not mean in fact what one can may think about it. In fact, when Hitler said "Poland sees danger in a German victory in the West, and will attempt to rob us of the victory." he really didn't mean it, because, as some brilliant fellow put it, "I doubt that Hitler or OKW had any serious concerns over Polish military plans. "
ps2: And another quote "we must be quite clear on the following point: France is and will remain the implacable enemy of Germany.", "France is and will remain by far the most dangerous enemy. The French people, who are becoming more and more obsessed by negroid ideas, represent a threatening menace to the existence of the white race in Europe", "France, the mortal enemy of our people" "I shall never believe that France will of herself alter her intentions towards us",

[LWD]

On the other hand you also said something to the effect that what Chaimberland did was "incredibly stupid". You simply have not made a case for that.

If the party of the first offers a bluff in an effort to influence the decision making of the party of the second and also offers a "guarantee" to the party of the third, in the hope that the parties of the second and third do exactly what the party of the first wants and if we further take it that the party of the first's decison may have incredibly dire consequences for the party of the first and others if failure ensues...then that is an extremely stupid move on the behalf of the party of the first.

I chose to walk across the road yesterday (a decsion). I could have been hit by a car (dire consequences). Does that make my decision "extemely stupid"?

If you think that Britain's handing her immediate destiny over to another Nation's decision makers is not a stupid move...then I cannot help you.

A couple of points (actually three)
1) It's far from clear that this is what Britain did.
2) It's not stupid if it is in the apparent best interest of Britain.
3) Saying it repeatedly doesn't nothing to increase its validity.

The same analogy can be applied to Poland by the way. From the perspective of the time the probability of a desirable outcome was probably greater taking the route they did. Because the choices made by Poland, Britain, and France worked out the way they did does not mean that based on the information available at the time they were "bad" choices.

[tonyh]

I chose to walk across the road yesterday (a decsion). I could have been hit by a car (dire consequences). Does that make my decision "extemely stupid"?

Yes, but you didn't offer someone else the choice to tell you when you could cross the road, which befits the bone of contention better. You kept that choice yourself, you chose your own destiny.

Your analogy doesn't apply.

Tony

[tonyh]

Tonyh:

"It was clear to me that a conflict with Poland had to come sooner or later. I had already made this decision in Spring. [Apparently this referred to (L-79).] But I thought I would first turn against the West in a few years, and only afterwards against the East. But the sequence cannot be fixed. One cannot close one's eyes even before a threatening situation. I wanted to establish an acceptable relationship with Poland, in order to fight first against the West, but this plan which was agreeable to me could not be executed, since essential points have changed."

"It became clear to me that Poland would attack us, in case of a conflict in the West."

I will repeat this again:
"I thought I would first turn against the West in a few years, and only afterwards against the East."
"It became clear to me that Poland would attack us, in case of a conflict in the West."

And on another occasion:

"The Pole is no 'supplementary enemy'. Poland will always be on the side of our adversaries. In spite of treaties of friendship, Poland has always had the secret intention of exploiting every opportunity to do us harm.

"Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a question of expanding our living space in the East and of securing our food supplies, of the settlement of the Baltic problem. Food supplies can be expected only from thinly populated areas. Over and above the natural fertility, thorough- going German exploitation will enormously increase the surplus.

DO you contest both those quotes?

I know they have nothing to do with Polish decision - I am providing those easily recognisable quotes just to say, that other decision would NOT lead to better option. IF Poland would enter German camp (unlikely) war would still follow, but with far more disastrous effect. For one, one may wonder what would be the impact of say 50 Polish divisions and border several hundreds km closer to Moscow on the result of the war.

If you're trying to suggest that Hitler would rather have a war with the West over a war in Eastern Europe, then you really need to hit the books.

Your sentence is a singularity that is heavilly outweighed by the volume of Hitler's anti-Soviet rhetoric.

Even after the war was months old Hitler was trying to get out of war with Britain.

A number of people tried to express the view that Hitler rather have a war in the West than have one in the East on this thread...

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... eclaration

It wasn't a convincing argument then and it still isn't.

In addition we need dates with the above quotes.

Tony

[Patzinak]

[…] The Poles had an offensive military strategy. […]

I hesitate to call this rubbish, because, nowadays, rubbish is not entirely useless -- at least some part of it can be recycled.

Clearly, one or two posters to this thread are in dire need of basic education on the topic. Not much is available in English, but Zaloga and Madej's Polish campaign… is a useful introduction. Until they get around to reading, marking, and inwardly digesting it, the following excerpts from Peszke may serve as an appetiser.

The Polish Historical Experience as a Background to 1939
[…] [The] inter-war period in Poland was not one of peace, as experienced by the citizens of France or of Britain, but a state of siege. It was a period of constant political, military, and economic tension,[…]

[…] The 1933 non-aggression pact with Germany was an attempt to regularize relations with a neighbor, but Poland had few illusions about ultimate German intentions and strove to buttress French resolution and to alert and interest Britain in the affairs of Eastern Europe and challenge Germany's expansion. In April of 1939 […] the British Government, for many complex reasons, offered Poland an alliance […]. This developed into a United Kingdom-Polish mutual security alliance, which led directly to Germany renouncing the Polish-German non-aggression treaty. But only in May of 1939 did negotiations between Poland and Germany over the Polish Corridor and Danzig break down. The apparent strength of the Polish, French, and United Kingdom alliance still gave hope that Hitler's bluff would be called and the general war and minor border corrections much feared by the Poles would be avoided.

[…] In 1925, following Pilsudski's coup d'etat, the command structure of the Polish Armed Forces was divided into a peacetime and a potential wartime track. The position of Inspector General (Generalny Inspektor) was created with the General Staff placed under his jurisdiction; accountability by-passed the government and led directly to the President. In the event of war, the Inspector General was automatically to become the Commander-in-Chief. Under the Inspector General were a number of senior officers who were delegated officers of the Inspectorate and who had the title of "Army Inspectors." The Army Inspectorates were designated as potential army commanders to facilitate the greatest flexibility in planning military operations either in the East (Soviet Union) or the West (Germany).

The rationale for this move was to free the future army commanders from peacetime administrative duties and to enhance their ability to concentrate on monitoring and advising on the combat proficiency of future subordinate units. There was a political and ideological component attributed to this (Pilsudski's) decision. Pilsudski himself stated his wish to remove and keep the Army free of politics as an embodiment of national pride and consciousness. Pilsudski's critics argue that he wanted to keep exclusive hegemony over the Army.

The Minister of Military Affairs remained responsible for the day-to-day running of the peacetime army and for executive implementation of such tactics and training norms as were suggested by the Inspector General. From 1925 to his death, Pilsudski occupied both the position of Inspector General and that of Minister of Military Affairs, but delegated the running of the ministry to two vice ministers. Following Pilsudski's death (19351, the positions of Minister of Military Affairs and Inspector General were assigned to different individuals. […]

The State of the Polish Army
Following the victory of the Polish Army over the Soviet Union in 1920 […] the Polish Army entered an era of comparative stagnation. During the first decade of independence, generously equipped with French World War One vintage equipment, it presented a formidable force, sufficient to deter the Weimar German Republic from unilateral military action. The Polish-French alliance of 1921 had sufficient credibility to give further pause to German revisionist policies.

During that period little original military equipment was conceived or produced in Poland. The exception was the Polish Air Force, which under Rayski's command (1926–1939) embarked on a very ambitious (though debatable) policy of becoming self-sustaining with Polish designed and built fighter planes. These began to enter service in the early 1930s. The main effect of the period 1925–1936 went into the building of the new port of Gdynia on the Baltic and the development of a new industrial center in Central Poland (C.0.P.—Centralny Okreg Przemyslowy— Central Industrial Complex.)

The death of Marshal Pilsudski, the march of the Germans into the Rhine Province, and Hitler's open renunciation of the Versailles Treaty limiting German military forces all occurred in 1935. This became a watershed year for Europe and Poland, confronted with the inevitable, had to modernize its Army. A special committee was appointed (K.S.U.S.—Komitet do Spraw Uzbrojenia i Sprzetu—Committee for Armament and Equipment) and began to study the needs and make recommendations about modernizing the Polish Armed Forces. An heroic proportion of the Polish national product and of Polish taxes was channeled into a Six Year Plan for the build-up of the Polish Armed Forces. This budget was in excess of 5 percent of the national product and more than 33 percent of state taxation.

The major thrust of the modernization program was in the area of motorization, communications, the strengthening of engineering forces, and the creation of adequate anti-aircraft and anti-tank defenses. The usefulness of major cavalry units was debated, and a decision to abolish cavalry divisions was implemented, though 11 cavalry brigades were to remain. These were to be strengthened by motorized infantry and tank reconnaissance units and become the nuclei for fast, light strategic units. Infantry divisions were to gain increased mobility while heavy and medium artillery and the engineering support units were to be completely motorized.

Specifications for the necessary equipment were detailed, and Polish industry, which had been laboriously and painfully created over the past ten years, began to produce equipment either of its own design or under license from such reputable firms as Bofors of Sweden (artillery), Vickers of Britain (tanks), and Browning of the U.S.A. (machine guns). The effort at motorization of the Armed Forces was being implemented in a country which in 1936, according to a report to the Polish Chiefs of Staff, showed a total of 24,000 motorized vehicles of all kinds, shapes, and sizes in the whole of Poland. This should be compared to 112,000 motor vehicles in Czechoslovakia, nearly a million in Germany, and over two million in France.

Strategic Doctrine in Polish Army
One of the criticisms directed at the Polish Military Command is that it was bogged down in an archaic (1918) doctrine of trench warfare. The paradox of this criticism is its incompatibility with its alleged cavalry mentality. Credence has been given to both arguments even though an elementary analysis of the situation shows them to be not only incompatible with each other, but also doubly inaccurate. Polish military doctrine was a product of experiences gained in the Polish-Russian War of 1920. That year-and-a-half long war, fought over vast terrain, was primarily one of fluid strategy and of constant maneuver. […] This experience of defense in depth by maneuver, rather than of a static system, heavily influenced the whole operational doctrine in the Polish Army. […]

A War College was formed in 1918, and for many years General Faury of the French Army presided over this College. It was clear from the beginning that while French military principles could be and were transplanted, the methodology could not. Many of the basic premises available to a French Army Commander, e.g. in the logistical supply of ammunition or in the density of artillery fire, were simply not available to the Polish equivalent. After Pilsudski's return from his political moratorium, General Faury was replaced by a Polish officer. There were many political differences between France and Poland, particularly over the Locarno Treaty, which contributed to the situation, but undoubtedly Pilsudski was also influenced by his perception of the unreality of much that was being transplanted to the Polish scene. The Polish War College continued, however, to be both a creative setting where ideas were studied and analyzed, and an academic institution where officers were educated in staff work. In retrospect, it appears that to some extent it was an "ivory tower" situation, and the analogy of an academic institution and the "real world" holds for the relationship of the War College to the actual command structure and problems of the Polish Armed Forces.

Much has been made of the alleged fact that the Poles had an irrational optimistic attitude that, given a war with Germany, they would "water their horses in the Oder." Undoubtedly, official propaganda was optimistic, as official propaganda is inevitably in any country. There is no indication from the official records that any person in the government or in the senior positions of the Armed Forces had anything but the most realistic perception of the problems facing Poland. In 1936, as part of a theoretical exercise, the War College was asked to explore an offensive and defensive war against Germany, with or without the military cooperation of France. This theoretical exercise again emphasized and postulated a war of maneuver and a defense in depth. The conclusions were extremely precise, accurate, and not at all grandiose about the ability of the Polish Armed Forces to carry out a defensive war against Germany without active French intervention. The assessment made was that the Polish Armed Forces had a maximum of six weeks to hold out before its ultimate destruction by the German Army. Had the Soviet Union not attacked Poland on September 1939, it is likely that this estimate would have held.

[…] In 1938, after theoretical exercises held under the auspices of the War College, it became obvious to the participants that a 24-hour successful counter-offensive carried out by an army-strength force (in Poland, 3-6 divisions) would use the equivalent of a month's production of ammunition. After analyzing the possibilities, Smigly-Rydz stated, "Whatever happens, with or without ammunition, fight we must and fight we shall." The commentator, Litynski, writes, "These words held a deep impact on the audience. This was an expression of the real Polish Military Doctrine — the doctrine of poverty."

The Inspector General faced many obvious practical problems such as lack of sufficient men, an army which was technologically backward, particularly when compared to Germany, and extremely long indefensible frontiers. These were further aggravated by the location of most of Poland's heavy industry in very close proximity to the German border and, to all intents and purposes, indefensible from aerial attack. In many cases it was within shelling distance of heavy artillery. In some of these regions fortifications were planned, and some were constructed. Some of the river systems connected by lakes and canals were also viewed as strategic and as good defensive positions. Plans were made for the concentration of a reserve army (Prusy) to be in such a strategic position as to give a severe and potentially knockout blow to those German armies which might break the perimeters but which would presumably be weary and bloodied.

Modernization
A frequent criticism of the Polish military leadership is that they were preoccupied with a concept of horsed armies and had a cavalry mentality. A cursory look at the budget figures for the cavalry or the total number of officers and other rank in cavalry service does not support this contention. The growth budget for cavalry was only 14 million zloty (0.29 percent of total), and the actual numbers of officers and men in cavalry service were 35,434 or 8.1 percent of the total force.

The question of the Cavalry cannot be separated from the development of the Polish Armored Force. Until 1930, very much along the lines advocated by French military doctrine, armored units were an integral part of the infantry. Tanks were seen as slow moving vehicles which could provide infantry support by destroying enemy emplacements. By 1930, this doctrine was questioned in Poland, and tank units were integrated with the existing motorized units to form the Armored Corps. […] In 1936, a separate Officers Cadet School for the Armored Corps was created following the precedents of the cadet academies for the Artillery, Infantry, Cavalry, Air Force, etc.

The polemics dealing with the problem of motorization of Polish Armed Forces prior to 1939, continue to this date. That there were strong regressive tendencies among many senior officers in the Polish Armed Forces and in other countries who looked askance at "new fangled" notions is, undoubtedly, true. […] On the other hand, it was realized that the strength and technological skills of the Army would be only as functional as the background of the population and the national economy; and much of the effort to upgrade the quality of the Armed Forces was directly related to attempts to upgrade the general economic and technological level of the country.

One of the methods of implementing motorization was for the Army budget to be used to assist civilians in purchasing trucks. Such civilian purchases would promote the economy of the country, serve to develop a technological sophistication in the community, and in the event of war the trucks would be subject to military requisition. It was planned to allow for a mobilization of 9,100 trucks, which would have substantially motorized the horse-drawn supply columns (an Achilles heel of the Army in September 1939) and allow for limited motorized movement of up to one regiment at the division level and one division at the army level. The problems pertaining to the formation of armored or motorized units were related to economic issues. It has been argued […] that to transport 20 troopers in a truck was cheaper than to purchase, stable, and feed 20 horses. This is an appealing argument, except that Poland did not have a sufficient number of trucks; in fact, trucks were in short supply for crucial areas of supporting services in 1939, reaching a total of 11,000 in military and civilian use in Poland. Due to the small number of motor vehicles in pre-war Poland, few (even among the educated) had the basic driving skills, let alone mechanical skills.

In 1936, the following doctrine emerged. Motorized units were to be of brigade size and would be flexible in function, capable of infantry support in strategic operations. They would be self supporting and capable of opposing enemy armored thrusts. Tank battalions would be independent, able to integrate with motorized infantry or cavalry brigades. On September 1939, the Armored Corps was able to muster the following number of tanks of Polish production: light (TK and TKS) — 574; medium (7TP) — 161; French Renault R35 — 49 which arrived in Poland in the summer of 1939. Thirteen light tanks were distributed to each of the eleven cavalry brigades and eleven light tanks to eighteen front line infantry divisions. The medium tanks were grouped in independent tank battalions of 49 each and were to be assigned to support either motorized brigades, infantry divisions, or cavalry brigades as strategic need dictated. They were thus kept in the dispositional reserve of the Commander-in-Chief.

The Polish High Command may indeed have been guilty of having broken up its tank units into too many and insignificant-sized units. It has been argued with obvious merit that had all the light tanks dispersed among the infantry divisions and cavalry brigades been centralized, then on 1 September 1939, Poland would have had at least two more modern motorized units. Much is made of the fact, and with reason, that the 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade (one of Poland's two fully modern brigades) held off consistently superior German units and did not suffer the loss of manpower and material that was the fate of all other units, infantry and cavalry alike. […]

The Air Force
Contrary to much popular writing, the Polish Air Force was neither the Cinderella of the Polish Armed Forces, nor was the High Command as ignorant of its potential as has often been averred. A look at the typical annual budget is essential. The annual Polish Military Budget was approximately 760 million zloty, and the Air Force share was 76 million zloty. The six-year rearmament plan, 1936-1942, postulated a total of 4,759 million zloty to be spent on modernizing and building up the military industrial base. This was the growth budget. Of this, 860 million zloty (18 percent) was set aside for the Air Force; 668 million (14 percent) for anti-aircraft defenses; 574 million (12 percent) for artillery; 548 million (11.5 percent) for armored forces and anti-tank defenses; and, […] 20 million (0.4 percent) and 14 million (0.29 percent) for infantry and cavalry respectively! The combined Air Force and anti-aircraft defenses budget was 32 percent of the whole, hardly evidence of underestimating the importance of the Air Force.

The problem of development and doctrine has also come in for question and criticism. The fledgling Air Force played an important part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920 in providing Army commanders reconnaissance and front line ground support. In the first decade of independence, the main operational doctrines were based on that early experience with some enthusiastic air advocates imbued with the theories of Douhet proposing a large independent strategic bomber force. By 1931, the High Command had settled on the Air Force as being a ground support and reconnaissance arm with a fighter Air Force component. This Regulamin Lotnictwa (Air Force Regulation) became the basis for the growth of the Air Force and thus led to the issuance of plane specifications and factory orders. The limitations imposed on the operational doctrine were due to a realistic appraisal of the capacity of the Polish State to support such an expensive and technologically demanding military speciality. The goal laid out in 1935 was that the Polish Air Force was to be completely re-equipped by 1941, and was to consist of a total of 78 squadrons; of these, 21 were to be bomber, 10 pursuit (two-engined fighters), 15 fighter (single-engined), and the rest army cooperation. This does document the heavy emphasis on army cooperation.

September 1939
There were no illusions in the minds of Poland's leadership as to the outcome of a campaign between Germany and Poland. However, there was significant hope that, combined with the French (on land) and United Kingdom (in the air) intervention on the Western Front, the Polish armies would be able to absorb the initial thrust, tie up a significant percentage of German units, and thus allow the Western powers to strike into the heart of Germany's industrial country. Official prediction accepted the postulate that, even assuming active French intervention against the German Siegfried Line, Poland could only fight for six weeks before being overwhelmed. The Commander-in-Chief's task was to make sure that this six-week period could be provided in order to give the greatest opportunity for a successful holding operation and a successful offensive to end the war from the West.

Many have assumed that the Poles were caught napping by the Germans in September 1939. The facts are different. […] However, the political and civil leadership through the summer continued to believe that given British and French guarantees, war would not occur. The Government was less concerned about a general war than about the possibility of minor border rectification, which would hurt Polish interests and yet be condoned by the West. The Poles did not believe that Hitler was ready for a two-front war and neither did the German Generals. The events of the summer, however, were clear portents.

In August 1939, the Polish Air Force was mobilized, increasing its strength to 15,000 (from 12,000 peacetime), and combat units were dispersed. In spite of much propaganda the fact is that no single combat plane was destroyed on the ground in the first days of the war! […] Full mobilization was ordered and then rescinded under pressure from the French and British so that Germany would not be provoked in the eyes of these parliamentary democracies. The Poles were well informed of German intentions, and Polish intelligence correctly predicted the main offensive thrusts. It is obvious that the Germans were [well] served by their intelligence services and overflights of Polish territory, which the Polish Air Force was unable to prevent.

The September 1939, Campaign was an unmitigated military, psychological, and political disaster for the Polish State. The Polish Armed Forces […] went to defeat in four weeks. In 1940, when the Germans, without the advantages of geographical encirclement and deprived of the aid of the Soviet Union, brought France to its knees in a bare five weeks as well as causing a precipitate [evacuation] of a 300,000 man British Expeditionary Force, the September Campaign was evaluated more objectively.

[…] It was in the area of communications that the Poles were most deficient. The civilian population became inured to the bombing, and the infantry soldier to the enemy tanks, but divisional commanders lost touch with each other, their superiors, and subordinates. Even so, it is not outside of reality to postulate that had France acted aggressively and the Soviet Union kept its non-aggression treaty, the Poles may have weathered the storm in the Southeast corner of Poland, the so-called Rumanian Beachhead. On 16 September, the eve of the Soviet invasion, there was guarded optimism in the Polish Staff. The Polish armies, though battered, bloodied, and routed, were reconcentrating in the Southeast; the Germans were running short of gasoline; Warsaw was far from captured and was tying up German energies.

In retrospect, one of the Polish tragedies of the 1939 Campaign was the fact that the Polish Commander-in-Chief correctly predicted the form of warfare of the Second World War, but because of the economic situation was unable to implement and field an Army which would have met those basic requirements of technological mobility. The Polish Campaign of September enabled France to complete her mobilization without interruption and enabled the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) to be transported safely to France. Furthermore, it put the German offensive timetable off a whole eight months due to wastage of equipment. […]

Source:

• Peszke, MA (1979) Poland's Preparation for World War Two. Military Affairs 43(1): 18–25.

--Patzinak

[tonyh]

If you think that Britain's handing her immediate destiny over to another Nation's decision makers is not a stupid move...then I cannot help you.

A couple of points (actually three)
1) It's far from clear that this is what Britain did.

Liddel Hart wrote "The unqualified terms of the guarantee placed Britain's destiny in the hands of Poland's rulers, men of very dubious and unstable judgement. Moreover, the guarantee was impossible to fulfil except with Russia's help, yet no preliminary steps were taken to find out whether Russia would give, or Poland would accept, such aid." [In fact Russia was continually snubbed]

2) It's not stupid if it is in the apparent best interest of Britain.

Getting Britain involved in a war nobody wanted is not in the interest of Britain. The stupidity of the Chamberlain's guarantee is that if it was actually put to the test, it was obviously doomed to fail in the most catastrophic manner.

3) Saying it repeatedly doesn't nothing to increase its validity.

And constant contraditction doesn't do anything to invalidate it.

[LWD]

Liddel Hart wrote "The unqualified terms of the guarantee placed Britain's destiny in the hands of Poland's rulers, ...

If it was "unqualified" why did Britain not declare war immediatly upon the German invasion? Why did they make sure they had French support and try to mediate even at that late date? Clearly the guaranetee had either explicit or implicit qualifications.

2) It's not stupid if it is in the apparent best interest of Britain.

Getting Britain involved in a war nobody wanted is not in the interest of Britain. The stupidity of the Chamberlain's guarantee is that if it was actually put to the test, it was obviously doomed to fail in the most catastrophic manner.

It's not clear that any other acceptable course would have kept Britain out of the war. It's also not at all clear, especially based on the info he had available, that the guarantee would fail. Absent these it cannot properly be called "stupid".

And constant contraditction doesn't do anything to invalidate it.

At least initially my point was that it wasn't proven not that it was invalid. You still have failed to supply critical data and logic to prove that it was the case. IE I have contradicted some of your points and logic and pointed out that your "proof" is lacking. Thus your accusation is on even shakier ground than your claims of stupidity on the part of British policy.

[Ranke]

Patzinak,
Thanks for the quote. Very interesting.
I have often wondered why many seem to criticize Poland's military effort in 1939. Given that Germany had all the advantages - Poland was effectively encircled and the Soviets were ready to pounce in the East etc, etc, - why did it take the much celebrated German military four weeks to defeat the allegedly miserable Polish armed forces? Poland's efforts seem even more impressive when compared to what happened in May and June 1940.

tonyh wrote

...I do criticise Chamberlain and his supporters for their about-face and incredibly stupid "guarantee" move, which not only placed Britain's fate in the hands of Poland, but guaranteed war in 1939, not just in the East, but also in the West, turning what could have been a relatively contained war in the East into a new European wide war (and subsequently an new world war).

I always suspected that Warsaw was pulling the strings in Downing St. in 1939 and now it has been confirmed. Clearly the British government was incapable of discerning its interests and making independent decisions.That perfidious Albion was responsible for the war in 1939 has also been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, so I suggest we end this thread and move on to a more learned discussion. Perhaps we could start a thread about how Hitler was just misunderstood. How about one about Danish war crimes or on how Britain started World War I ... wait a minute, they already exist

[Patzinak]

Liddel Hart wrote […]

If it was "unqualified" why did Britain not declare war immediatly […]

I'm not sure it's worth arguing with someone whose strong and apparently fixed opinions seem to be based exclusively on Liddell Hart. (See also http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 9&t=139809 )

I find difficult to conceive that someone genuinely interested in the issue (as opposed to someone interested in generating hot air over it) can't be bothered to try to read a little more about it -- or ask a few basic questions.

For instance, France didn't go to war in fall 1938 over Czechoslovakia, despite of a binding alliance; and, in March 1939, UK and France availed themselves of the flimsiest excuse not to go to war over Czecho-Slovakia (yes, dear listeners, there is a point to the way the name is spelled), although they had guaranteed it. So why should the guarantee to Poland -- and, let's not forget, to Romania and Greece -- be more binding? Would that have been the first diplomatic promise Britain ever broke?

For that matter, how did Chamberlain understand the guarantee?

[A memorandum in which Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal Party, recorded Chamberlain's remarks to him in interviews between August 28 and September 3, 1939] furnishes more evidence of what Chamberlain understood by the British guarantee to Poland. That guarantee - not signed as a treaty commitment until 25 August, after the Nazi-Soviet Pact - was not to be understood as a guarantee of the integrity of Poland's frontiers. Rather, it was to be seen as a guarantee of Poland's survival as a sovereign state - more likely than not, after a negotiated revision of its western frontiers. We now know, as Chamberlain could not, that a peaceful 'Polish Munich' was not on Hitler's agenda: Hitler had already committed himself to full-scale war and had mobilized for it on 25 August, delaying it only at the very last moment. Yet it is clear that, if it had been, Hitler would have been pushing at an open door where Chamberlain was concerned. Mentally, Chamberlain seems to have considered Hitler's proposed terms not as a test of British resolve, but as a real basis for a settlement similar to the Munich settlement of I938, with German claims in Danzig, the Corridor, and western Poland - the 'Polish question' as seen by Hitler - being settled on his terms. The problem for Chamberlain, as for the historian, is that Hitler had no stable terms and was testing the water as much as anything.

Sinclair's memorandum is, in fact, fully in agreement with what we already knew. Reuters, on March 31, and The Times, on April 1, interpreted Chamberlain's statement (for, until it was formalised in August, it was no more than a statement in the House) to mean that it guaranteed Polish independence, not her borders, and not Danzig. A controversy arose over this matter, and Chamberlain pretended it was a misunderstanding; yet, within hours,

Chamberlain wrote to his sister in the following terms:

I refused to be rushed into making a statement at 11.00 am on Friday in spite of suggestions that everyone would get the jitters if they were not told everything at once. This gave a little time to redraft the statement in the light of the latest information and after further reflection. It was of course mostly my own and when it was finished I was very well satisfied with it. It was unprovocative in tone, but firm, clear but stressing the important point (perceived alone by The Times) that what we were concerned with is not the boundaries of states but attacks upon their independence. And it is we who will judge whether this independence is threatened or not.

It is clear, therefore, that on the afternoon of 3 April Chamberlain allowed the Commons to be misled by the Chancellor explicitly. It is equally clear that he himself misled the Commons implicitly for, by clever footwork, he allowed the impression to be created in the House that he was indeed repudiating The Times's gloss upon his Friday statement, whilst at the same time avoiding an explicit rebuttal of The Times leader of 1 April.

[…] The extension of security commitments throughout eastern Europe by [Britain], of which the Polish Guarantee was the first, constitute a revolution in inter-war British foreign policy by any measure. The elements of continuity are perhaps less obvious but nonetheless real. Whilst British policy-makers were now prepared to underwrite the major single consequence of the Versailles settlement — the creation, or the recreation, of an independent eastern Europe with Poland at its heart — Britain was not prepared to guarantee the actual frontiers bequeathed by Versailles, any more than she had been prepared to do before March 1939. Moreover, at this stage Chamberlain was not prepared to lose control of British foreign policy and, as we have seen, he supposed that his careful phrasing of the Guarantee would allow him to achieve this purpose. He did not wish to abandon the traditional British policy of limited liability towards European security only to replace it by a policy of unlimited liability. It would be Britain and Britain alone who would decide when and in what circumstances the provisions of the Polish Guarantee would apply. This qualification meant that Britain would be afforded leverage for the exercise of discreet pressure upon the Poles, should they prove intransigent precisely because they had gained a British Guarantee, in the event, as Chamberlain hoped would one day be the case, that more reasonable men and more moderate policies prevailed in Berlin. In this sense Chamberlain had by no means abandoned the policy of appeasement, for he still profoundly believed that the long-term tranquillity of Europe could not be achieved without the revision of the Versailles settlement. […]

The Poles were not Czechs. They would make it clear in the summer of 1939 that they were fully prepared to fight to protect all their treaty rights, with allies by preference, but alone if necessary, in the face of German threats. They were as careful to make this understood in London as they were careful to make it understood in Berlin. They knew that on occasions in history 'guarantees' had sometimes been used more against the putative beneficiaries of those guarantees than the aggressor states they had supposedly been intended to deter. A recent lesson to this effect had been provided for Europe only a year earlier when French policy-makers, strongly backed by the British, had used their treaty with Czechoslovakia to weaken the natural Czech resolve to resist nazi intimidation rather than stiffen it. The Poles at no stage had any intention of allowing themselves to be manoeuvred into the same position as the Czechs had found themselves in. Furthermore, the Poles could also rely in this matter upon the transformed condition of British public opinion since Munich. The great mass of the British public had been profoundly shocked by Hitler's occupation of the rump Czech state in March 1939 in defiance of all ethnographical principles, to say nothing of the principle of national self-determination. They had accordingly concluded that it was dangerously counter-productive to try to appease Germany by concessions and that the only language the German dictator understood was the language of superior force and resolution. In a word, Germany must henceforth be confronted rather than appeased. The Poles were the first beneficiaries of this sea change in British opinion which resulted in the British people giving massive support to that diplomatic revolution whereby Great Britain extended a series of security commitments throughout eastern Europe. Of course, in a limited sense, Britain would retain that degree of control over her own foreign policy that Chamberlain had been so anxious for her not to surrender, when he was composing his statement to the Commons of Friday 31 March, but this had nothing to do with Chamberlain's careful draftsmanship. For, from this perspective, nothing but a sense of national honour (and the need to retain its diplomatic credibility for the future) can compel a sovereign state to honour its international security obligations at the moment of supreme crisis. Indeed, it would be this very fear, that Britain was about to dishonour her international commitments, that would be raised in the hearts of Chamberlain's critics at the beginning of September 1939, at the time of the supreme crisis in German-Polish relations when Britain delayed her ultimatum to Germany by thirty-six hours from the time that German troops first crossed the Polish frontier, on the grounds that it was essential to co-ordinate all moves with the French. […]

[Chamberlain's] statement of the Guarantee to Poland should therefore best be regarded as a 'cover note' for which the full insurance policy would arrive later. In due course this full insurance policy would be issued in the form of the Anglo-Polish Treaty of Mutual Security of 25 August 1939. This treaty remains unusual amongst treaties of mutual security in one important respect. In neither its open nor secret clauses is any reference at all made to the territorial integrity of either contracting party. This illustrates Chamberlain's success in retaining one key element in his original preferred position on the Polish Guarantee, as of 31 March 1939. It also illustrates one of those important strands of continuity in British foreign policy that survives the diplomatic revolution symbolized by the Polish Guarantee itself. The British decision to resist Hitler by the acceptance of revolutionary new security commitments throughout eastern Europe would not extend to an underwriting of the territorial settlement achieved at Versailles. In this sense Britain was not fighting during the second world war to restore the status quo ante bellum. Her official position on eastern Europe would remain as it had been throughout the interwar period, viz. that she would not oppose territorial changes in eastern Europe as long as those changes were arrived at by free negotiation between interested parties. […]

Sources:

• Foster, AJ (1991) An Unequivocal Guarantee? Fleet Street and the British Guarantee to Poland, 31 March 1939. J Contemp Hist 26(1): 33–47.
  
  Vincent, J (1998) Chamberlain, the Liberals and the Outbreak of War, 1939. Engl Hist Rev 113(451): 367–83.

--Patzinak

[tonyh]

Liddel Hart wrote "The unqualified terms of the guarantee placed Britain's destiny in the hands of Poland's rulers, ...

If it was "unqualified" why did Britain not declare war immediatly upon the German invasion? Why did they make sure they had French support and try to mediate even at that late date? Clearly the guaranetee had either explicit or implicit qualifications.

2) It's not stupid if it is in the apparent best interest of Britain.

Getting Britain involved in a war nobody wanted is not in the interest of Britain. The stupidity of the Chamberlain's guarantee is that if it was actually put to the test, it was obviously doomed to fail in the most catastrophic manner.

It's not clear that any other acceptable course would have kept Britain out of the war. It's also not at all clear, especially based on the info he had available, that the guarantee would fail. Absent these it cannot properly be called "stupid".

And constant contraditction doesn't do anything to invalidate it.

At least initially my point was that it wasn't proven not that it was invalid. You still have failed to supply critical data and logic to prove that it was the case. IE I have contradicted some of your points and logic and pointed out that your "proof" is lacking. Thus your accusation is on even shakier ground than your claims of stupidity on the part of British policy.

All you have done is contradict the point LWD and at every turn its been thrown back in your face.

The point still stands...handing the destiny of your country into the hands of another country's rulers is not the smart play.

If you think it wasn't a "stupid move" on behalf of Chamberlain, you have yet to show why.


Tony