Steve wrote: ↑21 Jul 2018, 02:55
When on February 6 Szembeck said that “extraterritoriality was out of the question” he was not following the same policy from beginning to end. He was following the same policy as decided on in early January. On November 19 1938 Lipski told Ribbentrop when discussing an extra territorial highway “it might be possible to find a solution”. It could be argued that Lipski was expressing his own view but given the importance of the matter I think that unlikely.
I can't find such a statement in "Note from the conversation between the Ambassador in Berlin and the German Minister of Foreign Affairs" on 24 October 1938. But:
15 December. Report of the Ambassador in Berlin on his conversation with the German Minister of Foreign Affairs on the subject of Polish and German foreign policy
15 December 1938
Top Secret.
To the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw I had a conversation with the minister of foreign affairs of the Reich, von Ribbentrop, today, and proceeded to execute the instructions you gave me verbally yesterday in Warsaw. [...]
On his own volition, von Ribbentrop mentioned problems of immediate Polish-German relations, asking about the superhighway.
I remarked that this problem had been referred to you and that it is being discussed in Warsaw, but that, naturally, this matter can only be dealt with within the frame of der Gesamtlosung.
and:
31 October. Instruction of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Ambassador in Berlin: Position of the Polish government regarding German demands
Warsaw, 31 October 1938
Top Secret.
To Jozef Lipski
Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in BERLIN.
[...]
Taking all the foregoing factors into consideration, and desiring to achieve the stabilization of relations by way of a friendly understanding with the Government of the German Reich, the Polish Government proposes the replacement of the League of Nations guarantee and its prerogatives by a bilateral Polish-German Agreement.
This Agreement should guarantee the existence of the Free City of Danzig so as to assure freedom of national and cultural life to its German majority, and also should guarantee all Polish rights.
Notwithstanding the complications involved in such a system, the Polish Government must state that any other solution, and in particular any attempt to incorporate the Free City into the Reich, must inevitably lead to a conflict.
So from the beginning it was a bilateral Polish-German Agreement, and the fate of the superhighway depended on it.
When Pilsudski said that Danzig was the criteria for estimating Germany’s intention towards Poland he was right but he was stating the obvious. How any Polish leader could have thought that Germany would never try to alter the status of Danzig is a mystery.
Well, Hitler threw South Tyrol under the bus, full of perfectly good Germans, brutally de-Germanized by the Italians to boot. So why not, it was just a city in decline, ruled by Germans.
Did the Polish leadership go to war expecting to lose and be occupied?
The expected to be defeated, but expected the Allies would win the war eventually.
The country was a loser in WW2 not a winner.
To win is to achieve victory or stated objectives. As the war was unexpected and unplanned the only identifiable objective was to survive. And that happened.
Additionally, Poland gained valuable territories, a basically perfect access to the sea, and gracefully got rid of the Ukrainians, who would be a source of constant and insurmountable problems, much greater than those caused by the IRA.