Areas of Czechoslovakia annexed by Poland in 1938

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Pavel,

Thanks verey much for the links.

It looks as though these sites are using material from Historie a Vojenstvi published in 1996 and 1997.

8th Infantry Division was 2nd Army's reserve, with responsibility for covering both the German and Polish borders.

The maps in your link also show 12, 22 and 16 Divisions on the Slovak-Polish border, besides HO37 covering Tesin. However, as 12th Division was the active garrison of Ruthenia, I wonder how accurate this is.

In 1938 the Germans also seem to have allocated Landwehr divisions to cover Poland's western border (WKII - 1 and 99 Landwehr Divisions and WKVIII - 16, 30 and 72 Landwehr Divisions). However, when they had mobilized 97th Landwehr division in Munich during the Anschluss crisis earlier in 1938, the result was a debacle. The men were older WWI veterans who were often too portly even to fit into the range of modern uniforms designed for slimmer young conscripts. They had received almost no training for some twenty years and their weaponry was archaic and in short supply. I doubt those in the Polish border wehrkreise during the Munich Cridsis were much better six months later.

[wm]

But this is not all. Earlier I forgot to mention that the Czechoslovaks also had to cover the rest of the Polish frontier with Slovakia and Ruthenia, where Poland was making other territorial claims.

Poland would not attack during an actual military conflict so there were no need for all that preparations. Polish opposition parties were solidly anti-German from 1937 on and, as Jura said, the ruling regime had a mantra "in war, never on the side of Germany".
It seems the Czech politicians did not understand the inner workings of the Polish political scene completely and this is another mistake they had made in dealing with the Polish problem.

[Pavel Novak]

The maps in your link also show 12, 22 and 16 Divisions on the Slovak-Polish border, besides HO37 covering Tesin. However, as 12th Division was the active garrison of Ruthenia, I wonder how accurate this is.

As I wrote in one of my previous post there were two formations with name "12. divize":
- peace time division which during mobilization changed name to "Hranicni oblast 42" and stayed in Slovak-Ruthenian area
- mobilized new "12. divize" - twin of "Hranicni oblast 42" redislocated to reserve of Supreme HQ
--- most of czechoslovak peace time divisions created its twin during mobilization

Unfortunatelly there is not more informations about that german wargame (ie. who won).

to wm:
I can say that czechoslovak politics did not have a clue about functioning and goals of polish diplomacy since the creations of both states after ww1 till the end in 1939. Practically every big polish move was surprise to czechoslovak politics.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

On the contrary "Smygly-Ruydz's instructions were to be ready by 1 October to fight, or to occupy Teschen, no matter how negotiations turned out between Warsaw and Prague." This was issued on 23 September and takes no account of whether there was a state of war between Germany and Czechoslovakoia, or not. (p.43 of On the Border of War and Peace.)

[Marcus]

A discussion was split off into a new thread entitled "Germany did not have any annihilatory intention pre-1939".

/Marcus

[Delwin]

Hi wm,

On the contrary "Smygly-Ruydz's instructions were to be ready by 1 October to fight, or to occupy Teschen, no matter how negotiations turned out between Warsaw and Prague." This was issued on 23 September and takes no account of whether there was a state of war between Germany and Czechoslovakoia, or not. (p.43 of On the Border of War and Peace.)

What's specific in it? The order is "be ready" - irrespective of the negotiations. It is not - "attack irrespective of anything". Also indication of "fight or occupy (actually it was "seize" in the order - I need to double check)" means that the situation may be different,

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Delwin,

You have to read wm's post, to which I was replying, to understand mine.

He wrote, "Poland would not attack during an actual military conflict so there were no need for all that preparations."

It seems that whether there was already a military conflict between Germany and the Czechs was not a consideration for the Salsk Group: "Smygly-Ruydz's instructions were to be ready by 1 October to fight, or to occupy Teschen, no matter how negotiations turned out between Warsaw and Prague."

Indeed, as northern Teschen had an active German minority wanting assimilation into the Reich, I would suggest that any armed conflict betweeen Czechs and Germans was likely to increase the need for the Poles to act before any uprising by local Teschen Germans occurred.

[Delwin]

OK - now I get it. What's more important in whole picture is the map attached to Bad Godersberg memorandum (known to Polish authorities) where significant part of Teschen area was subject of German claims.

[MARQ]

(BTW, larger part of the "overhelming Polish majority" consisted of "Silesians" (they didn't speak standard Polish, but local hybrid dialect called "po naszymu" - which is derived either from Silesian dialects of Polish, with influences of Czech, according to the Polish linguists; or from Northern Moravian Czech, with influences of Polish, according to the Czech linguists ), who refused to identify themselves neither with Czechs, nor with Poles.)

Bullshit!
Majority of Cieszyn Province (Teschen) was simply Polish. Not only according Polish sources, Czech census but first of all
according to Austrian census.
See the online book
Der Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. Dezember 1910 in Schlesien
Final table>
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/94/teschen2.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/593/teschen.jpg/

Map o Polish population in this region
http://slaskie.fotopolska.eu/foto/22/22256.jpg

Map of o Polish population in Czech occupied part of region.
Comparsion of Czech census 1930 and Austrian census 1910 (number in brackets)
http://www.cieszynisko.eu/domain/cieszy ... 131660.jpg

[michael mills]

Majority of Cieszyn Province (Teschen) was simply Polish. Not only according Polish sources, Czech census but first of all
according to Austrian census.

All that the results of the Austrian census show is that the Austrian Government classified persons who spoke the local Silesian Slavic dialect as "Polish".

Those results do not prove anything about how the speakers of that local dialect, who were called "Schlonsaken" in German, identified themselves.

Some may have identified themselves as part of the Polish nation. Others may have identified themselves as part of the Czech nation. Yet others may simply have identified themselves as Silesians, a local people neither Polish nor Czech.

[MARQ]

Census is not government classifcation but individual choice.
Poles in Czech Republic possess a Polish national consciousness. Please note that Czech census beside Polish has Silesian national option. Cieszyn region do not chose Silesian but only Polish one. Silesian nationality is chosen only in Opava region, where Poles are not present.
See the map from Czech census.
http://silesiana.republikasilesia.com/p ... t_2001.jpg

[gebhk]

[Moved from "Why did Poland mobilize in March 1939?"]

The Polish response to Munich was to extort Tesin/Teschen out of a weakened Czechoslovakia in its immediate aftermath in October 1938.

Let's not go round the houses with this one again - after all there is a topic specifically for that. You can't 'extort' something that's already been offered. At most Poland 'extorted' an earlier handover.

I would also suggest that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the Polish case, Poland undoubtedly extorted Tesin from a Czechoslovakia weakened at Munich by massing an army corps opposite it. The Czechs conceded under duress, not voluntarily.

This would be a more convincing argument if it was chronologically sound. Unfortunately the Benes letter had been written and was being sent when the units destined for SGO Slask were only beginning to detrain. It was but one of a number of military preparations made by Poland to counter concievable developments, including war with Germany.

However there is a separate thread for this discussion.

Best wishes
K

[Sid Guttridge]

Your post and my quote are complementary, not contradictory and the chronology was correct.

It is unlikely in the extreme that, after 20 years of denying the Polish claim, the Czechs would suddenly have voluntartarily decided to give up Tesin to Poland had it not been in the immediate wake of the Munich Agreement and just as the Poles were coincidentally deploying an army corps, including their only mechanized formation opposite it.

It was the threat of force that induced a Czech concession on the subject of Tesin, not an act of sponaneous generosity and reasonableness towards Poland.

As I say above, I am not debating the rights and wrongs of the various claims to Tesin, but the fact remains that the Poles extorted Tesin (and some other enclaves) off Czechoslovakia by threat of force immediately after the Czechoslovak strategic defensive position had been fatally weakened by the Munich Agreement. Rightly or wrongly, Poland was scavenging off the wounded carcass of Czechoslovakia.

Cherrs,

Sid.

[AlekBolduin]

Poland Army raised armies HQ in March 1939:
Army HQ «Lodz», «Poznan», «Pomoze», «Karpaty», «Modlin»
HQ: Reserve Group (dowod Naczelnego Wodza ) «Kutno», Operational Group «Narew», Korpus Intervanaciyny.
Total: 8 HQs at operational level.
I don’t know – there is mobilization or no..
But it was used the staff personal of the peacetime’s structures: corps districts headquarters (DOK), army inspectorates, central management HQ.

[gebhk]

It is unlikely in the extreme that, after 20 years of denying the Polish claim, the Czechs would suddenly have voluntartarily decided to give up Tesin to Poland had it not been in the immediate wake of the Munich Agreement

Again I'm afraid the chronology does not support the argument. The Czechoslovak offer came first, SGO Slask came into being next and the Munich agreement came last, so surely the offer could not have come in the wake of something that had no yet occurred? I would suggest a simpler explanation is that the Czechoslovak government in its desperate situation and having been abandoned by its ally France, was seeking whatever new allies it could find. And Poland was one of only two countries in this sorry business that had unequivocally committed to a shooting war should France decide to defend Czechoslovakia and the only one in a position to carry out its commitments.

Furthermore, let's not assume all Czechoslovaks held the same view. In fact much of the military leadership had been pressing the government for many months to reach accommodation with Poland at any cost including at the cost of Tesin. Indeed a smaller faction within it had approached Poland with the suggestion of a complete union. It seems more than likely that seeing its strategy unraveling, the government became willing to heed what its military had been advising for some time.

However, again, I would suggest this debate belongs elsewhere.