The Forced War

When Peaceful Revision Failed
 

By David L. Hoggan

http://www.ziopedia.org/content/view/3682/58/

Introduction

Shortly after midnight on July 4, 1984, the headquarters of the Institute for Historical Review was attacked by terrorists. They did their job almost to perfection: IHR’s office were destroyed, and ninety per cent of its inventory of books and tapes wiped out. To this day the attackers have not been apprehended, and the authorities — local, state, and federal— have supplied little indication that they ever will be.
 
The destruction of IHR’s offices and stocks meant a crippling blow for Historical Revisionism, the world-wide movement to bring history into accord with the facts in precisely those areas in which it has been distorted to serve the interests of a powerful international Establishment, an Establishment all the more insidious for its pious espousal of freedom of the press. That one of the few independent voices for truth in history on the planet was silenced by flames on America’s Independence Day in the year made infamous by George Orwell must have brought a cynical smile to the face of more than one enemy of historical truth: the terrorists, whose national loyalties certainly lie elsewhere than in America, chose the date well. Had IHR succumbed to the arsonists, what a superb validation of the Orwellian dictum: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”! 

One of the chief casualties of the fire was the text of the book you now hold in your hands. Too badly charred to be reproduced for printing plates, over six hundred pages of The Forced War had to be laboriously reset, reproofed, and recorrected. That this has now been achieved, despite the enormous losses and extra costs imposed by the arson, despite the Institute’s dislocation and its continued harassment, legal and otherwise, by the foes of historical truth, represents a great triumph for honest historiography, for The Forced War, more than a quarter century after it was written, remains the classic refutation of the thesis of Germany’s “sole guilt” in the origins and outbreak of the Second World War.

By attacking one of the chief taboos of our supposedly irreverent and enlightened century, David Hoggan. author of The Forced War, unquestionably damaged his prospects as a professional academic. Trained as a diplomatic historian at Harvard under William Langer and Michael Karpovich, with rare linguistic qualifications, Hoggan never obtained tenure. Such are the rewards for independent thought, backed by thorough research, in the “land of the free.”

The Forced War was published in West Germany in 1961 as Der erzwungene Krieg by the Verlag der Deutschen Hochschullehrer-Zeitung (now Grabert Verlag) in Tübingen. There it found an enthusiastic reception among Germans, academics and laymen, who had been oppressed by years of postwar propaganda, imposed by the victor nations and cultivated by the West German government, to the effect that the German leadership had criminally provoked an “aggressive” war in 1939. Der erzwungene Krieg has since gone through thirteen printings and sold over fifty thousand copies. The famous German writer and historian Armin Mohler declared that Hoggan had brought World War II Revisionism out of the ghetto” in Germany.

While Der erzwungene Krieg was considered important enough to be reviewed in more than one hundred publications in the Bundesrepublik, West Germany’s political and intellectual Establishment, for whom the unique and diabolical evil of Germany in the years 1933-1945 constitutes both foundation myth and dogma, was predictably hostile. A 1964 visit by Hoggan to West Germany was attacked by West Germany’s Minister of the Interior, in much the same spirit as West Germany’s President Richard von Weizsäcker attempted to decree an end to the so-called Historikerstreit (historians’ debate) due to its Revisionist implications in 1988. More than one influential West German historian stooped to ad hominem attack on Hoggan’s book, as the American was chided for everything from his excessive youth (Hoggan was nearly forty when the book appeared) to the alleged “paganism” of his German publisher.

The most substantive criticism of The Forced War was made by German historians Helmut Krausnick and Hermann Graml, who, in the August 1963 issue of Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht (History in Scholarship and Instruction), attacked the book on grounds of a number of instances of faulty documentation. A Revisionist historian, Professor Kurt Glaser, after examining The Forced War and its critics’ arguments in Der Zweite Weltkrieg und die Kriegsschuldfrage (The Second World War and the Question of War Guilt), found, that while some criticisms had merit,”It is hardly necessary to repeat here that Hoggan was not attacked because he had erred here and there — albeit some of his errors are material — but because he had committed heresy against the creed of historical orthodoxy.”

Meanwhile, in the United States, Hoggan and Harry Elmer Barnes, Hoggan’s mentor and the most influential American Revisionist scholar and promoter, became embroiled in a dispute over Hoggan’s failure to revise The Forced War in the face of the few warranted criticisms. Hoggan, proud and somewhat temperamental, refused to yield, despite a substantial grant arranged for him by Barnes. Barnes’s death in 1968 and financial difficulties created an impasse with the original publisher which blocked publication until IHR obtained the rights; IHR’s difficulties have been mentioned above. Habent sua fata libelli.

Whatever minor flaws in Hoggan’s documentation, The Forced War, in the words of Harry Elmer Barnes, written in 1963, “In its present form, ... it  not only constitutes the first thorough study of the responsibility for the causes of the Second World War in any language but is likely to remain the definitive Revisionist work on this subject for many years.” Hoggan prophesied well: the following quarter century has produced no Revisionist study of the origins of the war to match The Forced War; as for the Establishment’s histories regarding Hitler’s foreign policy, to quote Professor H.W. Koch of the University of York, England, writing in 1985,  such a major work is still lacking” (Aspects of the Third Reich. ed. H.W. Koch, St. Martin’s Press, New York, p. 186). Thus its publication after so many years is a major, if belated, victory for Revisionism in the English-speaking world. If the publication of The Forced War can contribute to an increase in the vigilance of a new generation of Americans regarding the forced wars that America’s interventionist Establishment may seek to impose in the future, the aims of the late David Hoggan, who passed away in August 1988, will have been, in part, realized.

IHR would like to acknowledge the assistance of Russell Granata and Tom Kerr in the publication of The Forced War; both these American Revisionists gave of their time so that a better knowledge of the past might produce a better future, for their children and ours.

— Theodore J. O’Keefe January, 1989

TABLE OF CONTENTS


Introduction

Preface    1

Chapter 1: The New Polish State     9

The Anti-Polish Vienna Congress 9  — The 19th Century Polish Uprisings 10  — Pro-German Polish
Nationalism 11  — Pro-Russian Polish Nationalism 12  — Pro-Habsburg Polish Nationalism 14  —
Pilsudski’s Polish Nationalism 14  — Poland in World War 116 — Polish Expansion After World War I 19
— The Pilsudski Dictatorship 26  — The Polish Dictatorship After Pilsudski’s Death 28

Chapter 2: The Roots Of Polish Policy     31

Pilsudski’s Inconclusive German Policy 31  — The Career of Jozef Beck 32  — The Hostility between
Weimar Germany and Poland 34  — Pilsudski’s Plans for Preventive War against Hitler 35  —
The 1934 German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact 37  — Beck’s Position Strengthened by Pilsudski 39  
— Beck’s Plan for Preventive War in 1936 41 — Hitler’s Effort to Promote German-Polish Friendship 43  
— The Dangers of an Anti-German Policy 44

Chapter 3: The Danzig Problem     49

The Repudiation of Self-Determination at Danzig 49  — The Establishment of the Free City Regime 51  
— The Polish Effort to Acquire Danzig 54  — Danzig’s Anguish at Separation from Germany 57  —
Poland’s Desire for a Maritime Role 57  — Hitler’s Effort to Prevent Friction at Danzig 60  —
The Chauvinism of Polish High Commissioner Chodacki 61  — The Deterioration of the Danzig Situation
 after 193663  — The Need for a Solution 64

Chapter 4: Germany, Poland, And The Czechs     65

The Bolshevik Threat to Germany and Poland 65  — Hitler’s Anti-Bolshevik Foreign Policy 66  —
Polish Hostility Toward the Czechs 68  — Polish Grievances and Western Criticism 72  —
The Anti-German Policy of Benes 74  — Neurath’s Anti-Polish Policy Rejected by Hitler 76  —
The German-Polish Minority Pact of 1937 79  — The Bogey of the Hossbach Memorandum 82  —
Hitler’s November 1937 Danzig Declaration 83 — Austria as a Czech Buffer 84

Chapter 5: The Road To Munich     87

Hitler’s Peaceful Revision Policy in 193887 — The January 1938 Hitler-Beck Conference 88 —
The Rise of Joachim von Ribbentrop 90 — The Fall of Kurt von Schuschnigg 91 —
The Double Game of Lord Halifax 94  — The Secret War Aspirations of President Roosevelt 100  
— The Peace Policy of Georges Bonnet 102  — Litvinov’s Hopes for a Franco-German War 105
— The Reckless Diplomacy of Edvard Benes 105  — The War 119


Chapter 6: A German Offer To Poland    123

Germany’s Perilous Position After Munich 123 — The Inadequacy of German Armament 125 —
The Favorable Position of Great Britain 126 — Hitler’s Generous Attitude toward Poland 127 —
Further Polish Aspirations in Czecho-Slovakia 127 — Continued Czech Hostility toward Poland and
Germany 131 — Polish Claims at Oderberg Protected by Hitler 134 — The Failure of Czech-Hungarian
Negotiations 136 — Germany’s Intentions Probed by Halifax 138 — Beck’s Failure to Enlist Rumania
Against Czecho-Slovakia 140—Beck’s Request for German Support to Hungary 142 — Hitler’s Suggestion
for a Comprehensive Settlement 144 — Beck’s Delay of the Polish Response 146
— Beck Tempted by British Support Against Germany 148

Chapter 7: German-Polish Friction In 1938    149

The Obstacles to a German-Polish Understanding 149 — The Polish Passport Crisis 151 —Persecution of
the German Minority in Poland 157 — Polish Demonstrations Against Germany 161 — The Outrages at
Teschen 161 — The Problem of German Communica tion with East Prussia 164 — Tension at Danzig 165
— The November 1938 Ribbentrop-Lipski Conference 166 — German Confusion about Polish Intentions 167
— Secret Of ficia Polish Hostility toward Germany 169 — A German-Polish Understanding Feared by
Halifax 172 — Poland Endangered by Beck’s Diplomacy 174

Page II

Chapter 8: British Hostility Toward Germany After Munich        177

Hitler’s Bid for British Friendship 177 — Chamberlain’s Failure to Criticize Duff Cooper 180 —
The British Tories in Fundamental Agreement 181 — Tory and Labour War Sentiment 186 —
Control of British Policy by Halifax 192 — Tory Alarmist Tactics 193 —Tory Confidence in War
Preparations 195 — Mussolini Frightened by Halifax and Chamberlain 196 —
Hitler’s Continued Optimism 201

Chapter 9: Franco-German Relations After Munich     203

France an Obstacle to British War Plans 203 — The Popularity of the Munich Agreement in France 205 —
The Popular Front Crisis a Lesson for France 205 — The 1935 Laval Policy Undermined by Vansittart 210
— The Prepondermt Position of France Wrecked by Leon Blum 215 — The Daladier Government and
the Czech Crisis 217 — The Franco-German Friendship Pact of December 1938 220 —
 The Flexible French Attitude After Munich 224

Chapter 10: The German Decision To Occupy Prague    227

The Czech Imperiump mortally Wunded at Munich 227— The Deceptive Czech Policy of Halifax 228
— The Vienna Award a Disappointment to Halifax 230 — New Polish Demands on the Czechs 231 —
Czech-German Friction After the German Award 233 —The Czech Guarantee Sabotaged by Halifax 235
— Czech Appeals Ignored by Halifax 237— Hiter’s Support of the Slovak Independence Movement 238
— President Roosevelt Propagandized by Halifax 240 — Halifax Warned of the  Approaching Slovak
Crisis 242 —Halifax’s Decision to Ignore the Crisis 243 — The Climax of the Slovak Crisis 245 —
The Hitler-Hacha Pact 247 — Halifax’s Challenge to Hitler 249 — Hitler’s Generous Treatment of the
Czechs after March 1939 250 — The Propaganda Against Hitler’s Czech. Policy 252

Chapter 11: Germany And Poland In Early 1939    255

The Need for a German-Polish Understanding 255 — The Generous German Offer to Poland 256 —
The Reasons for Polish Procrastination 257 — Hitler’s Refusal to Exert Pressure on Poland 259 —
Beck’s Deception Toward Germany 260 — The Confiscation of German Property in Poland 260 —
German-Polish Conversations at the End of 1938 262 — The Beck-Hitler Conference of January 5, 1939 265
— The Beck-Ribbentrop Conference of January 6, 1939 270 — German Optimism and Polish Pessimism 272
—The Ribbentrop Visit to Warsaw 274 — Hitler’s Reichstag Speech of January 30, 1939 277 — Polish
Concern About French Policy 281 — The German-Polish Pact Scare at London 283 — Anti-German
Demonstrations During Ciano’s Warsaw Visit 284 — Beck’s Announcement of His Visit to London 287

Chapter 12: The Reversal Of British Policy    291

Dropping the Veil of an Insincere Appeasement Policy 291 — British Concern about France 295 —
 Hitler Threatened by Halifax 297 — Halifax’s Dream of a Gigantic Alliance 297 — The Tilea Hoax 299 —
Poland Calm about Events in Prague 302 — Beck Amazed by the Tilea Hoax 303 — Chamberlain’s
Birmingham Speech 305 — The Anglo-French Protest at Berlin 306 — The Withdrawal of the British and
French Ambassadors 307 —The Halifax Offer to Poland and the Soviet Union 309

Chapter 13: The Polish Decision To Challenge Germany    311

The Impetuosity of Beck 311 — Beck’s Rejection of the Halifax Pro-Soviet Alliance Offer 312 —
Lipski Converted to a Pro-German Policy by Ribbentrop 313 — Lipski’s Failure to Convert Beck 316 —
Beck’s Decision for Polish Partial Mobilization 317 — Hitler’s Refusal to Take Military Measures 319 —
Beck’s War Threat to Hitler 321 — Poland Excited by Mobilization 324 — Hitler’s Hopes for a Change in
Polish Policy 326 — The Roots of Hitler’s Moderation Toward Poland 328

Chapter 14: The British Blank Check To Poland    333

Anglo-French Differences 333 — Bonnet’s Visit to London 334 — Franco-Polish Differences 335 —
Beck’s Offer to England 336 — Halifax’s Decision 337 — Beck’s Acceptance of the British Guarantee 339
— The Approval of the Guarantee by the British Parties 340 — The Statement by Chamberlain 341
— The Challenge Accepted by Hitler 342 — Beck’s Visit to London 343 — Beck’s Satisfaction 351 —

Page III

Chapter 15: The Deterioration Of German-Polish Relations    355

Beck’s Inflexible Attitude 355 — Hitler’s Cautious Policy 357 — Bonnet’s Coolness toward Poland 358
— Beck’s Displeasure at Anglo-French Balkan Diplomacy 360 — The Beck-Gafencu Conference 362 —
The Roosevelt Telegrams to Hitler and Mussolini 365— Hitler’s Assurances Accepted by Gafencu 369 —
Gafencu’s Visit to London 371 —Hitler’s Friendship with Yugoslavia 373 — Hitler’s Reply to Roosevelt
of April 28, 1939 374 — Hitler’s Peaceful Intentions Welcomed by Hungary 378 — Beck’s Chauvinistic
Speech of May 5, 1939 379 — Polish Intransigence Approved by Halifax 386

Chapter 16: British Policy And Polish Anti-German Incidents     387

Halifax’s Threat to Destroy Germany 387 — The Terrified Germans of Poland 388 —Polish Dreams of
Expansion 390 — The Lodz Riots 391 — The Kalthof Murder 392 —The Disastrous Kasprzycki Mission 394
— Halifax’s Refusal to Supply Poland 395 —Halifax’s Contempt for the Pact of Steel 397 — Wohlthat’s Futile
London Conversations 398 — Polish Provocations at Danzig 402 — Potocki’s Effort to Change Polish
Policy 406 — Forster’s Attempted Danzig Détente 407 — The Axis Peace Plan of Mussolini 409 —
The Peace Campaign of Otto Abetz 410 — The Polish Ultimatum to Danzig 412 —Danzig’s Capitulation
Advised by Hitler 413 — German Military Preparations 415 —Hungarian Peace Efforts 416 — The Day of
 the Legions in Poland 418 — The Peaceful Inclination of the Polish People 419

Chapter 17: The Belated Anglo-French Courtship Of Russia    421

Soviet Russian as Tertius Gaudens 421 — Russian Detachment Encouraged by the Polish Guarantee 422
— The Soviet Union as a Revisionist Power 422 — The Dismissal of Litvinov 424 — Molotov’s Overtures
Rejected by Beck 426 — A Russo-German Understanding Favored by Mussolini 428 — Stang’s Mission to
Moscow 430 — Hitler’s Decision for a Pact with Russia 431 — The British and French Military Missions 433
—The Anglo-French Offer at the Expense of Poland 435 — The Ineptitude of Halifax’s Russian Diplomacy 446

Chapter 18: The Russian Decision For A Pact With Germany        449

The Russian Invitation of August 12, 1939 449 — The Private Polish Peace Plan of Colonel Kava 450
— The Polish Terror in East Upper Silesia 452 — Ciano’s Mission to Germany 452 — The Reversal
of Italian Policy 457 — Italy’s Secret Pledge to Halifax 458— Soviet Hopes for a Western
European War 460 — The Crisis at Danzig 462 — Russian Dilatory Tactics 464 —
The Personal Intervention of Hitler 467 — The Complacency of Beck 468 — Ribbentrop’s Mission
 to Moscow 469 — Henderson’s Efforts for Peace 472— Bonnet’s Effort to Separate France from
Poland 475 — The Stiffening of Polish Anti-German Measures 478 — The Decline of German
Opposition to Hitler 480 —  Hitler’s Desire for a Negotiated Settlement 480

Chapter 19: German Proposals For An Anglo-German Understanding     483

Chamberlain’s Letter an Opening for Hitler 483 — Hitler’s Reply to Chamberlain 485 —
The Mission of Birger Dahlerus 486 — Charles Buxton’s Advice to Hitler 488 — The Confusion
of Herbert von Dirksen 489 — Hitler’s Appeal to the British Foreign Office 491 —
Polish-Danzig Talks Terminated by Beck 493 — Confusion in the British Parliament on August 24th 495
— The Roosevelt Messages to Germany and Poland 497— The German Case Presented by Henderson 500
— Kenfiard at Warsaw Active for War 501 — The August 25th Göring Message to London 503
— Hitler Disturbed about Italian Policy 504 — Hitler’s Alliance Offer to Great Britain 505 —
Hitler’s Order for Operations in Poland on August 26th 507 — The Announcement of the Formal
Anglo-Polish Alliance 508 — Military Operations Cancelled by Hitler 509

Chapter 20: The New German Offer To Poland     513

Halifax Opposed to Polish Negotiations with Germany 513 — The Polish Pledge to President Roosevelt 514
— Hitler’s Failure to Recover Italian Support 516 — Halifax Hopeful for War 517 —
British Concern About France 520 — The Hitler-Daladier Correspondence 522 — Hitler’s Desire for Peace
Conveyed at London by Dahlerus 524— Kennard Opposed to German-Polish Talks 526 — The Deceptive
British Note of August 28th — Hitler’s Hope for a Peaceful Settlement 535 — New Military Measures
Planned by Poland 537 — The German Note of August 29th 539 — The German Request for Negotiation
with Poland 540

Chapter 21: Polish General Mobilization And German-Polish War    545

Hitler Unaware of British Policy in Poland 545 — Hitler’s Offer of August 30th to Send Proposals to
Warsaw 547 — Hitler’s Sincerity Conceded by Chamberlain 548 —Henderson’s Peace Arguments
Rejected by Halifax 549 — A Peaceful Settlement Favored in France 551 — The Unfavorable British
Note of August 30th 552 — The Absence of Trade Rivalry as a Factor for War 555 — The Tentative
 German Marienwerder Proposals 557 — Hitler’s Order for Operations in Poland on September1st 561
— Beck’s Argument with Pope Pius XII 562 — Italian Mediation Favored by Bonnet 563 —
The Marienwerder Proposals Defended by Henderson 565 — The Lipski-Ribbentrop Meeting 566 —
 The Germans Denounced by Poland as Huns 568

Chapter 22: British Rejection Of the Italian Conference Plan
And The Outbreak of World War II        571

The German-Polish War 571 — Italian Defection Accepted by Hitler 571 — Polish Intransigence
Deplored by Henderson and Attolico 572 — Hitler’s Reichstag Speech of September 1, 1939 573 —
 Negotiations Requested by Henderson and Dahlerus 576 —Hitler Denounced by Chamberlain
and Halifax 578 — Anglo-French Ultimata Rejected by Bonnet 579 — Notes of Protest Drafted
by Bonnet 580 — The Italian Mediation Effort 584 — Hitler’s Acceptance of an Armistice and
a Conference 585 — The Peace Conference Favored by Bonnet 586 — Halifax’s Determination to
Drive France into War 588 — Ciano Deceived by Halifax 591 — The Mediation Effort Abandoned
by Italy 593 —Bonnet Dismayed by Italy’s Decision 594 — British Pressure on Daladier and
Bonnet 595— The Collapse of French Opposition to War 596 — The British and French Declarations
of War Against Germany 597 — The Unnecessary War 599

Conclusion    601
Appendix     609
Biography of the Author
Notes    621
Bibliography    646
Index    685

1

PREFACE

This book is an outgrowth of a research project in diplomatic history entitled Breakdown of German-Polish Relations in 1939. It was offered and accepted as a doctoral dissertation at Harvard University in 1948. It was prepared under the specific direction of Professors William L. Langer and Michael Karpovich who were recognized throughout the historical world as being leading authorities on modern European history, and especially in the field of diplomatic history.

During the execution of this investigation I also gained much from consultation with other experts in this field then at Harvard, such as Professor Sidney B. Fay, Professor Harry R. Rudin, who was guest professor at Harvard during the academic year, 1946-1947), and Professor David Owen, at that time the chairman of the Harvard History Department and one of the world’s leading experts on modem British history.

It has been a source of gratification to me that the conclusions reached in the 1948 monograph have been confirmed and extended by the great mass of documentary and memoir material which has been made available since that time.

While working on this project, which is so closely and directly related to the causes of the second World War, I was deeply impressed with the urgent need for further research and writing on the dramatic and world-shaking events of 1939 and their historical background in the preceding decade.

It was astonishing to me that, nine years after the launching of the second World War in September 1939, there did not exist in any language a comprehensive and reliable book on this subject. The only one devoted specifically and solely to this topic was Diplomatic Prelude by Sir Lewis B. Namier, an able English-Jewish-historian who was a leading authority on the history of eighteenth century Britain. He had no special training or capacity for dealing with contemporary diplomatic history. His book, published in 1946, was admittedly based on the closely censored documents which had appeared during the War and on the even more carefully screened and unreliable material produced against the National Socialist leaders at the Nuremberg Trials.

This lack of authentic material on the causes of the second World War presented a remarkable contrast to that which existed following the end of the [2] first World War. Within less than two years after the Armistice of November 1918, Professor Sidney B. Fay had discredited for all time the allegation that Germany and her allies had been solely responsible for the outbreak of war in August 1914. This was a fantastic. indictment. Yet, on it was based the notorious war-guilt clause (Article 239) of the Treaty of Versailles that did so much to bring on the explosive situation which, as will be shown in this book, Lord Halifax and other British leaders exploited to unleash the second World War almost exactly twenty years later.

By 1927, nine years after Versailles, there was an impressive library of worthy and substantial books by so-called revisionist scholars which had at least factually obliterated the Versailles war-guilt verdict. These books had appeared in many countries; the United States, Germany, England, France, Austria and Italy, among others. They were quickly translated, some even into Japanese. Only a year later there appeared Fay’s Origins of the World War, which still remains, after more than thirty years, the standard book in the English language on 1914 and its background. Later materials, such as the Berchtold papers and the Austro-Hungarian diplomatic documents published in 1930, have undermined Fay’s far too harsh verdict on the responsibility of the Austrians for the War. Fay himself has been planning for some time to bring out a new and revised edition of his important work.

This challenging contrast in the historical situation after the two World Wars convinced me that I could do no better than to devote my professional efforts to this very essential but seemingly almost studiously avoided area of contemporary history; the background of 1939. There were a number of obvious reasons for this dearth of sound published material dealing with this theme.

The majority of the historians in the victorious allied countries took it for granted that there was no war-guilt question whatever in regard to the second World War. They seemed to be agreed that no one could or ever would question the assumption that Hitler and the National Socialists were entirely responsible for the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, despite the fact that, even in 1919, some able scholars had questioned the validity of the war-guilt clause of the Versailles Treaty. The attitude of the historical guild after the second World War was concisely stated by Professor Louis Gottschalk of the University of Chicago, a former President of the American Historical Association: “American historians seem to be generally agreed upon the war-guilt question of the second World War.” In other words, there was no such question.

This agreement was not confined to American historians; it was equally true not only of those in Britain, France and Poland but also of the great majority of those in the defeated nations: Germany and Italy. No general revisionist movement like that following 1918 was stirring in any European country for years after V-J Day. Indeed, it is only faintly apparent among historians even today.

A second powerful reason for the virtual non-existence of revisionist historical writing on 1939 was the fact that it was—and still is—extremely precarious professionally for any historian anywhere to question the generally accepted dogma of the sole guilt of Germany for the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. To do so endangered the tenure and future prospects of any historian, as much in Germany or Italy as in the United States or Britain. Indeed, it was even more risky in West Germany. Laws passed by the Bonn Government made it [3 possible to interpret such vigorous revisionist writing as that set forth after 1918 by such writers as Montgelas, von Wegerer, Stieve, and Lutz as a political crime. The whole occupation program and NATO political set-up, slowly fashioned after V-E Day, was held to depend on the validity of the assertion that Hitler and the National Socialists were solely responsible for the great calamity of 1939. This dogma was bluntly stated by a very influential German political scientist, Professor Theodor Eschenburg, Rector of the University of Tuebingen:

“Whoever doubts the exclusive guilt of Germany for the second World War destroys the foundations of post-war politics.”

After the first World War, a strong wave of disillusionment soon set in concerning the alleged aims and actual results of the War. There was a notable trend towards peace, disarmament sentiment, and isolation, especially in the United States. Such an atmosphere offered some intellectual and moral encouragement to historians who sought to tell the truth about the responsibility for 1914. To do so did not constitute any basis for professional alarm as to tenure, status, promotion and security, at least after an interval of two or three years following the Armistice.

There was no such period of emotional cooling-off, readjustment, and pacific trends after 1945. Before there had even been any opportunity for this, a Cold War between former allies was forecast by Churchill early in 1946 and was formally proclaimed by President Truman in March 1947. The main disillusionment was that which existed between the United States and the Soviet Union and this shaped up so as to intensify and prolong the legend of the exclusive guilt of the National Socialists for 1939. The Soviet Union was no more vehement in this attitude than the Bonn Government of Germany.

There were other reasons why there was still a dearth of substantial books on 1939 in 1948—a lacuna which exists to this day—but those mentioned above are the most notable. Countries whose post-war status, possessions and policies rested upon the assumption of exclusive German guilt were not likely to surrender their pretensions, claims, and gains in the interest of historical integrity. Minorities that had a special grudge against the National Socialists were only too happy to take advantage of the favorable world situation to continue and to intensify their program of hate and its supporting literature, however extreme the deviation from the historical facts.

All these handicaps, difficulties and apprehension in dealing with 1939 were quite apparent to me in 1948 and, for the most part, they have not abated notably since that time. The sheer scholarly and research opportunities and responsibilities were also far greater than in the years after 1918. Aside from the fact that the revolutionary governments in Germany, Austria and Russia quickly opened their archives on 1914 to scholars, the publication of documents on the responsibility for the first World War came very slowly, and in some cases required two decades or more.

After the second World War, however, there was soon available a veritable avalanche of documents that had to be read, digested and analyzed if one were to arrive at any certainty relative to the responsibility for 1939. Germany had seized the documents in the archives of the countries she conquered. When the Allies later overcame Germany they seized not only these, but those of Germany, Austria, Italy and several other countries. To be sure, Britain and the [5] United States have been slow in publishing their documents bearing on 1939 and 1941, and the Soviet leaders have kept all of their documentary material, other than that seized by Germany, very tightly closed to scholars except for Communists. The latter could be trusted not to reveal any facts reflecting blame on the Soviet Union or implying any semblance of innocence on the part of National Socialist Germany.

Despite all the obvious problems, pitfalls and perils involved in any effort actually to reconstruct the story of 1939 and its antecedents, the challenge, need and opportunities connected with this project appeared to me to outweigh any or all negative factors. Hence, I began my research and writing on this comprehensive topic, and have devoted all the time I could take from an often heavy teaching schedule to its prosecution.

In 1952, I was greatly encouraged when I read the book by Professor Charles C. Tansill, Back Door to War. Tansill’s America Goes to War was, perhaps, the most learned and scholarly revisionist book published after the first World War, Henry Steele Commager declared that the book was “the most valuable contribution to the history of the pre-war years in our literature, and one of the notable achievements of historical scholarship of this generation.” Allan Nevins called it “an admirable volume, and absolutely indispensable” as an account of American entry into the War, on which the “approaches finality.” Although his Back Door to War was primarily designed to show how Roosevelt “lied the United States into war,” it also contained a great deal of exciting new material on the European background which agreed with the conclusions that I had reached in my 1948 dissertation.

Three years that I spent as Scientific Assistant to the Rector and visiting Assistant Professor of History in the Amerika Institut at the University of Munich gave me the opportunity to look into many sources of information in German materials at first hand and to consult directly able German scholars and public figures who could reveal in personal conversation what they would not dare to put in print at the time. An earlier research trip to Europe sponsored by a Harvard scholarship grant, 1947-1948, had enabled me to do the same with leading Polish figures and to work on important Polish materials in a large number of European countries.

Three years spent later as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley made it possible for me to make use of the extensive collection of documents there, as well as the far more voluminous materials at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, California, where I had done my first work in the archives while an under-graduate student at Stanford. Research grants thereafter permitted me to be free from teaching duties for several years and to devote myself solely to research and writing. Whatever defects and deficiencies my book may possess, they are not due to lack of application to cogent research in the best collections of documents for over nearly a decade and a half.

In various stages of the preparation of my book I gained much from the advice, counsel and assistance of Harry R. Rudin, Raymond J. Sontag, Charles C. Tansill, M.K. Dziewanowski, Zygmunt Gasiorowski, Edward J. Rozek, Otto zu Stolberg-Wernigerode, Vsevolod Panek, Ralph H. Lutz, Henry M. Adams, James J. Martin, Franklin C. Palm, Thomas H.D. Mahoney, Reginald F. Arragon, Richard H. Jones, and Ernest G. Trimble.

By 1957, I believed that I had proceeded far enough to have a manuscript worthy of publication and offered it to a prominent publisher. Before any decision could be reached, however, as to acceptance or rejection, I voluntarily withdrew the manuscript because of the recent availability of extensive and important new documentary materials, such as the Polish documentary collection, Polska a Zagranica, and the vast collection of microfilm reproductions based on the major portion of the German Foreign Office Archives from the 1936-1939 period, which had remained unpublished.

This process of drastic revision, made mandatory by newly available documentation, has been repeated four times since 1957. It is now my impression that no probable documentary revelations in any predictable future would justify further withholding of the material from publication. The results of my work during the last fifteen years in this field have recently been published in Germany (November, 1961) under the title Der Erzwungene Krieg (The Forced War). The German edition went through four printings within one year.

Neither this book nor the present English-language edition will exhaust this vast theme or preclude the publication of many other books in the same field. But it will not strain the truth to assert that my book constitutes by far the most complete treatment which has appeared on the subject in any language based on the existing and available documentation. Indeed, amazing as it seems, it is the only book limited to the subject in any language that has appeared since 1946, save for Professor A.J.P. Taylor’s far briefer account which was not published until the spring of 1961, the still more brief account in Germany by Walther Hofer, the rather diffuse symposium published under the auspices of Professor Arnold J. Toynbee at London in 1958, and Frau Annelies von Ribbentrop’s Verschwoerung gegen den Frieden (Conspiracy Against Peace, Leoni am Starnbergersee, 1962).

It represents, to the best of my ability, an accurate summation and assessment of the factors, forces and personalities that contributed to bring on war in September 1939, and to the entry of the Soviet Union, Japan, and the United States into the conflict later on. Valid criticism of the book in its present and first edition will be warmly welcomed. Such suggestions as appear to me to be validated by reliable documentation will be embodied in subsequently revised editions.

Although the conclusions reached in this book depart widely from the opinions that were set forth in allied war propaganda and have been continued almost unchanged in historical writing since 1945, they need not be attributed to either special ability or unusual perversity. They are simply those which one honest historian with considerable linguistic facility has arrived at by examining the documents and monographs with thoroughness, and by deriving the logical deductions from their content. No more has been required than professional integrity, adequate information, and reasonable intelligence. Such a revision of wartime propaganda dogmas and their still dominating vestiges in current historical writings in this field is inevitable, whatever the preconceived ideas held by any historian, if he is willing to base his conclusions on facts. This is well Illustrated and confirmed by the example of the best known of contemporary British historians, Professor A.J.P. Taylor.

Taylor had written numerous books relating to German history, and his [6] attitude had led to his being regarded as vigorously anti-German, if not literally a consistent Germanophobe. Admittedly in this same mood, he began a thorough study of the causes of the second World War from the sources, with the definite anticipation that he would emerge with an overwhelming indictment of Hitler as solely responsible for the causes and onset of that calamitous conflict. What other outcome could be expected when one was dealing with the allegedly most evil, bellicose, aggressive and unreasonable leader in all German history?

Taylor is, however, an honest historian and his study of the documents led him to the conclusion that Hitler was not even primarily responsible for 1939. Far from planning world conquest, Hitler did not even desire a war with Poland, much less any general European war. The war was, rather, the outcome of blunders on all sides, committed by all the nations involved, and the greatest of all these blunders took place before Hitler came to power in 1933. This was the Versailles Treaty of 1919 and the failure of the victorious Allies and the League of Nations to revise this nefarious document gradually and peacefully in the fifteen years preceding the Hitler era.

So far as the long-term responsibility for the second World War is concerned, my general conclusions agree entirely with those of Professor Taylor. When it comes to the critical months between September 1938, and September 1939, however, it is my carefully considered judgment that the primary responsibility was that of Poland and Great Britain. For the Polish-German War, the responsibility was that of Poland, Britain and Germany in this order of so-called guilt. For the onset of a European War, which later grew into a world war with the entry of the Soviet Union, Japan and the United States, the responsibility was primarily, indeed almost exclusively, that of Lord Halifax and Great Britain.

I have offered my reasons for these conclusions and have presented and analyzed the extensive documentary evidence to support them. It is my conviction that the evidence submitted cannot be factually discredited or overthrown. If it can be, I will be the first to concede the success of such an effort and to readjust my views accordingly. But any refutation must be based on facts and logic and cannot be accomplished by the prevailing arrogance, invective or innuendo. I await the examination of my material with confidence, but also with an open mind in response to all honest and constructive criticism.

While my primary concern in writing this book has been to bring the historical record into accord with the available documentation, it has also been my hope that it might have the same practical relevance that revisionist writing could have had after the first World War. Most of the prominent Revisionists after the first World War hoped that their results in scholarship might produce a comparable revolution in European politics and lead to the revision of the Versailles Treaty in time to discourage the rise of some authoritarian ruler to undertake this task. They failed to achieve this laudable objective and Europe was faced with the danger of a second World War.

Revisionist writing on the causes of the second World War should logically produce an even greater historical and political impact than it did after 1919. In a nuclear age, failure in this respect will be much more disastrous and devastating than the second World War. The indispensable nature of a reconsideration of the merits and possible services of Revisionism in this matter has been well [7] stated by Professor Denna F. Fleming, who has written by far the most complete and learned book on the Cold War and its dangers, and a work which also gives evidence of as extreme and unyielding a hostility to Germany as did the earlier writings of A.J.P. Taylor: “The case of the Revisionists deserved to be heard…. They may help us avoid the ‘one more war’ after which there would be nothing left worth arguing about.”

Inasmuch as I find little in the documents which lead me to criticize seriously the foreign policy of Hitler and the National Socialists, some critics of the German edition of my book have Charged that I entertain comparable views about the domestic policy of Hitler and his regime. I believe, and have tried to demonstrate, that the factual evidence proves that Hitler and his associates did not wish to launch a European war in 1939, or in preceding years. This does not, however, imply in any sense that I have sought to produce an apology for Hitler and National Socialism in the domestic realm. It is no more true in my case than in that of A.J.P. Taylor whose main thesis throughout his lucid and consistent volume is that Hitler desired to accomplish the revision of the Treaty of Versailles by peaceful methods, and had no wish or plan to provoke any general war.

Having devoted as much time to an intensive study of this period of German history as any other American historian, I am well aware that there were many defects and shortcomings in the National Socialist system, as well as some remarkable and substantial accomplishments in many fields. My book is a treatise on diplomatic history. If I were to take the time and space to analyze in detail the personal traits of all the political leaders of the 1930’s and all aspects of German, European and world history at the time that had any bearing on the policies and actions that led to war in September 1939, it would require several large volumes.

The only practical procedure is the one which I have followed, namely, to hold resolutely to the field of diplomatic history, mentioning only those out standing political, economic, social and psychological factors and situations which bore directly and powerfully on diplomatic actions and policies during these years. Even when closely restricted to this special field, the indispensable materials have produced a very large book. If I have found Hitler relatively free of any intent or desire to launch a European war in 1939, this surely does not mean that any reasonable and informed person could regard him as blameless or benign in all his policies and public conduct. Only a naive person could take any such position. I deal with Hitler’s domestic program only to refute the preposterous Chargé that he made Germany a military camp before 1939.

My personal political and economic ideology is related quite naturally to my own environment as an American citizen. I have for years been a warm admirer of the distinguished American statesman and reformer, the late Robert Marion La Follette, Sr. I still regard him as the most admirable and courageous American political leader of this century. Although I may be very much mistaken in this judgment and appraisal, it is sincere and enduring. What it does demonstrate is that I have no personal ideological affinity with German National Socialism, whatever strength and merit it may have possessed for Germany in some important respects. Nothing could be more presumptuous and absurd, or more remote from my purposes in this book, than an American attempt to [8] rehabilitate or vindicate Germany’s Adolf Hitler in every phase of his public behavior. My aim here is solely to discover and describe the attitudes and responsibilities of Hitler and the other outstanding political leaders and groups of the 1930’s which had a decisive bearing on the outbreak of war in 1939.

David Leslie Hoggan
Menlo Park, California

[9]

Chapter 1

THE NEW POLISH STATE


The Anti-Polish Vienna Congress

A tragedy such as World War I, with all its horrors, was destined by the very nature of its vast dimensions to produce occasional good results along with an infinitely greater number of disastrous situations. One of these good results was the restoration of the Polish state. The Polish people, the most numerous of the West Slavic tribes, have long possessed a highly developed culture, national self-consciousness, and historical tradition. In 1914 Poland was ripe for the restoration of her independence, and there can be no doubt that independence, when it came, enjoyed the unanimous support of the entire Polish nation. The restoration of Poland was also feasible from the standpoint of the other nations, although every historical event has its critics, and there were prominent individuals in foreign countries who did not welcome the recovery of Polish independence.1

The fact that Poland was not independent in 1914 was mainly the fault of the international congress which met at Vienna in 1814 and 1815. No serious effort was made by the Concert of Powers2  to concern itself with Polish national aspirations, and the arrangements for autonomy in the part of Russian Poland known as the Congress Kingdom were the result of the influence of the Polish diplomat and statesman, Adam Czartoryski, on Tsar Alexander I. The Prussian delegation at Vienna would gladly have relinquished the Polish province of Posen in exchange for the recognition of Prussian aspirations in the German state of Saxony. Great Britain, France, and Austria combined against Prussia and Russia to frustrate Prussian policy in Saxony and to demand that Posen be assigned to Prussia. This typical disregard of Polish national interests sealed the fate of the Polish nation at that time.3

The indifference of the majority of the Powers, and especially Great Britain, toward Polish nationalism in 1815 is not surprising when one recalls that the aspirations of German, Italian, Belgian, and Norwegian nationalism were flouted [10] with equal impunity. National self-determination was considered to be the privilege of only a few Powers in Western Europe.

The first Polish state was founded in the 10th century and finally destroyed in its entirety in 1795, during the European convulsions which accompanied the Great French Revolution. The primary reason for the destruction of Poland at that time must be assigned to Russian imperialism. The interference of the expanding Russian Empire in the affairs of Poland during the early 18th century became increasingly formidable, and by the mid-l8th century Poland was virtually a Russian protectorate. The first partition of Poland by Russia, Prussia, and Austria in 1772 met with some feeble opposition from Austrian diplomacy. Prussia made a rather ineffective effort to protect Poland from further destruction by concluding an alliance with her shortly before the second partition of 1792. The most that can be said about Russia in these various situations is that she would have preferred to obtain the whole of Poland for herself rather than to share territory with the western and southern neighbors of Poland. The weakness of the Polish constitutional system is sometimes considered a cause for the disappearance of Polish independence, but Poland would probably have maintained her independence under this system had it not been for the hostile actions of neighboring Powers, and especially Russia.

Poland was restored as an independent state by Napoleon I within twelve years of the final partition of 1795. The new state was known as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. It did not contain all of the Polish territories, but it received additional land from Napoleon in 1809, and, despite the lukewarm attitude of the French Emperor toward the Poles, it no doubt would have been further aggrandized had Napoleon’s campaign against Russia in 1812 been successful. It can truthfully be said that the long eclipse of Polish independence during the 19th century was the responsibility of the European Concert of Powers at Vienna rather than the three partitioning Powers of the late 18th century.5



The 19th Century Polish Uprisings

The privileges of autonomy granted to Congress Poland by Russia in 1815 were withdrawn sixteen years later following the great Polish insurrection against the Russians in 1830-1831. Polish refugees of that uprising were received with enthusiasm wherever they went in Germany, because the Germans too were suffering from the oppressive post-war system established by the victors of 1815.6 The Western Powers, Great Britain and France, were absorbed by their rivalry to control Belgium and Russia was allowed to deal with the Polish situation undisturbed. New Polish uprisings during the 1846-1848 period were as ineffective as the national revolutions of Germany and Italy at that time.7 The last desperate Polish uprising before 1914 came in 1863, and it was on a much smaller scale than the insurrection of 1830-1831.

The British, French, and Austrians showed some interest in diplomatic intervention on behalf of the Poles, but Bismarck, the Minister-President of Prussia, sided with Russia because he believed that Russian support was necessary for the realization of German national unity. Bismarck’s eloquent arguments in the Prussian Landtag (legislature) against the restoration of a Polish state in 1863, [11] reflected this situation rather than permanent prejudice on his part against the idea of an independent Poland. It is unlikely that there would have been effective action on behalf of the Poles by the Powers at that time had Bismarck heeded the demand of the majority of the Prussian Landtag for a pro-Polish policy. Great Britain was less inclined in 1863 than she had been during the 1850’s to intervene in foreign quarrels as the ally of Napoleon III. She was disengaging herself from Anglo-French intervention in Mexico, rejecting proposals for joint Anglo-French intervention in the American Civil War, and quarreling with France about the crisis in Schleswig-Holstein.8

The absence of new Polish uprisings in the 1863-1914 period reflected Polish recognition that such actions were futile rather than any diminution of the Polish desire for independence. The intellectuals of Poland were busily at work during this period devising new plans for the improvement of the Polish situation. A number of different trends emerged as a result of this activity. One of these was represented by Jozef Pilsudski, and he and his disciples ultimately determined the fate of Poland in the period between the two World Wars. Pilsudski participated in the revolutionary movement in Russia before 1914 in the hope that this movement would shatter the Russian Empire and prepare the way for an independent Poland.9

The unification of Germany in 1871 meant that the Polish territories of Prussia became integral parts of the new German Empire. Relations between Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, the three Powers ruling over Polish territories, were usually harmonious in the following twenty year period. This was possible, despite the traditional Austro-Russian rivalry in the Balkans, because of the diplomatic achievement of Bismarck.10 The situation changed after the retirement of Bismarck in 1890, and especially after the conclusion of the Franco-Russian alliance in 1894.11 There was constant tension among the three Powers during the following period. Russia was allied with France against Germany, and it was evident that an Eastern European, a Western European, or an Overseas imperial question might produce a war. This situation seemed more promising for Poland than when the three Powers ruling Polish territories were in harmony. It was natural that these changed conditions were reflected in Polish thought during these years.


Pro-German Polish Nationalism

Most of the Polish territory was ruled by Russia, and consequently it was quite logical for some Poles to advocate collaboration with Germany, the principal opponent of Russia, as the best means of promoting Polish interests. Wladyslaw Studnicki, a brilliant Polish scholar with contacts in many countries, was an exponent of this approach. He believed that Russia would always be the primary threat to Polish interests. His historical studies had convinced him that the finest conditions for Poland had existed during periods of peaceful relations and close contact with Germany.12

He noted that Poland, while enfeoffed to Germany during the Middle Ages, had received from the Germans her Christian religion, her improved agricultural economy, and her flourishing medieval development of crafts. German craft [12] colonization had been the basis for the growth of Polish cities, and the close cultural relationship between the two countries was demonstrated by every fourth 20th century Polish word. which was of German origin. He recalled that relations between Germany and Poland were usually friendly during the Middle Ages, and also during the final years before the Polish partitions.

Studnicki believed that Poland’s real future was in the East, where she might continue her own cultural mission, and also profit nationally. He asserted during World War I that Poles should cease opposing the continuation of German rule in the province of Posen, which had a Polish majority, and in the province of West Prussia, which had a German majority. Both of these regions had been Polish before the first partition of 1772. He favored a return to the traditional Polish eastern policy of federation with such neighboring nations as the Lithuanians and White Russians.13

Studnicki believed that collaboration with Germany would protect Poland from destruction by Russia without endangering the development of Poland or the realization of Polish interests. He advocated this policy throughout the period from World War Ito World War II. After World War II, he wrote a moving account of the trials of Poland during wartime occupation, and of the manner in which recent events had made more difficult the German-Polish understanding which he still desired. 14


Pro-Russian Polish Nationalism

The idea of permanent collaboration with Russia also enjoyed great prestige in Poland despite the fact that Russia was the major partitioning Power and that the last Polish insurrection had been directed exclusively against her rule. The most brilliant and popular of modern Polish political philosophers, Roman Dmowski, was an advocate of this idea. Dmowski’s influence was very great, and his most bitter adversaries adopted many of his ideas. Dmowski refused to com promise with his opponents, or to support any program which differed from his own.15

Dmowski was the leader of a Polish political group within the Russian Empire before World War I known as the National Democrats. They advocated a constitution for the central Polish region of Congress Poland, which had been assigned to Russia for the first time at the Vienna Congress in 1815, but they did not oppose the further union of this region with Russia. They welcomed the Russian constitutional regime of 1906, and they took their seats in the legislative Duma rather than boycott it. Their motives in this respect were identical with those of the Polish Conservatives from the Polish Kresy;16 the new constitution could bestow benefits on Poles as well as Russians. The Polish Kresy, which also served as a reservation for Jews in Russia, included all Polish territories taken by Russia except Congress Poland. The National Democrats and the Polish Conservatives believed that they could advance the Polish cause within Russia by legal means.17

Dmowski was a leading speaker in the Duma, and he was notorious for his clever attacks on the Germans and Jews. He confided to friends that he hoped to duplicate the career of Adam Czartoryski, who had been Foreign Secretary of [13] Russia one century earlier and was acknowledged to have been the most success ful Polish collaborator with the Russians. Unwelcome restrictions were imposed on the constitutional regime in the years after 1906 by Piotr Stolypin, the new Russian strong man, but these failed to dampen Dmowski’s ardor. He believed that the combined factors of fundamental weakness in the Russian autocracy and the rising tide of Polish nationalism would enable him to achieve a more prominent role.

Dmowski was an advocate of modernity, which meant to him a pragmatic approach to all problems without sentimentality or the dead weight of outmoded tradition. In his book, Mysli nowoczesnego Polaka (Thoughts of a Modern Pole), 1902, he advised that the past splendor of the old Polish monarchy should be abandoned even as an ideal. He recognized that the Polish nation needed modern leadership, and he proclaimed that “nations do not produce governments, but governments do produce nations.”18 He continued to envisage an autonomous Polish regime loyal to Russia until the latter part of World War I. His system of thought was better suited to the completely independent Poland which emerged from the War. He demanded after 1918 that Poland become a strictly national state in contrast to a nationalities state of the old Polish or recent Habsburg pattern. Dmowski did not envisage an unexceptional Poland for the Poles, but a state with strictly limited minorities in the later style of Kemal in Turkey or Hitler in Germany. He believed that the inclusion of minorities in the new state should stop short of risking the total preponderance of the dominant nationality.19

Dmowski opposed eastward expansion at Russian expense, and he argued that the old Lithuanian-Russian area, which once had been under Polish rule, could not be assimilated. Above all, the Jews were very numerous in the region, and he disliked having a Jewish minority in the new Polish state. In 1931 he declared that “the question of the Jews is the greatest question concerning the civilization of the whole world.”20 He argued that a modern approach to the Jewish question required the total expulsion of the Jews from Poland because assimilation was impossible. He rejected both the 18th century attempt to assimilate by baptism and the 19th century effort at assimilation through common agreement on liberal ideas. He insisted that experience had proved both these attempted solutions were futile. He argued that it was not Jewish political influence which posed the greatest threat, but Jewish economic and cultural activities. He did not believe that Poland could become a respectable business nation until she had eliminated her many Jews. He recognized the dominant Western trend in Polish literature and art, but he did not see how Polish culture could survive what he considered to be Jewish attempts to dominate and distort it. He firmly believed that the anti-Jewish policy of the Tsarist regime in Russia had been beneficial. His ideas on the Jewish question were popular in Poland, and they were either shared from the start or adopted by most of his political opponents.21

Dmowski’s basic program was defensive, and he was constantly seeking either to protect the Poles from threats to their heritage, or from ambitious schemes of expansion which might increase alien influences. There was only one notable exception to this defensive pattern of his ideas. He favored an ambitious and aggressive policy of westward expansion at the expense of Germany, and he used his predilection for this scheme as an argument for collaboration with Russia. [14]

He believed in the industrialization of Poland and in a dominant position for the industrial middle class. He argued that westward expansion would be vital in increasing Polish industrial resources.22

The influence of Dmowski’s thought in Poland has remained important until the present day. His influence continued to grow despite the political failures of his followers after Jozef Pilsudski’s coup d’Etat in 1926. Dmowski deplored the influence of the Jews in Bolshevist Russia, but he always advocated Russo-Polish collaboration in foreign policy.


Pro-Habsburg Polish Nationalism

Every general analysis of 20th century Polish theory on foreign policy empha sizes the Krakow (Cracow) or Galician school, which was easily the most prolific, although the practical basis for its program was destroyed by World War I. The political leaders and university scholars of the Polish South thought of Austrian Galicia as a Polish Piedmont after the failure of the Polish insurrection against Russia in 1863. Michal Bobrzynski, the Governor of Galicia from 1907 to 1911, was the outstanding leader of this school. In his Dzieje Polski w Zarysie (Short History of Poland), he eulogized Polish decentralization under the pre-partition constitution, and he attacked the kings who had sought to increase the central power. In 1919 he advocated regionalism in place of a centralized national system. He also hoped that the Polish South would occupy the key position in Poland as a whole.23

The political activities of the Krakow group before the War of 1914 were directed against the National Democrats, with their pro-Russian orientation, and against the Ukrainians in Galicia, with their national aspirations. Bobrzynski envisaged the union of all Poland under the Habsburgs, and the development of a powerful federal system in the Habsburg Empire to be dominated by Austrian Germans, Hungarians, and Poles. He advocated a federal system after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918, and he supported the claims to the old thrones of the Habsburg pretender. He argued with increasing exasperation that Poland alone could never maintain herself against Russia and Germany without additional support from the South. 24


Pilsudski ‘s Polish Nationalism

A fourth major program for the advancement of Polish interests was that of Jozef Pilsudski, who thought of Poland as a Great Power. His ideas on this vital point conflicted with the three programs previously mentioned. Studnicki, Dmowski, and Bobrzynski recognized that Poland was one of the smaller nations of modern Europe. It seemed inevitable to them that the future promotion of Polish interests would demand a close alignment with at least one of the three pre-1918 powerful neighboring Powers, Germany, Russia, or Austria-Hungary. It is not surprising that there were groups in Poland which favored collaboration with each of these Powers, but it is indeed both startling and instructive to note [15 that the strongest of these groups advocated collaboration with Russia, the principal oppressor of the Poles.

Pilsudski opposed collaboration with any of the stronger neighbors of Poland. He expected Poland to lead nations weaker than herself and to maintain alliances or alignments with powerful but distant Powers not in a position to influence the conduct of Polish policy to any great extent. Above all, his system demanded a defiant attitude toward any neighboring state more powerful than Poland. His reasoning was that defiance of her stronger neighbors would aid Poland to regain the Great Power status which she enjoyed at the dawn of modern history. Dependence on a stronger neighbor would be tantamount to recognizing the secondary position of Poland in Central Eastern Europe. He hoped that a successful foreign policy after independence would eventually produce a situation in which none of her immediate neighbors would be appreciably stronger than Poland. He hoped that Poland in this way might eventually achieve national security without sacrificing her Great Power aspirations.25

This approach to a foreign policy for a small European nation was reckless, and its partisans said the same thing somewhat more ambiguously when they described it as heroic. Its radical nature is evident when it is compared to the three programs described above, which may be called conservative by contrast. Another radical policy in Poland was that of the extreme Marxists who hoped to convert the Polish nation into a proletarian dictatorship. These extreme Marxists were far less radical on the foreign policy issue than the Pilsudski group.

For a period of twenty-five years, from 1914 until the Polish collapse of 1939, Pilsudski’s ideas had a decisive influence on the development of Poland. No Polish leader since Jan Sobieski in the 17th century had been so masterful. Poles often noted that Pilsudski’s personality was not typically Polish, but was much modified by his Lithuanian background. He did not share the typical exaggerated Polish respect for everything which came from abroad. He was not unpunctual as were most Poles, and he had no trace of either typical Polish indolence or prodigality. Above all, although he possessed it in full measure, he rarely made a show of the great personal charm which is typical of nearly all educated Poles. He was usually taciturn, and he despised excessive wordiness.26

Pilsudski’s prominence began with the outbreak of World War I. He was personally well prepared for this struggle. Pilsudski addressed a group of Polish university students at Paris in February 1914. His words contained a remarkable prophecy which did much to give him a reputation for uncanny insight. He predicted that a great war would break out which might produce the defeat of the three Powers ruling partitioned Poland. He guessed correctly that the Austrian5 and Germans might defeat the Russians before succumbing to the superior material reserves and resources of the Western Powers. He proposed to contribute to this by fighting the Russians until they were defeated and then turning against the Germans and Austrians.27

This strategy required temporary collaboration with two of the Powers holding Polish territories, but it was based on the recognition that in 1914, before Polish independence, it was inescapable that Poles would be fighting on both sides in the War. Pilsudski accepted this inevitable situation, but he sought to shape it to promote Polish interests to the maximum degree. [16]

Pilsudski had matured in politics before World War I as a Polish Marxist revolutionary. He assimilated the ideas of German and Russian Marxism both at the university city of Kharkov in the Ukraine, and in Siberia, where hundreds of thousands of Poles had been exiled by Russian authorities since 1815. He approached socialism as an effective weapon against Tsarism, but he never became a sincere socialist. His followers referred to his early Marxist affiliation as Konrad Wallenrod socialism. Wallenrod, in the epic of Adam Mickiewicz, infiltrated the German Order of Knights and became one of its leaders only to undermine it. Pilsudski adhered to international socialism for many years, but he remained opposed to its final implications.28

Pilsudski was convinced that the Galician socialist leaders with whom he was closely associated would ultimately react in a nationalist direction. One example will suggest why he made this assumption. At the July 1910 international socialist congress in Krakow, Ignaz Daszynski, the Galician socialist leader, was reproached by Herman Lieberman, a strict Marxist, for encouraging the celebration by Polish socialists of the 500th anniversary of Grunwald. Grunwald was the Polish name for the victory of the Poles, Lithuanians and Tartars over the German Order of Knights at Tannenberg in 1410, and its celebration in Poland at this time was comparable to the July 4th independence holiday in the United States. Daszynski heaped ridicule and scorn on Lieberman. He observed sarcastically that it would inflict a tremendous injury on the workers to tolerate this national impudence. He added that it was positively criminal to refer to Wawel (the former residence of Polish kings in Krakow) because this might sully the red banners of socialism.29 Pilsudski himself later made the cynical remark that those who cared about socialism might ride the socialist trolley to the end of the line, but he preferred to get off at independence station.30

Pilsudski was active with Poles from other political groups after 1909 in forming separate military units to collaborate with Austria-Hungary in wartime. This action was encouraged by Austrian authorities who hoped that Pilsudski would be able to attract volunteers from the Russian section. Pilsudski was allowed to command only one brigade of this force, but he emerged as the dominant leader. The Krakow school hoped to use his military zeal to build Polish power within the Habsburg Empire, and one of their leaders, Jaworski, remarked that he would exploit Pilsudski as Cavour had once exploited Garibaldi. Pilsudski, like Garibaldi, had his own plans, and events were to show that he was more successful in realizing them.31


Poland in World War I

World War I broke out in August 1914 after Russia, with the encouragement of Great Britain and France, ordered the general mobilization of her armed forces against Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Russians were determined to support Serbia against Austria-Hungary in the conflict which resulted from the assassination of the heir to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones and his wife by Serbian conspirators. Russian mobilization plans envisaged simultaneous military action against both the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. Poincaré and Viviani, the French leaders, welcomed the opportunity to engage Germany in a conflict, [17] because they hoped to reconquer Alsace-Lorraine. Sir Edward Grey and the majority of the British leaders looked forward to the opportunity of winning the spoils of war from Germany, and of disposing of an allegedly dangerous rival. Austria-Hungary wished to maintain her security against Serbian provocations, and the German leaders envisaged war with great reluctance as a highly unwelcome development.32

Russia, as the ally of Great Britain and France, succeeded in keeping the Polish question out of Allied diplomacy until the Russian Revolution of 1917. A Russian proclamation of August 18, 1914, offered vague rewards to the Poles for their support in the war against Germany, but it contained no binding assurances. Dmowski went to London in November 1915 to improve his contacts with British and French leaders, but he was careful to work closely with Alexander Isvolsky, Russian Ambassador to France and the principal Russian diplomat abroad. Dmowski’s program called for an enlarged autonomous Polish region within Russia. His activities were for the most part welcomed by Russia, but Isvolsky reported to foreign Minister Serge Sazonov in April 1916 that Dmowski went too far in discussing certain aspects of the Polish question.33

[Pilsudski in the meantime had successfully resisted attempts by the Austrian War Department to deprive his cadres of their special status when it became obvious that they were no magnet to the Poles across the Russian frontier. Responsibility for maintaining the separate status of the forces was entrusted to a Polish Chief National Committee (Naczelnik Komitet Narodowy). The situation was precarious because many of the Galician Poles proved to be pro-Russian after war came, and they did not care to join Pilsudski. They expected Russia to win the war. They might be tolerated following a Russian victory as mere conscripts of Austria, but they would be persecuted for serving with Pilsudski. As a result, there were only a few thousand soldiers under Pilsudski and his friends during World War I. The overwheiming majority of all Polish veterans saw military service only with the Russians. Large numbers of Polish young men from Galicia fled to the Russians upon the outbreak of war to escape service with either the Austrians or with Pilusdski.34 It was for this reason that the impact of Pilsudski on the outcome of the war against Russia was negligible. He nevertheless achieved a prominent position in Polish public opinion, whatever individual Poles might think of him, and he managed to retain it.

General von Beseler, the Governor of German-occupied Poland, proclaimed the restoration of Polish independence on November 5, 1916, following an earlier agreement between Germany and Austria-Hungary. His announcement was accompanied by a German Army band playing the gay and exuberant Polish anthem from the Napoleonic period, Poland Still Is Not Lost! (Jeszcze Polska nie Zginele!). Polish independence was rendered feasible by the German victories over Russia in 1915 which compelled the Russians to evacuate most of the Polish territories, including those which they had seized from Austria in the early months of the war. Pilsudski welcomed this step by Germany with good reason, although he continued to hope for the ultimate defeat of Germany in order to free Poland from any German influence and to aggrandize Poland at German expense.35

A Polish Council of State was established on December 6, 1916, and met for [18]  the first time on January 14, 1917. The position of the Council during wartime was advisory to the occupation authorities, and the prosecution of the war continued to take precedence over every other consideration. Nevertheless, important concessions were made to the Poles during the period from September 1917 until the end of the war. The Council was granted the administration of justice in Poland and control over the Polish school system, and eventually every phase of Polish life came under its influence. The Council was reorganized in the autumn of 1917, and on October 14, 1917, a Regency Council was appointed in the expectation that Poland would become an independent kingdom allied to the German and Austro-Hungarian monarchies.36 The German independence policy was recognized by Poles everywhere as a great aid to the Polish cause, and Roman Dmowski. never a friend of Germany, was very explicit in stating this in his book, Polityka Polska i Odbudowanie Panstwa (Polish Policy and the Reconstruction of the State), which described the events of this period.37 Negotiators for the Western Allies, on the other hand, were willing to reverse the German independence policy as late as the summer of 1917 and to offer all of Poland to Austria-Hungary, if by doing so they could separate the Central Powers and secure a separate peace with the Habsburgs.38

The Germans for their part were able to assure President Wilson in January 1917, when the United States was still neutral in the War, that they had no territorial aims in the West and that they stood for the independence of Poland. President Wilson delivered a speech on January 22, 1917, in which he stressed the importance of obtaining access to the Sea for Poland, but James Gerard, the American Ambassador to Germany, assured German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg that Wilson did not wish to see any Baltic port of Germany detached from German rule. It is not surprising that in German minds both before and after the 1918 armistice the Wilson Program for Poland envisaged access to the Sea in terms of free port facilities and not in the carving of one or more corridors to the Sea through German territory.39 There was no objection from Germany when the Polish Council of State in Warsaw sent a telegram to Wilson congratulating him for his speech of January 22, 1917, which had formulated Wilsonian Polish policy in terms later included as the 13th of the famous 14 Points.40

The Russian Provisional Government raised the question of Polish independence in a statement of March 29, 1917, but they stressed the necessity of a permanent Russo-Polish “alliance,” with special “guarantees,” as the conditio sine qua non. Arthur James Balfour, the Conservative leader in the British Coalition Government, endorsed the Russian proposition, although he knew that the Russians intended a merely autonomous Poland. Dmowski responded to the March 1917 Russian Revolution by advocating a completely independent Poland of 200,000 square miles, which was approximately equal to the area of the German Empire, and he attempted to counter the arguments raised against Polish independence in Great Britain and France.41

Pilsudski at this time was engaged in switching his policy from support of Germany to support of the Western Allies. He demanded a completely independent Polish national army before the end of the war, and the immediate severance of any ties which made Poland dependent on the Central Powers. He knew that there was virtually no chance for the fulfillment of these demands [19] at the crucial stage which the war had reached by the summer of 1917. The slogan of his followers was a rejection of compromise: “Never a state without an army, never an army without Pilsudski.” Pilsudski was indeed head of the military department of the Polish Council of State, but he resigned on July 2, 1917, when Germany and Austria-Hungary failed to accept his demands.42

Pilsudski deliberately provoked the Germans until they arrested him and placed him for the duration of the war in comfortable internment with his closest military colleague, Kazimierz Sosnkowski, at Magdeburg on the Elbe. It was Pilsudski’s conviction that only in this way could he avoid compromising himself with the Germans before Polish public opinion. His arrest by Germany made it difficult for his antagonists in Poland to argue that he had been a mere tool of German policy. It was a matter of less concern that this accusation was made in the Western countries despite his arrest during the months and years which followed.43

A threat to Pilsudskl’s position in Poland was implicit in the organization of independent Polish forces in Russia after the Revolution under a National Polish Army Committee (Naczpol). These troops were under the influence of Roman Dmowski and his National Democrats. The conclusion of peace between Russia and Germany at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 stifled this development, and the Polish forces soon began to surrender to the Germans. The Bolshevik triumph and peace with Germany dealt a severe blow to the doctrine of Polish collaboration with Russia. The surrender by Germany of the Cholm district of Congress Poland to the Ukraine at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 dealt a fatal blow to the prestige of the Regency Council in Poland, and prepared the way for the establishment of an entirely new Government when Germany went down in revolution and defeat in November 1918.44


Polish Expansion After World War I

It was fortunate for Pilsudski that the other Poles were unable to achieve any thing significant during his internment in Germany. He was released from Magdeburg during the German Revolution, and he returned speedily to Poland. On November 14, 1918, the Regency Council turned over its powers to Pilsudski, and the Poles, who were in the midst of great national rejoicing, despite the severe prevailing economic conditions, faced an entirely new situation. Pilsudski knew there would be an immediate struggle for power among the political parties. His first step was to consolidate the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) of Congress Poland, and the Polish Social-Democratic Party (PPSD) of Galicia under his own leadership.45

Pilsudskl had an enormous tactical advantage which he exploited to the limit. He was a socialist, and he had fought for the Germans. His principal political Opponents, the National Democrats, were popular with the Western Powers. Poland was not mentioned in the November 1918 armistice agreement with Germany, and soon after the armistice a protracted peace conference began. Pilsudski was persona non grata at Versailles. He gladly expressed his confidence in the Paris negotiation efforts of the National Democrats in the interest of obtaining a united Polish front. It was not his responsibility, but that of his [20] opponents, to secure advantages for Poland at the peace conference. This effort was almost certain to discredit his opponents, because Polish demands were so exorbitant that they could scarcely be satisfied. Pilsudski was free to turn his own efforts toward the Polish domestic situation. He made good use of his time, and he never lost the political initiative gained during those days. His cause was aided by an agreement he made with the Germans as early as November 11, 1918, before the armistice in the West. According to this agreement, the occupation troops would leave with their arms which they would surrender at the frontier (German-Congress Poland frontier of 1914, which was confirmed at Brest-Litovsk, 1918). The operation was virtually completed by November 19, 1918, and the agreement was faithfully carried out by both sides.46

The Polish National Committee in Paris, which was dominated by Roman Dmowski and the National Democrats, faced a much less promising situation. The diplomats of Great Britain and France regarded the Poles with condescension, and Premier Clemenceau informed Paderewski, the principal collaborator of Dmowski in the peace negotiation, that in his view Poland owed her independence to the sacrifices of the Allies.47 The Jewish question also plagued the Polish negotiators, and they were faced by demands from American Jewish groups which would virtually have created an independent Jewish state within Poland. President Wilson was sympathetic toward these demands, and he emphasized in the Council of Four (United States, Great Britain, France, Italy) on May 1, 1919, that “the Jews were somewhat inhospitably regarded in Poland.” Paderewski explained the Polish attitude on the Jewish question in a memorandum of June 15, 1919, in which he observed that the Jews of Poland “on many occasions” had considered the Polish cause lost, and had sided with the enemies of Poland. Ultimately most of the Jewish demands were modified, but article 93 of the Versailles treaty forced Poland to accept a special pact for minorities which was highly unpopular.48

The Polish negotiators might have achieved their extreme demands against Germany had it not been for Lloyd George, because President Wilson and the French were originally inclined to give them all that they asked. Dmowski demanded the 1772 frontier in the West, plus the key German industrial area of Upper Silesia, the City of Danzig, and the southern sections of East Prussia. In addition, he demanded that the rest of East Prussia be constituted as a separate state under Polish control, and later he also requested part of Middle Silesia for Poland. Lloyd George soon began to attack the Polish position, and he concentrated his effort on influencing and modifying the attitude of Wilson. It was clear to him that Italy was indifferent, and that France would not be able to resist a common Anglo-American program.49

Lloyd George had reduced the Polish demands in many directions before the original draft of the treaty was submitted to the Germans on May 7, 1919. A plebiscite was scheduled for the southern districts of East Prussia, and the rest of that province was to remain with Germany regardless of the outcome. Important modifications of the frontier in favor of Germany were made in the region of Pomerania, and the city of Danzig was to be established as a protectorate under the League of Nations rather than as an integral part of Poland. Lloyd George concentrated on Upper Silesia after the Germans had replied with their objections to the treaty. Wilson’s chief expert on Poland, [21] Professor Robert Lord of Harvard University, made every effort to maintain the provision calling for the surrender of this territory to Poland without a plebiscite. Lloyd George concentrated on securing a plebiscite, and ultimately he succeeded.50

The ultimate treaty terms gave Poland much more than she deserved, and much more than she should have requested. Most of West Prussia, which had a German majority at the last census, was surrendered to Poland without plebiscite, and later the richest industrial section of Upper Silesia was given to Poland despite the fact that the Poles lost the plebiscite there. The creation of a League protectorate for the national German community of Danzig was a disastrous move; a free harbor for Poland in a Danzig under German rule would have been far more equitable. The chief errors of the treaty included the creation of the Corridor, the creation of the so-called Free City of Danzig, and the cession of part of Upper Silesia to Poland. These errors were made for the benefit of Poland and to the disadvantage of Germany, but they were detrimental to both Germany and Poland. An enduring peace in the German-Polish borderlands was impossible to achieve within the context of these terms.51 The settlement was also contrary to the 13th of Wilson’s 14 Points, which, except for the exclusion of point 2, constituted a solemn Allied contractual agreement on peace terms negotiated with Germany when she was still free and under arms.52 The violation of these terms when defenseless Germany was in the chains of the armistice amounted to a pinnacle of deceit on the part of the United States and the European Western Allies which could hardly be surpassed. The position of the United States in this unsavory situation was somewhat modified by the American failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and 1920. The Polish negotiators remained discredited at home because they had failed to achieve their original demands, which had been widely publicized in Poland.

An aspect of this situation especially pleasing to Pilsudski was the confused condition of Russia which caused the Allied diplomats to postpone the discussion of the eastern frontiers of Poland. Pilsudski was more interested in eastward expansion than in the westward expansion favored by Dmowski. The absence of any decisions at Paris concerning the status quo in the East gave Pilsudski a welcome opportunity to pursue his own program in that area.

The left-wing radical tide was rising with Poland, but Pilsudski was not unduly worried by this situation. He allowed the sincere Marxist, Moraczewski, to form a government. The government proclaimed an electoral decree on November 28, 1918, which provided for proportional representation and universal suffrage. Pilsudski secretly undermined the Government in every direction, and he encouraged his friends in the army to oppose it. He also knew that the National Democrats hated socialism, and played them off against Moraczewskis53

On January 4, 1919, while Roman Dmowski was in Paris, the National Democrats recklessly attempted to upset Moraczewski by a poorly planned coup d’Etat. Pilsudski defended the Government, and the National Democrats lost prestige when their revolt was crushed.54 Pilsudski did not relish the barter of parliamentary politics, but Walery Slawek, his good friend and political expert, did most of this distasteful work for him. This enabled Pilsudskl to concentrate at an [22] early date on the Polish Army and Polish foreign policy, which were his two real interests. Pilsudski won over many prominent opponents; he had earlier won the support of Edward Smigly-Rydz, who directed the capture of Lwow (Lemberg) from the Ukrainians in Novermber 1918. Smigly-Rydz later succeeded Pilsudski as Marshal of Poland.55

There was action in many directions on the military front. A Slask-Pomorze-Poznaxi (Silesia-West Prussia-Posen) Congress was organized by the National Democrats on December 6, 1918, and it attempted to seize control of the German eastern provinces in the hope of presenting the peace conference at Paris with a fait accompli. Ignaz Paderewski arrived in Poznan a few weeks later on a journey from London to Warsaw, and a Polish uprising broke out while he was in this city. Afterward the Poles, in a series of bitter battles, drove the local German volunteer militia out of most of Posen province.56 The Germans in January 1919 evacuated the ancient Lithuanian capital of Wilna (Wilno), and Polish forces moved in. When the Bolshevik Armies began their own drive through the area, the Poles lost Wilna, but the Germans stopped the Red advance at Grodno on the Niemen River. The National Democrats controlled the Polish Western Front and Pilsudski dominated the East. The National Democrats were primarily interested in military action against Germany. Pilsudskl’s principal interest was in Polish eastward expansion and in federation under Polish control with neighboring nations.57 On April 19, 1919, when the Poles recaptured Wilna, a proclamation was issued by Pilsudski. It was not addressed, as a National Democratic proclamation would have been, to the local Polish community, but “to the people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.” It referred graciously to the presence of Polish forces in “your country.” Pilsudskl also issued an invitation to the Ukrainians and White Russians to align themselves with Poland. He intended to push his federalist policy while Russia was weak, and to reduce Russian power to the minimum degree.58

Pilsudski’s growing prestige in the East was bitterly resented by the National Democrats. They denounced him from their numerous press organs as an anti clerical radical under the influence of the Jews. They argued with justification that the country was unprepared for an extensive eastern military adventure. They complained that the further acquisition of minorities would weaken the state, and they concluded that Pilsudski was a terrible menace to Poland. Pilsudski cleverly appealed to the anti-German prejudice of the followers of his enemies. He argued that Russia and Germany were in a gigantic conspiracy to crush Poland, and that to retaliate by driving back the Russians was the only salvation. He tried in every way to stir up the enthusiasm of the weary Polish people for his eastern plans.59

Pilsudski also did what he could to stem the rising Lithuanian nationalism which objected to every form of union with Poland. By July 17, 1919, Polish forces had driven the Ukrainian nationalist forces out of every corner of the former Austrian territory of East Galicia. It was comparatively easy afterward for Pilsudski to arrive at an agreement with Semyon Petlura, the Ukrainian socialist leader who was hard pressed by the Bolsheviks. Petlura agreed that the entire territory of Galicia should remain with Poland, and Pilsudski encouraged the organization of new Ukrainian armed units.60

Pilsudski believed that Petlura would be more successful than Skoropadski, [23] the earlier Ukrainian dictator, in enlisting Ukrainian support. He deliberated constantly on delivering a crushing blow against the Bolsheviks, who were hard pressed by the White Russian forces of General Denikin during most of 1919. He negotiated with Denikin, but he did not strike during 1919 on the plea that the Polish forces were not yet ready. He dreaded far more than Bolshevism a victorious White Russian regime, which would revive Russian nationalist aspirations in the West at the expense of Poland.61

While Pilsudski was planning and postponing his blow against the Bolsheviks, his prejudice against the parliamentary form of government was augmented by the first Sejm which had been elected on January 26, 1919. Two coalition groups of the National Democrats sent 167 deputies.62 The Polish Peasant Party, which endorsed the foreign policy of Dmowski and denounced Pilsudski, elected 85 deputies.63 These three groups of Pilsudski Opponents occupied 260 of the 415 seats of the Sejm. Many of the other deputies, who were divided among a large number of parties, were either Germans or Jews. These election results were no chance phenomenon, but they represented a trend in Polish opinion which had developed over a long period. It was evident that this situation could not be changed without severe manipulation of the election system. No politician of Pilsudski’s ambitions could admire an election system which demonstrated his own unpopularity. His natural inclination toward the authoritarian system was greatly increased by his experience with parliamentary politics in his own country.64

Dissatisfaction with the terms of the Versailles treaty was uppermost in Polish public opinion by June 1919. The Poles were in consternation at the prospect of a plebiscite in Upper Silesia. They had claimed that most of the inhabitants favored Poland, but they were secretly aware that the vast majority would vote for Germany in a free election. The Poles were also furious at the Allied inclination to support the Czechs in their attempt to secure by force the mixed ethnic area and rich industrial district of Teschen.65

Adalbert Korfanty, a veteran National Democratic leader, set out to accomplish Poland’s purpose in Upper Silesia by terror and intimidation. The French commander of the Allied occupation force. General Le Rond, collaborated with invading Polish filibuster forces. The Italian occupation forces stationed in Upper Silesia were attacked by the Poles and suffered heavy casualties because they sought to obstruct the illegal Polish advance. It was widely assumed in Poland during 1919 and 1920 that the desperate campaign in Upper Silesia would be futile. The unexpected Polish reward there was not received until 1922.66

These reverses suffered by the Poles in the West added to the demand for effective action in the East. Interest gradually increased during the latter part of 1919 while Pilsudski continued his preparations. The high nobility from the eastern territories led much agitation, but support for the program also had become noticeable in all parts of the country. Pilsudski concluded a second pact with Petlura in October 1919 which provided that further Ukrainian territory east of the old frontier between Russia and Austrian Galicia would become Polish, and, in addition, an independent Ukrainian state in the East would remain in close union with Poland. The collapse of Denikin in December 1919 was a signal to the Bolsheviks that they might soon expect trouble with Poland [24 on a much larger scale than in the preceding sporadic hostilities which had extended from Latvia to the Ukraine. The Bolsheviks on January 28, 1920, offered Pilsudski a favorable armistice line in the hope of trading territory for time. Pilsudski was not impressed, despite the fact that the Western Allies disapproved of his plans. Pilsudski categorically informed the Allies on March 13, 1920, that he would demand from the Bolsheviks the right to dispose of the territory west of the 1772 Polish-Russian frontier. This frontier was far to the East of the line proposed by the Bolsheviks, and it was evident that a decisive conflict would ensue.67

Pilsudski and Petlura launched their offensive to drive the Bolsheviks from the Ukraine on April 26, 1920. The Skulski cabinet, which had followed earlier governments of Moraczewski and Paderewski, did not dare to oppose Pilsudski’s plans, and Foreign Minister Patek openly approved Pilsudski’s eastern program. The Polish troops under the command of General Smigly-Rydz scored conspicuous successes, and on May 8th a Polish patrol on a streetcar rode into the center of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. A huge celebration of the Kiev victory took place in the St. Alexander church in Warsaw on May 18, 1920. Pilsudski was presented with the old victory laurels of Stephen Bathory and Wladislaw IV.68

Russia was less prostrate than in the 17th century “time of troubles (Smetnoye Vremya),” and dreams of Polish imperialism were soon smashed under the hoofs of Budenny’s Red Army horses. The Russian counter-offensive strategy of outflanking the Poles was completely successful. The military reversals in the east created a cabinet crisis and the Skulski Government was forced to resign. On June 24, 1920, Wladislaw Grabski, a National Democrat and an opponent of Pilsudski, formed a government. His first step was to go to Belgium to plead with the Western Allied Command for aid. The Russians had penetrated deeply into Poland from two directions when Grabski arrived at Spa on July 10th. One of their armies had broken across the old Niemen defense line, and the other was driving on Lwow

The poorly disciplined Russians had become totally disorganized by the rapidity of their advance, and the major commanders failed to cooperate because of petty jealousies. Pilsudski had the expert advice of General Maxime Weygand and other French officers when he directed the Poles to victory in the battle of Warsaw on August 16, 1920. The famous expression in Poland, “the miracle of the Vistula (cudnad Wisla),” was coined by Professor Stanislaw Stronski, a National Democrat, to suggest that any Polish victory under Pilsudski’s leadership was a miracle.69

The Vistula victory brought tremendous prestige to Pilsudski, and it solidified his position as the strongest man in Poland, but the opponents of Pilsudski remained in office and the popular dissatisfaction with the war increased. Pilsudski was willing to strike eastward again after the Russian retreat, and to launch a second expedition against Kiev, but he knew this was an impossibility because of public opinion in war-torn Poland. Jan Dabski, who was selected by the Government as chief delegate to negotiate with the Russians, was a bitter critic of Pilsudski’s policy and was influenced by Dmowski. Dmowski opposed the idea of federating with the White Russians and the Ukrainians, but he believed that Poland could assimilate a fairly large proportion of the people from the regions which had been under Polish rule in the past. Consequently, at the Riga peace in [25] early 1921, the White Russian and Ukrainian areas were partitioned between the Soviet Union and Poland, with the bulk of both areas going to the Soviet Union. Federalism had been abandoned as an immediate policy, and the followers of Pilsudski resorted to Dmowski’s program of assimilating the minorities.70

The Polish people who had been influenced by the romanticist ideas of Henryk Sienkiewicz, the popular Polish author, denounced the Riga peace as an abandonment of their ancient eastern territories. Pilsudski himself shared this view, and in a lecture on August 24, 1923, he blamed “the lack of moral strength of the nation” for the Polish failure to conquer the Ukraine following the victory at Warsaw in 1920.71

The Dmowski disciples chafed at their failure to realize many of their aspirations against Germany in the West. It seemed that no one in Poland was satisfied with the territorial limits attained by the new state, although most foreign observers, whether friendly or hostile, believed that Poland had obtained far more territory than was good for her. It soon became evident that the post war course of Polish expansion had closed with the Riga peace, and with the partition of Upper Silesia. Poland had reached the limits of her ability to exploit the confusion which had followed in the wake of World War I. Her choices were to accept her gains as sufficient and to seek to retain all or most of them, or to bide her time while awaiting a new opportunity to realize her unsatisfied ambitions. The nature of her future foreign policy depended on the outcome of the struggle for power within Poland.

The Czechs during the Russo-Polish war had consolidated their control over most of the rich Teschen industrial district, and the Lithuanians, with the connivance of the Bolsheviks, had recovered Wilna. The Czechs were extremely popular with the Allies, and enjoyed strong support from France. The Czech leaders also had expressed their sympathy and friendship toward Bolshevik Russia in strong terms during the recent Russo-Polish war, and they had done what they could to prevent Allied war material from reaching Poland. The Poles were unable to revenge themselves upon the Czechs immediately, but, when the League of Nations awarded Wilna to Lithuania on October 8, 1920, local Polish forces under General Zeligowski seized the ancient capital of Lithuania on orders from Pilsudski. The Lithuanians received no support from the League of Nations. They refused to recognize the Polish seizure, and they protested by withdrawing their diplomatic representatives from Poland and by closing their Polish frontier. The Soviet-Polish frontier also was virtually closed, and a long salient of Polish territory in the North-East extended as far as the Dvina River and Latvia without normal economic outlets. The Lithuanians revenged themselves upon the League of Nations, which had failed to support them, by seizing the German city of Memel, which had been placed under a League protectorate similar to the one established at Danzig in 1920. It was a sad reflection on the impotence of the German Reich that a tiny new-born nation could seize an ancient Prussian city, and it also indicated the problematical nature of Woodrow Wilson’s cherished international organization, the League of Nations.72 [26]

Years of reconstruction followed in Poland, and for a considerable time there was much talk of sweeping economic and social reforms. Poland in March 1921 adopted a democratic constitution, which lacked the approval of Pilsudski. The constant shift of party coalitions always hostile to his policies irritated him, and the assassination immediately after the election of 1922 of his friend, President Gabriel Narutowicz, did not improve matters. Pilsudski, whose prestige remained enormous, bided his time for several years, and he consolidated his control over the army. Finally, in May 1926 he seized a pretext to overthrow the existing regime. A recent shift in the party coalitions had brought his sworn enemy, Wincenty Witos, back to the premiership, and the subsequent sudden dismissal of Foreign Minister Alexander Skrzynski, in whom Pilsudski had publicly declared his confidence, was considered a sufficient provocation. Pilsudski grimly ordered his cohorts to attack the existing regime, and, after a brief civil war, he was able to take control. Fortunately for Pilsudski, Dmowski was a great thinker, but no man of action. The divided opponents of the new violence were reduced to impotence.73

These events were too much even for the nationalists among the Polish socialists, and the break between Pilsudski and his former Party was soon complete. This meant that Pilsudski had no broad basis of popular support in the country, although he had obtained control of the army by gaining the confidence of its officers. He was feared and respected, but not supported, by the political parties of Poland. It seemed possible to attain the support of the Conservatives, but they required the pledge that he would not attack their economic interests. This pledge would be tantamount to the rejection of popular demands for economic reform.

Pilsudski at an October 1926 conference in Nieswicz arrived at a far-reaching agreement with the great Conservative landowners led by Prince Eustachy Sapieha, Count Artur Potocki, and Prince Albrecht Radziwill. On this occasion, Stanislaw Radziwill, a hero of the 1920 war from a famous family, was awarded posthumously the Virtuti Militari, which was the highest decoration the new state could bestow. Pilsudski declared himself to be neither a man of party nor of social class, but the representative of the entire nation. His hosts in turn graciously insisted that Pilsudski’s family background placed him equal among them, not only as a noble, but as a representative of the higher nobility.74

The effect of these negotiations was soon apparent. In December 1925 a land reform law had been passed calling for the redistribution of up to five million acres of land annually for a period of ten years. Most of the land subdivided by the Government was taken from the Germans and distributed among the Poles. This intensified minority grievances by depriving thousands of German agricultural laborers of their customary employment with German landowners. Nothing was done on the agricultural scene to cope with the pressing problem of rural overpopulation in Poland. The Polish peasantry was increasing at a more rapid rate than the urbanites, and the city communities, with their relatively small population, could not absorb the increase. The backward Polish system of agriculture, except on a few of the largest estates, and the absence of extensive peasant land ownership in many areas, increased the inevitable hardship of the [27] two decades of reconstruction which followed World War I. The large number of holdings so small as to be totally inadequate was about the same in 1939 as it had been in 1921. The regime after 1926 increased the speed of the reallocation of the most poorly distributed small holdings, but the scope of this policy was minor in relation to the total farm problem. The Peasant Party leaders, who were soon persecuted by Pilsudski for their opposition to his regime, were regarded as martyrs in the Polish countryside, where the new system was denounced with hatred.75

The Polish socialists had sufficiently consolidated their influence over the urban workers by the time of Pilsudski’s coup d’Etat to control most of the municipal elections. The socialist leaders turned against Pilsudski, and chronic industrial unemployment and scarce money embittered the Polish urban scene. The industrialization of Congress Poland had proceeded rapidly during the two generations before World War I, and progress in textiles was especially evident. The Russian market was lost as a result of the war, and Polish exports were slow to climb tariff barriers abroad, while low purchasing power restricted the home market. Profits in Polish industry were not sufficient to attract truly large foreign investments, although much of the existing industry was under foreign capitalistic control. Despite a 25% increase in the population of Poland between 1913 and 1938, the Polish volume of industrial products passed the 1913 level only in 1938, and the volume of real wages in Poland had still failed to do so. As a result of economic stagnation, the new regime was able to offer the Poles very little to distract them from their political discontent.76

These unfavorable conditions illustrate the situation of the Polish regime on the domestic front, and they offer a parallel to the unfavorable relations of Poland with most of her neighbors in the years immediately after 1926, and especially with the Soviet Union, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania. The domestic and foreign scenes presented a perpetual crisis which accustomed the Polish leadership to maintain its composure, and to develop an astonishing complacency under adverse conditions. Roman Dmowski on the home front in December 1926 directly challenged Pilsudski’s claim to represent the nation by establishing his own Camp of Great Poland. For nearly four years this organization dominated the ideological scene. It demanded the improvement of relations with Russia, the permanent renunciation of federalism, the intensification of nationalism, a program to assimilate the minorities, and a plan to expel the Jews.77

Pilsudski retaliated with great severity on September 10, 1930, by means of a purge organized by Walery Slawek. No one dared to silence Dmowski, but Pilsudski deprived him of many followers, and adopted many of his ideas. The arrest of opposition leaders, the use of the concentration camp system, and the adoption of terroristic tactics during elections intimidated the opposition at least temporarily. A new coalition of Government supporters was able to obtain 247 of 444 seats in the Sejm elected in November 1930. This was the first major election won by Pilsudski.78

There was much talk about a governing clique of colonels in Poland, and many of the principal advisers and key officials of the new regime held that rank. This situation reflected Pilsudski’s policy of rewarding his military collaborators and disciples. These men were intensely loyal, and their admiration [28] for their chief, whom they regarded as infallible, knew no limits. They energetically adopted Dmowski’s campaign against the minorities, and they dis cussed many plans for a new constitution which would buttress the executive power and reverse the democratic principles of the 1921 document. It was claimed that the 1921 constitution had been constructed with a jealous eye on Pilsudski, and that this explained its purpose in placing extraordinary limits on the executive power, and in providing for a weak president on the French model.79

The key to the 1935 document, of which Walery Slawek was the chief author, was a presidency sufficiently powerful to “place the government in one house,” and to control all branches of the state, including the Sejm, the Senate, the armed forces, the police, and the courts of justice. The president also was given wide discretionary powers in determining his successor.80


The Polish Dictatorship After Pilsudski’s Death

Pilsudski died of cancer in May 1935 at the comparatively early age of sixty-eight. This raised the question of the succession in the same year that the new constitution was promulgated, and Walery Slawek hoped to become the Polish strong man. He was widely regarded as the most able of Pilsudski’s collaborators, and the conspiracy of the other disciples against him has often been regarded as a major cause of the misfortunes which soon overtook Poland. A carefully organized coalition, which was originally based on an understanding between Ignaz Moscicki, the Polish scientist in politics, and Edward Smigly-Rydz, the military leader, succeeded in isolating Slawek and in eliminating his influence. The constitution of 1935 had been designed by Slawek for one powerful dictator, but the new collective dictatorship was able to operate under it for the next few years. Walery Slawek committed suicide in April 1939, when it seemed increasingly probable that the collective leadership would submerge the new Polish state in disaster.81

There is an impressive analysis of the new Polish state by Colonel Ignacy Matuszewski, one of Pilsudski’s principal disciples. It was written shortly after the death of the Marshal. It reads more like an obituary than a clarion call to a system lasting and new, and its author is extraordinarily preoccupied with the personality and actions of Pilsudski at the expense of current problems and the road ahead. In this respect the book mirrored the trend of the era, because this was indeed the state of mind of the epigoni who ruled Poland from 1935 to 1939.

Matuszewskl was editor of the leading Government newspaper, Gazeta Polska, from 1931 to 1936, and later he was president of the Bank of Warsaw, the key financial organ of the regime. Originally he had been a disciple of Dmowski and an officer in the Tsarist forces, but he gladly relinquished both for the Pilsudski cause in 1917. He was one of the heroes in the 1920-1921 war with Russia, and he remained with the Army until the coup d’Etat of 1926, which he favored. He had an important part in Polish diplomacy both in Warsaw and abroad during the years from 1926 to 1931.82

His book, Proby Syntez (Trial Synthesis), appeared in 1937. It defined the Polish regime ideologically and explained its aims. The author’s thought, like Roman Dmowski’s, was influenced mainly by the political philosophy of Hegel.83

Matuszewski declared that it was the will of the Polish nation to secure and maintain its national freedom. He believed that only the condition of the Polish race would decide Poland’s ability to exercise this will. He added that the extraordinary achievement of one man had simplified Polish endeavors. He listed 1905, 1914, 1918, 1920, and 1926 as the years in which Pilsudski raised Poland from oblivion. In 1905, during a major Russian revolution, Pilsudski led the Polish radical struggle against Russia. In 1914 he led the Polish military struggle against Russia. In 1918 he returned from Magdeburg to arrange for the evacuation of Poland by the Germans. In 1920 he led the Poles to victory over Communist Russia. In 1926 he crushed the conflicting elements at home and unified Poland.84

Matuszewski ominously warned his readers that the Polish national struggle of the 20th century had scarcely begun when Pilsudskl died. He insisted that Poland had far-reaching problems to solve both at home and abroad. He described the 1926 coup d’Etat as an important step on the home front, and as a victory over anarchy. He declared that the first Sejm had shown that Poland could not afford to surrender the executive power to legislative authority. He extolled the 1935 constitution which invested the basic power in the presidency. He maintained that unless the government of Poland was kept in one building (i.e., unless central control was completely simplified), the country would have civil war instead of domestic peace.

Matuszewski argued, as did other advocates of authoritarian systems, that the Polish regime retained a truly democratic character. He praised the Government for an allegedly enlightened awareness of the traditional past, in contrast to the Dmowski group, and for an awareness of the traditional needs of Poland. He also argued that the fixed ideological dogmas of such other authoritarian regimes as Russia, Italy, and Germany deprived them of flexibility in responding to popular needs, and consequently gave them an “aristocratic character” which he claimed Poland lacked, he described the constitutional regime of 1935 as a “traditional synthesis” and not an arbitrary system.85

It was to his credit that Matuszewski did not claim a broad basis of popular support for the existing Polish system. He did assume from his theory of statism that it would eventually be possible to bridge the gulf between the wishes of the citizens and the policy of the state without sacrificing the essential principles of the system. Matuszewski regarded his book, his numerous articles, and his editorials as contributions to an educational process which would one day accomplish this.

Matuszewski denied any affinity between Poland and the other authoritarian states or Western liberal regimes. He proclaimed Polish originality in politics to be a precious heritage for all Poles who cared to appreciate it. It was not his purpose to cater to whims and fancies, but to reshape mistaken systems of values. The people would not be allowed to impose their will on the new Polish state, either in domestic affairs or foreign policy. Whatever happened would be the responsibility of the small clique governing the nation.86

Matuszewski neglected to mention that there were people in Poland not [30] opposed to the regime who regarded the future with misgiving for quite another reason. They feared that the governing clique lacked the outstanding leadership necessary to promote the success of any system, whatever its theoretical foundations.

The new Polish state on the domestic front faced many grave problems arising from unfavorable economic conditions, the dissatisfaction of minorities, and the general unpopularity of the regime. The situation was precarious, but far from hopeless. Within the context of a cautious and conservative foreign policy, which was indispensable under the circumstances, the Polish state might have strengthened its position without outstanding leadership. It was indisputable that foreign policy was the most crucial issue facing Poland when Pilsudski died.

If Poland allowed herself, despite her awareness of past history, to become the instrument of the old and selfish balance of power system of distant Great Britain, if she rejected comprehensive understandings with her greater neighbors, and if she became involved in conflicts beyond her own strength, her future would bring terrible disappointments. The new Polish state could not possibly survive under these circumstances.

The issue can merely be suggested at this point. Later it will become clear how great were the opportunities, and how much was lost. The situation, despite its problems, held promise when Pilsudski died. [31]

Chapter 2

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