1939

Why was there war in 1939?

Letters from Vienna #39

1939

On Monday, 4th September 1939, Victor Klemperer noted in his diary: “In the Bienert park, the grocer Berger, a soldier from 1914, now a radio operator: “You’re lucky now!” – “Me? I expect to be beaten to death.” – “You’re out of everything – we poor dogs have to get back to it!”[1]

Yet, had a wider war actually broken out? Had Britain, Italy or France reacted to Hitler’s “Poland adventure”? What had the cost of the conflict in Poland really been and what would its consequences be? Klemperer didn’t know, much in the same way that I don’t know now about what exactly is happening in the Ukraine or whether World War Three has broken out or not. Either which way I lose.

How did it come to war in 1939? Whatever actually happened I no longer believe the fairy tale I was told in my youth.

“‘Nostra maxima culpa,’ ‘our gravest fault’, so reads the chapter title of one of many books, all alike, devoted by British historians to that disturbing season of their history known as ‘appeasement.’ ‘Culpa’: ‘fault,’ ‘error,’ ‘regrettable mistake’ – for having tried to appease a regime, Hitler’s, that would not and could not be pacified by any amount of goodwill, however profligate. A mistake at best, a shameful episode at worst – but a misjudgment in any case.”

“According to this myth, because her elite unexpectedly found itself deeply torn over foreign policy into several antagonistic currents, Britain, well-meaning but short-sighted, was incapable of reading Nazism’s mind and ended up as a result bearing some of the guilt for the ensuing disasters. On the surface of Britain’s political landscape, it is real factions that we’re made to see, headed by real leaders, fighting with vehemence over a range of vital points. Profiting from such political discordance, so goes the apologue, Hitler gave full rein to his mad ambition.”

“The truth is different. The British establishment was a monolithic structure: the dissension among the stewards, if any, was over policy, never over principles and goals, which were the same for them all. The British were never torn by disagreement as to what ought to be done with Hitler. That much was obvious: destroy him in time and raze Germany to the ground – imperial logic demanded it. Rather, the point was a pragmatic one: how could the Nazis be most suitably bamboozled into stepping, anew, into a pitfall on two fronts? The answer: by dancing with them. And dance the British would, twirling round the diplomatic ballroom of the 1930s, always leading, and drawing patterns as they spun that followed in fact a predictable trajectory.”[2]

On 15th of March 1939 the Germans occupied the remnants of Czechoslovakia. This, for Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, who was born in Weimar in 1939, was a turning point; Chamberlain accused Hitler of wanting to dominate the world. Given the size of the British Empire at that point in time this claim was clearly something of a joke. Yet, although this claim was patently ridiculous it has long been accepted as sterling fact. It was, ostensibly, the Nazi “desire to dominate the world” which provoked war. The beginning of the lies and the fake narrative which have since sullied many a history book can be traced to Chamberlain’s speech of 17th March 1939.[3]

“All neighbouring states of Czechoslovakia – and not only Germany – wanted the dissolution of the Versailles project. Thus, all signatory powers of Munich – and not only Germany – never gave a guarantee for the existence of Czechoslovakia and thus all allies deserted Czechoslovakia when it got into trouble. Only the Soviet Union, most obviously, would have liked to have helped.”[4]

The same can be applied to Poland. Anybody who seriously believes that the British establishment idealistically and selflessly cared about self-determination, the rights of peoples or democracy need only study the history of Palestine or India in the 1930s or of Ireland in the 1920s. Whatever one wishes to say about Poland in 1939: it certainly wasn’t a democracy.

Even if one argues that the question of Poland was one of geopolitics or economics then an alternative to war could have been found. Britain, in 1939, remained the largest empire in the world. As such it had quite a lot of leverage, as did France, which also had not a few colonies of its own. A negotiated settlement was a possibility at every step of the game. Yet this is clearly not what the British or French wanted; they wanted war.

“The 1939 Polish drama was ominously brewing since 1918” Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof wrote “with a brief but turbulent backstory. The difficult reorganisation of the territorial demarcation between the resurrected Poland and its neighbours was mapped out in January 1918 by the President of the USA Wilson. In point 13 of his 14-point peace offer, he demanded the establishment of a new state of Poland from the defeated states of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. Point 13 read: “An independent Polish state should be established, encompassing the areas inhabited by an undeniably Polish population, which should be guaranteed free and safe access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international agreements.””[5]

“The unclear formulation in this demand created an enormous explosive force in all later territorial and border regulations that applied to Poland and its neighbours. The words “indisputably Polish population” inspired in Poles the expectation that any tract of land inhabited by Poles would become Polish in the future…The second formulation, which contains explosive material, lies in the words of “free and safe access to the sea”.”[6]

The problem was: the territory that guaranteed “free and safe access to the sea” (Pomerellen and Danzig) was predominantly German; in the case of Danzig: nearly wholly so. Altogether there were, after 1920, roughly two million Germans left stranded in Poland, concentrated mainly in Westpreußen, Posen and Ost-Oberschlesien.

What further complicated matters was the war between Russia and Poland, which the latter won. “On March 18, 1921, Russia renounced “Eastern Poland” along the Curzon Line at the Treaty of Riga. It lost 5 million Ukrainians, 1.2 million Belarusians and about 1 million Jews as citizens of its country. In “Eastern Poland” Poland gained approximately 1.5 million Poles. With the new conquered territory, Poland’s state border was now 250 kilometres within the Russian-speaking area.”[7]

“The Peace of Riga had…consequences which would eventually cause the demise of Poland. First, the Soviet Union retained a legitimate reason for a later revision at the expense of Poland…Second, Poland gained large minorities which it couldn’t integrate in the years that followed. And thirdly, the victory of relatively small Poland against the huge Soviet Union misled the Polish people into an insidious overconfidence. From now on, the Poles, and with them the army, believed they could defeat the large neighboring states militarily. So, in 1939 they saw no reason to negotiate instead of going to war.”[8]

A further nail in the Polish coffin was their success in wresting Teschen from Czechoslovakia in October 1938, which led the Russians to abandon the Soviet-Polish non-aggression treaty of 1932, a treaty the Poles would badly need in 1939. It also set an unhappy precedent for the use of force rather than negotiation and, given the fact that the Germans had been instrumental in facilitating all this, Berlin erroneously expected Danzig in return.

One of the immediate causes of war in 1939 was the vexed question of Danzig: “On November 15, 1920, the victorious powers decided to separate the Hanseatic city from the German Reich without a referendum and put it “under the protection of the League of Nations”. Citizens of Danzig lost German citizenship and became citizens of a newly formed “Free City of Danzig”. At the time, 340,000 people lived in the city and environs. 97% of the population were German and 3% were nationals of other nations, mostly Poles. In the years between the two wars, the population frequently demanded a referendum on their membership of the German Reich, which the League of Nations repeatedly denied.”[9]

“Poland also wasn’t satisfied with Danzig’s status as a free entity under League of Nations rule. During the Versailles victors’ conference, the Polish delegation demanded Gdańsk be annexed to the new Poland.”[10]

“Article 104 stipulated that Danzig was to be a “free” city with its own autonomous administration under the direction of a High Commissioner appointed by the League of Nations. According to the treaty, the direction of Gdańsk’s foreign affairs was to be in the hands of the Polish government. Gdańsk’s interests abroad were therefore represented from Warsaw…”[11]

“According to Article 104 of the treaty, Danzig also belonged to Poland’s customs territory from 1920 onwards. Gdańsk waterways and the entire port were available for use by Poles without restrictions while Poland monitored rail and waterway traffic in and around Gdańsk. The postal and telecommunications connections from Poland to the port…were also transferred to Polish authorities.”[12]

This complicated set up led to innumerable stresses and strains between Germans and Poles.

“Despite…the efforts of the Poles to permanently integrate Danzig into their state, Hitler was, until the summer of 1939, suffering from illusions. Since Danzig wasn’t part of the Polish state under international law, he believed that if the opportunity arose and other concessions were made, he could find a way of reconciliation with Poland. Apart from the Teschen concession, Hitler saw his concession in his own final renunciation of the…territories that Germany lost in Posen, West Prussia and in Upper Silesia. He considered it reasonable for the Poles to waive part of their rights in the Free State of Danzig. But Danzig had become a symbol for both countries, Germany and Poland.”[13]

At this juncture international politics and military considerations began to play a role. The Poles were relying, somewhat foolishly, on their alliance with the French to protect them: “the…idea of ​​defeating Germany from two sides in a joint French-Polish offensive was still to be found as a strategic goal in the “Studium Niemcy” (Study of Germany) of the Polish General Staff from 1935 onwards.”[14]

“Even in 1939 the idea of ​​an attack on Germany wasn’t entirely off the table. The defence of Poland in 1939 was based on a memorandum by General Kutrzeba dated January 26, 1938. The general quite realistically assumed that the Polish armed forces were inferior to the Germans, but he believed that they could still hold Poland for a few weeks. He calculated that France would help Poland militarily after less than eight weeks and that Germany could then be defeated. Kutrzeba’s concept also assumed that after a defensive initial phase a war could be won in a second phase with an attack on Berlin from both Poland and France. He believed that this would happen as soon as the Wehrmacht had to withdraw parts of its troops from Poland and throw them against France.”[15]

“Regardless of the real circumstances, past victories against the Soviet Union and Lithuania, and a strong sense of national pride, had given the Poles a military confidence that had grown into complete overconfidence. Shortly before the start of the war, Poland’s Foreign Minister Colonel Beck, Commander-in-Chief Rydz-Śmigły and apparently also the majority of the Polish officer corps still believed that the Polish armed forces were superior to the Germans and that they would defeat the Wehrmacht if necessary. The mood in Poland in the summer of 1939 also deceived the British and French. They were led to believe that their allied partner Poland was a major factor in the expected war with Germany. As late as mid-1939, the Polish Minister of War assured his French colleague and the Polish Ambassador in Paris assured the French Foreign Minister that if war broke out, it would be the Poles who would invade Germany first and not the other way around.”

“Two officials from the London Foreign Office, who traveled through Poland on a “fact finding mission” in May and June 1939, reported in their travel log about meeting a department head of the Polish General Staff and other officers:”

““Partly from him, partly from the other gentlemen, I learned that they were considering attacking East Prussia at the beginning of the war because it would be difficult for the Germans to reinforce the province quickly and sufficiently...In any case, it seemed to be the general opinion that East Prussia must be annexed by Poland.””[16]

When the Poles asked for a treaty with England as a diplomatic card to play in the dispute over an extra-territorial corridor to Danzig, which the Germans were insisting upon, London was glad to oblige. This understanding however proved to be of dubious value. When it came to the crunch in September 1939 neither the British nor the French, who were keen to avoid a compromise between Poles and Germans, came to the rescue of the former.

Rather than rely on negotiations the Poles unwisely depended on force in March 1939: “On the grounds that the Germans wanted to annex Danzig, he (Marschall Rydz-Śmigły) mobilised part of the Polish armed forces, called… reservists and thousands of specialists to the barracks, increased the army’s troop strength by over 330,000 soldiers and sent combat units in the direction of Danzig…”[17] The Germans signalled the Poles that an attack upon Danzig would be regarded as an attack upon Germany itself. Tensions understandably rose.

Diplomacy continued but the Poles made perfectly clear that they wanted something substantial in return for a sacrifice of Danzig. This Hitler, for domestic reasons, was hard pressed to consider. War was politically easier to digest, even if a wider war was a distinct possibility. In May 1939 he decided to prepare for military conflict.

The situation on the ground escalated out of control. “From May 1939, riots by Poles against Germans took on serious forms. In the country, a large number of German farms were set on fire, farmers were driven away, people in towns were beaten up and, in isolated cases, killed. German religious services were so frequently stormed and broken up that the Vatican felt compelled to complain to the Polish government. In the summer of 1939 the German Reich government had to set up refugee camps in order to cope with the stream of German refugees from Poland.”

“By the middle of August, the number of those who had fled was 78,000 on the territory of the German Reich and another 18,000 who escaped to Danzig.”[18]

“In July and August, the situation in Poland and on the Polish-German borders deteriorated to such an extent that Danzig became almost a side issue. In July the anti-German demonstrations in Poland’s cities reached a new climax. Enforced business and plant closures of companies with German owners were the order of the day. In the Teschen area, which Poland had just acquired, German-speaking and Czech teachers, pastors and civil servants…were dismissed because they were “disloyal and anti-state”. In Upper Silesia it was the German-speaking workers and executives who were dismissed en masse from industry, along with forest officials and forest workers.”[19]

“In the last week before the outbreak of war, Polish anti-aircraft batteries tried to shoot down German Lufthansa passenger planes on their flight from Berlin to Königsberg over the Baltic Sea and there were numerous shootings at the border crossings between Polish and German customs officials and soldiers, resulting in numerous deaths.”[20]

“On August 31, the day before the war started, Poles murdered the German consul of Kraków. In August 1939, the German-Polish border was on fire even without a war.”[21]

Yet all this violence didn’t necessarily mean war. Diplomatic activity continued unabated and on 23rd of August the German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop and the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov signed the “Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” otherwise known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

This led Hitler to postpone the planned attack.[22] He had by no means given up on a peaceful solution to the problem. Nevertheless: the generals told him that the clock was ticking. If an attack came it would have to be very soon.[23]

The Americans knew that there was a secret protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which was an agreement to divide up eastern Europe in German and Russian spheres of influence, but neglected to tell the Poles, British or French of this startling development. Had they done so the Poles might well have ceased to consider the possibility of war:

“Both Roosevelt and Hull did nothing to warn Warsaw, London and Paris. Instead, in the evening, the President sent a message to the governments in Warsaw and Berlin that a solution to the German-Polish problems should be found through peaceful negotiations. A warning that same day might have persuaded the Poles to accept Hitler’s proposal of April 28th. The last Hitler offer was a free port and economic privileges in Danzig, recognition of the Polish territorial gains of 1920 in Posen, West Prussia and south-eastern Upper Silesia and a peace treaty for 25 years against extraterritorial routes through the corridor and Danzig, which was anyway Polish, but still a mandate of the League of Nations. A warning to the British might have prevented the guarantee treaty for Poland that was signed that day. But what mattered to Roosevelt was that Hitler got caught up in the Danzig dispute. What was obviously of lesser importance was whether Poland survived or not. Roosevelt remained silent, as he did two years later before the attack on Pearl Harbor.”[24]

The key questions are: why did the Americans fail to exert their considerable influence to avert war? And: why did they actively but discretely encourage it? Given that this is a complex question it must be reserved for a later letter.

Suffice it to say: the facts on the ground, at least those as conveyed in the narrative by Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, a German, in a distinctly pro-German apology, are much more complex than those in the majority of history books. How and why history has been falsified isn’t difficult to understand; history is invariably written by the victors. It’s also written with a clear agenda in mind. Yet this must be dealt in a later letter too.

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[1] p.484-485 Tagebücher 1933-1941, Victor Klemperer

[2] p.228-229 Conjuring Hitler, Guido Giacomo Preparata

[3] p.195, 1939 – Der Krieg, der viele Väter hatte: Der lange Anlauf zum Zweiten Weltkrieg, Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof

[4] p.196 Ibid

[5] p.335 Ibid

[6] p.335 Ibid

[7] p.342 Ibid

[8] p.343 Ibid

[9] p.353 Ibid

[10] p.353 Ibid

[11] p.355 Ibid

[12] p.355 Ibid

[13] p.357 Ibid

[14] p.375 Ibid

[15] p.376 Ibid

[16] p.376 Ibid

[17] p.396 Ibid

[18] p.447 Ibid

[19] p.450 Ibid

[20] p.452 Ibid

[21] p.453 Ibid

[22] p.467 Ibid

[23] p.461 Ibid

[24] p.468 Ibid