Post by Bonobo on Apr 13, 2009 18:34:06 GMT 1
Polish reply to allegations from Berlin - Mar 28, 1939
The statements made in Berlin to-night about alleged ill-treatment of Polish citizens of German origin in Bromberg and other "Corridor" towns are authoritatively described by her as a malicious invention.
Reprinted in Telegraph.co. uk 20 Mar 2009
There have been patriotic demonstrations in all parts of Poland to-day, but not a single case has been reported of disorderly conduct.
Herr von Moltke, the German Ambassador left to-night for Berlin
Official circles deny the report published in London this morning that Germany several days ago asked Poland to begin discussions about Danzig, the cession to Germany of the town and railway junction of Hogumin, in Teschen-Silesia, and the granting to Germany of permission to build a motor road across the "Corridor".
NOTHING NEW TO DISCUSS
As already reported in THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, the questions of Bogumin and the motor road were raised informally several weeks ago, and rejected. There is, according to the Polish view, nothing new to discuss.
The Danzig problem was dealt with at the January meeting of the League Council and shelved until the next meeting in May. Until a decision has been taken by the League, and then only if the League decides to wash its hands of Danzig, the view here is that any discussion between Poland and Germany about the "Free City" would be out of place.
I understand, moreover, that Poland would not be willing to discussion a permanent settlement of the Danzig operation while German forces are massed in East Prussia.
The report published this morning in London, therefore, appears to be part of the vicious "whispering campaign" to which I called attention last night. It has now been ascertained beyond a doubt that German sources are spreading the most fantastic rumours about Polish affairs.
GERMAN-MADE RUMOURS
Poland is infested with Gestapo agents, masquerading as newspaper correspondents, domestic servants and so forth. The limit in mendacity appeared to be reached yesterday with the German-made rumour that Marshal Smigly-Rydz, Inspector-General of the Forces, had shot and wounded Col. Beck, the Foreign Minister, because the latter had secretly agreed to the annexation of Danzig to the Reich.
This campaign or lies and innuendo is having an effect precisely opposite to that intended. Patriotic feelings have been raised to such a pitch here in the last few days that any talk now about concessions in Germany would seem ludicrous.
The Polish nation, to the last man and woman, is firmly united behind the Army.
Travellers who arrived to-day from Danzig report large concentrations of Polish troops in the "Corridor" and near the border of East Prussia.
WOMEN TO AID THE ARMY
The number of reservists called up in the last four days is believed to be about 750,000. The standing army a week ago was not less than 300,000. a large number of doctors and medical students have been called up.
Concurrently with the mobilisation of several classes of reservists, active steps are being taken to organise women for auxiliary services behind the lines.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
German campaign against Poland intensified - Mar 29, 1939
The German propaganda campaign against Poland, which was inaugurated yesterday with a semi-official statement about the alleged treatment of members of the German minority in the Bydgoszcz neighbourhood, was carried a step further today.
Reprinted in the Telegraph.co. uk
20 Mar 2009
The "National Zeitung" of Essen, the organ of Field-Marshall Goering, has now entered the lists.
No notice whatever has been taken here of the Polish statement that the German allegations are a malicious invention.
The "National Zeitung," which, as is often the case, is the first newspaper permitted to give publicity to the "atrocity stories," heads its report with the words "Polish Assaults on Germans; Intolerable strain on the German-Polish Treaty of Friendship," Democratic Wirepullers! "
SYSTEMATIC BOYCOTT
It makes the sinister assertion, often heard in the campaign against Czechoslovakia last year, that the authorities are "no longer masters of the situation."
Certain Polish circles, it adds, which wish to dissociate themselves from the "outrages," expressed the opinion that British and French agents are responsible.
"Nearly every day," continues the paper, "brings fresh attacks on Germans. German women and children are threatened on the streets because they use their mother tongue. German farmhouses are assaulted under cover of darkness. In the towns a systematic boycott of German shopkeepers has begun.
After repeating the allegations about the anti-German demonstrations said to have been staged by the Polish Western League in Bydgoszcz the paper adds "Such demonstrations are becoming so frequent that the German population of the Polish Western areas now watches this increasing threat to its existence with anxiety.
"Up to now the German public has remained silent at these events. It was generally thought that it was a case of individual action, which would automatically cease.
"Now, however, that every day shows that these outrages are proceeding on systematic lines, it is no longer possible to remain silent. Outbreaks of this nature and the failure of the Polish authorities to suppress them form in the long run an intolerable strain on the relations of friendship between Germany and Poland.
"Wherever the instigators of such attacks on the Germans may have their headquarters, it must be demanded of the Polish authorities that they protect the Germans living in Poland from molestation and outrages and guard their property against attacks."
In another article, the "National Zeitung" alleges that German workers are being systematically deprived of their jobs in Polish Upper Silesia and in the Olsa district, which was seized by Poland from Czechoslovakia last autumn.
In the "Hamburger Fremdenblatt" tonight, Dr. Halfeld, the paper's Berlin correspondent refers with suspicion to the increased British interest in Poland.
Great emphasis, he says, is suddenly being laid by the British Press on all anti-German utterances by the Polish Opposition.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Will Poland again bar German expansion to the East? Apr 4, 1939
Col. Beck, Poland's Foreign Minister, is visiting London at a critical moment in the history of his country, and at a moment rendered notable in Britain's history by the terms of the pledge of assistance to Poland announced by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on Friday.
Reprinted in the Telegraph.co. uk 06 Apr 2009
This visit was arranged before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the planning of it reflected the desire felt by Great Britain and Poland to draw close, both politically and economically. Events of the past three weeks have given the visit a new significance. For in the European security system which British diplomacy is evolving Poland has a vital part to play.
It has not always been easy, on a superficial analysis, to understand the attitude adopted by Poland during recent years in her relations with other Powers.
CUTTING REICH IN TWO
With a considerable German minority and with territory which cuts the German Reich in two, Poland is more obviously threatened than any other country by the resurgence of Nazi German. Even before Herr Hitler assumed power very few Germans believed that the Polish-German frontier, as defined in the Versailles Treaty, would prove permanent. Long before the world had become conscious of the existence of a Sudeten problem it was almost universally assumed that Germany would one day demand the revision of a territorial arrangement whereby the province of East Prussia was separated from the rest of the Reich.
In the circumstances it would appear axiomatic that Poland, more perhaps than any other European country, would oppose the extension of German power towards the East. Yet, in the September crisis Poland followed Germany in taking her share in dismembering Czechoslovakia.
To understand Poland's feeling it is necessary to go back to the first days of the Nazi regime in Germany. Poland was the first country in Europe to recognise the significance of the great nationalist revival which Hitler led. In 1933, and again in 1936, when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, Poland was in favour of a preventive war. On each occasion her ally France held back.
`TWIXT NAZI AND SOVIET
France's refusal to join her in a preventive war compelled Poland to take stock of her position. Alone, she could not hope to resist Germany. She had no wish to ally herself with the Soviet Union, for to do so was to run the risk that for the second time within a quarter of a century, a German-Russian conflict would be fought out on Polish soil. And in addition she feared that the Red Army, once admitted on to Polish territory for the purpose of resisting a German attack, might, at the conclusion of hostilities, seize the opportunity of inciting the workers and peasants of Poland to overthrow the existing order.
Sandwiched between revolutionary Russia and revolutionary Germany, Poland trusted neither of her neighbours. She feared the possibility of clash between Communism and Nazism on Polish territory; she feared also the possibility that her two great neighbours might reach agreement at her expense. When in 1934 M. Barthou, the French Foreign Minister, invited her to join in an "Eastern Locarno" with Germany and Russia, guaranteed by France, she refused, for to do so would have been to grant the right of passage through Polish territory to the Red Army.
In the search for a way out of her dilemma Poland, like Belgium, turned to a policy of neutrality. In 1932 she had concluded a non-aggression treaty with Russia; in 1934 she supplemented this by a 10-year pact with Germany. She was already allied with Rumania, and the object of her policy was to make the "Baltic-Black Sea Axis" a "bastion of peace" between Germany and Russia.
When the German-Czech conflict began to dominate the European scene, Poland recognised in it a peculiar danger for herself. Czechoslovakia was allied with Soviet Russia, but the Soviet Union could bring help to her ally only by sending troops and aircraft across Polish or Rumanian territory. If Russian troops had taken the route across the plains of Southern Poland, Germany would undoubtedly have marched troops into Poland also, and Polish territory would, one again, have become a battlefield for Germans and Russians.
Poland had for some years been herself engaged in a desultory conflict with Czechoslovakia. It concerned, in particular, the question of the Polish minority in the Czech province of Teschen, but it dated back to pre-war days. The Czechs within the Austro-Hungarian Empire had looked to Russia for help in gaining their freedom, whilst the Poles, who lived in part under the harsh rule of St. Petersburg and in part under the milder sway of Vienna, were strongly anti-Russian. This old rivalry, fed by a frontier dispute and by mutual accusations of intrigue and of fostering separatist movements in each other's territory, served to poison Polish-Czech relations.
THREATS SINCE MUNICH
If Poland had felt certain about the attitude of France and Great Britain she might well have sided with Czechoslovakia against Germany. Indeed, wide sections of opinion in Poland advocated the settlement of the dispute with Czechoslovakia and the adoption of a common attitude in face of the threat from Germany.
Col. Beck decided against supporting the Czechs. Foreseeing the abandonment of Czechoslovakia by the Western Powers, he feared that Poland, with her long frontiers and her lack of natural defences, would have to hear the brunt of a German attack. With Czechoslovakia dismembered he planned to detach the eastern province of Ruthenia from the rest of the Republic and by establishing a common frontier with Hungary, to set up a barrier against further German aggression in the East.
German influence having been established over Czechoslovakia after the Munich agreement, Poland found herself confronted with a new problem.
Germany lost no time in using the 500,000 Ukrainians who live in what was the eastern-most province of the Czech State as a nucleus for propaganda among the 6,000,000 Ukrainians in Poland, as well as amongst the 25,000,000 who live within the borders of the Soviet Union. Threatened here by a common menace Poland and Russia drew closer together and emphasises the improvement of their relations by concluding a treaty providing for a vast expansion of Polish-Russian trade.
The events of mid-March have brought home to the Polish people the danger of their position. Through her acquisition of the Bohemian "Protectorate" and of the Memel territory, Germany has extended her power to the North and to the South of Poland.
Rumania has been obliged to submit her economy in large measure to that of Germany. Only the Hungarian conquest of Ruthenia, which served to extinguish the focus for German-inspired Ukrainian propaganda, has offset to a slight degree the weakening of Poland's position.
But the manifest threat to Poland has had a remarkable effect upon the internal situation within the country.
For years the Government, violently attacked on questions of home and foreign policy by its opponents both of the Right and of the Left, has survived precariously by playing off the two extremes against one another.
FACING DANGER UNITED
On the one hand and the exiled peasant leader M. Witos, who enjoys tremendous popularity in the country districts, attacked the foreign policy of the Government for its weakness in face of Germany and its hoe policy for the slow progress in dividing the great estates among the land-hungry peasantry. On the other hand the National Radicals called for the setting up of a totalitarian form of Government and the establishment of closer ties with Germany. To-day M. Witos has offered to serve under the present Government in defence of the country, whilst the National Radicals having no longer illusions about the intentions of Germany, stand shoulder to shoulder with the Government.
In the critical months which are ahead of her Poland has one tremendous asset, the national spirit of her people. There is no nation in Europe so deeply patriotic and so accustomed to making sacrifices in the interests of their national independence. If Hitler, with his dreams of expansion, is the spiritual heir of the Teutonic knights who in the Middle Ages fought their way to the East, the Poles have not forgotten that it was their ancestors who halted this eastward expansion.
The statements made in Berlin to-night about alleged ill-treatment of Polish citizens of German origin in Bromberg and other "Corridor" towns are authoritatively described by her as a malicious invention.
Reprinted in Telegraph.co. uk 20 Mar 2009
There have been patriotic demonstrations in all parts of Poland to-day, but not a single case has been reported of disorderly conduct.
Herr von Moltke, the German Ambassador left to-night for Berlin
Official circles deny the report published in London this morning that Germany several days ago asked Poland to begin discussions about Danzig, the cession to Germany of the town and railway junction of Hogumin, in Teschen-Silesia, and the granting to Germany of permission to build a motor road across the "Corridor".
NOTHING NEW TO DISCUSS
As already reported in THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, the questions of Bogumin and the motor road were raised informally several weeks ago, and rejected. There is, according to the Polish view, nothing new to discuss.
The Danzig problem was dealt with at the January meeting of the League Council and shelved until the next meeting in May. Until a decision has been taken by the League, and then only if the League decides to wash its hands of Danzig, the view here is that any discussion between Poland and Germany about the "Free City" would be out of place.
I understand, moreover, that Poland would not be willing to discussion a permanent settlement of the Danzig operation while German forces are massed in East Prussia.
The report published this morning in London, therefore, appears to be part of the vicious "whispering campaign" to which I called attention last night. It has now been ascertained beyond a doubt that German sources are spreading the most fantastic rumours about Polish affairs.
GERMAN-MADE RUMOURS
Poland is infested with Gestapo agents, masquerading as newspaper correspondents, domestic servants and so forth. The limit in mendacity appeared to be reached yesterday with the German-made rumour that Marshal Smigly-Rydz, Inspector-General of the Forces, had shot and wounded Col. Beck, the Foreign Minister, because the latter had secretly agreed to the annexation of Danzig to the Reich.
This campaign or lies and innuendo is having an effect precisely opposite to that intended. Patriotic feelings have been raised to such a pitch here in the last few days that any talk now about concessions in Germany would seem ludicrous.
The Polish nation, to the last man and woman, is firmly united behind the Army.
Travellers who arrived to-day from Danzig report large concentrations of Polish troops in the "Corridor" and near the border of East Prussia.
WOMEN TO AID THE ARMY
The number of reservists called up in the last four days is believed to be about 750,000. The standing army a week ago was not less than 300,000. a large number of doctors and medical students have been called up.
Concurrently with the mobilisation of several classes of reservists, active steps are being taken to organise women for auxiliary services behind the lines.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
German campaign against Poland intensified - Mar 29, 1939
The German propaganda campaign against Poland, which was inaugurated yesterday with a semi-official statement about the alleged treatment of members of the German minority in the Bydgoszcz neighbourhood, was carried a step further today.
Reprinted in the Telegraph.co. uk
20 Mar 2009
The "National Zeitung" of Essen, the organ of Field-Marshall Goering, has now entered the lists.
No notice whatever has been taken here of the Polish statement that the German allegations are a malicious invention.
The "National Zeitung," which, as is often the case, is the first newspaper permitted to give publicity to the "atrocity stories," heads its report with the words "Polish Assaults on Germans; Intolerable strain on the German-Polish Treaty of Friendship," Democratic Wirepullers! "
SYSTEMATIC BOYCOTT
It makes the sinister assertion, often heard in the campaign against Czechoslovakia last year, that the authorities are "no longer masters of the situation."
Certain Polish circles, it adds, which wish to dissociate themselves from the "outrages," expressed the opinion that British and French agents are responsible.
"Nearly every day," continues the paper, "brings fresh attacks on Germans. German women and children are threatened on the streets because they use their mother tongue. German farmhouses are assaulted under cover of darkness. In the towns a systematic boycott of German shopkeepers has begun.
After repeating the allegations about the anti-German demonstrations said to have been staged by the Polish Western League in Bydgoszcz the paper adds "Such demonstrations are becoming so frequent that the German population of the Polish Western areas now watches this increasing threat to its existence with anxiety.
"Up to now the German public has remained silent at these events. It was generally thought that it was a case of individual action, which would automatically cease.
"Now, however, that every day shows that these outrages are proceeding on systematic lines, it is no longer possible to remain silent. Outbreaks of this nature and the failure of the Polish authorities to suppress them form in the long run an intolerable strain on the relations of friendship between Germany and Poland.
"Wherever the instigators of such attacks on the Germans may have their headquarters, it must be demanded of the Polish authorities that they protect the Germans living in Poland from molestation and outrages and guard their property against attacks."
In another article, the "National Zeitung" alleges that German workers are being systematically deprived of their jobs in Polish Upper Silesia and in the Olsa district, which was seized by Poland from Czechoslovakia last autumn.
In the "Hamburger Fremdenblatt" tonight, Dr. Halfeld, the paper's Berlin correspondent refers with suspicion to the increased British interest in Poland.
Great emphasis, he says, is suddenly being laid by the British Press on all anti-German utterances by the Polish Opposition.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Will Poland again bar German expansion to the East? Apr 4, 1939
Col. Beck, Poland's Foreign Minister, is visiting London at a critical moment in the history of his country, and at a moment rendered notable in Britain's history by the terms of the pledge of assistance to Poland announced by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on Friday.
Reprinted in the Telegraph.co. uk 06 Apr 2009
This visit was arranged before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the planning of it reflected the desire felt by Great Britain and Poland to draw close, both politically and economically. Events of the past three weeks have given the visit a new significance. For in the European security system which British diplomacy is evolving Poland has a vital part to play.
It has not always been easy, on a superficial analysis, to understand the attitude adopted by Poland during recent years in her relations with other Powers.
CUTTING REICH IN TWO
With a considerable German minority and with territory which cuts the German Reich in two, Poland is more obviously threatened than any other country by the resurgence of Nazi German. Even before Herr Hitler assumed power very few Germans believed that the Polish-German frontier, as defined in the Versailles Treaty, would prove permanent. Long before the world had become conscious of the existence of a Sudeten problem it was almost universally assumed that Germany would one day demand the revision of a territorial arrangement whereby the province of East Prussia was separated from the rest of the Reich.
In the circumstances it would appear axiomatic that Poland, more perhaps than any other European country, would oppose the extension of German power towards the East. Yet, in the September crisis Poland followed Germany in taking her share in dismembering Czechoslovakia.
To understand Poland's feeling it is necessary to go back to the first days of the Nazi regime in Germany. Poland was the first country in Europe to recognise the significance of the great nationalist revival which Hitler led. In 1933, and again in 1936, when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, Poland was in favour of a preventive war. On each occasion her ally France held back.
`TWIXT NAZI AND SOVIET
France's refusal to join her in a preventive war compelled Poland to take stock of her position. Alone, she could not hope to resist Germany. She had no wish to ally herself with the Soviet Union, for to do so was to run the risk that for the second time within a quarter of a century, a German-Russian conflict would be fought out on Polish soil. And in addition she feared that the Red Army, once admitted on to Polish territory for the purpose of resisting a German attack, might, at the conclusion of hostilities, seize the opportunity of inciting the workers and peasants of Poland to overthrow the existing order.
Sandwiched between revolutionary Russia and revolutionary Germany, Poland trusted neither of her neighbours. She feared the possibility of clash between Communism and Nazism on Polish territory; she feared also the possibility that her two great neighbours might reach agreement at her expense. When in 1934 M. Barthou, the French Foreign Minister, invited her to join in an "Eastern Locarno" with Germany and Russia, guaranteed by France, she refused, for to do so would have been to grant the right of passage through Polish territory to the Red Army.
In the search for a way out of her dilemma Poland, like Belgium, turned to a policy of neutrality. In 1932 she had concluded a non-aggression treaty with Russia; in 1934 she supplemented this by a 10-year pact with Germany. She was already allied with Rumania, and the object of her policy was to make the "Baltic-Black Sea Axis" a "bastion of peace" between Germany and Russia.
When the German-Czech conflict began to dominate the European scene, Poland recognised in it a peculiar danger for herself. Czechoslovakia was allied with Soviet Russia, but the Soviet Union could bring help to her ally only by sending troops and aircraft across Polish or Rumanian territory. If Russian troops had taken the route across the plains of Southern Poland, Germany would undoubtedly have marched troops into Poland also, and Polish territory would, one again, have become a battlefield for Germans and Russians.
Poland had for some years been herself engaged in a desultory conflict with Czechoslovakia. It concerned, in particular, the question of the Polish minority in the Czech province of Teschen, but it dated back to pre-war days. The Czechs within the Austro-Hungarian Empire had looked to Russia for help in gaining their freedom, whilst the Poles, who lived in part under the harsh rule of St. Petersburg and in part under the milder sway of Vienna, were strongly anti-Russian. This old rivalry, fed by a frontier dispute and by mutual accusations of intrigue and of fostering separatist movements in each other's territory, served to poison Polish-Czech relations.
THREATS SINCE MUNICH
If Poland had felt certain about the attitude of France and Great Britain she might well have sided with Czechoslovakia against Germany. Indeed, wide sections of opinion in Poland advocated the settlement of the dispute with Czechoslovakia and the adoption of a common attitude in face of the threat from Germany.
Col. Beck decided against supporting the Czechs. Foreseeing the abandonment of Czechoslovakia by the Western Powers, he feared that Poland, with her long frontiers and her lack of natural defences, would have to hear the brunt of a German attack. With Czechoslovakia dismembered he planned to detach the eastern province of Ruthenia from the rest of the Republic and by establishing a common frontier with Hungary, to set up a barrier against further German aggression in the East.
German influence having been established over Czechoslovakia after the Munich agreement, Poland found herself confronted with a new problem.
Germany lost no time in using the 500,000 Ukrainians who live in what was the eastern-most province of the Czech State as a nucleus for propaganda among the 6,000,000 Ukrainians in Poland, as well as amongst the 25,000,000 who live within the borders of the Soviet Union. Threatened here by a common menace Poland and Russia drew closer together and emphasises the improvement of their relations by concluding a treaty providing for a vast expansion of Polish-Russian trade.
The events of mid-March have brought home to the Polish people the danger of their position. Through her acquisition of the Bohemian "Protectorate" and of the Memel territory, Germany has extended her power to the North and to the South of Poland.
Rumania has been obliged to submit her economy in large measure to that of Germany. Only the Hungarian conquest of Ruthenia, which served to extinguish the focus for German-inspired Ukrainian propaganda, has offset to a slight degree the weakening of Poland's position.
But the manifest threat to Poland has had a remarkable effect upon the internal situation within the country.
For years the Government, violently attacked on questions of home and foreign policy by its opponents both of the Right and of the Left, has survived precariously by playing off the two extremes against one another.
FACING DANGER UNITED
On the one hand and the exiled peasant leader M. Witos, who enjoys tremendous popularity in the country districts, attacked the foreign policy of the Government for its weakness in face of Germany and its hoe policy for the slow progress in dividing the great estates among the land-hungry peasantry. On the other hand the National Radicals called for the setting up of a totalitarian form of Government and the establishment of closer ties with Germany. To-day M. Witos has offered to serve under the present Government in defence of the country, whilst the National Radicals having no longer illusions about the intentions of Germany, stand shoulder to shoulder with the Government.
In the critical months which are ahead of her Poland has one tremendous asset, the national spirit of her people. There is no nation in Europe so deeply patriotic and so accustomed to making sacrifices in the interests of their national independence. If Hitler, with his dreams of expansion, is the spiritual heir of the Teutonic knights who in the Middle Ages fought their way to the East, the Poles have not forgotten that it was their ancestors who halted this eastward expansion.
