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September 1939. Could Poland have avoided the tragedy?
PATRYK PALKA
Poland was doomed to confrontation with the Third Reich and the Soviet Union – this was a result of the policies of the great powers and the balance of power in Europe. It could only slightly hasten or delay this moment. However, in no scenario could it avoid tragedy.
From the moment Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Europe embarked on an irreversible path. Until 1938 at least, the Third Reich could have been stopped, as it did not yet possess the power that would bring most of the continent to its knees in 1939–40. However, things turned out differently.
The outcome was decided by a mechanism as old as geopolitics itself – war cannot be waged without will. In 1930s Europe, the will to wage war was lacking above all on the part of the British and French rulers and society, who were still struggling with the trauma of the First World War. However, German society, led by a man who embodied this will and appealed to revisionist and imperialist slogans, was not lacking in it.
Will alone, though necessary, is not enough to start a world war. Victory or defeat also hinges on money, weapons, technology, population, resources, a system of alliances, and a plan of action. In the 1930s, none of the European powers was prepared for a conflict of this scale, including Germany. However, Hitler sought to change this. He encountered no resistance along the way. Although initially much more powerful than Germany, England and France were struggling with internal economic and social crises. Moreover, they were overwhelmed by the desire to avoid another war. Consequently, when Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles in 1936 and remilitarised the Rhineland, the great powers did not respond. In 1938, he annexed Austria and, with the consent of England and France, occupied part of Czechoslovakia. By March 1939, he had finished and incorporated Bohemia, Moravia, and Cieszyn Silesia into the Reich. Poland was next on the list.
Only then did the West realise that striving for peace at any cost had, in practice, paved the way for another world war. England and France were undoubtedly not ready for war, which largely explains their caution, but Germany was no better prepared in 1938–39. The Western powers overestimated Germany’s capabilities and naively believed that, like their own elites, Hitler would not risk starting another world war and would be content to restore the Reich’s status as a great power. Poland itself did not influence this. Warsaw’s diplomacy was imperfect, and many mistakes were made during the interwar period, but even the greatest strategists in history directing Polish policy would not have been able to alter the course of events. Hitler could only have been stopped through cooperation with Britain and France. However, they lacked the will to do so.
The prospect of an alliance with the USSR against the Third Reich was unthinkable. Allowing the Red Army into Poland would have been the same as surrendering the country’s recently regained independence without a fight. An alliance with Hitler was also irrational. If Germany attacked the USSR, the Poles would have to consider the possibility of war with the Anglo-French-Russian coalition. In 1939, it was not assumed that France would quickly collapse under German pressure, so fighting alongside Hitler on two fronts against such a powerful bloc was not appealing. Furthermore, there was no reason to trust Hitler’s promise that Poland would not be completely subjugated to the Reich after a possible defeat of the USSR, leaving Poland with no room for manoeuvre and no allies to rescue it from German clutches. Even if Germany ultimately lost the war to the coalition led by the United States and Great Britain, Poland’s fate would be in the hands of the victors. The victors would treat Poland as a defeated vassal of the Third Reich, which could be used at will.
Had Hitler allied himself with Poland and attacked the West first, the Second Polish Republic would have become a buffer state between Germany and the USSR. In that case, Stalin’s reaction would have had to be considered, as he would likely have attacked Poland while Hitler was occupied in the west. This would have left Poland facing a lonely fight against the USSR while Germany was tied up in France, with no guarantee of victory.
The Poles chose the most logical option. An alliance with the Franco-British coalition, which assumed that Poland would take the first blow from the Third Reich, and then fight Hitler together with the support of two empires. Their guarantees were also uncertain, but still stronger than those offered by Hitler or Stalin. At that time, Poland was unaware of the secret protocol attached to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and the resulting cooperation between Germany and the USSR. However, even if this had been common knowledge, Poland had only bad alternatives to choose from. There could be no scenario in which both Germany and the Soviets lost World War II and Poland benefited from their defeat, respected by the victors of the conflict.
In this context, Poland’s loss of independence to the USSR in the aftermath of World War II, coupled with the retention of its separate identity and borders with its western territories, appears to be a brutal and tragic yet ultimately not the worst possible ending to this historical epic. It is difficult to imagine a more favourable scenario that would have been realistic. However, it is easy to imagine worse outcomes that could have occurred.
PATRYK PALKA
A historian dealing with the history of political thought and the history of ideas. Editor of the Warsaw editorial office of the monthly magazine and portal „Everything That Is Most Important.”
Source: DlaPolonii.pl
