The guarantees granted to Poland by London on 31 March 1939 are informative. Here I want to present a point of view which is simply a small bit different from these banners.
It must be noted first of all that the cunning English did not give us assurances about their wartime commitment to defend our borders, but limited them to state sovereignty. And that doesn't mean the same thing.
On the date of making this loud statement, the following explanation was in force: if Berlin, after a fewer days of the winning campaign, halted its further military action, unilaterally called on Warsaw to negociate a table – guarantees would not require Britain to declare war on Germany. It should besides be added that until August 1939, this general public-law act was not complemented by circumstantial agreements, specified as credit or arms supplies. The Anglo-Saxons, their custom, wanted to keep to themselves the ability to make different decisions. Always in the spirit of their old rule: caring for continental balance.
Their governing circles, acting in this spirit, believed that my concessions to Berlin were to make Germany war on Russia. In order for this to be possible, 3 countries had to vanish before: Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. The second worked closely with France, as part of the alleged small Entente. Poland, on the another hand, had an alliance relation with Paris, but separate. Austria and Czechoslovakia have already been erased from the map of Europe. Poland remained. Of course, England is an empire besides complicated to be unambiguous and easy to read, but this direction of reasoning about continental Europe has prevailed there since planet War I. Throughout this hot time Germany, in many ways, was in constant contact with the British. The dominance of diplomatic actions, authored by Adolf Hitler himself, was established. However, the Führer took various English meanders as signs of weakness. This reduced the soundness of the courts and pushed them to reckless steps. Albion fundamentally posed only 1 condition limiting freedom of action. The request to get different acquisitions based on diplomatic arrangements, not military actions.
Government factors in London were very delicate to their own public opinion, which was subject to peculiar propaganda force long before 1914 was powerfully anti-German. In the islands, elections to the home of Commons could take place in the autumn of 1939. And that meant a large deal to the ruling Conservatives. Moreover, Germany after Munich has accelerated very quickly. Thus in March 1939 the Czech Republic and Moravia, already truncated in Munich, began to escalate their expectations towards Poland without ceremony.
However, the earthquake took place only after the Ribbentrop pact – Molotov was signed. Thanks to him, in fact without a proverbial shot, the large areas of east Europe have turned into Russian rule. The English have been "stranged" and, most importantly, in their view, there has been a decisive breach of the European balance they have set. At this point, the ‘bones were cast’. It should be added that the Russian-German agreement proved to be a major success for the Kremlin, as Germany paid a large price for it. Already his interior critic, Alfred Rosenberg, has protested them given the closeness of his heart to the Baltic countries. Earlier, the English were so agreeable that they even offered Berlin the restoration of the colonial empire. They were offered in exchange for the lost Tanganyika, Cameroon and South-West Africa and the Belgian Congo.
Antoni Koniuszewski
photo public domain
Think Poland, No. 31-32 (30.07-6.08.2023)
