Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

In the face of this misunderstanding and hatred on the part of Hitler, and in the full knowledge that he had every intention of attacking Poland, Britain made no real effort to build up a peace front, and continued to try to make concessions to Hitler. Although the British unilateral guarantee to Poland was made into a mutual guarantee on April 6, Poland guaranteed Britain’s “independence” in exactly the same terms as Britain had guaranteed that of Poland on March 31st. No British-Polish alliance was signed until August 25th, the same day on which Hitler ordered the attack on Poland to begin on August 26th. Worse than this, no military agreements were made as to how Britain and Poland would cooperate in war. A British military mission did manage to get to Warsaw on July 19th, but it did nothing. Furthermore, economic support to rearm Poland was given late, in inadequate amounts, and in an unworkable form. There was talk of a British loan to Poland of £ 100 million in May; on August 1st Poland finally got a credit for $8,163,300 at a time when all London was buzzing about a secret loan of £ 1,000,000,000 from Britain to Germany.

The effects of such actions on Germany can be seen in the minutes of a secret conference between Hitler and his generals held on August 22nd. The Führer said: “The following is characteristic of England. Poland wanted a loan from England for rearmament. England, however, gave only a credit to make sure that Poland buys in England, although England cannot deliver. This means that England does not really want to support Poland.”

Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that France, which had had an alliance with Poland since 1921, had no military conversations with Poland after 1925, except that in August 1936 Poland was given 2,000,000,000 francs as a rearmament loan (Rambouillet Agreement), and on May 19, 1939, the Polish minister of war signed an agreement in Paris by which France promised full air support to Poland on the first day of war, local skirmishing by the third day, and a full-scale offensive on the sixteenth day. On August 23rd General Gamelin informed his government that no military support could be given to Poland in the event of war until the spring of 1940 and that a full-scale offensive could not be made by France before 1941-1942. Poland was never informed of this change, and seems to have entered the war on September 1st in the belief that a full-scale offensive would be made against Germany in the west during September.

The failure to support Poland by binding political, economic, and military obligations in the period before August 23rd was probably deliberate, in the hope that this would force Poland to negotiate with Hitler. If so, it was a complete failure. Poland was so encouraged by the British guarantee that it not only refused to make concessions but also prevented the reopening of negotiations by one excuse after another until the last day of peace. This was quite agreeable to Hitler and Ribbentrop. When Count Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, who had been kept completely in the dark by the Germans, visited Ribbentrop on August 11th he asked his host: “What do you want? The Corridor or Danzig? … ‘Not any longer.’ And he fixed on me those cold … eyes of his. ‘We want war.’ “ Ciano was shocked, and spent two days trying, quite vainly, to persuade Ribbentrop and Hitler that war was impossible for several years.

In the light of these facts the British efforts to reach a settlement with Hitler, and their reluctance to make an alliance with Russia, were very unrealistic. Nevertheless, they continued to exhort the Poles to reopen negotiations with Hitler, and continued to inform the German government that the justice of their claims to Danzig and the Corridor were recognized but that these claims must be fulfilled by peaceful means and that force would be inevitably be met by force. On the other hand, they argued, a German agreement to use negotiation would ultimately bring them the possibility of a disarmament agreement, colonial acquisitions, and economic concessions in a settlement with England.

The same point of view had been clearly put by Lord Halifax at Chatham House on June 29th. The key was “no use of force, but negotiations,” then a chance to settle “the colonial problem, the questions of raw materials, trade barriers, Lebensrawn, the limitations of armaments,” and other issues. This emphasis on methods, with the accompanying neglect of the balance of power, the rights of small nations, or the danger of German hegemony in Europe, was maintained throughout. Moreover, the British continued to emphasize that the controversy was over Danzig, when everyone else knew that Danzig was merely a detail, and an almost indefensible detail. The real issue was Germany’s plan to destroy Poland as one more step on the way to the complete domination of Europe.

Danzig was no issue on which to fight a world war, but it was an issue on which negotiation was almost mandatory. This may have been why Britain insisted that it was the chief issue. But because it was not the chief issue, Poland refused to negotiate because it feared that if negotiation began it would lead to another Munich in which all the Powers would join together to partition Poland. Danzig was a poor issue for a war because it was a free city under the supervision of the League of Nations, and, while it was within the Polish customs and under Polish economic control, it was already controlled politically by the local Nazi Party under a German Gauleiter, and would at any moment vote to join Germany if Hitler consented.

In the midst of all these confusions, the British opened negotiations to get Russia to join the “Peace Front.” Although the documents probably never will be published on the Soviet side, the course of the discussions is fairly clear. Both sides thoroughly distrusted each other, and it is highly doubtful if either wanted an agreement except on terms which were unacceptable to the other. Chamberlain was very anti-Bolshevik, and the Russians, who had seen him perform in regard to Ethiopia, Spain, and Czechoslovakia, were not convinced that he had finally decided to stand up to Hitler. In fact, he had not. A few words on this last point are relevant here.

We have mentioned that the economic discussions between Britain and Germany, which were publicly broken off on March 28th, were secretly reopened five days later. We do not know what became of these, but, about July 20th, Helmuth Wohlthat, Reich commissioner for the Four-Year Plan, who was in London at an international whaling conference, was approached with an amazing proposition by R. S. Hudson, secretary to the Department of Overseas Trade. Although Wohlthat had no powers, he listened to Hudson and later to Sir Horace Wilson, Chamberlain’s personal representative, but rejected their suggestion that he meet Chamberlain. Wilson offered (1) a nonaggression pact with Germany, (2) a delimitation of spheres of interest, (3) colonial concessions in Africa along the lines already mentioned, (4) an economic agreement, and (5) a disarmament agreement. One sentence of Dirksen’s report on this matter is significant. It says, “Sir Horace Wilson definitely told Herr Wohlthat that the conclusion of a nonaggression pact would enable Britain to rid herself of her commitments vis-a-vis Poland.” That Chamberlain wanted a nonaggression pact with Germany was stated by him publicly on May 3rd, only five days after Hitler denounced his nonaggression pact with Poland.

Dirksen’s report of July 21st continued: “Sir Horace Wilson further said that it was contemplated holding new elections in Britain this autumn. From the point of view of purely domestic political tactics, it was all one to the Government whether the elections were held under the cry ‘Be Ready for a Coming War!’ or under the cry ‘A Lasting Understanding with Germany in Prospect and Achievable!’ It could obtain the backing of the electors for either of these cries and assure its rule for another five years. Naturally, it preferred the peaceful cry.”