Jozef Beck & the fall of Poland

In 1938. at Munich, Czechoslovakia was split up. Hungary & Poland eagerly joined in gobbling up portions of that unfortunate country, along with the Germans. The Czechs had a pact with the Soviets but that was conditional on France honouringa similar commitment. Still, the Soviets had declared their willingness to send troops but Poland & Romania would not allow them passage. That was the end of 'collective security'. Henceforth, the big fish would eat the little fish before turning on each other. 

In 1939, it was Poland's turn. Germany, the Soviet Union & Slovakia divided up its territory. Britain & France declared war on Germany but did nothing very much to help Poland. It was taken over by Stalin over the course of the War and its immediate aftermath.

Why did the Poles not see this coming? How could they have been so blind?

Hitler had ended his non-aggression pact in April after the Brits said, in March, that they would give military assistance to Poland. Hitler had taken Lithuania's one sea port and had further territorial demands. In return for Poland becoming a satellite and joining the anti-Comintern alliance, Hitler would extend his non-aggression treaty. 

The Poles firmly believed that the Soviets & the Nazis were ideologically too far apart to ever ally together to gobble up Polish territory. However, it should have occurred to them that if a battle between Hitler & Stalin was inevitable, then they would rather duke it out on Polish soil. At the very least. they would want territorial buffers between each other.  Poland's peril was extreme.  Moreover, its codebreakers had cracked the German Enigma cipher & were aware of  menacing German troop movements. Yet, Poland refused to enter bilateral negotiations with the Soviets.They refused permission for Soviet troops to cross their territory despite pressure from UK & France. Their Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły famously said that while the Germans might take Poland's freedom, "the Russians will take our soul." 

On August 22, diplomats in Moscow became aware of the non-aggression pact between Hitler & Staalin. At that time, the Soviets & Mongolians were still fighting the Japs and thus it was not blindlingly obvious that the purpose of the pact was to carve up Eastern Europe. Still, the Poles were gambling on the Western powers being strong enough to deter not just Hilter but also Stalin. This was utterly mad. 

On 23/24 August 1939, the Nazis & the Soviets secretly agreed to divide up Poland and other territory in the region. Within hours of the pact being signed in Moscow, Hans Herwarth von Bittenfeld (a German diplomat opposed to Hitler stationed in Moscow) leaked the full text of the Secret Protocol to Charles Bohlen, a diplomat at the U.S. Embassy, who immediately cabled the details to Cordell Hull & thus FDR. Some say that FDR did not pass on this intelligence to the Brits so as to preserve neutrality. Others say that Soviet moles in the British Embassy in Washington suppressed it. It may also be that Britain wanted 'plausible deniability'- i.e. didn't want to know what they already suspected. After all, they had been careful to put in a secret clause in their pact with Poland which bound them to declare war only on Germany not the Soviet Union if it joined in. 

One reason to suppress the truth of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact was what Jofef Beck- the Polish Foreign Minister- had told the US ambassador that Polish morale would collapse if they thought the August 23 pact was a partition plan. The Allies wanted Poland to fight even if they didn't think fighting would do them any good. Moreover, it was helpful if the Western Leftists believed that the Soviet Union was only pretending to help Hilter. It was actually moving its own troops into position and would strike against the Axis when the time was right. 

A week after signing the pact, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On 17 September, one day after a Soviet–Japanese ceasefire came into effect after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol,[13] and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union approved the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,[14] Stalin, stating concern for ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians in Poland, ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland. By October 6, the Polish army had been defeated though a substantial resistance featuring the 'cursed soldiers' continued even into the first couple of years of the Soviet occupation.

It seems odd that nobody told the Poles of the threat they faced. Their Military Intelligence did not anticipate a two front war. Indeed, the Poles accepted at face value the Soviet's deceitful offer of help. Yet, alarm bells should have been ringing in Warsaw, when the UK formalised the March mutual assistance pact on 25 August, but with the inclusion of a secret protocol obliging them to fight only Hitler, not Stalin as well. 

Sadly, neither UK nor France could or would do anything to help Poland. Instead, they got them to delay mobilization by a day or two (though Poland had done a stealth mobilization) which appears to have materially weakened them. 

Some blame Poland's unpopular foreign minister- Jozef Beck- for Poland's woes. He was Pilsudski's man in Budapest, during their first war with the Soviets, and he laid the foundation for an alliance with Hungary- a revisionist power.  What this meant was that Czechoslovakia became vulnerable. If its neighbours took big bites out of it- which is what happened in 1938- then all borders became contestable. Interestingly, Horthy helped the Poles in some small ways when Hitler invaded. Sadly, both countries had doomed themselves. 

 As military attache in Paris in the 1922-23 Beck was suspected of being a spy. What was certain was that he was an obnoxious, abrasive, fellow with a prejudice against the French. Indeed, it is said, they asked him to leave. Ten years later, after he became foreign minister, the French continued to view him with suspicion & he continued to alienate everybody. His territorial claims against neighbouring countries caused them to distrust him.

At the time, many thought that the Poles were relying on the Kasprzycki–Gamelin Convention- a mutual defence pact- signed in May 19, 1939. According to this view, the French stabbed the Poles in the back by failing to put pressure on the Germans (apart from the useless 'Saar offensive'). But the agreement was full of holes which, the French Foreign Minister said, was designed to commit France to nothing substantial. Beck- always suspicious of the French- appears to have been somewhat gullible believing that French 'military honour' would oblige it to do something substantial. Sadly, France had no fucking military honour.

Perhaps, the Poles hoped that the Brits would twist the arm of the French & get them to go on the offensive. Sadly, Churchill, disgusted at his gobbling up a piece of Czechoslovakia had said in Parliament- :

The British and French Ambassadors visited Colonel Beck, or sought to visit him, the Foreign Minister, in order to ask for some mitigation in the harsh measures being pursued against Czechoslovakia about Teschen. The door was shut in their faces.

The French Ambassador was not even granted an audience and the British Ambassador was given a most curt reply by a political director. The whole matter is described in the Polish Press as a political indiscretion committed by those two Powers, and we are today reading of the success of Colonel Beck’s blow.

I am not forgetting, I must say, that it is less than twenty years ago since British and French bayonets rescued Poland from the bondage of a century and a half. I think it is indeed a sorry episode in the history of that country, for whose freedom and rights so many of us have had warm and long sympathy.

 The British foreign office- represented by Sir Howard Kennard- considered Beck to be too clever by half- i.e. a self-defeating intriguer- and distrusted the Polish Sanation elite as being proto-Nazi in their thinking. Ultimately, of course, Russia- however it was governed- had to be Britain's ally even if the gallant Poles paid the price. Still, some particularly stupid Britishers may have believed Stalin would respect the British interpretation of the Sikorski–Mayski pact- i.e. Poland mught get back its pre-War borders.  Within less than a year, in April 1943, Stalin used the pretext of the Polish government requesting an independent Red Cross investigation into the Katyn massacre—where Soviet secret police had executed over 20,000 Polish officers—to cut off ties with the Govt. in exile & build up an alternative Communist administration. Again and again, the 'cursed soldiers' (non-Communist Polish resistance) would be lured to their doom by false amnesties and other such tricks.  Stalin's combination of deceit and utter ruthlessness left him the master of Eastern Europe.

Sadly, it must be said, Poland's Jozef Beck bears some of the blame for this horrible outcome.