GalleryPOLAND'S FOREIGN POLICY
From its birth in 1919 to Hitler's advent in 1933, Poland's foreign policy was orientated almost exclusively on its plans to dismember the Soviet Union and replace Russia as Europe's eastern Great Power. On this grandiose program Poland's leading political parties were in essential agreement—somewhat as Japan's leading political parties are in essential agreement on an even more grandiose program—the moderates, radicals and conservatives merely differing on the tempo of its execution. The Polish Government realized, however, that the scheme was too ambitious for its own unaided strength. But it looked hopefully for support from its neighbors of the Cordon Sanitaire, from Finland to Rumania, and for military, financial and industrial assistance from France, then the dominant military power on the continent. And always there was the hope of a "Second Front" from Japan.
The rise of Nazi Germany put the Polish government in a quandary. Not only its diplomatic but its military and industrial orientation had been based on an imminent war against the Soviet Union with an innocuous, disarmed Germany safely in the rear. Poland's army, with the largest percentage of cavalry in the world, had been organized with a view toward action on the plains of the Soviet Ukraine and not in the semi-urban, semi-wooded, semi-mountainous terrain of their German frontier. Its fortifications were inconveniently concentrated on its Russian border and its industry even more inconveniently concentrated on its "safe" German border.
It was indeed a perilous situation. All the dictates of reason and self-interest, all the lessons bitterly learned during centuries of Polish history, pointed to a reorientation of Polish policy toward an alliance with Russia against a foe whose avowed program was the subjection of all the Slav peoples. Instead Pilsudski signed a ten-year non-aggression pact with Germany, which was in effect an alliance, though it attracted far less recrimination in certain circles than the Soviet-German non-aggression pact which was in effect only an armed truce.1
| 1 | Brody's account here is pure propaganda. Piłsudski's policy was (as it turned out, presciently—Piłsudski died in 1935 before seeing his worst fears fulfilled) based on the principle that both Germany and USSR née Russia had designs on reconquering Polish territory, attempting to navigate a path between them. There was no organized Cordon Sanitaire; indeed, the Baltic States and Poland had failed in their inter-war attempt to establish a closer union. While France had been Poland's traditional ally, as German power waxed, France's support waned. When Hitler finally invaded Poland, Britain, also allied by treaty to Poland, was forced to shame France to compel it to declare war. Even then, there was no major action against Germany in support of Poland in fear of German retaliation. |
