Danzig crisis

On 8 January 1918, the U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the 14 Points as the American war aims. Point 13 called for Polish independence to be restored after the war and for Poland to have "free and secure access to the sea", a statement that implied the German deep-water port of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland) located at a strategical location where a branch of the river Vistula flowed into the Baltic Sea should become part of Poland.[1] At the Paris peace conference in 1919, of the "Big Three" leaders, Wilson and the French premier Georges Clémenceau supported the Polish claim to Danzig, but the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was opposed under the grounds the population of Danzig was about 90% German. In a compromise, it was agreed that Danzig would become a Free City that would belong to neither Germany nor Poland, but the latter was to have special rights in the city. The city-state would govern itself via a Senate, but the League of Nations would appoint a Commissioner to oversee the affairs of the Free City. The Polish delegation to the Paris peace conference led by Roman Dmowski had asked for the cessation of Danzig to Poland, and within Poland the creation of the Free City was widely seen as a betrayal of Point 13.[2] The Polish position was always that Poland needed Danzig to be economically independent of Germany as Danzig was where most of Poland's exports and imports to the wider world went through. The loss of Danzig did indeed deeply hurt German national pride and in the interwar period, German nationalists spoke of the "open wound in the east" that was the Free City of Danzig.[3]

In 1921, France and Poland signed a defensive alliance committing both powers to go to war in the event of an attack by Germany.[4] The alliance with Poland was the cornerstone of the cordon sanitaire as the French system of alliances in Eastern Europe were known as France signed defensive alliances with Czechoslovakia in 1924, Romania in 1926 and Yugoslavia in 1927.[5] At the time, the alliances were signed, the Rhineland was demilitarised and occupied by the French Army, which was in a strong position to launch an offensive deep into Germany.[5] The Rhineland with the broad Rhine river and its steep hills formed a natural defensive barrier and beyond the Rhineland was the wide open North German plain, which favored offensive operations. In June 1930, the French ended the occupation of the Rhineland five years earlier than the Treaty of Versailles had called.[6] As no-one in the French government actually expected the Germans to abide by the Treaty of Versailles, it was assumed that the Rhineland would be remilitarised at some point in the near-future, and in 1929 the French began construction of the Maginot line, which was a tacit French admission that the Rhineland would be remilitrised.[6] The Maginot line implied a defensive strategy in the event of war, which created a major strategical problem, namely how would France aid its allies in Eastern Europe if Germany should turn east instead of west.[7]

The city-state of Danzig was widely considered to be "the most dangerous city in Europe" as the Free City was a flashpoint in German-Polish relations that could cause a war at any moment.[8] Since Poland was allied to France, any German-Polish war would automatically become a Franco-German war, thereby starting another world war. A speech given by a British journalist in October 1932 noted: "Germany intends to have Danzig and the Corridor. I have no brief for her. I deplore the fact that several million Germans would shed blood for this cause, but since it is a fact and the Poles certainly cannot be talked out of their territory, how will the matter be settled except by arms? I believe there must be a war in Europe; the best we can hope for is that it will be over soon, and that it will not spread".[8]

In 1933, the Danzig Nazis took over the Free City of Danzig, and thereafter, the leadership of the Free City followed the line set by Berlin.[9] It was always the intention of Adolf Hitler to have the Free City of Danzig "go home to the Reich", but knowing that the Polish government was unwilling to see any alternation in the status of the Free City he did not press the matters in the early years of the Third Reich.[9] The leadership of the Danzig Nazis was highly dysfunctional with power being shared by two feuding leaders, Albert Forster and Arthur Greiser.[10] The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote: "The two could not abide each, and the very fact that both were faithful followers of Hitler only made them rivals for the latter's affection and support. What one wanted, the other automatically rejected, and vice-versa; only the occasional intervention of Hitler himself could bring them temporarily to the same course-until they parted company again on the next issue".[10]

In 1935, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, Poland's de facto leader since the May coup of 1926, died and was replaced by a triumvirate. The new leadership of the Sanacja regime as the Polish military dictatorship was known was divided about the course of action to be pursued. The commander of the Polish Army, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły favored incorporating the Free City into Poland while the Foreign Minister, Colonel Józef Beck was more open to a compromise.[9] Beck favored the idea of "Third Europe", a bloc of East European nations to be led by Poland and was willing to accept a German-Polish condominium over Danzig in exchange for German support for the "Third Europe" concept.[9] However, the Sanacja regime had become unpopular by the late 1930s, and many Poles disliked Colonel Beck's foreign policy of weakening ties to France while improving relations with Germany. Polish opposition groups to the Sanacja regime such as the Front Morges led by General Władysław Sikorski accused Beck of being too anti-French and pro-German in his foreign policy.[11] Beck was always very sensitive to the charge that his foreign policy was too pro-German and he was not willing to accept any bullying over the Danzig issue, which he saw as the "barometer" of German-Polish relations.[9] Beck's Third Europe concept failed because Germany had the world's second largest economy and all of eastern Europe was dominated economically by the Reich even before the Second World War, which led to a tendency in eastern Europe to follow the lead of Berlin rather than Warsaw.[12] In 1936, the League of Nations commissioner for the Free City of Danzig, the Irish diplomat, Sean Lester, was fired under heavy German pressure for his attempts to protect the rights of Danzig's Jewish minority.[10] The new League of Nations commissioner, the Swiss diplomat, Carl J. Burckhardt, was known as an advocate of "restraint" towards the Nazi-dominated government of the Free City, and generally followed a pro-German line.[10] In 1939, the population of the Free City of Danzig was 400, 000, of whom 17, 000 were Polish and 3, 000 were Jewish with the rest being German..[13]

In October 1938, the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, invited the Polish ambassador, Józef Lipski, to meet him in Berchtesgaden.[14] Lipski was confused as why he could not see Ribbentrop in Berlin and had to go all the way to Berchtesgaden for this meeting that Ribbentrop insisted was extremely important. At their lunch at the Grand Hotel in Berchtesgaden, Ribbentrop told Lipski that he wanted an "eine Gesamtlösung" ("total settlement") between Poland and Germany.[15] Ribbentrop wanted Danzig to be returned to the Reich; extraterritorial roads running across the Polish Corridor to link East Prussia with the rest of Germany and for Poland to sign the Anti-Comintern pact.[15] Lipski told Ribbentrop that he felt it was highly unlikely that Beck would agree to these demands.[15] Alarmed, Lipski on the next day took the train to Warsaw where he met Colonel Beck and his deputy Count Jan Szembek.[15] Lipski stated that he thought Ribbentrop and presumably Hitler as well were determined to see Danzig returned to Germany.[16] In November 1938, Lipski saw Ribbentrop where he read to him a statement declaring that the Polish government was unwilling to accept any changes in the status of the Free City, but still wanted good relations with the Reich.[17] Lipski told Ribbentrop's that Polish public opinion would not tolerate the Free City joining Germany and predicated that if Warsaw allowed that to happen, then the Sanacja military dictatorship that had ruled Poland since 1926 would be overthrown.[18]

On 24 November 1938, King Carol II of Romania visited Germany to meet Hitler at the Berghof, where the principle subject was German-Romanian economic relations, especially oil.[19] Weinberg wrote: "Carol made the needed concessions, but he demonstrated his concern for his country's independence by driving a very hard bargain".[19] The British historian D.C. Watt wrote that Carol had a "trump card" in his control of the oil Germany needed so badly and that the Germans were willing to pay a very high price for Romanian oil without which their military could not function.[20] The Four Year Plan was intended to make Germany self-sufficient in artificial oil by 1940, but had ran into major delays and cost overruns. Hermann Göring, the chief of the Four Year Plan organisation, had been forced to inform Hitler in November 1938 that the synthetic oil plants that would make oil from coal would be not be operating by September 1940 as planned owning to problems with the new technology and that 1942 would be a more likely date.[21] During the Hitler-Carol summit at the Berghof, Hitler demanded that Carol free Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the leader of the fascist Legion of the Archangel Michael whom Carol had imprisoned in May 1938, and appoint him Prime Minister.[19] In late November 1938, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to begin plans to occupy the Free City with the aim of restoring it to Germany.[22] Believing that as long as an alternative leadership existed in the form of Codreanu that Hitler might back that his grip on his throne was weak, Carol decided to wipe out the leadership of the Legion. On the night of 30 November 1938, known in Romania as the "Night of the Vampires", Codreanu and 13 other Legion leaders were taken from prison out to a remote rural road where they were all garroted to death and then shot up with the official story being they were all "shot while trying to escape". The German media launched a major campaign against Carol for the "Night of Vampires", which was described as an act of murder and the "victory for the Jews".[23] Despite the campaign against Carol, on 10 December 1938 a German-Romanian economic agreement was signed that provided for more Romanian oil exports to Germany.[19]

On 6 December 1938 Ribbentrop visited Paris, where he and the French foreign minister Georges Bonnet signed a grand-sounding but largely meaningless Declaration of Franco-German Friendship.[24] During his visit, Ribbentrop and Bonnet had a long conversation in French in the Tuileries Garden where Bonnet was alleged to have told Ribbentrop that France now recognized all of Eastern Europe as being within the German sphere of influence and that the French alliance system in Eastern Europe was effectively defunct.[25] Ever since June 1939 when Ribbentrop first made this claim in public, there has been much debate over just what Bonnet told Ribbentrop, but it is very clear that Ribbentrop believed that Bonnet had made this claim, which he used to persuade Hitler that France would never go to war for Poland.[25] The British historian Michael Bloch wrote that Bonnet almost certainly did make this statement to Ribbentrop, which accorded well with his dislike of the French alliances in Eastern Europe, but that this statement was legally null and void. [24] Only the Assemblée nationale could repeal the treaties it had ratified, and Bonnet as foreign minister did not the legal power to renounce France's alliances in Eastern Europe in the manner that Ribbentrop believed he did.[24]

Governments under the Troisième République were unstable coalitions and the powers of the premier was more alike to being the chairman of a quarreling committee than an executive leader. The cabinet of Édouard Daladier was badly divided into three factions. The first was the "peace lobby" (the appeasement faction) led by Bonnet and which included Jean Mistler, Henri Bérenger, Jean Montigny, Anatole de Monzie, François Piétri, Lucien Lamoureux, and Joseph Caillaux.[26] Another faction, the "policy of firmness" (the anti-appeasement faction) was made up of Paul Reynaud, Jean Zay, and Georges Mandel.[26] A third faction led by Daladier stood half-way between the "peace lobby" and the "policy of firmness".[26] Daladier had supported a policy of appeasement in 1938 largely out of his perception of French weakness vis-vis the Reich, but in 1939, he tended to favor the "policy of firmness".[27] Daladier's change in stance was due to increased French industrial production together with the efforts of the Colonial minister Mandel to raise more troops in France's populous African colonies alongside with the equally populous colony of French Indochina, which provided a way of compensating for Germany's greater population.[27] French decision-making during the Danzig crisis was very dysfunctional with Bonnet seeking a way to avoid going to war for Poland vs. Daladier who was willing to honor France's alliance with Poland should the Reich chose war.[28]

During his talks with Lipski and Beck in the winter of 1938-1939, Ribbentrop's main demand was not that the Poles allow the return of the Free City, but rather that Poland sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was a symbolic gesture that was understood in Berlin as a sign that Poland accepted being in the German sphere of influence.[29] During the same period, Hungary signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which both Hitler and Ribbentrop understood as a symbolic gesture that Hungary was now in the German sphere of influence.[30]

In late 1938-early 1939, there were two schools of thought within the German state about Danzig. One led by Forster favored the "little solution" of sending in troops to occupy the city and returning it by force to Germany while the "big solution" favored making a deal under which Poland would accept Danzig returning to Germany in exchange for German support for Poland annexing parts of the Soviet Union.[31] At this time, Hitler was determined upon a war against Britain and tended to favor the "big solution" of bringing Poland into the German sphere of influence.[31] Beck told Count Hans-Adolf von Moltke, the German ambassador in Warsaw, that he was planning to spend his Christmas holiday on the French Riviera and gambling in the casinos of Monte Carlo.[31] Beck added that he was willing to meet Ribbentrop in Berlin on his way back from his Christmas on the Riviera.[31] Ribbentrop agreed to the meeting but when Beck arrived at the Berlin train-station on 5 January 1939, he was instead placed on another train to see Hitler at the Berghof high up in the Bavarian Alps.[31] At the Beck-Hitler meeting held in secret at the Berghof, Hitler was adamant that the Free City of Danzig had to "go home to the Reich", and he was unwilling to accept compromises on the issue.[32] Beck stated that on economic grounds that his government could never accept Danzig returning to Germany as that would reduce Poland down to a German economic colony.[33] However, Beck agreed that Ribbentrop should visit Warsaw later that month to discuss the matter.

The Wehrmacht generals were extremely anti-Polish, and at a meeting on 22 January 1939, Ribbentrop argued against war with Poland, stating he felt it was still possible to bully Beck into accepting the German line.[33] In January 1939, Ribbentrop visited Warsaw, where he was greeted by President Ignacy Mościcki with much pomp.[34] The Beck-Ribbentrop meeting went badly with Beck again saying that for economic reasons Poland could never accept Danzig being returned to Germany.[35] Ribbentrop in his account of the meeting stated that Beck was willing in principle to accept the return of Danzig to the Reich.[35] After the Warsaw summit, Beck told his chef de cabinet Michale Lubíenski, that he did not want to be seen to be bullied, but he was willing to agree to a German-Polish condominium over Danzig.[36] Hitler in his annual speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939 spoke about the importance of German-Polish friendship, which showed that he had not decided upon war against Poland by this point.[35]

In February 1939, German and Polish university students in Danzig were involved in a number of bloody brawls, which attracted much attention in the Polish press.[37] At the Café Langfuhr that was popular with students from the Danzig Polytechnic, the German students put up a sign reading: "To dogs and Polish students entrance is forbidden. Poor dogs!".[37] The sign led to fights breaking out between Polish and German students.[37] The incidents limited the room to maneuver by the Polish state, which did not want to be seen to bullied as the Polish public opinion was outraged by the brawling caused by the Café Langfuhr sign.[37] On 25 February 1939, a group of Polish university students held a demonstration outside the German embassy in Warsaw and threw bricks though the windows out of anger over the brawls at the Café Langfuhr .[37]

In February 1939, Göring dispatched his deputy, Helmuth Wohlthat of the Four Year Plan organisation, to Bucharest with instructions to sign yet another German-Romanian economic treaty that would allow Germany total economic domination of Romania, above all its oil industry, which Göring wanted to compensate for the failure to achieve self-sufficiency in synthetic oil by 1940 as he had promised to do in 1936. [38] Wohlthat demanded during his talks with the Romanian Foreign Minister Grigore Gafencu that Romania nationalise its entire oil industry, which was owned mostly by British, French and American companies.[21] Wohlthat further demanded that Romanian oil industry would henceforward to controlled by a new corporation owned jointly by the German and Romanian governments while demanding Romania "respect German export interests" by only selling its oil to Germany.[21] Carol resisted these demands and the German-Romanian talks in Bucharest grew increasingly stormy.

On 15 March 1939, Germany violated the Munich Agreement by occupying the Czech half of Czecho-Slovakia, which became the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. On 17 March 1939, the so-called Tilea affair began when Virgil Tilea, the Romanian minister-plenipotentiary in London, told Lord Halifax that his country was faced with a German invasion following the Romanian refusal to hand over control of the Romanian industry to the Reich.[39] As Romania was rich in various natural resources, above all in oil, this was felt in London to be an unacceptable change in the balance of power.[39] Germany did not have oil of its own and the German need to import oil from the United States, Mexico and Venezuela left Germany open to a crippling British naval blockade; by contrast, if the Romanian oil industry came under German control, the Reich would be an immune to a naval blockade. Tilea also asked on behalf of King Carol II for British loan to finance Romanian rearmament and for British help with creating a bloc of Romania, Greece, Poland, Yugoslavia and Turkey to resist the Reich.[39] Colonel Beck's evasive answers as to what Poland would do if Germany invaded Romania infuriated Alexis St. Léger-Léger, the secretary-general of the Quai d'Orsay. At a meeting with Juliusz Łukasiewicz, the Polish ambassador to France, St. Léger told him in a moment of some rage: "Poland refuses to join France and England in protecting Romania".[40] To express his frustration with Beck, St. Léger sent long letters in English to both the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and the prime minister Neville Chamberlain that denounced Colonel Beck as an unscrupulous and unprincipled opportunist whose word was not to be trusted.[40] St. Léger's picture of Beck as an amoral and ruthless man who only acted out of self-interest had much influence on British decision-makers. On 18 March 1939, Daladier had a long telephone conversation with Colonel Beck, where it was agreed that a German seizure of the Free City would be a sufficient casus belli for France to activate the Franco-Polish alliance provided that Poland agree to convert the Polish-Romanian alliance aimed against the Soviet Union into an alliance against Germany as well.[39]

On 20 March 1939, Germany pressured Lithuania to return Memel (modern Klaipėda) to Germany. On 21 March 1939, Ribbentrop told Lipski that der Führer was "increasing amazed" at Poland's refusal to accept the return of Danzig and warned that German media would soon start a press campaign asking for Danzig to "go home to the Reich".[41] In response to Lipski's reports, Rydz-Śmigły ordered a partial Polish mobilization.[41] On 21 March 1939, Bonnet noted in a telephone call to Lord Halifax that Poland was the only nation in Eastern Europe that was capable of helping Romania resist a German invasion.[39] Beck was opposed to the plans of King Carol II for a Eastern European bloc, which he felt was too provocative towards Germany.[39] In London, Halifax approached the Polish ambassador, Count Edward Raczyński, and in Warsaw, the British ambassador, Sir Howard William Kennard, approached Beck for a plan for a joint statement to be issued calling for a bloc of Britain, France, Poland, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Greece, Romania and the Soviet Union to resist any further German invasion.[39] Beck rejected the British plan, saying that he regarded the Soviet Union as a far greater danger to Poland than Germany and instead proposed a bilateral Anglo-Polish treaty with a promise of British support for the Polish position regarding Danzig.[39] British elites regarded Poland as a far stronger power than the Soviet Union and Halifax later stated: "We had to make a choice between Poland and the Soviet Union; it seemed clear that Poland would give the greater value".[39] The quid pro quo of the British "guarantee" of Poland was that Poland in turn would be willing to protect Romania and its oil from Germany.

On 24 March 1939, after overseeing Memel's return to Germany, Hitler returned to Berlin, where he stated that the "little solution" was not possible as it would mean war with Poland, and to have Danzig returned would require the liquation of the Polish state.[42] On 22 March 1939, Gauleiter Forster announced that the elections for the Senate of the Free City due in 1939 would not being held, a violation of the constitution of the Free City.[43] On 24 March 1939, Colonel Beck, who was part of the triumvirate which ruled the Sanacja regime and largely ran foreign policy on his own, told a meeting of the Polish cabinet that Poland should go to war if Germany made any attempt to alter the status of Danzig.[18] Beck stated that Danzig "regardless of what it is worth as an object" had become a "symbol" in Poland that was so important that Poland should go to war over the issue.[18] Aside from the possibility that a revolution in Poland might overthrow the Sanacja regime should it allow Danzig to be returned to Germany, Beck as part of his plans for a "Third Europe" (i.e. a block of Eastern European states under Polish leadership) had sought to develop closer economic relations with Sweden and Finland.[44] Beck envisioned both Sweden and Finland joining the "Third Europe" block, and German plans to take back Danzig threatened to allow Germany a "choke-hold" on Poland's main link to the sea as the port facilities at Danzig were still better developed than those at Gdynia.[44] On 25 March 1939, Hitler ordered General Walther von Brauchitsch, the commander-in-chief of the Army, to start plans for a war against Poland that summer.[42] In a further escalation of the crisis, Forster and Greiser began to raise para-military forces in Danzig to confront the Polish garrison n the Westerplattte.[45]

On 26 March, Ribbentrop was extremely angry with Lipski when the latter gave him a memo saying that Poland was still committed to preserving the status que with regard to Danzig.[46] On 26 March 1939, a Polish offer made by Lipski for a joint German-Polish guarantee of Danzig and for customs-free travel across the Polish Corridor was rejected by Ribbentrop.[47] On 27 March 1939, General Walter Warlimont of the OKW started working on Fall Weiss (Case White), the plan for the invasion of Poland, and by the end of the month, the first draft of Fall Weiss was completed.[48] On 29 March 1939 Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, the State Secretary of the Auswärtiges Amt, told the Danzig government the Reich would carry out a policy to the Zermürbungspolitik ("point of destruction") towards Poland, saying a compromise solution was not wanted..[49] On 30 March 1939, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain met with the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and the Foreign Office's Permanent Undersecretary, Sir Alexander Cadogan, to write up a statement warning that Britain would go to war if Germany invaded Poland.[39]

On 31 March 1939, Chamberlain announced in the House of Commons a "guarantee" of Polish independence, stating that Britain would go to war with Germany if there was an attempt to end Polish independence, though Chamberlain pointedly excluded the borders of Poland from the "guarantee".[18] The "guarantee" caused much opposition from the Dominions. Later on 31 March, the South African High Commissioner to Great Britain, Charles Theodore Te Water and Vincent Massey, the Canadian High Commissioner to Great Britain, both told Chamberlain during a meeting at 10 Downing Street that Germany "had a genuine claim to Danzig", which made it an "extremely bad reason" to risk a war over.[50] On 1 April 1939, Hitler went to Wilhelmshaven to oversee the launch of the new battleship Tirpitz.[51] At the Wilhelmshaven Rathuas (town hall), Hitler gave a violently anti-Polish and anti-British speech.[52] In April 1939, Beck visited London to ask for an Anglo-Polish military alliance, saying this was the best way to deter Germany from war.[53]

Beck had not abandoned hopes of negotiating a settlement with Germany.[54] During the spring and summer of 1939 it was the aim of British foreign policy to build a "peace front" embracing Britain, France, the Soviet Union and a number of other European states such as Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey with the aim of "containing" Germany. Beck made it clear that he wanted no Polish-Soviet treaty to go along with the British-inspired "peace front" since an alliance with the Soviets would rule out any possibility of a settlement with Germany, which he still had hopes of reaching..[54] Beck declined to have Polish diplomats take part in the talks between British, French and Soviet diplomats about having the Soviet Union join the "peace front", and during his visit to London in April 1939 he declined British offers to create a military alliance of Britain, Poland, the Soviet Union and Romania designed to block the Reich's efforts to expand its influence in Eastern Europe..[54] The Polish historian Anita Prazmowska wrote that Beck's refusal of the British offers of assistance was partly due to his "inflated sense of self-importance and the general overestimation of Poland's military potential" as he believed that Poland was one of the world's great powers that could defeat Germany on its own, but also due to his desire not have Poland join the anti-German "peace front" at a time when he still believed that he could settle the Danzig issue..[54] During his visit to London on 4–6 April 1939 Beck told Chamberlain that any effort to include the Soviet Union in the "peace front" would cause the very war it was supposed to prevent, and he wanted to exclude the Soviet Union from the "peace front" for that reason.[55] On 3 April 1939, both Colonel Beck and Raczyński met with Lord Halifax who stressed that the British government did not want to go to war for Danzig and urged the Poles to make concessions.[39] Raczyński told Halifax that with his demand for concessions on the Danzig issue "the British government exhibits its ignorance of the actual state of affairs".[39] Beck stated that he wanted British support, but he declined Halifax's offer of Britain serving as a "honest broker" as he stated that Poland would negotiate directly with Germany over Danzig.[56]

On 5 April 1939 Weizsäcker told Moltke that he was under no conditions was to negotiate with Beck, saying the last thing he wanted was for Beck to agree to the Free City's return to Germany.[49] In April 1939, the League of Nations High Commissioner Burckhardt was told by the Polish Commissioner-General that any attempt to alter Danzig's status would be answered with armed resistance on the part of Poland.[57] On 28 April 1939, Hitler gave a speech at the Reichstag where he renounced the German-Polish non-aggression pact of 1934 and for the first time in public asked for Danzig to be returned.[58] On 4 May 1939, the French fascist Marcel Déat who secretly worked in the pay of the Auswärtiges Amt wrote in the Paris newspaper L'oeuvre an article entitled "Mourir pour Dantzig?" ("Die for Danzig?"), in which he argued against, saying that Poland was not worth a war.[59] The phrase "die for Danzig?" that Déat introduced was often used by the German media during the crisis.[60] On 5 May 1939, Beck gave a speech before the Sejm, where he stated: "The position of Danzig is the result of a positive interplay of German and Polish interests. I have to ask myself 'what is the real object of this?' Is it the freedom of the German population of Danzig, which is not threatened, or a matter of prestige-or is it a matter of barring Poland from the Baltic, from which Poland will not allow herself to be barred".[59] On the same day, Beck in a speech broadcast on Polish radio stated that Poland wanted peace but that "peace...has its price, high but definable. We in Poland do not recognize the conception of peace at any price. There is only one thing...which is without price, and that is honor".[61] Before the Danzig crisis, the Polish General Staff had devoted far more time to planning a possible war with the Soviet Union rather than with Germany, and even after the Danzig crisis began, planning for a possible war with Germany went about in a rather haphazard and causal manner suggesting the Polish high command did not see war with Germany as very likely in 1939.[62] Forster had the Danzig newspapers print stories that claimed that Beck had demanded a Polish veto over the decisions of the Senate, Polish control of the heavy industry of the Free City and a Polish occupation, and treated the failure of these alleged demands to occur as a Polish retreat.[60] In a further escalation, three SA men from Danzig were involved in a brawl with the chauffer of the Polish High Commissioner for Danzig in the frontier village of Kalthof, which ended with the chauffer shooting and killing one of the SA men, Max Grubnau.[63] At the time, both Forster and Greiser dismissed the incident as unimportant to Burchkhardt.[63]

On 16 May 1939, Hitler gave orders to the Wehrmacht generals to begin preparations for a war against Poland scheduled for 26 August.[64] In May 1939, the German media started a campaign demanding that Danzig "go home to the Reich".[65] On 23 May 1939, Hitler at a meeting with the leading Wehrmacht generals stated he was determined upon with war against Poland, and that the Danzig issue was a pretext as he wanted Poland to serve as German lebensraum ("living space").[66] In the same conference, Hitler defended the Z Plan, which placed the Kriegsmarine first in terms of defense spending, saying that he did not expect Britain to go to war for Poland.[67] Even if Britain did intervene, he argued that Germany could economically cripple Britain by conquering the Low Countries and France, saying control of the French Atlantic ports would give the Kriegsmarine access to the Western Approaches (the sea-lanes to the west of the British Isles where most of the ships going to or from Britain sail).[67]

In May 1939, Franco-Polish talks were started on France accelerating its arms deliveries to Poland.[68] On 19 May 1939, a secret Franco-Polish agreement was signed in Paris calling in the event of war for France to launch an offensive into the Rhineland no later than 15 days after Germany had invaded Poland.[68] The agreement was made only for political reasons, namely that Daladier wanted to reassure the Poles to resist German pressure.[69] Daladier very much wanted an Anglo-French-Soviet bloc to deter Germany from invading Poland, and he believed that the constructing the "peace front" will be sufficient to stop a war in 1939.[70] The French felt that the British were foot-dragging on including the Soviet Union in the "peace front", which was the source of much Anglo-French discord.[70] On 3 June 1939, Greiser as the president of the Danzig Senate gave a note to the Polish commissioner, Marjan Chodacki, that complained about the "bad behavior" of the Polish customs officers as proved by the Kahlthof incident.[63] In a show of defiance, Beck increased the number of Polish customs officers from 77 to 106.[63]

The nature of the Danzig crisis with Germany demanding that the Free City of Danzig, a city that was mostly German to "go home to the Reich" and already under the control of the Nazi Party posed major difficulties for France and Britain.[71] Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador in Berlin, noted in a dispatch to Paris on 21 June 1939:

"The majority of the accredited diplomats in Berlin try to see what could be a compromise solution and are alarmed that they do not. Thus, they are trapped in a sort of contradiction, for the moment one admits, and they admit it, the unlimited nature of German National Socialist demands, then there is no hope of ending them by settling the crisis of Danzig, and consequently there is no advantage of compromising oneself on the subject. On the contrary there are major disadvantages".[71]

On 24 June 1939, Coulondre visited Paris to meet Bonnet.[72] Coulondre charged that Bonnet's equivocal Johannes von Welczeck, the German ambassador in Paris, about what France would do if Germany invaded Poland had convinced Ribbentrop that France would do nothing. Coulondre advised Bonnet to make an unequivocal statement to Welczeck that France would stand by its alliance with Poland if Germany invaded, advice that Bonnet ignored.[72]

During the planning for Fall Weiss, Hitler was closely involved.[73] Hitler generally approved of the plans by the Army and Luftwaffe generals, and his notable role was to insist to Admiral Erich Raeder that war begin in Danzig with the Kriegsmarine sending a warship into Danzig harbour.[73] In June 1939, it was announced that German light cruiser Königsberg would visit Danzig harbour on 25 August 1939 to honor the sailors killed on the cruiser Magdeburg sunk by the Russians in August 1914.[74] In his meetings with Forster, Hitler stressed that the Reich was to present itself as the victim of the Treaty of Versailles and was only seeking the return of Danzig because the city was overwhemlingly German.[75] Hitler believed this propaganda would lead to public opinion in both France and the United Kingdom pressuring their governments not to go to war for Poland.[76] Hitler ordered Forster to "keep the pot boiling" by having the Danzig authorities harness the Polish customs inspectors working on Danzig harbour.[76]

Tensions escalated into the Danzig crisis during the summer of 1939. As Bonnet continued to ignore Coulondre's advice on making a firm statement to Welczeck, the ambassador appealed directly to Daladier who in ordered Bonnet to make such a statement to Welczeck.[77] On 1 July 1939, Bonnet told Count von Welczeck that Germany should not try to unliterally change the status of Danzig and that France would honor its alliance with Poland.[78] F.M Shepard, the British consul in Danzig, reported that the Danzig Nazis were bringing in arms from Germany and building fortifications around in and around the Free City.[79] In July 1939, the British government reluctantly extended its "guarantee" of Poland to the Free City of Danzig, stating that a German attempt to take Danzig would be a casus belli.[80] The British government took a different line from that pursued during the Sudetenland crisis. In 1938, the Reich government had first demanded autonomy for the Sudetenland region and after Prague had conceded the demand for autonomy, had laid claim to the Sudetenland. On 15 March 1939, Germany had occupied the Czech part of Czecho-Slovakia, which had done immense damage to Hitler's claim that he was only trying to undo an "unjust" Treaty of Versailles by bringing all of the ethnic Germans "home to the Reich". The British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax in July 1939 told Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador in London:

“Last year the German government put forward the demand for the Sudetenland on purely racial grounds; but subsequent events proved that this demand was only put forward as a cover for the annihilation of Czechoslovakia. In view of this experience… it is not surprising that the Poles and we ourselves are afraid that the demand for Danzig is only a first move towards the destruction of Poland’s independence”.[81]

On 17 July 1939, Helmuth Wohlthat, the deputy head of the Four Year Plan organisation headed by Hermann Göring, arrived in London to attend the meeting of the International Whaling Conference as part of the German delegation.[82] On 18 July 1939, Wohlthat together with Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador to the Court of St. James, met with Sir Horace Wilson, the Chief Industrial Adviser and very close friends of Chamberlain to discuss finding a way to end the crisis.[82] In a bizarre intervention, Robert Hudson, an ambitious junior minister who had attended the Wohlthat-Wilson meeting, arrived at the German embassy to propose to Wohlthat and Dirksen his solution to the crisis..[83] Hudson wanted Germany to promise not to invade Poland and to end the Anglo-German arms race in exchange for which a cartel would be created that consist of the major industrialists of Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States to run develop the economies of China, Eastern Europe and Africa; of a loan to be floated in the City and on Wall treet that would amount hundreds of millions of dollars and pounds to go to Germany to be floated in the City and on Wall Street; and a vague plan for the "international governance" of Africa, by which he meant he that Germany would given a role in the ruling of the African colonies of the European nations.[83] Hudson then called an "off-the-record" press conference at his house later the same day to boast about how he supposedly just ended the crisis.[83] The journalists from the The Daily Telegraph and the News Chronicle decided to report the story despite Hudson's request to wait for Wohlthat to return to Germany.[83] On 22 July 1939, both The Daily Telegraph and the News Chronicle ran as their frontpage stories that Britain was about to float a loan worth hundreds of millions of pound sterling to Germany in exchange for the Reich not invading Poland.[83] The British public was outraged by the story and much of the British media labelled Hudson's plan as "paying the Danegeld".[83] In an address to the House of Commons, Chamberlain denied that Britain was about to try to bribe Germany to not invade Poland and stated that Hudson had been acting on his own.[83]

On 20 July 1939, Forster used the good offers to Burckhardt to meet Chodacki, and afterwards Burckhardt that the matter was settled as nothing would happen in Danzig for the next year or two.[84] However, incidents continued as the SS marched though the streets of Danzig, Polish customs officers continued to be harnessed and another incident where a member of the Danzig SA shot and killed a Polish frontier guard.[85] As expected, Burchkhardt passed on this report to the British and French.[85] At the same time, the British embassy in Berlin received false reports that Hitler was planning to call a conference to be attended by himself, Chamberlain, Daladier, Mussolini, the U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Japanese prime minister Hiranuma Kiichirō to end the crisis..[85]

At the beginning of August, the Senate of the Free City told Warsaw that henceforward the Free City would no longer recognize the authority of Polish customs officers in Danzig, which led Beck in response to warn that the Senate did not have the right to disregard the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and that the German government also did not have the right to speak for Danzig.[86] Much to the chagrin of the British Foreign Office, Warsaw did not consult Britain first when it issued a warning that the Polish Air Force would bomb Danzig if the authority of Polish customs officers continued to be ignored.[86] The Senate backed down while the British who were informed after the fact of the Polish decision to confront the Free City were thrown into panic over the possibility of an armed clash in Danzig plunging Europe into war.[86] Kennard sought in vain for a promise from Colonel Beck that Poland would take no action in Danzig without first obtaining British approval.[86] Beck disliked Kennard and kept him in the dark about what Poland would do if Danzig voted to rejoin Germany, but also about the state of German-Polish relations, much to the vexation of the Foreign Office.[87] On 13 August 1939, three Polish customs inspectors were arrested by the Danzig police after they in turn had arrested the crew of a German boat that entered Danzig harbour at night without turning on its lights..[88] On 17 August 1939, a Polish frontier guard was shot dead by the Danzig Nazis, leading to the Polish police to arrest the gunmen, one of whom shot and killed a Polish policeman while resisting arrest..[88] On 16 August 1939, Greiser invited Chodacki to his house, where he offered a compromise under which if the extra Polish customs officials were withdrawn, the rest could continue their duties without harassment..[88] On 18 August 1939, Greiser had the arrested Polish officials freed, which was taken as a positive sign..[88] Beck told Léon Noël, the French ambassador in Warsaw, that he believed that the crisis would be settled peacefully that summer..[88]

During the crisis, Ribbentrop refused to allow any talks with the Poles as it was always Ribbentrop's great fear that the Poles might actually agree to the Free City returning to Germany, thereby depriving the Reich of its pretext for attacking Poland.[89] However, the German propaganda that all the Reich wanted was to bring Danzig home did some effect abroad. In April 1943, when mass graves of the Polish officers massacred by the NKVD in Katyn Wood were discovered, the Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King wrote in his diary that it was the Poles who caused the outbreak of the war in 1939 by refusing to give in to Hitler's demand that Danzig be allowed to rejoin Germany, and as such it was the Poles' own fault for the Katyn Wood massacre and everything else they had suffered since 1939.[90] The British historian Victor Rothwell described King's view that the Poles had caused their own suffering as one motivated by spite and his resentment at being pressured by public opinion into declaring war on Germany despite his own inclinations towards neutrality..[90] From distant New Zealand, the Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage offered to return Western Samoa, which had once been the colony of German Samoa together with the rest of the former German islands in the Pacific held by New Zealand, in exchange for Germany promising not to use violence to alter the status of Danzig..[90]

On 14 August 1939 at a conference with his generals, Hitler expressed fear that the Danzig crisis might end the same way as the Sudetenland crisis, saying the last thing he wanted was a Munich-type deal that would allow the Free City to be peacefully returned to Germany.[91] The Treaty of Versailles had stated that the Free City of Danzig was a demilitarised zone, and in violation of the treaty's terms, the para-military landespolizei and the Eberhard Brigade of the Wehrmacht of about 6, 500 men were secretly sent into the city.[74] On 15 August 1939, it was announced instead of the cruiser Königsberg, that the old battleship Schleswig-Holstein would visit Danzig for the "friendship" visit.[92] It was felt the guns of the cruiser Königsberg were not powerful to destroy the Polish base on the Westerplatte and accordingly the guns of a battleship were needed.[92] Starting on 15 August 1939, the British ambassador in Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, started to sent increasing frenetic dispatches to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, demanding that British government pressure the Poles to make concessions to the Germans.[93] On 18 August 1939, the SS-led Heimwehr (Home Guard), which was mostly made up of teenagers from the Hitler Youth, took part in a public parade, during which guns were provocatively displayed while members of the Polish and Jewish minorities were threatened with violence.[74] On the same day, Lord Halifax ordered Kennard to see Colonel Beck and apply pressure on him to make concessions.[93] Beck in turn replied that it was impossible to negotiate with the Germans, who refused to see any Polish officials.[94]

In the middle of August, Beck offered a concession, saying that Poland was willing to give up its control of Danzig's customs, a proposal which caused fury in Berlin.[95] However, the leaders of the Free City sent a message to Berlin on 19 August 1939 saying: "Gauleiter Forster intends to extend claims...Should the Poles yield again it is intended to increase the claims further in order to make accord impossible"..[95] The same day a telegram from Berlin expressed approval with the proviso: "Discussions will have to be conducted and pressure exerted against Poland in such a way that responsibility for failure to come to an agreement and the consequences rest with Poland"..[95]

On 19 August, Beck ordered Lipski to see Hermann Göring, who was regarded as being the most moderate of the Nazi leaders.[94] During the crisis, as part of a scheme by Hitler to confuse the diplomats from other nations, Göring played the role of the "soft man", the supposed voice of reason in the Nazi leadership while Ribbentrop played the role of the "hard man", the obstinate extremist who was forever encouraging Hitler to take drastic steps.[96] The differences presented to foreign diplomats between Göring and Ribbentrop in the crisis, through based partly on the genuine mutual detestation that the two men held for each other, was part of a stratagem by Hitler to confuse foreing leaders and make it appear that a peaceful resolution was still possible.[96] Göring privately presented himself to Lipski as a man opposed to war and in a cunning stratagem invited Lipski to make a lengthy visit to his Karinhall estate in October to discuss the crisis, thereby giving the impression that there was still time until October to avoid war.[94] As commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, Göring knew very well that Y Day (the date chosen for the invasion) was 26 August.[94] On 21 August, Lipski visited Warsaw to ask Colonel Beck what he should say when made the expected visit to Karinhall in October.[94] During his visit, Lipski discovered that Beck was very self-confident that Poland would defeat Germany if it came to war.[94] Beck told Lipski that when he made his visit in October that he should tell Göring that there would be no benefits if it came to war and that Poland would not allow itself to be bullied.[94]

On 23 August 1939, Albert Forster, the Gauleiter of Danzig, called a meeting of the Senate that voted to have the Free City rejoin Germany, raising tensions to the breaking point.[97] At the same meeting Forster announced that the Free City of Danzig was no longer under the authority of the League of Nations.[92] The same meeting appointed Forster the Danzig State President, through this was due to Forster's long-running rivalry with Arthur Greiser, a völkisch fanatic who regarded Forster as too soft on the Poles while Gresier was proclaimed minister president..[92] Both the appointment of Forster as State President and the resolution calling for the Free City to rejoin the Reich were violations of the charter the League of Nations had given Danzig in 1920, and the matter should have been taken to the Council of the League of Nations for discussion.[86] On 24 August 1939, Gresier told Buckhardt that he no longer had any authority over the Free City while the news was broken to the world media by a press release from the DNB news agency in Berlin.[92] On noon of the same day, the Poles were confronted with the demand for the removal of all Polish frontier officials and a 50% reduction in the number of Polish customs inspectors working the Danzig harbor.[92] In a further provocation, Forster had the chief of the Polish railroad administration arrested and briefly closed via force the Polish customs office.[92] In Warsaw, the French ambassador Léon Noël had a meeting with Colonel Beck and Marshal Smigly-Rydz where he practically begged the Poles not to respond to these provocations by sending troops into the Free City.[98] The Germans expected the Poles to react to these violations of the Treaty of Versailles by sending in troops into Danzig, but Beck limited himself to making only a diplomatic protest.[99] On 23 August 1939, the Schleswig-Holstein took on board a naval assault group and set sail for Danzig.[92] On 25 August 1939, the Schleswig-Holstein anchored in Danzig harbour and aimed its guns menacingly at the Polish positions on the Westerplatte.[92]

Since these violations of the Danzig charter would have resulted in the League deposing the Danzig's Nazi government, both the French and British prevented the matter from being referred to the Council of the League of Nations.[100] Instead the British and French applied strong pressure on the Poles not to send in a military force to depose the Danzig government, and appoint a mediator to resolve the crisis.[101] By late August 1939, the crisis continued to escalate with the Senate confiscating on 27 August 1939 stocks of wheat, salt and petrol that belonged to the Polish businesses that were in the process of being exported or imported via the Free City, an action that led to sharp Polish complaints.[102] The same day, 200 Polish workers at the Danzig shipyards were fired without severance pay and their identification papers revoked, meaning that they legally could not live in Danzig anymore.[103] The Danzig government imposed food rationing, the Danzig newspapers took a militantly anti-Polish line, and almost every day there were "incidents" on the border with Poland.[103] Ordinary people in Danzig were described as being highly worried in the last days of August 1939 as it become apparent that war was imminent.[103]

On 24 August, Lipski finally saw Göring and asked him to use his influence to persuade Hitler to abandon all idea of war to end the crisis..[94] Göring, who knew that Y Day was 26 August was not sympathetic as Lipski had expected and instead blamed Britain for the invasion as he argued it as the British "guarantee" of Poland that caused the crisis.[94]

Fall Weiss had been planned for 26 August 1939, but the fact that Britain and France had failed to abandon Poland led Hitler to halt the invasion of Poland and pushed the invasion date back to 1 September to give Ribbentrop more time to sever Britain and France from Poland.[104] Hitler's orders to postpone Fall Weiss for another week did not reach all of the Wehrmacht forces on time. On the morning of 26 August 1939, a number of Wehrmacht units crossed into Poland, where they engaged in much bloody fighting before retiring back into the Reich the same morning when they received word of Fall Weiss's postponement.[105] Coulondre took the news that there had been fighting along the Polish-German frontier alongside the sudden withdrawal of the Wehrmacht as evidence that French deterrence diplomacy was having its effect.[106] On the evening of 27 August 1939, Coulondre wrote a letter to the French Premier Edouard Daladier declaring: "One must hold firm, Hitler faced with force is a man who will climb down".[105]

On 30 August 1939, Forster led a group of Nazis into Burckhardt's house he was placed under arrest and told had been expelled.[107] Forster stated that the swastika would fly over Danzig and that he had two hours to leave Danzig as Forster ensured him: "Personally, I have nothing against you"..[107]

On the morning of 1 September 1939 at 4:45 am the Scheswig-Holstein fired the first shot of World War Two by blasting volley after volley of its 11-inch guns on the Westerplatte.[108]

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