415)įinally realizing that Hitler could not be negotiated with, London and Paris gave public guarantees to Warsaw for Polish security on 31. In fact, even the pre-Hitlerite Weimar Republic rejected Polands existence, as the following excerpt from Hans von Seeckt, head of the Reichswehr in 1922, shows:Ĭlick to expand. Immediately afterwards Hitler began to make demands on Poland for Gdansk (Danzig) and for a solution to the Polish Corridor problem.
Hitlers Germany showed its true intentions towards the region, encouraged by the 1925 Treaty of Locarno, when in March 1939 the Germans broke their 1938 agreement with Britain and France over Czechoslovakia by occupying Bohemia and Moravia, and declaring Slovakia an independent (puppet) state. Hitler had proclaimed both Poland and Czechoslovakia to be the bastards of Versailles, artificial creations in Hitlers eyes who had illegally taken up historically German lands. Poland had been anticipating it for five years. The German invasion of Poland came as a surprise to no one. The Battle of Bzura River, the last offensive action taken by the 1939 Polish Army, was about to begin. With French assurances of a massive invasion of western Germany, Rydz-Smigly gave the go-ahead for a Polish offensive southwestwards from Warsaw to relieve pressure on the capital and buy some time before the French invasion of Germany that could save Poland.
Kraków, the countrys second largest city, had already fallen three days before. The Polish united front had been smashed over the past week + of fighting and now the Wehrmacht was threatening Warsaw. General Rydz-Smigly, head of all Polish forces, had just received from General Gamelin in France assurances that the French invasion of Germany underway would increase in volume and provide a serious distraction for the Wehrmacht to take some pressure off Poland.
September, 1939, nine days after the German invasion of Poland had begun.
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