This lecture is a further discussion of the Munich agreement of 1938, and its consequences. Overall, Hitler's handling of the crisis with Czechoslovakia in 1938 was the first in a series of major, major mistakes by Germany, and the first in a series of disasters produced by the appointment of Ribbentrop as foreign minister. In diplomacy, personal relationships matter. Ribbentrop's personal relationships with the British could be summed up in one word: a disaster. Ribbentrop even went so far as to restrict the presence of the German Ambassador Derksen in London. A good part of the time, he wasn't even allowed to do his job. So, relations between Germany and England largely consisted of meetings in Berlin between Ribbentrop and the British ambassador, Henderson.
Now, Henderson was a well-meaning man but he wasn't very intelligent, and this would lead to a whole series of problems and missed communications. Ribbentrop hated the British because he felt he'd been humiliated in Britain, and his mission had failed. The British, in turn, did not trust Ribbentrop. This is a very bad situation for two world powers, and it's an invitation for trouble. Now, at Godesberg, Chamberlain had made a quite reasonable proposal to Hitler for the absorption of the German parts of Czechoslovakia by Germany. Hitler made a tremendous mistake in rejecting these proposals, and letting Europe slide towards the possibility of war. At Munich, Hitler basically went back and accepted Chamberlain's Godesberg proposals. However, in a speech in Berlin, apparently getting emotionally overwrought, he made the absolutely disastrous and ridiculous statement that this was the end of his territorial demands in Europe. Obviously, it was not, so this created further problems for Germany in terms of credibility.
There was also the incident shortly after Munich of Kristallnacht. A very mysterious incident, because it's contrary to most actions of the German government, which did not allow spontaneous or even organized mass mob violence. Apparently, Goebbels convinced Hitler to authorize some sort of mob violence, which was then later authorized by the S.S. - some people think it was authorized by the S.S., nothing could be further from the truth. Himmler was furious about the whole situation, but he received an order via Hitler just to allow the Kristallnacht to take place. Anyway, mobs attacked synagogues throughout Germany, and burned a lot of them down. This was an international public relations disaster of the first order from Germany, and laid the groundwork for war because it made people see Germany as an evil country, so on and so forth. Whether that's justified or not, it was a very, very damaging situation for Germany.
The whole Munich situation, while in some ways is portrayed as a triumph for Hitler, really wasn't. It might've been a net triumph, but it's a triumph that came out of staggeringly bloody cost, and in our view, was kind of a disaster. As a result of letting everything slide out of control towards war at the last minute, Britain and France accelerated enormous armaments programs. The scale of these armaments programs has been not been adequately thought through by historians, because the end result of this is that the military balance of power was going to start changing dramatically against Germany. So, Germany had set in motion some very, very negative trends against itself as a result of Munich. A further result of Munich was that it was pretty much the kiss of death for Japan, Germany's ally, Japan, to want to get involved in Hitler's global plans.
The Japanese had been very disturbed by the handling of the Munich crisis by Germany, and they did not want to be dragged into a war with the Western states - particularly England. As a result, the Japanese in early 1939 refused to go ahead with a further strengthening of the military alliance with Germany, leaving Hitler with really only one major ally - specifically Italy - so, the end result of Munich was a real crisis for German diplomacy. Now after Munich, very, very important developments began to take place. For Hitler to carry out his geopolitical plan, he had to have the cooperation of Poland. Now it's very important to understand who the Polish government was.
Marshall Pilsudsky had served on the German side in World War I. He had been appointed to run Poland by the Germans. He must have been a very compelling guy, because he was able to persuade his fellow countrymen to elect him president in spite of that fact. In the 1920s, Poland fought a terrible war with the Soviet Union. This fact is largely ignored in histories of the situation, which left the Poles with a tremendous fear and hatred of the Soviet Union. In the discussion, so it's important to understand that the Polish government was highly sympathetic to Germany. In late 1938, there was a very fateful meeting between Ribbentrop and the Polish Ambassador to Germany, Lipsky, in Munich. This would be followed up in the early 1939 by a meeting between Hitler, Ribbentrop, and Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, at the Berkoff, and a follow-up meeting between Ribbentrop and Beck after that.
Now, these meetings set the course for World War II. Part of the problem was that Ribbentrop was such an obnoxious person that he had a marvelous ability to antagonize whoever he dealt with. And German relations with Poland were very good. Poland had sided with Germany in the Munich agreement against Czechoslovakia. And as we mentioned, this was a pro-German Polish government. The Polish government was vehemently anti-Soviet, and sponsored nationalist movements that were designed to bring down the Soviet Union. We cannot prove this point, but it is our opinion that there were secret discussions, more than is known between the Germans and the Poles, for an invasion of the Soviet Union, this cannot be determined, but we are highly convinced that such negotiations took place.
Now, what Ribbentrop proposed to the Poles was a so-called settlement of German-Polish differences. Specifically, they wanted Danzig, which was a German city, returned to Germany and a extraterritorial highway conducted across the Polish corridor. These were not unreasonable requests, they were not. In fact, it's very important to understand that Hitler's proposals were virtually revolutionary in terms of German public opinion. These were an enormous concessions to Poland.
What is less well-studied by historians is the second part of what Hitler and Ribbentrop proposed. Which was the joining of the anti-Comintern pact by Poland against the Soviet Union. Now that point is absolutely critical, because in our view, it makes absolutely no sense for Hitler to have made the enormous concessions in terms of German public opinion to the Poles without some kind of quid pro quo.
In late 1939 after the agreement with Russia, Hitler ordered a destruction of records of plans against the Soviet Union throughout the German Foreign Ministries. So, we suspect a good part of this was destroyed, on top of that, a good part of the Polish government was killed off during World War II, and those that survived would hardly be very chatty about the plans to join with Germany in the war against the Soviet Union. So we can't prove this, but we think that there's a lot more to this than that has been known.
Suffice it to say, the the Ribbentrop's efforts did not go over well with the Poles. Ribbentrop subsequently in early 1939 made a visit to Warsaw, which was pretty much of a disaster, and further alienated the Poles. Not only alienated the Poles, Ribbentrop's actions the Poles found extremely threatening, probably with a certain amount of good reason from their point of view, and caused the Poles to look around for allies. Now, this would all have very disastrous consequences. Part of the problem is that the British and the French - particularly the French - lied to the Poles.
The Poles were not too bright, but they weren't idiots. And they understood that any military alliance with France and England required a massive invasion of Germany in order for it to be viable. They had no illusions that if they had to fight the Germans by themselves, they'd get annihilated, contrary to some statements in the postwar period. So, the policy of Britain and France towards Poland was basically a lie, as is documented in our report on this subject from day one. The Poles did not understand that it was a lie. So after the Munich agreement completely fell apart with the German seizure of the rest of Bohemia, Moravia and the secession of Slovakia in March 1939, the Poles were looking around for some further assurance vis-à-vis Germany.
At this time, for political reasons, the British government made a guarantee of Poland this is similar to the May 1938 situation. This was based on false information that there was about to be a German invasion of Poland. In our view, it was a craven political act by Chamberlain, which put Britain in the position of making a unviable military commitment, specifically the defense of Poland, which Britain could not really carry out, unless the French conducted this massive invasion of Germany, which they were not planning to do. This created a dangerous tripwire for war, and we will then discuss the further consequences of this.
In March 1939, on one level Germany stood at the peak of its power having absorbing their Moravia, Austria and the Memel and being at its strongest military position since the disaster of 1918. On another level, however, Hitler's geopolitical plans were in ruins. They were in absolute ruins. The plans for a nonaggression pact with England were completely wrecked. Much more serious was the fact that the plans for joining Poland and invasion of the Soviet Union were largely destroyed. Now the latter point, as we mentioned, is not as farfetched as it sounds. Poland did intend to seize areas of the Soviet Union. They coveted the Ukraine; they had the idea of reestablishing greater Poland, and it's not unrealistic to believe that they would've accepted a military alliance with Germany the way Romania accepted such a military alliance in 1940, allowing German troops to go through Romania in an invasion of the Soviet Union, in return for Romania getting huge areas of territory of the Soviet Union.
That is not far-fetched, because Poland was in a position where it was forced to make a choice - it was either to side with Russia, or it was going to side with Germany. There was no way the Poles would ever side with Russia, in light of the bad feelings all of the Polish government towards Russia. It just wouldn't happen. The Poles, instead, were lied to by the British and the French, and accepted a defense treaty that was basically a fraud from day one, and would lead to the annihilation of Poland in 1939, and the enslavement of Poland until 1991 - basically 50 years of slavery and disaster from the Poles - because Poland's great friends, England and France, America, so on would double-cross the Poles another time in their negotiations with Stalin. So, this was a long pattern of betrayals. The Poles probably would've been better off to have cut a deal with Hitler. He was willing to give them a fairly reasonable deal in 1939. Anyway, that did not happen, and things headed towards a tremendous crisis in 1939.
In April 1939, Hitler repudiated the Anglo-German naval agreement, setting the stage for an ever-deepening conflict with England. Meanwhile, England formalized a defense treaty with Poland. This has got to be one of the most irresponsible and stupid actions ever concocted by incompetence like Chamberlain and Halifax. Basically, committing Britain to go to war to defend - what everybody agreed were - a nonsensical set of borders for Poland in 1918, so on and so forth. But that's what they did. So, Germany was forced into a terrible situation. Hitler - the world as seen from Berlin in 1939 - Britain and France were involved in a massive rearmaments campaign.
Britain's defense treaty with Poland was all but a defacto declaration of war on Germany. You got to understand, this was a struggle between the haves and the have-nots. And what Britain was basically saying is that they were going to keep all their ill-gotten gains; their giant empire, but they were going to block Germany's return to becoming a world power. No German government - social democratic, communist whatever - would ever accept that. This made war between England and Germany almost inevitable. So, things continue to the crisis continued to build. Germany was facing a very impossible situation, similar to that faced by the Kaiser.
Hitler, in a great feat of creativity, and/or desperation, came to decide to seek the unthinkable - a nonaggression pact with Stalin. Now, at the same time, Russia had - hostilities were breaking out between Russia and Japan in the East. So, Stalin was facing a pretty thought-provoking situation himself. Now, a lot of people have criticized Stalin for reaching the agreement with Hitler. We disagree. Stalin correctly saw the British and French leaders as a bunch of charlatans, and he correctly understood that if he signed military agreement with them, they would do the same thing to him that they did the Poles: they would sit back and let him do all the fighting and get slaughtered, and he also was facing the prospect of an invasion from the East, by the Japanese. The latter point is a very critical point in pushing Stalin over the edge to meet, to reach the agreement that he did. So our view - Stalin reached a very logical conclusion, and signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler. Immediately after signing the nonaggression pact with Hitler, Stalin ordered the Russian troops in Siberia to launch an all-out attack on the Japanese. People don't realize the Eastern aspect of this, and the Japanese government collapsed as a result of the Nazi Soviet agreement. Anyway, this set the stage for World War II, and we will discuss that in the upcoming lectures.