runs, would have followed the attack on Poland
with an invasion of the Soviet Union. Would this
not have been in Britain’s and France’s interest?
The speculation about benefit is highly dubious.
The evidence, moreover, is by no means so con-
clusive. At various times after Munich Hitler spoke
of having to strike at France first before turning
eastwards, on other occasions of finishing Poland
first. He hoped by coercion and cajolery to keep
Britain neutral. Logically the strategy of the light-
ning war suggested a quick campaign against
Poland, then France, before resuming the war in
the east again. In any case this was the path Hitler
followed. Our uncertainty concerns only his timing
and strategic priorities.
Hitler’s well-tried step-by-step policy of
aggrandisement entered a new phase in 1939. He
recognised that further bloodless successes were
unlikely; he welcomed the opportunity of war,
preferably against a small, weaker neighbour.
Britain and France fought in September 1939 not
because Hitler had then forced war on them.
They fought because there could no longer be
any doubt about the pattern of Hitler’s violence
nor about his ultimate goals. It would have been
madness to allow him to pick off his victims one
by one and to choose his time for overpowering
them while reassuring those whose turn had not
yet come. Belatedly, by September 1939, Hitler
was no longer able to call the tune. For
Chamberlain, Hitler’s choice of how to settle his
Polish demands was the ultimate test.
The intricate diplomacy of the powers from
March to September 1939 can only be briefly
summarised here. The British and French govern-
ments were still seeking a settlement with Hitler
and were even prepared to make far-reaching
concessions to him after March 1939. They had
accepted his seizure of Memel on the Baltic only
a week after his entry into Prague. Poland, more-
over, had not been guaranteed unconditionally.
Its frontiers were not regarded as inviolate. As
in the case of Czechoslovakia, if Hitler made
‘reasonable’ demands the Western powers hoped
that the Poles would be ‘reasonable’ too. What
the two Western powers ruled out, however, was
that Hitler should simply seize what he wanted
by launching with impunity a war against Poland.
In October 1938 Poland was first approached
by the Nazi foreign minister Ribbentrop with
demands that it return Danzig to Germany, create
an extra-territorial corridor to East Prussia and
join with Italy and Japan in the anti-communist
alignment known as the Anti-Comintern Pact.
Then in January 1939 the Polish foreign minister
Colonel Beck visited Hitler and was offered a
junior partnership as Germany’s ally, with pro-
mises of Czech territory and the Soviet Ukraine.
During the earlier Czech crisis Hitler had already
been helpful in permitting the Poles to acquire the
Czech territory of Teschen. It seems that because
of Poland’s strong anti-communist past, and the
‘racial’ mixture of Balt and Slav in the population,
Hitler was ready to see the ‘best’ Polish elements
as a suitable ally. Anti-Semitism and the Polish
government’s desire to force Poland’s own Jewish
population into emigration was another link
between them. But the Poles proved stubborn.
They overestimated the worth of their own army
and with a population of more than 34 million
regarded themselves as almost a great European
power. The cession of territory was anathema to
them; in Polish history cession of territory had
been the prelude to partition.
Hitler had offered the Poles what amounted to
an alliance in the east. Later, during the war
against the Soviet Union, other Slav nations, the
Slovaks and Croats, were to become allies. Does
this mean that Hitler was flexible about his defi-
nition of ‘subhumans’ other than the Jews? Might
Poland have been spared the carnage that fol-
lowed? For 3 million Poles who were Jews the
outcome would have been no different; for the
rest of the Poles, of whom another 3 million were
murdered, the great majority would probably
have survived the war as the Czechs did. But the
rejection by the Poles of Hitler’s offers as late as
1939 sealed their immediate fate.
Beck’s rejection and the Anglo-French guar-
antee determined Hitler to smash the Poles at the
first opportunity. In May 1939 Germany and Italy
ostentatiously signed the bombastically named
Pact of Steel which, by its terms, committed Italy
to go to war whenever Hitler chose that Germany