TWENTY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE 3211....
2. In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to
the Polish state the spheres of influence of Germany and the USSR shall be
bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula, and San.
The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the mainte-
nance of an independent Polish State, and how such a state should be bounded
can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments.
In any event, both Governments will resolve this question by means of a friendly
agreement.
3. ...
4. This protocol shall be treated by both parties as strictly secret.
For the Govt, of the Plenipotentiary of the
German Reich. Govt, of the USSR.
V. RIBBENTROP V. MOLOTOV.^39
In Polish eyes, the Nazi-Soviet Pact enshrined the Seventh Partition. As soon as
Ribbentrop returned to Berlin, Hitler order the Wehrmacbt to march.
None of which explains why, from beginning to end, the Polish Republic
should have provoked such torrents of abuse from all sides. If Hitler and Stalin
had reason enough to hate it, as an obstacle to their respective designs, the likes
of Keynes, Namier, Carr, and Lloyd George did not. One cannot help speculat-
ing about their dubious motives. But such speculations belong more properly to
the flights and fantasies of the liberal conscience than to the facts of Poland's
unhappy history.
The Second Republic was indeed destined for destruction. But if in 1945, it
was unimaginable that the European order could be reconstituted without a
Polish state, this fact was largely due to the achievements of the Second Republic
in those two unique decades of genuine independence between the first Great
War and the Second.^40