The German–Polish declaration of non-aggression

On 26 January 1934 in Berlin the Polish envoy, Józef Lipski, and the Reich Foreign Minister, Konstantin von Neurath, signed a declaration of non-aggression between Poland and Germany. The two governments declared that they would in no circumstances resort to force to settle their disputes and undertook to resolve them directly, through negotiation. The agreement, commonly called a non-aggression pact, was concluded for ten years. Europe received it with astonishment. Since 1919 Polish–German relations had been the most explosive point on the continent, and no government of the Weimar Republic had agreed to any treaty that might look like recognition of the border with Poland. Now it was done by Adolf Hitler, Reich Chancellor for a year, and his partner was Józef Piłsudski, Poland’s de facto leader.

Poland between Locarno and Hitler

From the Polish point of view, the country’s position had been deteriorating since the mid-1920s. In the Locarno Treaties of 1925 Germany recognised its borders with France and Belgium, and Britain and Italy guaranteed them, whereas the border with Poland was left without a guarantee. Germany openly announced that it would seek to change it, and from 1925 it waged a ruinous customs war against Poland. In 1930 France withdrew its troops from the Rhineland ahead of time and began building the Maginot Line, which Warsaw read as a sign that in a war its ally would defend itself behind fortifications rather than strike at Germany. The Franco-Polish alliance of 1921 formally remained in force, but it was losing its value.

Piłsudski therefore pursued what was called a policy of balance: Poland was not to side with either of its two great neighbours against the other, but to establish correct relations with both. The first step was the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, signed in July 1932. From November 1932 Polish diplomacy was directed by the Marshal’s trusted associate, Colonel Józef Beck.

Hitler’s rise to power in January 1933 caused alarm in Warsaw, but also hope of change. In March 1933 Piłsudski ostentatiously reinforced the garrison of Westerplatte in Gdańsk (Danzig). Rumours circulated in Paris and Berlin that the Marshal had proposed a preventive war against Germany to France, but historians still argue over whether any such proposal was ever made, as there are no unambiguous documents. Some scholars believe Piłsudski deliberately fuelled the rumours to frighten Berlin. At the same time, in the spring of 1933, Benito Mussolini was pressing for a Four-Power Pact of Italy, Britain, France and Germany, which Warsaw saw as heralding a “concert of powers” that would decide the borders of smaller states. The pact was signed in July 1933 but never came into force. For Piłsudski it was proof that the West could not be relied upon.

The road to agreement

Hitler proved a different kind of interlocutor from his predecessors. On 2 May 1933 he received the Polish envoy, Alfred Wysocki, and assured him of his peaceful intentions and his wish to act within the framework of existing treaties, which was announced in a joint communiqué. In his Reichstag speech of 17 May he said that the idea of turning Poles or Frenchmen into Germans was alien to him. In the summer, tension in the Free City of Danzig eased, as the Nazis who had recently taken power there, led by the President of the Senate, Hermann Rauschning, concluded agreements with Poland on the port and the rights of Poles. In September in Geneva Beck held talks with Neurath and the Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels.

The breakthrough came with Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations in October 1933. On 15 November Lipski, the new envoy in Berlin, acting on Piłsudski’s instructions, asked Hitler whether the loss of security that Germany’s departure from Geneva meant for Poland could be replaced by direct Polish–German relations. Hitler replied that he saw Poland as a bulwark against Asia, called war a catastrophe for both sides and himself proposed a declaration ruling out the use of force. A joint communiqué renouncing force was issued. At the end of November the German side handed over a draft declaration; the Polish government accepted it in principle, and within a few weeks the text was agreed.

The German Foreign Ministry insisted that the agreement be called a declaration rather than a pact or a treaty. Berlin did not want the document to look like recognition of the border fixed at Versailles. Poland accepted this, but secured a clause protecting its existing commitments, above all the alliance with France.

The text of the declaration

The document was short. The two governments considered that the time had come “to introduce a new phase” in their political relations through direct understanding between the states. They took as their basis the principles of the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 27 August 1928. It was stipulated that their obligations towards third states did not hinder the peaceful development of their mutual relations and were not affected by the declaration, and that the declaration did not extend to matters which under international law were the internal affairs of one of the states. Disputes were to be settled through direct negotiation and, should that fail, by other peaceful means agreed between the parties. “In no event”, however, would the governments resort to force.

The declaration was to remain in force for ten years from the exchange of ratifications. If neither party gave notice six months before the end of that period, it would continue in force and could then be terminated at any time on six months’ notice. President Ignacy Mościcki ratified it on 15 February 1934, and the instruments were exchanged in Warsaw on 24 February. Contrary to rumours spread by the French and Soviet press, the declaration had no secret clauses. None has been found in either the Polish or the German archives, and the Soviet envoy in Warsaw also confirmed this in his report.

The motives of the two sides

For Poland the declaration was a safeguard for a time when Germany was rearming and France was weakening. Piłsudski did not believe the agreement would last. According to the accounts of his associates, he thought good relations with Germany would last a few years at most, and as early as 1934 he ordered his generals to consider which of the two neighbours would become dangerous sooner. The declaration nonetheless bought time for preparations, removed the risk of Poland becoming an object of bargaining among the great powers, and strengthened its position towards France, which now had to take its ally more seriously. Poland did not thereby abandon either its alliance with France or that with Romania, nor its pact with the Soviet Union.

Hitler’s motives were different. After leaving the League of Nations Germany was isolated, and the Reichswehr was still weaker than the Polish and French armies. The agreement removed the threat of preventive action at a time when the Reich was only beginning to rearm. It also struck at the system of alliances with which France surrounded Germany from the east, showing that France’s most important ally in Central Europe was talking to Berlin behind its back. Finally, Hitler gained a propaganda argument: from then on he could say at every opportunity that it was he, and not the democratic politicians of Weimar, who had come to terms with Poland. The common claim that Germany simply wanted to stop Poland from interfering with its rearmament therefore captures part of the truth, but not all of it. Hitler was breaking with the traditional line of German diplomacy and the army, which since 1919 had counted on cooperation with Moscow against Poland. In time he came to see Poland as a junior partner in a future war against the Soviet Union. Between 1935 and 1938 Hermann Göring, who came to Białowieża to hunt, several times sounded out Warsaw about a common policy against Moscow. Poland consistently refused.

Reactions

Britain welcomed the declaration, believing that it removed a dangerous flashpoint. In France it came as a shock: the government in Paris had been informed of the start of the talks, but not of their conclusion, and the press wrote of Polish betrayal. In Prague the Foreign Minister, Edvard Beneš, who had spoken with Beck a few days earlier, called the agreement a stab in the back. In Moscow Izvestia wondered whether it was a German concession or a manoeuvre, and predicted that the arrangement would be temporary. Beck hastened to reassure: in February 1934 he paid a visit to Moscow, and in May Poland extended its non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union until the end of 1945. In April 1934 the French Foreign Minister, Louis Barthou, came to Warsaw; he was trying to build an Eastern security pact that would include the Soviet Union and Germany. Poland was reluctant.

The years of détente

The declaration opened five years of correct Polish–German relations. On 7 March 1934 the customs war was ended, the press and radio of both countries stopped attacking each other, and cultural exchanges developed. In June 1934 the Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, came to Warsaw, gave a lecture on National Socialism and was received by Piłsudski, and in the years that followed Hitler and Göring entertained Polish guests in Germany. In the autumn of 1934 the legations in Berlin and Warsaw were raised to the rank of embassies. Disputes in Gdańsk were settled in direct talks, bypassing the League of Nations. In November 1937 the two governments issued a joint declaration on the treatment of national minorities. Beneath the surface, however, nothing had changed: Germany still did not recognise the border, and in private Hitler spoke of the agreement as a temporary arrangement.

Significance

The 1934 declaration remains controversial to this day. The British historian A. J. P. Taylor believed that it freed Hitler’s hands and broke up the French alliance system, while in communist Poland it was called the “Piłsudski–Hitler pact” and presented as proof of the pro-German policy of the Sanacja regime. Later scholars such as Anna Cienciała and Piotr Wandycz see it as part of a policy of balance intended to protect Poland’s independence from both neighbours. Claims of a secret protocol directed against the Soviet Union, repeated in recent years by Russian intelligence services and politicians, have no basis in any archive.

How durable the agreement was became clear in 1938. After the Anschluss of Austria and the Munich Agreement, Hitler decided that Poland’s turn had come. On 24 October 1938 Joachim von Ribbentrop demanded that Lipski agree to the incorporation of Gdańsk into the Reich and to an extraterritorial motorway and railway line across Pomerania, offering in return a twenty-five-year extension of the declaration and a common policy towards the Soviet Union. Poland refused, and on 31 March 1939 received a British guarantee. On 28 April 1939, in a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler announced that Poland’s agreement with Britain had rendered the 1934 declaration void. This was a unilateral repudiation, contrary to the declaration’s own text, which made no provision for termination during its first ten years. Beck replied in the Sejm on 5 May that Poland did not recognise the notion of peace at any price. Four months later Germany invaded Poland.