The Danzig crisis was an important prelude to World War II. The crisis lasted from March 1939 until the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939. The crisis began when tensions escalated between Nazi Germany and the Second Polish Republic over the Free City of Danzig (present-day Gdańsk, Poland). The city, since the early 14th century largely German-speaking, had been ruled variously by Polish and German authorities in its long history. After the Partition of Poland, it had been ruled by Prussia from 1793 and the German Empire from 1871.
At the end of World War I the city came under the governance of the League of Nations (via the Treaty of Versailles) and was placed under a settlement that aligned it with Poland for external affairs, despite the fact that this arrangement was opposed by the local population. As part of his aggressive foreign policy after the Nazi rise to power, Adolf Hitler sought to bring Danzig back under German control, and also wished Poland to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact. Poland refused these initial demands, and Hitler began to plan a full-scale invasion, informing his subordinates that he was no longer interested in a peaceful settlement.
Despite Britain and France guaranteeing Poland's territorial integrity, key German officials such as Joachim von Ribbentrop were convinced that Britain and France would not go to war over Poland. The crisis reached its peak when Germany, on 1 September 1939, invaded Poland in the planned Fall Weiss. Following the invasion, Britain and France declared war on Germany, thus beginning the Second World War. The Danzig issue, therefore, was central to the breakdown of diplomacy and the onset of the war in Europe.
Background
End of World War I
On 8 January 1918, the U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the 14 Points as the American war aims. Point 13 called for Polish independence to be restored after the war and for Poland to have "free and secure access to the sea", a statement that implied the German deep-water port of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland), located at a strategic location where a branch of the river Vistula flows into the Baltic Sea, should become part of Poland. Danzig was known as the "Amsterdam of the East" owing to its strongly Dutch-style architecture and its traditional role as a trading center that linked the markets of eastern Europe to the wider world. At the Paris peace conference in 1919, two of the "Big Three" leaders—Wilson and the French premier Georges Clémenceau—supported the Polish claim to Danzig, but the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was opposed under the grounds that the population of Danzig was about 90% German.
In a compromise, it was agreed that Danzig would become a Free City that would belong to neither Germany nor Poland, but the latter was to have special rights in the city. The city-state would govern itself via a volkstag (people's assembly) while executive council was the Senate, but the League of Nations would appoint a Commissioner to oversee the affairs of the Free City. The Senate president served as the head of government for the Free City. The Polish delegation to the Paris peace conference led by Roman Dmowski had asked for the cession of Danzig to Poland, and within Poland the creation of the Free City was widely seen as a betrayal of Point 13. The Polish position was always that Poland needed Danzig to be economically independent of Germany as Danzig was where most of Poland's exports and imports to the wider world went through. The loss of Danzig did indeed deeply hurt German national pride and in the interwar period, German nationalists spoke of the "open wound in the east" that was the Free City of Danzig. The precise legal status of Danzig was ambiguous as the American historian Elizabeth Clark noted: "...few experts, whether Polish, French or German, agreed on a legal description of the city, whether it was a sovereign state, a state without sovereignty, a Polish protectorate or a League of Nations protectorate". The Free City had some of the markers of sovereignty such as its own police force, anthem, flag, currency and stamps.
French alliances in central and eastern Europe
In February 1921, France and Poland signed a defensive alliance committing both powers to go to war in the event of an attack by Germany. The alliance with Poland was the cornerstone of the cordon sanitaire, as the French system of alliances in Eastern Europe were known, as France signed defensive alliances with Czechoslovakia in 1924, Kingdom of Romania in 1926 and Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1927. At the time the alliances were signed, the Rhineland was demilitarized and occupied by the French Army, which was in a strong position to launch an offensive deep into Germany. The Rhineland, with the broad Rhine river and its steep hills, formed a natural defensive barrier and beyond the Rhineland was the wide open North German plain, which favored offensive operations.
End of the French occupation of the Rhineland, Maginot Line
In June 1930, the French ended the occupation of the Rhineland five years earlier than the Treaty of Versailles had called for. As nobody in the French government actually expected the Germans to abide by the Treaty of Versailles, it was assumed that the Rhineland would be remilitarized at some point in the near future. The construction of the Maginot Line, beginning in 1929, can be seen as a tacit admission of this. The Maginot Line implied a defensive strategy in the event of war, which created a major strategic problem, namely how France would aid its allies in Eastern Europe should Germany turn east instead of west.
Situation in Danzig 1932
The city-state of Danzig was widely considered to be "the most dangerous city in Europe" as the Free City was a flashpoint in German–Polish relations that could cause a war at any moment. Throughout its existence, the German and Polish populations of Danzig clashed over a number of issues while relations between the Free City and Poland were antagonistic. Since Poland was allied to France, any German–Polish war would automatically become a Franco–German war, thereby starting another world war. A speech given by a British journalist in October 1932 noted: "Germany intends to have Danzig and the Corridor. I have no brief for her. I deplore the fact that several million Germans would shed blood for this cause, but since it is a fact and the Poles certainly cannot be talked out of their territory, how will the matter be settled except by arms? I believe there must be a war in Europe; the best we can hope for is that it will be over soon, and that it will not spread".
Hitler in power
On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler became Reichskanzler (Nazi seizure of power). The Danzig Nazis took over the Free City of Danzig, and thereafter, the leadership of the Free City followed the line set by Berlin. It was always the intention of Hitler to have the Free City of Danzig "go home to the Reich", but knowing that the Polish government was unwilling to see any alteration in the status of the Free City he did not press the matter in the early years of the Third Reich. The leadership of the Danzig Nazis was highly dysfunctional with power being shared by two feuding leaders, Albert Forster and Arthur Greiser. Forster was the Gauleiter of Danzig while Greiser served as the Senate president. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote: "The two could not abide each, and the very fact that both were faithful followers of Hitler only made them rivals for the latter's affection and support. What one wanted, the other automatically rejected, and vice-versa; only the occasional intervention of Hitler himself could bring them temporarily to the same course—until they parted company again on the next issue". Franco–Polish relations became increasingly strained with the French charging that the Poles only valued the alliance for the protection it afforded them against Germany.
In May 1935, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, Poland's de facto leader since the May coup of 1926, died and was replaced by a triumvirate. The new leadership of the Sanacja regime, as the Polish military dictatorship was known, was divided about the course of action to be pursued. The commander of the Polish Army, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły favored incorporating the Free City into Poland while the Foreign Minister, Colonel Józef Beck was more open to a compromise. Beck favored the idea of "Third Europe", a bloc of East European nations to be led by Poland and was willing to accept a German–Polish condominium over Danzig in exchange for German support for the "Third Europe" concept. However, the Sanacja regime had become unpopular by the late 1930s, and many Poles disliked Beck's foreign policy of weakening ties to France while improving relations with Germany. Polish opposition groups to the Sanacja regime such as the Front Morges led by General Władysław Sikorski accused Beck of being too anti-French and pro-German in his foreign policy. Beck was always very sensitive to the charge that his foreign policy was too pro-German and he was not willing to accept any bullying over the Danzig issue, which he saw as the "barometer" of German–Polish relations. Beck's Third Europe concept failed because Germany had the world's second largest economy and all of eastern Europe was dominated economically by the Reich even before the Second World War, which led to a tendency in eastern Europe to follow the lead of Berlin rather than Warsaw. In 1936, the League of Nations commissioner for the Free City of Danzig, the Irish diplomat Seán Lester, was fired under heavy German pressure for his attempts to protect the rights of Danzig's Jewish minority. The new League of Nations commissioner, the Swiss diplomat Carl J. Burckhardt, was known as an advocate of "restraint" towards the Nazi-dominated government of the Free City, and generally followed a pro-German line. Burckhardt described the office of high commissioner in the Free City as "a slowly dying organ of a decadent institution". In 1939, the population of the Free City of Danzig was 400,000, of whom 17,000 were Polish and 3,000 were Jewish, with 380,000 being German.
The beginning of the crisis
German demand for "overall settlement"
In October 1938, the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, invited the Polish ambassador, Józef Lipski, to meet him in Berchtesgaden. Lipski was confused as to why he could not see Ribbentrop in Berlin and had to go all the way to Berchtesgaden for this meeting that Ribbentrop insisted was extremely important. At their lunch at the Grand Hotel in Berchtesgaden, Ribbentrop told Lipski that he wanted a "Gesamtlösung" ("overall settlement") between Poland and Germany. Ribbentrop wanted Danzig to be returned to the Reich; extraterritorial roads running across the Polish Corridor to link East Prussia with the rest of Germany and for Poland to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact. Lipski told Ribbentrop that he felt it was highly unlikely that Beck would agree to these demands. Alarmed, Lipski on the next day took the train to Warsaw where he met Beck and his deputy Count Jan Szembek. Lipski believed Ribbentrop, and presumably Hitler as well, were determined to see Danzig returned to Germany.
Bonnet advocates end to French alliance system in eastern Europe
Starting in October 1938, the French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet advocated the end of the French alliance system in Eastern Europe and ordered the officials of the Quai d'Orsay to start preparations for renouncing the French alliances with the Soviet Union and Poland. In October 1938 Bonnet spoke before the Foreign Affairs Committee on the Chamber of Deputies, where he testified for his wish to "restructure" the French alliance system in Eastern Europe and of his desire to "renegotiate" treaties which might bring France into a war "when French security is not directly threatened". Bonnet found his efforts to end the eastern alliances blocked by opposition from other members of the French government. During a conversation with a group of Deputies who had formally asked Bonnet to end the alliances in Eastern Europe, Bonnet stated: "If I was free, I would carry out your policy; but I am not: I would have against me the majority of the Cabinet, led by Reynaud and Mandel, and I cannot count on Daladier, for Gamelin believes that in the event of war Polish military assistance would be indispensable".