There has been, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, lots of discussion of Poland, and how World War II started. Some of the commentary, especially the comments by Vlad Putin blaming Poland for the start of World War II,  and not Adolph Hitler, have created quite a stir. From my perspective Putin’s comments were not really surprising as he has been using the German playbook from that period. What happened in the run-up to the German invasion of Poland in 1939, and how did Germany, and the Soviet Union, view the Polish state? Are there similarities to how Putin views the Ukrainian state?

World War II started when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. The British and French, having guaranteed Polish borders, declared war. The German invasion provided the casus belli, but it was the culmination of a series of aggressive German actions that finally pushed the French and the British into action. These prior German actions, well covered in history, included assimilating the State of Austria (the Anschluss) by invasion,  and then making territorial demands on Czechoslovakia that were settled in favor of Germany by the British at Munich, where Czechoslovakia was carved up, and a major piece handed to Hitler’s Germany. We will look at some additional detail on these events, but the first lesson is that an aggressor state is not likely to be placated by attempts to “settle” disputes when its territorial ambitions are clearly larger than the immediate issue at hand. Hitler digested the Sudetenland and Austria, but his grievances and hunger for additional territory could not be satisfied by those concessions. Aggressor states, for all of the lying about short term intentions, usually have stated long term goals fairly clearly. That was the case with Hitler. It is quite clearly the case with Putin.

The tactics and rationales used today by Putin relative to Ukraine are not similar to the German rationales used in the run-up to World War II. They are identical. Putin has said plenty about the Russian rationale for the invasion of Ukraine. We have heard that Ukraine is not a “real state” and that the government of Ukraine was committing “genocide” against the Russian population. Putin points out that Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, and that the “artificial separation” of Ukraine into a state within the Soviet Union was an invention of Lenin and the Soviet Communist Party. His early interventions in East Ukraine were driven by these claims of genocide.

“How else can one interpret the shelling of residential areas by Ukrainian Armed Forces using multiple rocket launchers or the discovered mass grave sites of almost 300 civilians near Lugansk, who were killed only because they considered Russian as their native language?”

Anatoly Antonov Russian Ambassador to U.S. (on Facebook)

Hitler would make use of the same technique in his propaganda war against Czechoslovakia in the run up to the Munich Conference, demanding the return of the geographic area inside

Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland where there were 3 million ethnic Germans residing. Hitler controlled the German political apparatus in the Sudetenland and used that apparatus to create a political firestorm inside Czechoslovakia. With civil disorder inside Czechoslovakia the government did respond, attempting to quell the chaos, and to negotiate with the Sudeten Nazi leader Konrad Heinlein. The attempts to restore civil order were characterized by Hitler as attacks and atrocities being committed by the Czech authorities against the German population. Heinlein was called to Berlin to be given his marching orders. German foreign office documents described his instructions from Hitler:

“Hitler’s instructions, as revealed in a Foreign Office memorandum, were that ‘demands should be made by the Sudeten German Party  which are unacceptable to the Czech government.’ As Heinlein himself summarized the Fuehrer’s views, ‘We must always demand so much that we can never be satisfied.’ “

Shirer, William, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” pg. 359

So we see the use of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and the German use of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia. What about the issue raised by Putin that Ukraine is not a real state? Even that is poached from the Hitlerite playbook.

As we move further from World War II the historical memory becomes a little less sharp. It is generally remembered that the Germans, and especially Hitler, despised the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty imposed some harsh conditions on the Germans after World War I, and those are generally remembered as financial burdens, imposed through reparations. But there was a lot more to the Treaty of Versaille than reparations. There were major relocations of borders, and the creation of nation-states that had not prior existed. This was the case for Czechoslovakia.

“Why did Chamberlain go to Munich? What could he have hoped to accomplish by brokering the transfer to Hitler of a Sudetenland that held the mountain fortifications of Czechoslovakia, loss of which would put Prague at the mercy of Berlin? To answer these questions we must go back to 1919. At Paris, 3.25 million German inhabitants of Bohemia and Moravia had been transferred to the new Czechoslovakia of Thomas Masaryk and Eduard Bones in a flagrant disregard of Wilson’s self-proclaimed ideal of self determination. Asked why he had consigned three million Germans to Czech rule, Wilson blurted, ‘Why, Masaryk never told me that!’ H.N. Brailsford, England’s leading socialist thinker on foreign policy, had written in 1920 of the Paris peace: ‘The worst office was the subjection of over three million Germans to Czech rule.’ Austrian historian Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn describes the polyglot state the men of Paris had created: The Czechs numbered 47 percent of the population of Czechoslovakia. It was only by “annexing” the Slovaks, much against their expressed will, into a hyphenated nation which had never existed historically that they suddenly became a “majority.” In fact, there were more Germans (24.5%) in Czechoslovakia  than Slovaks. But by clever gerrymandering devices the Czechs maintained a parliamentary majority and exercised an oppressive rule which drove the German minority  (inexactly called “Sudeten Germans) into a rebellious and disloyal nationalism that would evolve into national socialism.”

Buchanan, Patrick “Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War” pg. 214

Hitler hated the Czech state, and considered its very existence to be an outrage, an artificial creation of Versailles. As the British and the French negotiated over the demands of Hitler which culminated in the Munich conference their position eventually became that the Czechs were going to have to give up territory based on the essential soundness of the German position as well as the military threats being brandished by Hitler. The French and the British also  believed Hitler’s assurances that the settling of the Sudetenland question would resolve his territorial demands and would not present a threat to what would be left of the Czech state. (“This is my last territorial demand in Europe.”) They would soon learn a very hard lesson. The Munich Agreement, reached without the participation of the Czech government, are instructive politically and militarily. After the agreement was reached the French attempted to offer condolences to the Czech foreign minister, who responded presciently.

“The French Minister’s attempt to address words of condolence to Krofta was cut short by the Foreign Minister’s remark: ‘We have been forced into this situation; now everything is at an end; today it is our turn, tomorrow it will be the turn of others.’ “

Shirer, William, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” pg. 420-421

The turn of others would come in short order. But as you look at the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia you hear some of the same discussion points today. It is not our problem, Ukraine is a fake state that has a large ethnic Russian population, and the military might of Russia is simply too much for Ukraine in any case. Cede territory to Russia and simply call it a day. After the forced turnover of 11,000 square miles of Czech territory to Germany Hitler demanded a change of government in Prague, which happened immediately. President Benes not only resigned but was forced to leave the country, wisely, as his personal safety was at risk. Hitler’s guarantee of the rump Czech state was a sham from the moment he gave it. A top secret directive issued by Hitler to the military  on October 21, 1938 called for “the liquidation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia.” With the German government refusing to offer the guarantees required by the Munich and the Germans fomenting separatist sentiment in what was left of Czechoslovakia, Hitler sent German troops into rump Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, ending  the state of Czechoslovakia. Daniel Henninger, in the Wall Street Journal, looked at some of these similarities:

“Months later in the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, attempting to avert war, conceded that Hitler could occupy the German-speaking territories of Czechoslovakia in return for promising no further territorial expansions. Mr. Putin has justified his invasion of eastern Ukraine in part on the basis of Russian speakers there and has made similar threats against Latvia on behalf of Russian-speaking minorities. Last week the Russian police put Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas on its wanted list for the “desecration of historical [Russian] memory.”

Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal February 21, 2024

Henninger, a conservative columnist, asks the right questions in that piece.

“For starters, what did Mr. Trump mean when he said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours? Does he in fact mean Mr. Putin should be allowed to annex eastern Ukraine? Would he withdraw the U.S. from the roughly 50-nation Ukraine Defense Contact Group? Would he cede Russian-speaking areas of the Baltics to Mr. Putin? I would ask Mr. Trump if he thought the Munich Agreement was a mistake in 1938, or just poorly negotiated.”

Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal February 21, 2024

It did not take long for Poland to realize its “turn” as Adolph Hitler began to create the same type of trouble in Danzig that he created in the Sudetenland. With tensions escalating there occurred a serious diplomatic back and forth between Germany and Great Britain in advance of the German invasion. When the Poles refused to send a plenipotentiary to Berlin to negotiate the Germans published what they described as their final negotiating position. Even William Shirer acknowledged that the published position of Hitler was a “generous” one.

“Compared to his demands of recent days, they were generous, astonishingly so. In them Hitler demanded only that Danzig be returned to Germany. The future of the Corridor would be decided by a plebiscite, and then only after a period of twelve months when tempers had calmed down. Poland would keep the port of Gdynia. Whoever received the Corridor in the plebiscite would grant the other party extraterritorial highway and railroad routes  through it-this was a reversion to his “offer” of the previous spring. There was to be an exchange of populations and full rights accorded to nationals of one country in the other.”

Shirer, William, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” pg. 582

This “offer” is the basis of Putin’s remarks blaming Poland for the start of World War II. Hitler, before he made it, had issued the order for “Case White,” the German invasion of Poland. Putin’s remarks were not the first time the Poles had been blamed. Pat Buchanan’s book, “Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War” put forward the same proposition many years ago.

“But no war is inevitable until it has begun. What made a European war “only a matter of time” was not Hitler’s occupation of Prague but Britain’s guarantee to Poland. Had there been no war guarantee, Poland, isolated and friendless, might have done a deal over Danzig and been spared six million dead. Had there been no war guarantee of March 31, there would have been no British declaration of war on September 3, and there might have been no German invasion of France in May 1940, or ever. For there was nothing inevitable about Hitler’s war in the west.”

Buchanan, Patrick “Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War” pg. 293

So Buchanan also blames the British, and the book, which caused a firestorm of criticism, lays much of the blame for the war on the Poles and the Allies.

Many people see the identical playbook that Putin is using, from the claims of genocidal attacks on ethnic Russians to the charge of being a non authentic state. The idea that Poland should have capitulated to German demands, even if you accept that the Polish diplomatic effort was clumsy, is a perversion of history, and ignores Hitler’s prior treatment of Austria and Czechoslovakia. Hitler was a man of the right, and so is Putin. Pat Buchanan ultimately, in my view, would have preferred western acquiescence, if not support, for German aggression against the Soviet Union. That would come.

Finally Daniel Henninger’s questions in his recent column bring us back to Munich. What is the current American belief on Munich? Poland in 1939 most certainly was not a democracy. Should the west have given a guarantee to Poland? It looks like the upcoming Presidential race may have many revisiting the events of 1938-1939? I was sure I knew where most stood on that issue. I am not so sure anymore.