Why the west likes neither Molotov, nor Ribbentrop 4 страница
Here is a typical account by a well-heeled Western historian of the cause of the murderous assault that resulted in the “Crystal Night”: “It was a desperate protest against the unexpected deportation of his parents and 50 thousand more Polish Jews back to Poland, an act accomplished by Gestapo” (source: Bullock, A. P. 205). That is all. Why Gestapo “unexpectedly” deported the Jews to Poland the Western authors do not like to write about. Still less do they like to explain the meaning of the expression “deportation back”.
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Poland. The Polish government’s desire to expel 50 thousand Jews from the country was quite obvious, because the sacred stamp was not a pure formality, and the Polish functionaries were in a position to refuse anyone admission to their country. It goes without saying that only the Jews were at hazard…
Warsaw’s act of law put the authorities of the Third Reich in a dilemma. Hitler’s regime took great pains to expel their “own” Jews from the country, but considering the “alien” Jews from Poland, the situation was still worse. Thanks to the flagrant violation of civil rights by Poland, dozens of thousands of her citizens were deprived of their IDs and homeland, with a dash of the pen. Poland shifted the responsibility for the fate and fortunes of these people onto Germany. But Germany was in no position to deport stateless people, because at that time there was no such practice anywhere. One has the impression that someone was trying hard to incite the Nazi leadership that lacked morality, as it was, to extermination of the Polish Jews, their “headache department”, and the German Jews, if that was the case...
After all, the Germans determined that the Polish Jews whose passports had not been revalidated before October 30, 1938 were illegal immigrants on the territory of Germany. Such a problem would be likely to be viewed in the same way by any modern European state, if the government of another state had expatriated her citizens at a stroke. The German Nazis had com-mitted appalling crimes over the 12 years of their rule, but there is no need to assign blame to them for something they were not guilty of. Therefore it should be stressed that the crisis related to the Polish Jews lies at the door of the Polish authorities! That is what makes Western historians sidestep this issue…
What would the US administration do with 50 thousand Mexicans, if Mexico City had suddenly cancelled their passports, each bearing a long-awaited American visa in the right place? The answer is clear: immediate deportation. That was what the leaders of the Third Reich decided to do. So they acted accordingly: on October 28 and 29 all those with cancelled passports were arrested and trained to the Polish border. The idea was clear: while there were still citizens of Poland, they could be deported from Germany. About 18 thousand unlucky creatures were hustled toward the frontier posts. But the Polish frontier guards did not let the Jews with can-celled passports into the country, so they clubbed and hustled them back to Germany!
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This victimization took place in the Polish border settlement Zbonsin (the Zbonsin incident). Among those hurrying and scurrying across the neutral zone for nearly three days were the relatives of Herschel Grynszpan. There is evidence that the frontier guards on both sides even opened warn-ing machine-gun fire. Finally Poland backed out and acceded to extend the deadline of confirming the Polish citizenship until July 31, 1939 in exchange of Germany’s cessation of violent deportation of the Jews.
Thus, the attempt to provoke The Nazi Germany to massacre failed; though the motive for assassinating a German diplomat was found (his life was attempted later by Grynszpan). It means that an excuse for the upcoming “Crystal Night” was found, too. In all likelihood, the 17-year-old boy that got a letter from his parents describing this travesty of the law was properly instructed. How? There are a lot of ways, for example, he may have received a fake letter with an exaggerated description of the real event, or a description with falsified, though ghastly details. But thanks to the Polish government, Znonsin gave a just cause of offence even without purposefully painting it too black. All that was left to do was to supply the Jewish youth with a pistol and show him the way.
As a matter of fact, the story of this murder is a mystery. It is interesting to follow both the inquest and the young man’s further life. 20 thousand dollars had been raised for the defense of the accused by the Writers Association of America which made it possible to hire Frenkel, the best French counsel for the defense of the day. The murdered German diplomat Ernst von Rath was a homosexual, and that was the detail on which the counsel built the line of defense. There was no mention of harassing the Jews, or any other political motive that might have appealed to the French servants of Themis. The defense brought to mind a second-rate detective story of a young man who was having a love affair with the German diplomat and attempted his life to revenge himself for his lover’s “unfaithfulness”.
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In spite of the apparent simplicity of the case with the murderer, the victim of the murder and the crime instrument, the inquest was hardly in progress. An open trial of that obscure case was so much undesirable that by September 1, 1939, when the Second World War began (10 months after the murder), the proceedings had not begun yet! The young murderer was sent to juvenile prison where he was captured by the Germans when they occupied France, in the summer of 1940. In Germany H. Grynszpan was not imprisoned, but sent to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen where
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they provided him with good conditions. The murderer of the German diplomat had not been seen since. He just disappeared. Only in the 60-ies of the 20th century a German court informed his parents in response for their inquiry that their son had died… on May 8, 1945. Who liquidated the undesirable witness is still in the clouds…
This story triggers a number of questions. It is within reason to suggest, as most historians do, that the German special services had masterminded the murder of their diplomat to have an excuse for racial repressions in the Reich. That is a probability.
But why should the German intelligence service stage a provocation on the French territory? Why complicate the task, whereas the German gov-ernment has a lot more servants of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or any other ministry in Berlin, than anywhere else? Anyone can shoot a desired number of Germans until hell freezes over! Why should they tackle a simple problem in such a complicated way? A person like von Rath could be killed in any Berlin street, with a Jew’s corpse nearby, pistol in hand, to point to the person protesting against the Nuremberg act of law. Any victimized person, like an abused and harassed Jew, has a motive for protesting and killing a Nazi official. It should be noted that 10 years later Hitler wanted a motive to accuse Poland of aggressiveness, and the SS-men concocted it without batting an eyelid1. Did they fail to do what they had managed so well before?
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It is worthy of note that the German intelligence service chose France as a locus in quo. That suggested pursuing the following inquiry by the French police that could hardly be pushed into an agreement. Besides, there was the murderer. Did the Germans want him alive? Suppose the interrogating officer scared him into blurting out the truth? A corpse with a note in his pocket seemed much safer than a live terrorist in the hands of a foreign investigation. It was no problem to organize return fire on the part of the embassy guards. A security officer instructed beforehand hears the shooting and kills the shot. Nobody will be a penny the wiser.
The incident in question is a notorious armed seizure of a radio station in the German border town of Gleiwitz. A group of SS-men in Polish uniforms invaded the radio station, opened fire and even went on the air with a proclamation in Polish. In a while another group of SS-men came to the “captured” building and drove “the Poles” from their positions. To camouflage their actions the intruders left a few corpses of some earlier shot prisoners in Polish military apparel.
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There are other curious particulars, too. The German intelligence that is evidently fond of solving problems keeps Grynszpan in confinement until the end of the war — to the last day!
If the Moor has done his duty, why not let him go? Why keep a witness alive, though it makes more sense to cover tracks, like any intelligence service does? Is the Germen intelligence an exception? Are they sorry for the Jewish boy that, according to the Nazi ideology is a “subman” (Untermensch). Most likely, if the Germans spare a person who knows something important, they design to play this person against someone else. The question is: what is it that the youth provoked to assassination by the German intelligence knows? Could it be that it was not the German intelligence that engineered the assas-sination? The Germans may have spared a valuable witness of their Western partners’ operation to the last day, his SS-guards executing an instruction punctually: to liquidate Grynszpan at the last moment. That is a probability.
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There is also a probability that the German special services were not involved in the affair. Then the secret services of the Allies may have gained access to any place and liquidated Grynszpan, because it was the 8th of May, when Germany signed its capitulation. But why kill him? The answer is: the youth was a witness of how the West had incited the Nazis to commit anti-Jew crimes in order to disguise their future war against Germany as a humanitarian mission. The version of engineering this provocation by the British and French special services fits the facts of the “wrong” blood transfusion (in a French hospital, too!) and the dragging of the case as long as possible to prevent the accused from blurting out the truth. But this is only a version. Hopefully, some future historians will be able to pour some light on the dark business that took place in Paris…
It is time to turn back to the Polish-German amity. Such “trifles’ as the Zbosin incident could not torpedo the good-neighborly relations between the countries. While Hitler was so far ready to honor his agreement with the West, in his relations with Poland he was set on two major objectives:
to return the territories annexed by Poland after World War I, 2) to ren-der military support to the Polish army before attacking the USSR. As the second objective was more important, he treated the first, rather sensitive question as tactfully as he could. Later on Adolf Hitler would be demonized by historians who would emphasize his aggressive and insidious nature. This is quite true: the head of Nazi Germany was aggressive and insidious toward Russia. But Poland he treated like a gentleman — until the Poles —
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on command from London — plagued their relations with Germany in the most outrageous manner.
The above-quoted Professor Wieczorkiewicz agrees with this interpreta-tion of events: “On October 24, 1938 during the talks between Ribbentrop and Lipski the German side presented the demands which I would rather call a package, because initially they did not have the nature of an ultima-tum. The aim was to tie Poland with the Reich’s policies. If Rzeczpospolita accepted these demands, she would not have suffered any considerable damage. Gdansk (German Danzig) was not then a Polish city, and a high-way across the corridor was the idea of Polish diplomacy of the 30-ies with the aim of smoothing the bilateral relations between Poland and Germany, though few people remember about this. In exchange for this concession, Germany proposed extending the non-aggression pact and Poland’s joining the Antikominternpakt signed between Germany and Japan”1.
In preparation for a joint German-Polish expedition against the USSR the German leadership proposed a peaceful and civilized solution of the territorial problem. To settle this problem the Germans wanted to hold a referendum on the disputed territory. If the inhabitants of the so called corridor decided to return the German citizenship, Poland was supposedto acquire both an exterritorial railway and a highway to have access to the Baltic Sea. In case Poland held the corridor, Germany was supposed to have such exterritorial facilities. Besides, it was not for nothing that Hitler asked Poland to return Danzig. He intended to guarantee Poland’s new borders, to extend the non -aggression pact and to ensure the exclusive rights of Poland in Danzig2. Ukraine was supposed to make good with a vengeance the territories that Poland was going to lose. It was a good deal, but Poland refused, which grieves modern historians.
Danzig (Gdansk) had the status of a free town. In diplomatic practice this term applies to a temporary freeze of territorial disputes between states. The victors in World War I chose this method to avoid a military conflict between Germany and Poland. The status of Danzig was a kind of moral compensation to Germany for forming the enclave of East Prussia separated from the major part of the German land by the borders of New Poland. The city with a population of 407 thousand turned into a sover-
The newspaper Rzeczpospolita. 28.09.2005.
Bullock, A. P. 217.
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eign state under the aegis of the League of Nations. Danzig enjoyed great autonomy and, in point of fact, became Germany’s other enclave mainly populated by ethnic Germans. Even its monetary unit was not the Polish zloty, but the local mark that was equal to the German 100 pfennigs. The state of Poland was represented in Danzig by a commissar in charge of running all Polish affairs in the city and the surrounding area, rendering assistance to the citizens of Poland in Gdansk, supervising observance of their rights, maintaining communication between the Republic of Poland and the High Commissioner of the League of Nations.
A great number of documents testify to the desire of the Poles to seize as much Ukrainian land as possible. For example, Mr. Karszo-Siedlewski, Poland’s ambassador in Iran, said to a German diplomat: “The political perspective for the European east is clear. In a few years Germany will be at war with the Soviet Union… The best solution for Poland would be to take a definite stand on the side of Germany before the conflict, because her territorial interests in the West and political aims in the East, namely in the Ukraine, may be guaranteed only by means of an early agreement between Poland and Germany”1.
With Hitler so far acting according to the scenario of attacking the USSR, the Polish leaders behaved in a nice and friendly way. January 1939 saw Ribbentrop’s visit to Warsaw where the Polish and German Foreign Ministers exchanged speeches, in which they confirmed the phase of “defi-nitely establishing good-neighborly bilateral relations”. Making a speech in Berlin on January 30, 1939, Hitler called the German-Polish amity during the disturbing time of splitting Czechoslovakia “a decisive factor in the political life of Europe” and said that the Pact2 was “essential for preserving peace in Europe”.
One may compare the relations between Poland and Germany with ball-room dancing. In the period of late 1938 — early 1939 “the male partner”, Mr. Germany, was cuddling his “female partner”, Miss Poland. At first, as befits a decent girl, the Polish female put on some airs; she would not consent at once, but gave to understand that the partner suited her. Then suddenly Miss Poland rudely pushes off her partner and goes as far as to give him a slap in the face. How could it have happened? Why did the
Source: The Crisis Year of 1938–1939: Documents and materials. M., 1990. V. 1. P. 162.
The Polish-German non-aggression pact, signed in 1934.
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friendly relations between the “male” Germany and the “maidenly” Poland come to a military conflict?
The relations between Poland and Germany after Hitler’s coming to power were really very good. But the political solutions of Warsaw were controlled by English and French diplomats. That was why the degree of Poland’s “love” of Germany was measured far beyond the Polish borders…
When did the Poles change their attitude to Germany? The historians give an unambiguous answer: March 21, 1939. It was on that day that Ger-many allegedly presented an ultimatum insisting on immediate cession of Danzig and “the corridor”1. But it was a lie. The Germans did not propose anything new to the Poles and expected the Poles to respond to their old reasonable proposal. They expected a response from Mr. Beck, Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs who was being waited for in Berlin. But instead of the minister, the ambassador Lipski came. The German Minister of Foreign Affairs Ribbentrop was concerned about two questions: 1) Was Warsaw prepared to accept the German proposal? 2) Why had Minister Beck who was to have arrived in Berlin on an official visit to finalize the bilateral pactleft for London, instead of Berlin?2
The Polish ambassador answered neither of these questions. But the answers are evident. No sooner had Hitler had the cheek to handle the Slovakia and Ukraine questions the wrong way, than the voice of the British policy changed. As a result, the “independent” Polish gentlemen changed their kindly manners. On March 21, 1939 England “unexpectedly” proposed that the USSR and France should sign a declaration concerning immedi-ate consultations on measures of curbing “further aggression in Europe”. On that same day the Western leaders met in London to decide what to dowith Hitler who had got out of control. “Independent” Poland’s Minister Beck was also there. He did not go there in vain, as he was instructed there on the subject of “the party’s new policy”. Now, the policy of soft-handling in relation to Germany was to be replaced by the toughest possible line.
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