Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Ribbentrop was offering the Poles a Berlin-Warsaw alliance against Russia. Ribbentrop had reason to expect a positive response. Like Hungary, Poland had joined in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia after Munich. As Hitler seized the Sudetenland, the Poles, “like a carrion fish swimming in the wake of a shark,” seized the coal-rich region of Teschen.8 Also, Danzig was 95 percent German. Before Versailles, the town had never belonged to Poland. Danzig had been detached from Germany at Paris and declared a Free City to be administered by a High Commissioner appointed by the League of Nations to give Poland a port on the Baltic. As the Poles were now developing their own port, Gdynia, and could continue to use Danzig, Warsaw no longer needed to rule Danzig. Moreover, the 350,000 Danzigers were agitating for a return to Germany.