German diplomatic demand on Poland
The 1939 German ultimatum to Poland refers to a list of 16 demands by Nazi Germany to Poland, largely regarding the Polish Corridor and status of the Free City of Danzig attached to German demands to negotiate on August 29, 1939. It was announced on German radio that these points had been rejected on September 1, 1939, even though they were never presented to Poland. Like the raid on the Gleiwitz radio station on the same day, Polish "rejection" of the ultimatum served as a pretext for the German invasion of Poland which initiated the Second World War.
Background.
On August 23, the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was reached with the Soviet Union, dividing East-Central Europe into a German and a Soviet Sphere of influence in a secret additional protocol. This was the basis for the German attack on September 1. The Soviet invasion of eastern Poland followed on September 17.
On August 29, 1939, Adolf Hitler told British Ambassador Nevile Henderson that he was ready to resume negotiations with Poland. For this purpose, a Polish plenipotentiary was required to come to Berlin within 24 hours. In principle, Poland and Great Britain were ready to negotiate. Because of Hitler's ultimate demand, the British government decided not to forward it to Warsaw until after the set deadline had expired. It was not until the following noon that the Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski appeared at the Foreign Office and sought an audience with Ribbentrop. Five hours later he was shown in, and since he did not have the negotiating authority demanded by Hitler, Ribbentrop briefly dismissed him with the information that he would inform the "Führer" of this. Thus the German-Polish relations were severed. On the night of August 31, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop read the 16 points to Henderson but, against all diplomatic custom, refused to hand him the relevant document. Since no Polish representative had appeared, the proposal had become void anyway.
As intended by Ribbentrop, the narrow time limit for acceptance of the ultimatum made it impossible for the British government to contact the Polish government in time about the German offer, let alone for the Poles to arrange for a Polish plenipotentiary envoy to arrive in Berlin that night, thereby allowing Ribbentrop to claim that the Poles had rejected the German demands".
By the time of the radio broadcast on the same day, Hitler had already given the order to attack on September 1, 1939.
Commentary.
In 1959, the historian Karl Dietrich Erdmann expressed the view that Poland had refused "to show any objective accommodation in the questions that had to be settled since the unfortunate provisions of the Treaty of Versailles". In doing so, it had weakened its own "moral position" in the face of German "impositions against Polish integrity and independence." In contrast, the historian Klaus Hildebrand points out that the German offer of negotiations was only made as an alibi to its own population. Its decision to go to war had been made long ago. According to Hermann Graml, the 16 points were not intended as a basis for negotiations at all, but to let them "burst." Peter Longerich also emphasizes the "purely propagandistic character" of the 16-point memorandum, since the Germans gave neither the Polish nor the British side the opportunity to comment on it before they began their invasion.
The American historian Gerhard Weinberg described the Henderson–Ribbentrop meeting regarding the ultimatum:When Joachim von Ribbentrop refused to give a copy of the German demands to the British Ambassador [Henderson] at midnight of 30–31 August 1939, the two almost came to blows. Ambassador Henderson, who had long advocated concessions to Germany, recognized that here was a deliberately conceived alibi the German government had prepared for a war it was determined to start. No wonder Henderson was angry; von Ribbentrop on the other hand could see war ahead and went home beaming.
References.
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