Poland Between Two Totalitarian Powers (1933 - 1939)

Marek Kornat: Poland Between Two Totalitarian Powers (1933 - 1939)

In 1939 Poland lost its independence for many years. The country became a victim of two totalitarian powers: Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Was there any possibility for interwar Poland to avoid this?

Debates on Polish foreign policy between 1934 and 1939 have to take into account discussions on the Versailles peace treaty. For many Western politicians and intellectuals at that time, such as John Maynard Keynes, the international order of Versailles appeared to be impracticable. Also today many historians regard the Versailles system as a fatal mistake in European history. Yet some of them claim, that the policies of “small countries” contributed to the catastrophe in 1939 as well. In the opinion of Polish historians, however, not the instability of the Versailles order but the aggressive policies of Germany and the Soviet Union led to the collapse of Versailles, which was not effectively defended by its creators. The lecture reassesses Polish foreign policy in the interwar period and attempts to answer the question whether Poland really had a chance to prevent its own destruction.

Marek Kornat is Lecturer of History at the Polish Academy of Science and Professor of History of International Relations at Cardinal Wyszyński University, Warsaw. Currently he is a Visiting Fellow at the IWM, Vienna.

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