An individual can avoid war. In the face of bellicose ultimatums it is always possible for a leader to yield in the name of peace. But although presidents, kings, prime ministers and dictators can perpetually postpone armed conflict, countries can not. At some point the nation will act to defend itself. National will is difficult to break, and when patriots see the sovereignty of their country trampled on, they inevitably become belligerent.
German nationalism -- in the form of Adolf Hitler's cry for Lebensraum and desire for a homogeneous greater Germany -- aroused Germans to a patriotic fervor. German antagonism was the impetus for Polish patriotism. The difference between the two was rather simple. Germans could reinforce (or enforce) their idealism with the army of a Great Power and seize the Free City of Danzig with impunity. The Poles, no matter how awesome they may have thought their army to be, realized that they alone could not hold back the Wehrmacht and were not committed to dying futilely. And, since they were aware that Great Britain had virtually given Hitler Danzig, armed resistance to Germany would have been in vain. However, when Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, offered to guarantee Poland's security, he provided Colonel Joseph Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, with the confidence necessary to produce a confrontation between Polish and German national will. The Second World War was not inevitable until Great Britain signed a mutual assistance pact with Poland in April of 1939.
Immediately after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 John Maynard Keynes loudly proclaimed the injustice of the document. But those who would point to his book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and utilize it to mark the beginning of the Second World War as the conclusion of the first are mistaken. In the final chapter of the book Keynes himself provides several peaceful remedies for the inequities the treaty instituted. The failure of the victories powers to adopt these measures could be called the starting point of the war, but an unjust peace had never before guaranteed a war of revenge. If anything devastating a country should dissuade it from ever fighting again. If the treaty obliterated Germany economically, as Keynes writes, than the it should have prevented a second war and not made it inevitable.
It is also not true that war become inevitable with Adolf Hitler's assumption of power in Germany in 1933. His primary concern was the rectification of the errors he saw in Versailles with the ultimate goal of attaining Lebensraum or the German people. Hitler and the leaders of France and Great Britain repeatedly demonstrated that fulfilling these desires did not mean engaging in armed conflict. On March 7, 1936 the German army moved into the Rhineland -- directly violating Versailles but not, in the eyes of Chamberlain and the French (who were in the middle of elections) meriting a continental war. Austria was formally made part of the Third Reich on November 5, 1937. Less than a year later, on October 10, the Whermacht occupied the Sudetenland. Not only did this final action not bring about armed resistance from Great Britain and France, it could not have been accomplished without their aid.
Yet on September 3, 1939, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany and thus honored their treaties with Poland whose borders had been crossed two days earlier by the German army. The rest of this essay will be devoted to determining why these treaties existed and why the western European powers honored them.
Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime minister from May 1937 until after the War began, thought that German national will could not be suppressed and recognized the merit of German claims to Austria, Czechoslovakia, and the Free City of Danzig. In November of 1919 Hitler was informed of this through Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary. A realignment of influence in Austria and Czechoslovakia was acceptable to France also. The French, however, were bound by the 1921 Franco-Polish treaty and military agreement to come to Poland's aid if that country's sovereignty were to be infringed.
Chamberlain justified this appeasement on the basis of self-determination and the time it would buy -- during which Britain's armed forces could be built up to a competitive level. The French could not write off Czechoslovakia as easily for they had to consider their treaty commitment before they could agree to any of the conclusions reached at the Munich conference. In April 1938 Edouard Daladier brought a more conservative and pro-British perspective to the French government and agreed with Chamberlain's assessment of the situation -- Czech resistance would be futile and fulfillment of French treaty obligations would only lead to a second war. The Czech president, Eduard Benes, found himself forced to accede to German desires. By March 15, 1939 Hitler had annexed most of the rest of Czechoslovakia and delivered the remainder to Hungary (except for a small portion which Poland demanded and received), despite French and British guarantees of its integrity.
Up until this point, a world war was avoidable. Great Britain was not inclined to instigate a war because doing so would only weaken its attempts to restore peace in the Far East. By refusing to honor its treaties unless it had British backing the French demonstrated their willingness to find a peaceful solution to the German problem. That they agreed to Munich and thus abandoned what they considered the strongest anti-German force in central Europe only supports the thesis that war was not inevitable. Hitler himself had no designs on a war with Great Britain and discounted the likelihood of one with France.
After assessing the behavior of France and Great Britain Hitler came to the conclusion that neither would have any serious objections to his annexation of the Free City of Danzig. There had been no sudden shift in the appeasement policy when Hitler annexed Moravia and Bohemia. Although that maneuver may have cost Germany whatever moral advantage it had there were also no allied objections when the Lithuanian city of Memel was annexed into the Reich on March 23 of 1939. This is important because by their lack of protest the French and British sent a signal to Hitler, telling him he had not abrogated his right to incorporate Germanic lands into Germany.
From 1933 onward, but especially from 1937 onward, there were no objections to German expansion. France definitely feared Germanic hegemony, but the Maginot line provided a secure defense and it was easier and safer for France to passively object than to actively enforce. Great Britain did not suffer from Germanophobia, but Chamberlain desired stability and peace and during his tenure as Prime minister seemed to do everything possible to avoid war.
Current historians do not debate that Hitler planned to occupy Poland at some time. In several places he clearly identified the Ukraine as a target of German expansion and although he did not directly state it, there was no way to occupy the Ukraine without occupying Poland. However, after the Munich conference Chamberlain thought he had obtained peace. For this reason he was greatly disturbed when Germany occupied rump Czechoslovakia. The policy of appeasement had lost much of its popular support, but Chamberlain still believed in it. Nevertheless, he had told Hitler that German expansion had to be accomplished peacefully and thought that Germany would maintain a veneer of legality as it had in the past.
Hitler began his negotiations with Poland just as he had those with Austria and Czechoslovakia. The army was instructed to prepare a plan of attack and Hitler began to pressure the Poles to cede Danzig and a corridor through the Corridor. The difference between what would take place next and what had occurred previously was that Poland did not give in and Poland was not pressured by Great Britain or France to give in. Instead, the British offered an unconditional guarantee (which the French also agreed to). According to the guarantee, when Poland felt threatened the British and French could be called on to provide aid. Taylor attributes this shift in policy and the ability of Beck to parlay the agreement into a mutual defense pact to "an underground explosion of public" outrage over German behavior.
Once Beck had his agreement, there was no reason for him to accede to German demands. The Polish people had a fairly strong sense of national pride and, in the words of A.J.P. Taylor, "Beck was not Benes." He had no desire to yield to Germany on Danzig out of fear that such a capitulation would lead to further demands. The British guarantee provided the diplomatic clout he needed to oppose Hitler.
Hitler had planned to march into Poland on August 26, because he assumed that the British and French would find some way to evade their obligations to Poland and fulfill the promise Halifax had made two years prior. When the treaties were ratified on August 25 Hitler postponed his attack and attempted to dissuade Great Britain from intervening. By August 30 he felt he had found just cause to invade when the Poles refused to send a plenipotentiary to negotiate. On September 1 he invaded Poland and on September 3 Britain and France declared war on Germany.
That last sentence may seem rather terse but there does not seem to exist any analysis of the two days between the invasion and the war declarations. The British and the French simply honored their obligations. They had also honored their treaties to Czechoslovakia. The annexation of the Sudetenland was technically a voluntary one as Benes agreed to forfeit the region. By not stopping the annexation Britain and France were violating the spirit, but not the letter, of the agreement. The Polish treaty was a different matter. If the Poles felt they needed aid the French and British were obligated to provide it. Thus despite Poland being less defensible than Czechoslovakia and further from France, the two guarantors could find no loophole through which they could escape.
German foreign policy, as articulated in the Hossbach memorandum, specifically called for the destruction of an independent Austria and an independent Czechoslovakia. German designs on the Ukraine required the occupation of some of Poland. Hitler was not one to throw away a gift and he remembered what Lord Halifax had told him -- Germany could have the "Hossbach countries" and Danzig. The condition on that promise was that they had to be obtained peacefully. Great Britain made that impossible by guaranteeing Poland's security because the Poles rightfully considered the annexation of Danzig a threat to their security and therefore refused to give in to German demands. A world war was really not made inevitable by that treaty because by all rights any conflict should have been confined to France, Great Britain, Germany, and Poland. However, the treaty did make such a conflict unavoidable.
END NOTES: Lost to posterity for they were mangled by the Microsoft Word HTML addon thing.