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To: fredhead; r9etb; PzLdr; dfwgator; Paisan; From many - one.; rockinqsranch; GRRRRR; 2banana; ...
Continued from post #2 above.

After mulling it over that night, the Polish Foriegn Minister had a talk with Ribbentrop the next day [January 6, 1939] in Munich. He requested him to inform the Fuehrer that whereas all his previous talks with the Germans had filled him with optimism, he was today, after his meeting with Hitler, "for the first time in a pessimistic mood." Particularly in regard to Danzig, as it had been raised by the Chancellor, he "saw no possibility whatever of agreement."

It had taken Colonel Beck, like so many others who have figured in these pages, some time to awaken and to arrive at such a pessimistic view. Like most Poles, he was violently anti-Russian. Moreover, he disliked the French, for whom he had nursed a grudge since 1923, when, as Polish military attache in Paris, he had been expelled for allegedly selling documents relating to the French Army. Perhaps it had been natural for this man, who had become Polish Foreign Minister in November 1932, to turn to Germany. For the Nazi dictatorship he had felt a warm sympathy from the beginning, and over the past six years he had striven to bring his country closer to the Third Reich and to weaken its traditional ties with France.

Willaim L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Thrid Reich, p. 457

9 posted on 01/06/2009 7:39:39 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson ("Every nation has the government that it deserves." - Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821))
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To: Homer_J_Simpson

On the surface there is every reason for Beck to throw in his lot with Hitler. But in the end it appears he still could see that it would be to his country’s detrement to do so and turned away. Of course that still did not work out for Poland other than finally getting the western powers to wake up and stand up against Hitler (after Poland’s destruction unfortunately).


10 posted on 01/06/2009 9:41:52 AM PST by CougarGA7 (Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.)
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To: Homer_J_Simpson
That could be true. The historical actors in the thirties (France, Britain, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, USSR, etc.) had their own quirks and quibbles that kept them from working together to stop Hitler.

Shirer and the people around him did have their own agenda, though. If I remember correctly, he was far more inclined to put his trust in the Left than the Right, assuming that the military regimes were all more or less fascistic.

This comes out in his treatment of the Dolfuss-Schussnig regime in Austria. Shirer went pretty close to the party line in his condemnation of that anti-Hitler government. The regime may have been as bad as he said, but other writers saw things differently.

12 posted on 01/06/2009 12:55:01 PM PST by x
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