Polish Corridor
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The Polish Corridor (German: Polnischer Korridor; Polish: Korytarz gdański) was the most common English-language name used between the World Wars to refer to the territory of Poland which separated German East Prussia from Germany proper. The area was transferred to a reformed Polish state as a result of the Treaty of Versailles after World War I. It consisted of the part of Polish Pomerania along the Vistula River, forming the Pomeranian Voivodeship but excluded the Free City of Danzig.
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[edit] Background
Giving Poland access to the sea was one of the guarantees proposed by United States President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points of 1918. The thirteenth of Wilson's points was:
- An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. [1]
[edit] Arguments in favor of the corridor
The transfer of this territory to Poland was said[citation needed] to be justified on these grounds:
- Historical: The area had been part of the Kingdom of Poland and later the Duchy of Pomerania from the end of the 10th century till 1309 [2] when the monastic knights of the Teutonic Order took over control. According to the Peace of Toruń (1466) the area called Royal Prussia became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1466. Over 300 years later it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia during the first partition of Poland in 1772.
- Economic and political: It was argued that if the newly independent Polish state did not have an outlet to the Baltic Sea, it would be economically and therefore politically dependent on Germany. Since Britain and France wanted a strong Polish state as a counter-weight to Germany, they accepted this argument.
- Ethnic: As argued by supporters of Corridor, most of the population of the region was either Polish (in the area on the west bank of the Vistula, between Gdańsk (Danzig) and Bydgoszcz (Bromberg), or Kashubian (the direct descendants of the medieval West Slavic tribe of Pomeranians) in the coastal area north-west of Danzig.
[edit] Arguments against the corridor
The arguments against the Polish Corridor had been considerably discredited by the use which Hitler made of them. Still, it should be noted that to begin with those objecting to the corridor were not only Nazis nor only Germans. For example, the British writer H.G. Wells, in his 1933 The Shape of Things to Come, enumerates the main points of the case against the Polish Corridor:
- Creation of the Polish Corridor was part of the Treaty of Versailles, intended to weaken Germany whatever the specific issue. The Poles and their aspirations were cynically used for this purpose, against the true interests of Poland itself. Creation of the corridor, even more than other provisions of Versailles, had a share in bringing Adolf Hitler to power and was likely to be the flashpoint of a new European war (as actually happened).
- As argued by opponents of the corridor, while there was considerable Polish population in the southern parts of the corridor, the sea shore/Vistula Estuary area was not ethnically Polish, its inhabitants being mainly Germans and Kashubians/Pomeranians. The Kashubians were a Slavic ethnic group with a strong distinct identity, and the allegiance of many of them as between Poland and Germany was at the time ambiguous. Thus, running a corridor of sovereign Polish territory up to the sea was considered unjustified.
- Poland did not really need an outlet to the sea, as most of her trade was with immediate neighbours. Danzig lived mainly as an outlet for Polish trade, could prosper in no other way, and would not have obstructed Polish imports and exports also without a sovereign Polish corridor to the sea.
- The corridor completely dislocated economic life. Instead of railways running between east and west and north-south river traffic aimed at Danzig, it artificially created north-south rail and river traffic, bypassing Danzig and aimed at the new rival port of Gdynia.
- Giving Poland control of the east bank of the Vistula harmed the German inhabitants: depriving fishermen and herders of access to the river water, causing rapid deterioration of anti-flood dykes, and depriving the towns of Garnsee (Gardeja) and Bischofswerder (Biskupiec) of their railway stations.
[edit] Percentage of Ethnic Composition
| County | Population | German population | Percentage of population |
|---|---|---|---|
| Działdowo (Soldau) | 23,290 | 8,187 | 34,5 % |
| Lubawa (Löbau) | 59,765 | 4,478 | 7,6 % |
| Brodnica (Strasburg) | 61,180 | 9,599 | 15,7% |
| Wąbrzeźno (Briesen) | 47,100 | 14,678 | 31,1% |
| Toruń (Thorn) | 79,247 | 16,175 | 20,4% |
| Chełmno (Kulm) | 46,823 | 12,872 | 27,5% |
| Świecie (Schwetz) | 83,138 | 20,178 | 20,3% |
| Grudziądz (Graudenz) | 77,031 | 21,401 | 27,8% |
| Tczew (Dirschau) | 62,905 | 7,854 | 12,5% |
| Wejherowo (Neustadt) | 71,692 | 7,857 | 11,0% |
| Kartuzy (Karthaus) | 64,631 | 5,037 | 7,8% |
| Kościerzyna (Berent) | 49,935 | 9,290 | 18,6% |
| Starograd (Preußisch Stargard) | 62,400 | 5,946 | 9,5% |
| Chojnice (Konitz) | 71,018 | 13,129 | 18,5% |
| Tuchola (Tuchel) | 34,445 | 5,660 | 16,4% |
| Sępólno (Zempelburg) | 27,876 | 13,430 | 48,2% |
(Note: The above table does not give the division between Poles and Pomeranians/Kashubians, which as noted was an important element of the debate.)
[edit] Consequences and the Post-War Era
Also in the post-World War I period, the important seaport of Danzig (Gdańsk), which had almost totally German-speaking population, was made a state called "Free City of Danzig" and put under the protection of the League of Nations, without consulting the local (German) populace. Taking advantage of the Corridor and reducing their dependence on Danzig, the Poles built a new seaport at Gdynia.
Following the appropriation of the Polish Corridor, the province of East Prussia was cut off from the rest of Germany, which contributed to severe economic difficulties.[citation needed] In 1922 the "Seedienst Ostpreußen" (literally: Sea Service East Prussia) was established by the German Ministry for Transport to have a ferry connection to East Prussia that was not dependent on the transit through Polish territory. Throughout the 1920s and especially the 1930s, according to German propaganda, German planes and buses were reported to have been shot at by Polish police and militia while passing through or flying over the Polish Republic's territory on their way to or from German East Prussia.[citation needed]
The creation of the Corridor aroused great resentment in Germany, and all post-war German Weimar governments refused to recognize the eastern borders agreed on at Versailles. The German statesman Gustav Stresemann, for instance, known for his policy of conciliation with the Western Allies, several times declared that Germany's eastern borders would have to be revised, and refused to follow Germany's acknowledgment of its western borders in the Treaty of Locarno of 1925 with a similar declaration with respect to its eastern borders.[citation needed]
[edit] Nazi Era
In 1933 the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, took power in Germany. Hitler at first ostentatiously pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland[citation needed], culminating in the 10 years' Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. In the coming years, Germany placed an emphasis on rearmament, as did Poland and other European powers.[1][2] Regardless, the Nazis were able to achieve their immediate goals without provoking armed conflict; Austria and the Sudentenland were both annexed in 1938. In October, Germany tried to get Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact. Poland refused, as the alliance was quickly becoming a sphere of influence for an increasingly powerful Germany.[3]
Following negotiations with Hitler for the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Chamberlain reported that, "He told me privately, and last night he repeated publicly, that after this Sudeten German question is settled, that is the end of Germany's territorial claims in Europe."[4] Almost immediately following the agreement, however, Hitler reneged. The Nazis increased their requests for the incorporation of the Free State of Danzig into the Reich, citing the "protection" of the German majority as a motive.[5] In November 1938, Danzig's district administrator, Albert Forster reported to the League of Nations that Hitler had told him Polish frontiers would be guaranteed if the Poles were "reasonable like the Czechs." German State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker reaffirmed this alleged guarantee in December 1938.[6]
The situation regarding the Free State of Danzig and the Polish Corridor created a number of headaches for German and Polish Customs.[7] The Germans requested the construction of an extra-territorial highway and railway through the Polish Corridor, connecting East Prussia to Danzig and Germany proper. Poland agreed on building a German highway and to allow German railway traffic.[citation needed] However, no agreement was reached concerning the Free State of Danzig.
This seemed to conflict with Hitler's plans and with Poland's rejection of the Anti-Comintern Pact, his desire to either isolate or gain support against the Soviet Union.[citation needed] German newspapers in Danzig and Nazi Germany played an important role inciting nationalist sentiment; headlines buzzed about how Poland was misusing its economic rights in Danzig and German Danzigers were increasingly subjugated to the will of the Polish state.[8] At the same time, Hitler also offered Poland additional territory as an enticement, such as the possible annexation of Lithuania, Memel, Soviet Ukraine and Czech inhabited lands.[9][10] However, Polish leaders continued to fear for the loss of their independence and a shared fate with Czechoslovakia, although they had also taken part in its petitioning. [11] Some felt that the Danzig question was inextricably tied to the problems in the Polish Corridor and any settlement regarding Danzig would be one step towards the eventual loss of Poland's access to the sea.[12]
In 1939, Nazi Germany made another attempt to renegotiate the status of Danzig; the city was to be incorporated into the Reich while the Polish section of the population was to be "evacuated" and resettled elsewhere.[13] Poland was to retain a permanent right to use the seaport and the route through the Polish Corridor was to be constructed. However, the Poles distrusted Hitler and saw the plan as a threat to Polish sovereignty, practically subordinating Poland to the Axis and the Anti-Comintern Bloc while reducing the country to a state of near-servitude. [14] [15] Additionally, Poland was backed by guarantees of support from both the Britain and France in regards to Danzig.
A revised and less favorable proposal came in the form of an ultimatum made by Nazis in late August, after the orders had already been given to attack Poland on September 1. Nevertheless, at midnight on August 29, Ribbentrop handed British Ambassador Sir Neville Henderson a list of terms which would allegedly ensure peace in regards to Poland. Danzig was to return to Germany and there was to be a plebiscite in the Polish Corridor; all Poles who were born or settled there since 1919 would have no vote, while all Germans born but not living there would. An exchange of minority populations between the two countries was proposed. If Poland accepted these terms, Germany would agree to the British offer of an international guarantee, which would include the Soviet Union. A Polish plenipotentiary, with full powers, was to arrive in Berlin and accept these terms by noon the next day. The British Cabinet viewed the terms as "reasonable," except the demand for a Polish Plenipotentiary, which was seen as similar to Czech President Hacha accepting Hitler’s terms in mid-March 1939.
When Ambassador Lipski went to see Ribbentrop on August 30, he was presented with Hitler’s demands. However, he did not have the full power to sign and Ribbentrop ended the meeting. It was then broadcasted that Poland had rejected Germany's offer.[16]
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and German forces captured the corridor during the Battle of Bory Tucholskie by 5 September. After the Battle of Hel, Danzig and the Polish Corridor were under the control of Nazi Germany.
[edit] Post-War Era
At the Potsdam Conference, 1945, following the German defeat in World War II, Poland's borders were reorganized at the insistence of the Soviet Union, which was in occupation of the whole area. Territories east of the Oder-Neisse Line, including the Corridor and Danzig, were put under Polish control. East Germany recognised this border in 1953, West Germany did so in 1970 and the re-unified Germany did so in 1990.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ The text of Woodrow's Fourteen Points Speech
- ^ see Kingdom of Poland (1025–1138) and Kingdom of Poland (1138–1320)
- ^ Richard Blanke, Orphans of Versailles: The Germans in Western Poland 1918-1939, University of Kentucky Press, 1993, ISBN 0-8131-1803-4, page 244 (Appendix B.Population of Western Poland) University Press of Kentucky 1993
