In 1948, Major General John F. Fuller, a British Army officer, military historian and strategist, exaggerated the British myth of Dunkirk in his book, The Second World War: A Strategical and Tactical History. In 1973, Professor David Sumler, in his book, A History of Europe in the Twentieth Century, endorsed Fuller’s version of the events by claiming that the British government assembled private citizens and “all sorts” of boats to “rescue 200,000 British and 140,000 French troops.” 859 Another persistent fabrication is the idea of the “highly mechanized” state of the German armies in 1939-41. In 1940, of their 135 Panzer divisions, the Germans only used ten for their western offensive. Meanwhile, not only did the British and French forces have more tanks, most of them were medium and heavy models while the Germans used antiquated light tanks, in addition to several hundred light tanks from the Czechs. 860
In 1948, Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, an English soldier, military historian and inter-war theorist, in his book, The German Generals Talk, blamed Hitler for the Halt Order of May 24. After the war, Hart talked with a few German officers who claimed that Hitler’s order “shocked” them and allowed the French to form a defensive line west of Dunkirk. General Günther Blumentritt, Rundstedt’s ex-Chief-of-Staff purportedly told Hart that the order involved political as well as military concerns, particularly in seeking peace with Britain. The Germans would have tarnished the British military honor if they had captured them at Dunkirk. Hart proposed that Hitler allowed them to escape to facilitate reconciliation with them later. 861
General Guderian concluded that General Rundstedt had been logistically correct in ordering a halt to further tank attacks across the wet land. If he had proceeded, he would have uselessly sacrificed some of his best troops and tanks. However, in his post-war memoirs and in his discussions with Hart, General Guderian blamed Hitler for the Halt Order. 862 In his book, Hart wrote, “The escape of the BEF in 1940 was largely due to Hitler’s personal intervention. After his tanks had overrun the north of France and cut off the British army from its base, he held them up just as they were about to sweep into Dunkirk, which was the last remaining port of escape left to the British. At that moment, the bulk of the BEF was still many miles distant from the port. But Hitler kept his tanks halted for three days.” 863
Hart wrote, “His action preserved the British forces when nothing else could have saved them. By making it possible for them to escape, he enabled them to rally in England, continue the war, and man the coasts to defy the threat of invasion. Thereby he produced his own ultimate downfall, and Germany’s, five years later. Acutely aware of the narrowness of the escape, but ignorant of its cause, the British people spoke of ‘the miracle of Dunkirk.’” 864 Further Hart wrote, “How did he come to give the fateful halt order, and why? It remained a puzzle in many respects to the German generals themselves, and it will never be possible to learn for certain how he came to his decision and what his motives were. Even if Hitler had given an explanation, it would hardly be reliable. Men in high positions who make a fatal mistake rarely tell the truth about it afterwards, and Hitler was not one of the most truth-loving of great men.” 865 Obviously, Hart was writing from a biased British position.
The Creation of Poland
The monarchy allocated the Pale of Settlement, about twenty percent of Russia, for Jewish residency, and prohibited Jewish inhabitance elsewhere. The Pale included most of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine, and parts of western Russia. By 1800, the Jews had achieved a level of emancipation and thereafter used their financial skills to exploit circumstances and influence unwary politicians. Throughout Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and other eastern European countries, many of the residents of the poorest towns were Jews who exchanged merchandise for produce with peasants in the surrounding countryside, a practice that had been going on for about 400 years. 866
Paris Peace Conference, January 18, 1919-January 21, 1920
Selective Right of Self-Determination
America joined the war against Germany on April 6, 1917. On January 8, 1918, Woodrow Wilson presented his Fourteen Points speech to Congress based on research by the Inquiry led by Edward M. House. In the speech, Wilson named his war goals, including free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination, using notes prepared by Walter Lippmann and others. The phrase, “Right of Self-Determination,” when referring to nations, is from Clause 9 of the Russian Marxists’ Programme, in Vladimir Lenin’s collected works, published in April-June 1914. 867 During World War I, Ignacy Paderewski, the world-famous pianist, was an active member of the Polish National Committee (PNC) in Paris. In September 1917, the French officially recognized the PNC as Poland’s legitimate government and a year later, Britain and America did the same.
Post-war life in Europe was rife with social unrest and chaos, the perfect climate for political upheaval and communist infiltration. The survivors, whose lives had been shattered by war and death, resulting in unemployment, hunger and destitution are vulnerable to the Marxist ideology. The politicians gathering in Paris offered hope with their promises of national self-determination which certainly took the focus off of war and those who provoked it and thereafter profited from that massive destruction of human life and property.
Politicians exploited Wilson’s “Right of Self-Determination,” to modify Europe’s borders. Wilson, catering to Jerzy Sosnowski, Roman Dmowski and Paderewski, decided that Poland should have access to the Baltic Sea and dominion over Danzig. Impatient Polish insurgents, motivated by Paderewski patriotism, immediately attacked and occupied the Posen area and some regions of western Prussia in what people refer to as the Greater Poland Uprising. Then they denied Germans access to the Vistula River. 868 The Polish Corridor had been German territory for over a century and a half. In 1919, the Allies divided East Prussia from the rest of Germany when they created Poland which in turn isolated the German city of Danzig (96% German). In detaching East Prussia, Germany lost about one tenth of her territory. 869
The post-war Versailles Treaty deprived Germany of Danzig, split Germany into two parts and created the Polish Corridor. It transferred 27,000 square miles from German territories to France, Belgium, Poland and Denmark. 870 Wilson’s Fourteen Points allowed Poland to receive access to the Baltic Sea. On January 10, 1920, Danzig, a seaport city between East Prussia and Germany, became the Free City of Danzig. The German population understandably opposed these provisions but, having lost the war, had no part in the negotiations. Danzig, a city-nation, was composed of 252 villages and 63 hamlets situated on 754 square miles, all part of the German Empire. The newly established League of Nations sanctioned the separation of Danzig from Germany, and made it part of Poland.
Jewish Influence in Paris
Jerzy Sosnowski, the Polish agitator, who as a purported rabid anti-communist, would later (1926) engage in espionage activities within Germany, under the name of Baron Ritter von Nalecz, requested the dismemberment of Germany. In a letter to Wilson, dated April 7, 1917, even before the Paris conference and the war’s end, he requested the “restitution of the coastal territories stolen from Poland.” Even Pilsudski remarked, “So you are lusting after Upper Silesia? But really Upper Silesia is an age-old Prussian colony!” Dmowski wanted to make Poland the heart of a non-German Central Europe which required that it attain economic and political strength via its possession of Upper Silesia. This necessitated the division and destruction of Germany. On February 5, 1919, Pilsudski said that the “western borders of Poland were a gift of the coalition.” 871
Jewish bankers, and their lawyers and political minions, during their peace conferences, falsified maps, faked statistics, divided, sectioned and created new nations by partitioning long-established, successfully functioning countries. They did this without the involvement or the consent from the populations involved, or regard for languages, customs and culture. They merged populations, often peoples who had been long-time enemies. Perhaps trying to c
reate dissension, they consigned millions of Hungarians, Poles, and Germans into the newly-created Czechoslovakia. The bureaucrats in Poland and Lithuania, both created as political entities in 1918, soon subjugated millions of ethnic Germans who had lived in the area for generations.
In April 1918, in New York, Paderewski met Louis Marshall and other leaders of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) which vowed that it and other organized Jewish groups would support Polish territorial ambitions in exchange for support for equal rights. The French advocated the establishment of a European federal and security policy relative to the League of Nations, an organization that Donald Day said degenerated into “a Jewish club.” Day pointed out that in any country that has national minorities, the Jews are always at the forefront in leading those ethnic groups, using political power, and in demanding and acquiring “special privileges.” Rather than advocating international harmony and friendship, the League of Nations cultivated and sharpened national differences. 872
Reportedly, Marshall and other leaders of the AJC could not reach any kind of consensus with Paderewski when they met in New York in April 1918. However, years later, on June 28, 1933, Paderewski would give a concert in Paris to raise money for the “victims of Hitler,” 873 long before the Jews allegedly became Holocaust victims. Paderewski and Roman Dmowski represented the PNC at the Versailles Peace Conference.
Bernard Baruch went to the Economic Conference at Paris as Chairman of the American Commission. 874 Dissatisfied Polish diplomats, encouraged by the Versailles Treaty architects, wanted more than just the Corridor and Eastern Upper Silesia but rather wanted to increase the size of the Polish State as it existed historically, before the partition (1787-1795). Ambitious Polish officials, in addition to East Prussia and Danzig, wanted Upper Silesia and areas in Mid Silesia and the “Oder territories.” 875
On March 25, 1919, Prime Minister David Lloyd George sent a memo to the negotiators at Versailles in which he strongly opposed placing over 2,100,000 Germans under Polish control as the Poles were a people who had not proven themselves capable of stable self-government. He believed this would certainly trigger another war. 876 He said that the negotiators should never have thought of giving Poland “a province that had not been Polish for the last 900 years.” France was intent on surrounding Germany with small German-speaking states, rather than being generous with Poland. These small states would invariably demand reunion with their homeland, creating an atmosphere for warfare. 877
After World War I, the Allies created Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Yugoslavia. Dmowski’s memo of March 1919 at Versailles, in which he falsified Danzig’s history, mentioned the territorial isolation of East Prussia. He suggested that Poland could economically develop the Corridor, and encourage Polish immigration in order to de-Germanize the land. Four million Poles in America helped win Wilson’s support for the idea that Poland should have East Prussia. The Polish agitators, most of them Jews, wanted a restoration of the “multinational empire” as it existed in 1772. 878
The territory that Poland acquired from Germany had good infrastructure and roads. Those roads were soon full of holes which made them hazardous for travel. The east Prussians loved to work, not to acquire material goods, but because of their ethical values and appreciation of efficiency. They had “a desire to accomplish as much as possible in the space of a short life-time.” The Poles and Jews who replaced the Germans allowed the buildings to deteriorate and the streets to become filthy. Cluttered Shops displayed inferior products behind their dirty windows. A different class of people now inhabited the “Polish Corridor.” 879
Conference delegates were in the process of assigning Bromberg, part of Germany, to Poland, when anti-German members of the West Marches Society were persecuting the Germans. On March 27, 1919, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs talked with Paderewski regarding the outrageous attacks against Germans in Bromberg. He suggested that the Polish authorities tolerated, rather than prevented, the atrocities against the Germans. He regretted this development between the two nations but emphasized that Germany would hold Poland responsible. Paderewski said that he knew nothing about the incidents but would make enquiries. He justified the incidents because of the tension prevailing in Poland. 880
On May 29, the German Peace Delegation, though not privy to the debates, wrote a memo pointing out the potential international and domestic challenges of such a territorial reassignment, really just a device to impose harsh economic and cultural pressures. 881 On June 24, Georges Clemenceau reminded Paderewski of Poland’s obligations incurred because of the large population transfer due to the boundary change which would make people minorities in another country. Officials required that Poland sign the Treaty for the Protection of Minorities, the only condition on which Poland was to receive the German territories. The Allies were then required to monitor Poland to make certain that she honored the charter regarding Germans and other minorities. The unambiguous wording of the Treaty defined their responsibilities to the non-Polish inhabitants who represented over forty percent of the total population of the newly created state. The Danzig census for 1920 would show a 3.5% Polish-speaking minority. 882
Polish Aggression
The Austrian and German armies of occupation left Poland in November 1918, at about the same time that General Jozef Pilsudski escaped from a German prison. He assumed control of the Polish government and began promoting a sizable arms program and adopted an aggressive foreign policy. In January 1919, when the PNC disbanded, Paderewski, under President Pilsudski, became the second Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. Pilsudski attacked Ukraine in the Polish-Ukrainian War (November 1, 1918-July 17, 1919) and then attacked the Red Army to rid them from Poland, in the Polish-Soviet War (February 1919-March 1921) both in an attempt to expand Polish borders further east. Poland also wanted to rid Poland of the Red Army. Pilsudski was the Chief of State (1918-22), the first Marshal (from 1920), and Poland’s leader (1926-1935) of the Second Polish Republic.
After the Greater Poland Uprising, December 27, 1918 to June 28, 1919, Poland received land comprising an area of 53,800 km2 and 4,224,000 inhabitants (1931) and included Pomerelia (in West Prussia) and Upper Silesia, an area of 510 km2 with 26,000 inhabitants and the eastern part of Upper Silesia (including Katowice), an area of 3,214 km² and 965,000 people. Poland also obtained Działdowo (Soldau), an area of 492 km² and a few villages in the eastern part of West Prussia and in the southern part of East Prussia (Warmia and Masuria). They renamed Danzig, with the delta of the Vistula River at the Baltic Sea, an area of 1893 km² and 408,000 inhabitants (1929) the Free City of Danzig, placed under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations and the Polish authorities.
The Geneva Convention (May 1922), mandated by the Permanent Court of International Justice (created December 16, 1920), now known as the World Court, also placed Upper Silesia under Poland. Polish politicos were quick to exploit and tout their power over the Germans. 883 884 Some Germans, justifiably wary about the future, sold their property, usually below market prices and received currency that was already diminishing in value due to inflation. Another reason for fleeing the area was the Polish-Soviet War. Germans feared that the communists might triumph which would subject them to a brutal government far worse than Poland. 885
Morgenthau’s Commission
Poland had previously functioned as a Jewish refuge in Europe. However, because of the expulsion of the Jews from Russia and the enforcement of the May laws of 1882, many Jews relocated to Poland. In addition, in 1882, the First Anti-Jewish Congress, a “movement of self-protection,” convened in Dresden on September 11-12, 1882, attended by delegates from all over Europe. 886 Consequently, anti-Semitic feelings erupted in Poland, especially after the 1905 Bolshevik revolution in Russia. In 1912, the Polish National Democratic Party nominated an anti-Semite to represent Warsaw in the Russian Duma. Howe
ver, the Jews, who controlled the media, voted for a Polish Socialist and won the election. The losing party then began an aggressive anti-Semitic campaign. 887 The Jews in New York had to intervene because if Poland, with the highest concentration of Jews in Europe, suppressed Jewish behavior, then all of Europe would follow Poland’s example.
At Paderewski’s request, the American Commission to Negotiate Peace to investigate Jewish matters in Poland (ACNP) sent Henry Morgenthau, Brigadier General Edgar Jadwin, and Homer H. Johnson to Poland. Lansing gave them instructions, dated June 30, 1919, “It is desired that the Mission make careful inquiry into all matters affecting the relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish elements in Poland. This will, of course, involve the investigation of the various massacres, pogroms and other excesses alleged to have taken place, the economic boycott and other methods of discrimination against the Jewish race.” Further, he said that the U.S. Government, concerned for all of the people in the new Poland, desired to render service to Jews and Christians alike. The Jews would exploit the favoritism defined in Article 93 of the Versailles Treaty that guaranteed their protection, a provision that caused resentment against them. 888
The ACNP, headed by Morgenthau, recommended developing “a strong democratic Poland” in order to improve the relationship between Jews, fourteen percent, and the Christians, eighty-six percent of the population (1919). The “mission” arrived in Warsaw on July 13, 1919 and remained in Poland until September 13, and submitted its 72-page report, dated October 3, to the Senate. 889 It promoted reconciliation and cooperation between the two factions and declared that the Christians “must realize” that they cannot present a solid front against their Jewish neighbors if that minority is discontented or fear-stricken. Rather, the majority must encourage the Jews to employ their strength and influence to make Poland a unified country in Central Europe. 890
The Ruling Elite Page 32