The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - ELTE BTK Történelem Szakos Portál

After the Pact
For Bonnet, „the Polish government must carefully avoid any military
reaction in the event the senate of Dantzig should proclaim the reunion of the
Free City to Germany.” Bonnet continues his pacifist policy and tries to avoid
conflict at any cost, while the French government undertakes a complete U-turn
and starts getting prepared to conflict, for the German-Soviet pact has sealed
the fate of Poland.
As we saw in our introduction, France and Great Britain have made
alliances and they will defend Poland. It is true that France and Great Britain
had promised to defend Czechoslovakia, as G. Mandel and Paul Reynaud had
assured M. Ripka, a Czechoslovakian minister. But these two countries will not
accept yet another conquest by Hitler. They cannot betray Poland as they
betrayed Czechoslovakia.
In a telephone conversation of August 31 st 1939, Bonnet asks Noël „to take
new steps with M. Beck – the minister of the Polish foreign office – in order to
obtain from the Polish government a favorable answer to direct conversations.”
The same day in the evening, he tells him: „We wish direct dialogues
between Germany and Poland would succed. We want a multilateral
conference to solve the problems linked with the treaty of Versailles that
the Germans denounce.” Bonnet suggests that neutral observers should
be sent in regions where, according to the Reich, the Poles treat the
Germans badly.
On August 28 th 1939, Léon Noël sends 8 telegrams to Bonnet about this
so-called violence : „Ten new cases of attack or ill-reatment” But he says
later: „There are no precise facts, no dates, no names” According to Noël, it
might be slander.
Then G. Bonnet asks that the German and Polish troops in contact in many
places stand back , in case talks between the two countries took place. The
purpose of the German manoeuvres is to declare war in the position of the
attacked country. Moreover, Léon Noël underlines that „maps and monographs
show that in 1914, the region the Germans refer to in their official statement
and which they claim because of the German population on the territory, were,
in majority, peopled by Poles.”
Conclusion
For some historians, the Polish government has contributed to its own
disaster, as if the contacts between Beck and the Reich in 1937-1939 was a sort
of guilty flirt, or as if the refusal to let the Russian troops station in Poland
justified the Soviet Union's attack. Bonnet does not agree with this judement. In
his opinion, Poland is not responsible for this aggression.
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