If Germany gained the alliance with Poland it wanted in the mid-1930s

Of course, he could have changed his mind later.

But in this case, it was something he believed in - that the pre-1914 borders were worthless and indefensible so a better solution was needed.

And the point was it wasn't true that "attempt to recover both West Prussia and East Upper Silesia was inevitable" - Nazi Germany wasn't interested in a mere recovering.
Poland limited to the 1914 borders would be attacked (or vassalized) too.

It should be added that lots of people were crying wolf at that time, that the German would attack, or/and the Soviets.
Sci-fi books were written describing such a war in detail (with German thousand-bomber raids with gas bombs on Polish cities).
Such thinking wasn't original or prophetic at all.

 

"Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a question of expanding our living space in the East and of securing our food supplies, of the settlement of the Baltic problem. Food supplies can be expected only from thinly populated areas. Over and above the natural fertility, thorough- going German exploitation will enormously increase the surplus."
Hitler, 23rd May 1939 (Minutes of Meeting recorded by Hitler's Adjutant Schmundt)
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So much for the demands of Hitler. Bochenski was right after all.... That or "forever" has a very short half-life.

"I further assured him and I repeat here that if this problem is solved, there will be no further territorial problems in Europe for Germany."
Hitler, Berlin 1938, after the Munich agreement.​

I wonder what happened in March 1939?

 

"German attempt to recover both West Prussia and East Upper Silesia as inevitable" had nothing to do with "a question of expanding our living space in the East and of securing our food supplies".

Both West Prussia (it was mostly the corridor) and East Upper Silesia were tiny (in comparison with Germany) and wouldn't provide living space and food supplies (East Upper Silesia didn't produce any food worth mentioning), and they weren't thinly populated.

 

I've found something interesting on the subject while reading today in Showalter & Deutsch's "If the Allies Had Fallen: 60 Alternate Scenarios of World War II", This specific excerpt is talking about the Munich Crisis, and what would happen if war began in 38' rather than 39' and if Germany reached out to Poland."Thus Germany could not expect military support from a single European state. It's best hope, in fact, lay in one of the least likely quarters imaginable, Warsaw. The Prospect of a disintegrating or mutilated Czechoslovakia had raised annexationist fever there regarding the district of Teschen. The wisest heads in the Polish capital saw the folly of collaborating in a German aggression which all too likely might next turn eastward. There was also the sacrifice of the alliance with France, indispensable in any later showdown with Berlin. But the acquisitive urge was strong and for a time it seemed to predominate. Tragically the threatening posture was sufficient to induce the Prague government not to risk refusal to accept the Munich pact. President Benes was later to maintain that the likelihood of Poland joining in a German attack was decisive in a hairline resolve to accept the decree of Munich."

 

Exactly... so Poland was to be destroyed. By one means or another. Polish politicians were under no illusions about this. You seem to believe that Hitler was sincere when the offer of 25 years of non-aggression was offered. Yet history shows Adolph couldn't keep his word for 6 months.

Danzig was an excuse for expansion and establishing control. Just as Sudetenland was.

 

Actually, the Polish diplomats believed both Hitler and Ribbentrop were sincere, that Ribbentrop wanted Danzig and the highway, but Hitler wasn't sure and maybe didn't even care much about them.
Hitler actually confirmed that later: I wanted, first of all, to establish a tolerable relationship with Poland in order to fight first against the West.

But simultaneously they weren't so naive to believe in words and guarantees. They believed that a full-blown war for a limited goal (Danzig) wasn't worth it, and the Germans being reasonable people wouldn't do it.

It wasn't the 19th century anymore when wars were declared at the drop of a hat.
In the thirties wars, even with a weaker country, were too destructive and too costly for that.

They didn't believe Hitler was nice because he was a nice guy, they believed Hitler was nice because he had no choice.

 

Unfortunately, those are strange speculations of some unknown people.
The Poles didn't threaten Czechoslovakia with war, they simply demanded the Polish minority was given the same rights as the German minority.

And actually, four days before Munich the Czechs verbally agree to return Teschen to Poland but were still prepared resist the Germans to the end.
Teschen was so small it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but Sudetenland certainly matter.

But the story of "stab in the back" is true, but I'm afraid you won't like it.

Amid all the nervous anticipation, the president calmly worked on his response to a letter Franklin D. Roosevelt had sent to him and the Fuhrer. [...] Benes was disappointed that Roosevelt had sent identical texts to Prague and Berlin, thus implying moral equivalence between the respective causes of the Third Reich and Czechoslovakia.
Roosevelt's plea that the conflict should not be solved by force was fine, but Czechoslovakia was not proposing to attack Germany. It was the Fuhrer who threatened to use violence to seize the Sudetenland and maybe more. Benes felt bitter about being put on the same level with Hitler.
Later, be would describe Roosevelt's intervention in the crisis as a stab in the back and the "last heavy blow."

The president also complained that Roosevelt "even ordered for himself [similar] statements from twenty-one South American republics." There are additional records of interventions by diplomatic representatives of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.
They contained the same message for President Benes: Mr. President, please find a peaceful solution.
from: Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler: The Diplomacy of Edvard Beneš in the 1930s by Igor Lukes

 

Please provide some sort of scholarly evidence for any of your many suppositions, rather than just making like a drowning fish. As it stands it seems like you are exercising your imagination.

Your quote was misquoted. Here it is:

It was clear to me that a conflict with Poland had to come sooner or later. I had already made this decision in the spring, but I thought that I would first turn against the West in a few years, and only after that against the East. But the sequence of these things cannot be fixed. Nor should one close one's eyes to threatening situations. I wanted first of all to establish a tolerable relationship with Poland in order to fight first against the West. But this plan, which appealed to me, could not be executed, as fundamental points had changed. It became clear to me that, in the event of a conflict with the West, Poland would attack us. Poland is striving for access to the sea. The further development appeared after the occupation of the Memel Territory and it became clear to me that in certain circumstances a conflict with Poland might come at an inopportune moment.
Speech by the Führer to the Commanders in Chief on August 22, 1939.
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You can read the full speech here.

​

Any guesses what a "tolerable relationship" with Poland would be for someone as Hitler?

Opportunistic Hitler does not go well together with Polish independence.

 

The story of the surrender, British folks are advised to take a few deep breaths before reading it:

Just before 2 A.M. on 21 September 1938, the French legation called the castle and demanded an audience with the president for 2 A.M. The British minister would come along as well. [...]
Newton and de Lacroix arrived fifteen minutes late (the British legation had a hard time decoding Newton's instructions from Lord Halifax), but they wore top hats. Darkness provided an appropriate background for their arrival. From a distance, they could be mistaken for seconds who were to officiate a duel between gentlemen. But the president was more likely to see them as executioner's helpers who had come to make preliminary arrangements in his cell before he would be taken out at dawn.
As soon as they entered, Benes noticed that they seemed unspeakably sad, almost fearful, studiously avoiding his eyes.
Newton was more decisive than de Lacroix, and he delivered his message first. London and Paris refused to accept Prague's rejection of the Anglo-French proposal and threatened that Hitler's attack was imminent. Benes now had one more chance, Newton stressed, to save his country from disaster.
De Lacroix had begun weeping even before he delivered his lines. Crying, he stumbled over the first sentences, but he gradually rediscovered his courage and his voice finally acquired a steely undertone. When he read the crucial sentence, that France would break its legal obligations to Czechoslovakia and would not go to war against the Third Reich, it sounded merciless. Ignoring Newton, Benes asked for a written statement from de Lacroix, which he was unwilling to provide. [...]
Benes inquired: Is this "une sorte d'ultimatum"? Newton and de Lacroix confirmed it by repeating they had nothing else to add. [...]

Because the two envoys were unable to say anything in addition to reading the texts they had already communicated, it was only Benes who spoke. Neither Great Britain nor France knew what they were doing, he said, and their policy would have grave consequences for Czechoslovakia, Central Europe, and Europe in general. The consequences would be dreadful, he repeated.
De Lacroix began to weep again, and the meeting was over.

Now the government had to meet to make a decision. It was 4:20 A.M.M Benes went to discuss the ultimatum with the ministers in a different part of the Castle. They had to face a hideous dilemma. [...]
The government pondered the ultimatum to 1 P.M. and again from 3:30 to 5 P.M. Several ministers broke down and wept. When Newton returned to the British legation, he predicted that Benes would cave in. But the president continued to have doubts. At noon on 21 September 1938, Newton and de Lacroix came back to demand an answer to the ultimatum they had left in Benes's hands some eight hours ago.

They repeated that unless an official acceptance was forthcoming immediately, neither London nor Paris would have any responsibility for the consequences. The president asked what guarantees he would have against being attacked by Hitler after he had accepted the ultimatum and withdrawn the Czechoslovak army from the fortresses. Newton said he did not know, but he thought that Great Britain had no obligation toward Czechoslovakia.
The President turned to de Lacroix: 'We are allies, after all, we have a treaty and that treaty is valid, is it not?" The French minister, terrified of making an irreparable error, refused to answer. When Benes kept pressing, de Lacroix said he was not certain whether the ultimatum had altered or voided the treaty. It was, paradoxically, Newton who tried to end the conversation by observing that, in his opinion, old treaties were valid. Unpersuaded, de Lacroix said he would have to contact Paris. The whole discussion, Benes noted, was extremely embarrassing:

"Standing in the door of my library, upstairs at the Castle, the English Minister displayed the sad audacity to tell me he could not understand what sort of government we had that it was unable to make up its mind. I was furious, seeing that while the existence of the state was at risk this ignoramus and imbecile complained that the government was unable to decide within a few hours to take the step which the two had simply dictated."

Minister Stefan Osusky cabled from Paris that neither Paris nor London sought to find an honorable solution to the crisis because their intention was to gain time for themselves by feeding Hitler chunks of Czechoslovak territory. "Judge the situation calmly and objectively," Osusky urged the Prague government, 'without regard to what you hear from Great Britain and France."
This did not change the direction of the tide, and on 21 September 1938, just before Krofta officially informed Newton and de Lacroix that "under pressure of urgent insistence" the Prague government "sadly accepts the French and British proposals."

 

It's not misquoted, the fact is there are three versions of the speech (1014-PS, 798-PS, L-3), written by three different people for different purposes.

He wanted to make sure Poland would be passive during his war with France, and wouldn't take part in a blockade of his country.

 

Yet you did not actually quote a full passage of any, nor provide the context, and instead choose to use a single sentence, to evidence that Hitler was uninterested in attacking Poland, which the full passage clearly shows was not the case at all...

In other words, it is misquoted, within the context you tried to give it.

To conquer at a later date... wow. Polish politicians must have been thrilled at that prospect.

 

Without referring to your source, that wall of text about Benes is utterly useless. Name your sources ffs.

Remarkable, in that text, how the nameless author tries to blame the British, for the misdeeds of others.

What is the author's point? That the British are somehow obligated to die for Czechoslavakia?

 

Even though elements of this book are speculation, and the authors are far from unknown people. As you said, Poland had no intention of starting a war with anyone, the book merely states that...."It's best hope, in fact, lay in one of the least likely quarters imaginable, Warsaw", this is saying that the only nation other than Germany with a motive at all to attack Czechoslovakia, was Poland, because of Teschen territory that was possessed by the Czech's.

 

If one takes a narrow enough time frame this may be accurate but Poland did start a war with the USSR between the 2 world wars and I believe in the 30's they were looking for an ally to go after Germany.

 

Looks like you have perfected the art of Cherry-Picking...Congratulations.

 

His source is "Czechoslovakia Between Stalin and Hitler: The Diplomacy of Edvard Beneš in the 1930s" by Igor Lukes.

The author's point to examine the affairs of Prague and Moscow during this turbulent time.

wm. has eliminated the many passages about the Soviet Union & Moscow from his wall of text, thus skewing the perception of what the author is presenting.

 

Yes, Poland had been aggressive and started a conflict with the Soviet Union just a year after their Independence in 1919, they did succeed in halting the Soviet advance at Warsaw, and likely saved the rest of Europe from being invaded. As for an ally to against Germany, that was meant to be a deterrent more than a legitimate threat to the Germans. Poland wanted no conflict at all in the late 30's, but it prepared for one, and boosted it's defensive capabilities to protect itself.

 

That would be the same Lukes that presents a case that the Soviets were trying to provoke a German-Czechoslovakian war in order to suck in the Western powers, to allow the Red Army the honour of cleaning up big time once everyone was exhausted?

 

Not a German-Czechoslovakian war but any war, or at least a prolong diplomatic conflict. They weren't choosy. Anything would do. And he offers lots of evidence of that.

Basically he is the foremost authority on Czechoslovakia today (well maybe even the only one), he spent quite a chunk of his life in Czech/Slovak/Russian archives.

He doesn't say the Red Army was going to clean up, they didn't plan so far into future.

 

You complained it was a wall of text, and now you are complaining I've made the wall of text readable?
Can you make your mind?
I've removed all irrelevant parts which would be unintelligible without reading the book.