ADSS 1.142 Cortesi to Maglione: situation worsens in Poland

ADSS 1.142 Filippo Cortesi, Poland, to Luigi Maglione, Sec State.

Reference: Telegram 36 (AES 5733/39)

Location and date: Warsaw, rec’d Rome 28.08.1939.

Summary statement: The situation is worsening. A last chance for peace could be found in a guarantee for the minorities.

Language: Italian

Text:

Press speaks of extremely grace situation: mobilisation around (?) Germany believed (?) excessive (?) … Germans and military planes penetrate here and there on the Polish frontier causing bloody conflicts … Polish Consulate seized, international trains … Poznan diplomatic circles do not see what could still save the peace. (1)

Head of Propaganda Section of the Prime Minister delivers today, 21.00hrs … speech, which will be broadcast in French, English and German, saying, “We are not persecuting German subjects (?)” (2)

I have submitted my idea: Holy See to ask German and Polish Governments what steps they think necessary to guarantee condition of minorities in respective countries.  I think this could give some satisfaction to Germany.

Notes: 

(1) The Brisbane Courier Mail reported on 28.08.1939 that border clashes had left both Germans and Poles dead.  The newspaper reported that there had been a series of incidents along the German-Polish border as well as from the Slovak-Polish border.

(2) Poland’s government issued almost daily announcements in an attempt to counter German claims of Polish atrocities against Germans in Poland. “The Polish Government is obliged to protest solemnly against the German Government using untrue information in its diplomatic gamble regarding the alleged terrorisation of the German minority.  This untrue information is being deliberately used to mislead international opinion and foreign Governments … pure invention.” Courier Mail, 30.08.1939, p3.

ADSS 1.70 Orsenigo to Maglione: German-Polish tensions

ADSS 1.70 Cesare Orsenigo, Germany, to Luigi Maglione, Sec State.

Reference: Report number 48 (27/810) (AES 4189/39)

Location and date: Berlin, 23.06.1939

Summary statement: Incidents between Germany and Poland call attention to the latent danger of a conflict.  Some place their hope in the moderating influence of the HS.  Some trouble over use of Polish or German in the liturgy by minority groups.

Language: Italian

Text:

I hasten to bring to your Eminence’s attention the following events:

Great impression has been created in these diplomatic circles by the news, recently secretly learned, regarding the existing tension between Polish and German populations.  The news leaked out that in a Polish town, Thorn (1) some fanatic and degenerate people have assaulted and castrated three Germans.  The news came to the knowledge of the German Press Agency (Deutsches Nachricktenbüro – DNB) who collected it and issued a press release.  I enclose a copy of it.

According to the opinion of the diplomats such a publication would have been sufficient to start a popular upheaval of such magnitude as to lead to a war.  Fortunately, at the last moment, the Führer, having heard of it, forbade its publication.  A feeling of fear, however, has remained in everybody’s mind as the episode has shown how fragile is the prudence, both of the German and the Polish populations, regarding matters which could start a war. (2)

To this we must add the speech made by Minister Goebbels last Sunday in Danzig and made more dangerous by other more menacing phrases, as for example “within three months Danzig will belong to Germany”, said during an interview with Foreign newspaper men, although he requested that it should not be published. (3)

Some diplomats, even amongst neutrals and Germany’s friends, find again new hope of preventing war in some tentative effort of the Holy See: even the Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, Baron von Weizsäcker, on Tuesday, talking to me, mentioned very respectfully the moderating influence that the Catholic Church could exert on the Polish population.

News arrived here of increasing hostility by both sides against religious services in the language of the minority population.  In German Silesia the numerous Polish people who live there rarely have religious services in their own language as previous was the custom.  At the same time in Katowice, Archbishop [sic] Adamski, has been compelled, in order to preserve dignity and decorum in the churches, to forbid the service in two parishes in the town, which were regularly celebrated in German. (4)

Notes: 

(1) There is no way of verifying this story.  Given that German propaganda indulged in lurid cases of Polish atrocities against ethnic Germans, it is highly likely the story is fictional.  The only verified account of so-called Polish “atrocities” against Germans was in the opening week of the war, 03-04.09.1939,in Bromberg where German soldier and some civilians, possibly saboteurs, fired upon retreating Polish soldiers which lead to a fight where between 40-50 Poles and 100-130 Germans were killed.  Savage reprisals followed. German propaganda inflated the number of dead and used the incident as “proof” of Polish savagery.

(2) Compare the letter of 28.06.1939 of Nevile Henderson (1882-1942) UK Ambassador in Berlin 1937-39: “Unwelcome though I feel that my warnings are, in London, about Polish provocations, I cannot help it, for it is my duty to repeat to you that they constitute a serious danger.” (DBFP, Series 3, Volume 6, n161, p184.

(3) Henderson had expressed his surprise to the Secretary of State that Goebbels could speak as he liked about foreign policy. Ibid.

(4) Stanislaw Adamski (1875-1967), Bishop of Katowice 1930-67.