| This is a study of Anglo-Polish relations within the context of the efforts of the Western Allies to ensure their post-war security by giving in to what they regarded as justified German political and economic demands. The Poles feared that Germany, having regained international respectability and economic health with the connivance of the West, would attempt to regain the territories lost to Poland by its defeat in World War I. The Poles looked to London to balance its appeasement of Berlin by guaranteeing the Polish-German frontier. Although a succession of Conservative and Labour governments in London refused to extend their protection to the territorial settlement beyond the Rhine, few were prepared to acquiesce in German schemes to recover Danzig, the Polish Corridor, or Upper Silesia. Only with Hitler's accession to power and a diminution of the West's resolve in the face of his assaults on the Treaty of Versailles, did London come to favor buying Berlin's good political behavior with frontier revision. Unable to interest Britain or the other Allies in their security, the Poles came to terms with Hitler on their own. |
