760C.6215/550

Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Castle) of a Conversation With the Polish Ambassador (Filipowicz), October 22, 1931

The Ambassador told me he had, shortly before leaving Poland, a long talk with Marshal Pilsudski,33a who had instructed him to tell the President about the political situation. The Ambassador saw the President yesterday and put up to him substantially the following:

Ever since the war the Germans have been carrying on more or less vigorously anti-Polish propaganda, generally taking the question of the corridor as a point of departure to interfere wherever possible in Polish affairs. This has gone on so long that the Poles are becoming really worried. As examples of this propaganda the Ambassador gave the following, adding that he was only touching the surface.

[Page 600]
(1)
It is known that the Germans have been directly implicated in the troubles in the Ukraine for independence. The Polish Government has in its possession documents signed by members of the German Foreign Office to the Ukrainian leaders making suggestions as to what they should do. Some of these documents were secured by a correspondent of the London Times and have been published in the Times.
(2)
There is, of course, continual propaganda in the form of speeches made by important members of the German Government as to the iniquity of the corridor.
(3)
The recent extension of the Rappallo treaty between Germany and Russia34 is directed against Poland for the purpose of preventing the importation of arms and ammunition into Poland from abroad in case of war with either Germany or Russia.
(4)
Factories in Russia producing airplanes, arms and ammunition are manned and managed by Germans, many of whom are members of the German army.
(5)
The school books used by the German school children are full of misstatements intended to stir up feeling against Poland. All this, in the opinion of the Poles, is an attempt a long way ahead to bring about probable war.
(6)
Whenever any attempt is made to establish good commercial relations with Germany, the Germans at the last minute back out and refuse to co-operate.

Marshal Pilsudski instructed the Ambassador to say that

1.
Poland would not consider any settlement of the Polish corridor other than the maintenance of the status quo. Poland would absolutely refuse to enter into any discussion whatsoever of that subject with any neutral nation.
2.
Poland believes that there is at almost any moment the danger of the invasion of Polish territory by German irregular troops. If this should occur, the whole Polish army would be immediately mobilized and march into Germany to settle the thing once and for all, and they would not be influenced by any action of the League of Nations or anyone else.
On the other hand, the intentions of Poland are purely pacific. Poland would like nothing better than to live on the most cordial terms with Germany, co-operate with Germany economically and politically, but has reached the point where the violent anti-Polish propaganda in Germany must be stopped if the peace is to be kept.

This was the extent of the Ambassador’s communication to the President. He then told me a little of his own observations in Germany. He says that the amount of secret military preparation going on is very great. (This is pretty well corroborated from British and French sources.)

He says that he was amused while in Carlsbad to find that Germans whom he had known before and others whom he met this year were [Page 601] filled with the Hitlerite ideas and were convinced that the ideal of mittel-Europa would be fulfilled and that the troubles economically in the world at present were due to the destruction of the late system.

He says that he saw a good deal of a group of German professors with whom he himself attended the school of economics, I think, in Berlin; that these professors told him that the whole spirit of Germany was becoming more and more militaristic; that when the children were graduated from the middle schools, the speeches almost always dwelt on the fact that death on the field of battle was the only honorable death. They told him that all the encampments of the Boy Scouts and of the children who go into the country in the summer, were built on a military basis with trenches and drills in order to train these young people to think in terms of war. He said that he was almost convinced from talking with the Germans themselves that if the Hitlerites should come to power there would be an immediate explosion.

W. R. C[astle,] Jr.
  1. Joseph Pilsudski, Polish Minister of War.
  2. Signed April 16, 1922, League of Nations Treaty Series No. 498, vol. xix, p. 248.