The diplomatic turmoil in central Europe certainly opened up further opportunities of revisionism — and not just from Germany. Almost before the ink was dry on the Munich Agreement, Hungary — egged on by Poland, looking to its own interests in a strong central European cordon of states between Germany and the Soviet Union — was eyeing up the eastern tip of Czechoslovakia known as Ruthenia (or the Carpatho-Ukraine), a mountainous tract so backward that some of its peasant population had never heard of Hitler.4 Hungary had disappointed Hitler through its hesitancy during the Sudeten crisis. And it suited Germany at this point to encourage the Ukrainian nationalists in the ethnically divided Ruthenian population.5 Hungarian hopes of gaining Ruthenia were, therefore, for the time being firmly vetoed.6 Hitler’s own aims for the total destruction of Czechoslovakia had, as we noted, only been temporarily interrupted, not halted, by the Munich settlement.7 With the dismembered state of Czechoslovakia now friendless and, with its border fortifications lost, exposed, and at Germany’s mercy, the completion of the plans made in 1938 for its liquidation was only a matter of time. As we have seen, that had been Hitler’s view even before he acceded to the Munich Agreement.
Beyond the rump of Czechoslovakia, German attention was immediately turned on Poland. There was no plan at this stage for invasion and conquest. The aim — soon proving illusory — was to bind Poland to Germany against Russia (thereby also blocking any possibility of an alliance with the French). At the same time, the intention was to reach agreement over Danzig and the Corridor (the land which Germany had been forced to cede to Poland in the Versailles Treaty of 1919, giving the Poles access to the sea but leaving East Prussia detached from the remainder of the Reich).8 Already by late October, Ribbentrop was proposing to settle all differences between Germany and Poland by an agreement for the return of Danzig together with railway and road passage through the Corridor — not in itself a novel idea — in return for a free port for Poland in the Danzig area and an extension of the non-aggression treaty to twenty-five years with a joint guarantee of frontiers.9
The proposal met with a predictably stony response from the Polish government.10 Most vehement of all was the refusal to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, which would have been tantamount to admitting to a position as Germany’s puppet.11 The obduracy of the Poles, especially over Danzig, rapidly brought the first signs of Hitler’s own impatience, and an early indication of preparations to take Danzig by force.12 Hitler was nevertheless at this point more interested in a negotiated settlement with the Poles. Misleadingly informed by Ribbentrop of Polish readiness in principle to move to a new settlement of the Danzig Question and the Corridor, he emphasized German-Polish friendship during his speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939.13 Some army leaders, a few days earlier, had been more belligerent. In contrast to their overriding fears of western intervention during the Sudeten crisis, a number of generals now argued that Britain and France would remain inactive — a direct reflection of the weakness of the western powers fully revealed at Munich — and that negotiations with the Poles should be abandoned in favour of military measures. A war against Poland, they claimed, would be popular among the troops and among the German people.14
