A
The Po1ishReview, Vol. LII, No. 1,2007:115-120
@2007The Po1ishlnstitute of Arts and S~iencesof America
REVIEW ARTICLE
FORGOTTEN FOREIGN MINISTER OF INTERWAR
POLAND.
Piotr Wandycz, Aleksander Skrzyñski. Minister Spraw Zagranicznych II
Rzeczypospolitej,Warsaw, Polski Instytut Spraw Miêdzynarodowych, 2006.
304 pages including English summary and index, plus illustrations. ISBN
83-89607-40-9.
Western specialists on interwar international relations may be
familiar with the names of two Polish foreign ministers: August Zaleski
(1926-1932), and Józef Beck (1932-1939). They are, however, unlikely to
recognize Aleksander Skrzyñski (December 1922 -May 1923, July 1924November 1925, and November 1925-May 1926), unless they are interested
in the Locarno Treaties of 1925 with which Polish historians identify bim.
At the time, these treaties were regarded as stabilizing Europe by
reintegrating Germany into the "concert of nations."
In the western treaty known as the Rhine Pact, Germany officially
recognized ber frontiers with France and Belgium, as well as the
Demilitarized Zofie in the Rhineland, both established by the Versailles
Treaty of 1919.(Hitler was to abolish the Rhineland DMZ in 1935).
Germany was algo to have a permanent seat in the League of Nations
Council (LNC). The Rhine Pact was to provide security to France; its
guarantors, Britain and ltaly, were to come to the aid of the country attacked
(France or Germany, but clearly France was envisaged). Germany did not,
however, recognize its frontiers with Poland and Czechoslovakia, nor did it
agree to a French guarantee of the German-Polish and GermanCzechoslovak arbitration treaties algo signed at Locarno (they excluded
territorial questions). Therefore, France signed mutual assistancetreaties
with Poland -with
which it already bad an alliance and secret military
convention, both signed in 1921 -and with its ally Czechoslovakia,where
a French generalheadedthe General Staff. French assistanceto these allies,
however, was to be given only if the LNC could not reach unanimous
agreementon identifying the aggressor.The Locamo Treaties, paragraphed
at Locarno in October and signed in London in December 1925, were touted
as a great gain for peace, but in Poland they were strongly criticized as
weakening the Franco-Polish alliance of 1921 by making French aid
dependenton the LNC mechanism, and Foreign Minister Skrzyñski bore the
brunt of this criticism. Howeve³; It is clear that he achieved for Poland the
maximum possible at the time.
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Before discussing Skrzyñski's diplomatic labors in 1925, a rew
details orbis life and career should be mentioned. Bom in 1882 in Austrian
Poland into an old and wealthy Polish aristocratic family (most of their
wealth came from East Galician oil), he studied in Kraków, Vienna and
Munich, and obtained a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence from the Jagiellonian
University in 1906. He was a member of the Austro-Hungarian diplomatic
service in 1909-1918, and algo served in the Austro-Hungarian Army as an
aide to General TadeuszJordan Rozwadowski during the World War I. Hejoined
the Polish diplomatic service in late 1918. As Polish minister
plenipotentiary in Bucharest(1919-1923), he made a significant contribution
to the conclusion of the Polish-Romaniandefensive alliance treaty signed in
March 1921 (renewed severaltimes later), while GeneralT.J. Rozwadowski
(now in the Polish Army) negotiatedthe military convention.
Skrzyñski became Foreign Minister for the first time in the
government headed by General W³adys³aw Sikorski (16 Dec. 1922-26 May
1923). He skillfully managedto secureGreat Power recognition ofPoland's
eastern frontiers (Decision by the Conference of Ambassadors-Britain,
France and Japan -on the Frontiers between Poland, Soviet Russia, and
Lithuania, March 15 1923), even though the powers did not take any
responsibility for these frontiers. (Britain disapproved of the Polish seizure
of WilnoNilnius, as well as the inclusion of westernBelarus and Ukraine in
Poland.) It was algo in 1923 that Skrzyñski served briefly as Polish delegate
to the League of Nations, spent a rew months in England, and published a
book entitled Po/and and Peace; the English version was to explain Poland
to the English, while the Polish version was to help Poles understand how
they were viewed abroad (Wandycz, p. 84).
He became Foreign Minister again in W³adys³aw Grabski's
government from late July 1924 to mid-November 1925, and filled that role
in the next government, of which he was algo the Premier, until early May
1926. As a background to Skrzyñski's policies, Wandycz notes the changes
which took place in British and French policy. The first Labor Party
government came to rower in Britain under Ramsey MacDonald in late
1924, while a left wing government led by Edouard Hemot took rower in
France that spring (Wandycz p. 88). Both governments aimed at
reconciliation with Germany, while France sought, above alI, future security.
This was alI the more pressing since British opposition led to the failure of
the Geneva Protocol, which would have ensured aid to any League of
Nations member who was the victim of aggression. The Protocol was
approved by alI League of Nations members except Britain, which was
unwilling to sign a commitrnent of aid even to France, let alone to any
League member, especially in EasternEurope.
Skrzyñski was an avid supporter of the Protocol and was greatly
disappointed by its failure. He then worked extremely bard to persuadethe
French government that western and eastern European security was
Review Article
117
indivisible, thus opposing the differentiation between East and West that
emerged with British and then French acceptance of German Foreign
Minister Gustav Stresemann'sproposais for a western security pact in early
1925. When Skrzyñski failed to secure one security pact for both Eastern
and Western Europe, he supported the conclusion of German-Polish and
German-Czechoslovak arbitration treaties as well as the Franco-Polish
mutual assistancetreaty, and managedto get theseagreementsratified by the
Polish parliament. There was a general assumptionin Poland that the latter
would be compensated for the security differentiation and the German
permanent seat on the LNC with a permanent seat for Poland. Skrzyñski
denied that he bad struck such a bargain at Locarno, but his reputation in
Poland suffered greatly when the permanent seat -though
favored by
British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain -was
not granted to
Poland becauseof opposition in the British cabinet. Instead,Poland obtained
a so-called semi-permanentseatalong with a rew other countries.
Skrzyñski touted the Locarno Treaties as a great successfor Poland
and for Europe. He viewed them as confirming the Versailles Treaty (which
established the Polish-German frontier except for part of East Prussia and
Upper Silesia where plebiscites were held), and the LNC Covenant (also
known as the League of Nations Pact), both of which he viewed as the
pillars of Poland's independenceand territorial integrity. At the same time,
he viewed the Covenantand the Locarno Treaties as the mechanismsfor the
peaceful resolution of disputes,to which the only alternative that he saw was
a war even more destructive than the "Great War" of 1914-18. He algo
supported the Anglo-French rapprochementin the Rhine Pact as vital both
for Poland and for Europeanpeace.
Skrzyñski's second period as Foreign Minister (late July 1924 to
late November 1925), when he took an active part in the negotiations for the
Locarno Treaties, was overshadowedby Marshal Józef Pi³sudski's insistence
that the post of War Minister -which he bad held in 1926-1923and wanted
to hold again -not
be subordinated to the government as per the
constitution. Pi³sudski did not want the army to be subjectto the vagaries of
Polish politics, especially the right-wing politicians whom he hated for their
praise for the assassinof the first President of independentPoland, Gabriel
Narutowicz, in 1922. Therefore, he attacked the Grabski government, and
Skrzyñski in particular; perhaps it was at this time, that the marshalbeganto
refer to bim as "that little Locarno bitch" (Wandycz, p. 257). This was
unfair, for Skrzyñski, tried his best to obtain a solution favoring Pi³sudski's
wishes, but failed due to opposition in the cabinet. Facing this problem as
well as an economic crisis, the Grabski government resigned. Skrzyñski
then became both premier and foreign minister in a broad coalition
governmentthat held power from November 20, 1925 until early May 1926.
The new right-wing governmentformed a rew days later by Wincenty Witos,
leader of the Peasant Party- in which Skrzyñski refused to serve -
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ThePolishReview
actually dared Pi³sudski to seize power. The Marshal did so on May 12
1926, but he did not expect bloodshed and was greatly shocked when it
occurred. Despite Pi³sudski's unflattering epithet, Skrzyñski was offered the
Foreign Ministry, but rejected it. This was partly because, as a farmer
admirer of Pi³sudski, he was widely suspectedof involvement in the coup,
but mostly because he did not want to be a marionet in a government
dominated by the Marshal. He decided to wait and might have bad another
chance to serve as Foreign Minister if not for his untimely death in a car
accident on September25, 1931. He was only forty-nine years old.
It is impossible in a brief review to discuss alI aspects of
Skrzyñski's foreign policy, but it should be noted that he tried to improve
Poland's relations with Czechoslovakia -which,
however, did not want
close cooperation or alliance with Poland -and began a series of long onand-off negotiations for a Polish-Soviet non-aggressionpact that was finally
signed in 1932 (when Stalin decided for it) and extended for ten years in
1934. He algo visited the United States in summer 1925, where he tried to
counteract German propaganda against Poland and obtain u.S. maral
support for his efforts to equalize the security of Eastern and Western
Europe. His failure to achieve either of these goals was due to the strong
sympathy of the American establishment and press for Germany as the
victim of the Versailles Treaty. The same sympathy prevailed in Britain and
was used later by British governmentsto justify the appeasementof Hitler's
Germany.
With ibis book, Professor Wandycz bas rescued the memory of a
very able and dynamic foreign minister of Poland. In the absence of
personal papers, the author bas carefully reconstructed Skrzyñski's
diplomacy and its underlying principles on the basis of his speechesand
articles; his surviving instructions to Polish diplomats and their reports, if
available; the memoirs and letters of those who knew bim, and the reports of
foreign statesmanand diplomats, especially the British minister in Warsaw,
Sir William Max Muller, with whom he cultivated close relations in working
for a Polish rapprochement with Britain. Although Wandycz admits that
Skrzyñski bad some faults, especially his sometimes odd behavior, his
arrogance --that, in fact, covered up his innate shyness --and the studied
nonchalance that camouflaged his bard work, but he clearly admires the
mafioThis was a diplomat, then minister, totally devoted to foreign policy.
He basedhis work on a very clear theoretical-philosophicalfoundation, that
is, he believed in the peaceful resolution of disputes through the mechanisms
of the League of Nations and the Locarno Treaties (arbitration), though
always within the framework of the peace treaties. He saw the only
altemative to ibis peace system in a war far more terrible than that of 1914-
1918.
But was this really prescienceof Skrzyñski'spart? (Wandycz,p.266).
After alI, apart from PresidentWoodrowWilson, who did not find
ICf.
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119
support for League of Nations membership in his owo country, maDY
Europeans held the same view, beginning perhaps with the British writer
H.G. Wells, who warned in his Outline oj History (1919) that if civilization
was to continue, there must be a world federation.\ Likewise, was Skrzyñski
prescient when -fending
orf charges in March 1925 that the Germanproposed security pact would be concluded at Poland's expense-he stated,
that since England wanted stability on the continent, it could not question
aDYexisting frontiers? Furthermore, he claimed, England realized that no
democracy in the world could allow its government to voluntarily resign
from even the smallest part of its territory (Wandycz, pp. 138-139).
Unfortunately, he was proved wrong when the British govemment tried to
persuadeits Polish ally in the summer of 1939to voluntarily acceptHitler's
demands for the return of Gdañsk (Danzig) to Germany and for a German
"corridor" through the" Polish Corridor (Pomorze). Also, despite their
alliance obligations to Poland, France and England gave their ally no
military aid in September 1939. One caD argue that these developments
could not have been foreseen in 1925, but documents cited by Wandycz
show that leading British and French statesmenalready assumed that the
revision of both the Polish-German and the Polish-Soviet frontier was
inevitable at some future time. In 1943-45, Poland's British ally would also
press the Poles to voluntarily give up the easternterritories to the USSR and
finally agreed to this transfer, together with the United States, without the
Polish government's agreement, in exchange for Germanterritories at Yalta
in February 1945. But if Skrzyñski privately entertainedthe possibility of a
future Western betrayal of Poland, he could not have prevented i³. He did,
however, ensure Poland's participation in the negotiations for the Locamo
treaties when refusal to participate and sign ³bem would have meant
isolation, thus greatly increasingthe dangersalready facing the Polish sta³e.
Indeed, the German-Soviet Friendship and Neutrality Treaty signed in Berlin
on Apri124, 1926 -also known as the Berlin Treaty -was the forerunner
of the German-Soviet non-aggression treaty with its infamous secret
protocol, signed in Moscow on August 23 1939.
Wandycz justifiably gives a very positive evaluation of Skrzyñski's
foreign policy and views bim as the most "European" of Polish foreign
ministers in the interwar period. He also provides a very good English
language summary and some very interesting photographs at the end of the
book. It is regrettable that, except for Skrzyñski, other persons in group
photographs are not identified, even though they are all mentioned in the
book.
Professor Wandycz, who, apart from maDY other books, bas algo
written a biography of August Zaleski, is to be congratulated for this
excellent, detailed biography of Aleksander Skrzyñski. It is to be hoped that
H.G. Wells, Outline ofHistory, London, 1919; revised edition, 1931
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an English version will follow, though it will need same explanatory notes
ob Polish history, politics, politicians and statesmenof the time. A political
biography of the third outstanding foreign minister of interwar Poland, Józef
Beck (1932-1939), currently being written by Dr. Marek Komat of the
PolishAcademy ofSciences, Warsaw,will complete the trilogy.
Universityo/KansasCement.)
ANNA M. CIENCIALA