Ideology and the Rationality of Domination. Gerhard Wolf

drawn into alliances meant to block any subsequent German pushes to the east. This new constellation of Eastern European states drew its legitimation from Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. In proclaiming the right to national self-determination, the US president believed that a solution had also been found to the many nationalist confrontations that he considered had contributed to the outbreak of war.⁶⁵ But this was certainly not the case. As recently noted by Eric D. Weitz, the Treaty of Versailles marked a “move from the Vienna system to the Paris system,” in which state sovereignty was no longer defined primarily—let alone solely—in territorial terms but also had to prove itself in terms of the resident populace, or in terms of the resident ethnically or religiously defined demographic groups.⁶⁶ New states answering the call for national self-determination arose from the liquidation of old empires in Central and Eastern Europe, but at the same time, nationalism was to be held in check by the various minority rights agreements imposed on these states.⁶⁷ But this policy was unsuccessful in the face of “the genie that would not go back into the bottle.”⁶⁸ Particularly in a state that derived its legitimacy from its people, or more precisely from its Volk (folk, but variously meaning people, nation, or ethnonation), defined in ethnic terms, it was easy to see the existence of local ethnic minorities as a threat. This is how the ideal of ethnically homogeneous nation-states came to lie “at the heart of inter-war European politics.”⁶⁹

      Revising the Treaty of Versailles became the main foreign-policy goal for each successive government of the Weimar Republic. It was not only about the annulment of treaty limitations on German sovereignty, but also the recovery of lost territories. The latter aspect soon solidified into an anti-Polish policy aimed at retaking formerly Prussian territories.

      In view of the impending referenda in the eastern border regions, as well as the futile attempts by a multitude of paramilitary Selbstschutz (self-defense) and Freikorps (free corps) groups—backed by the German military—to reverse territorial changes by force, the German delight at the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland, while surprising at first glance, also becomes understandable. Unhappy with the eastern border drawn by the victorious Allied powers, the Polish army had invaded the Soviet Union, but only barely escaped a complete military catastrophe after a series of Soviet victories—which were celebrated in Berlin “as if these were German military successes.”⁷⁰ The unexpected reversal just outside Warsaw in August 1920, however, along with the subsequent peace treaty favoring Poland, did not cause German foreign policymakers to give up on their cherished belief in the Polish state’s imminent collapse. Instead, Berlin turned to reviving the old German-Russian policy of encircling Poland.⁷¹ This received a decisive boost with the Treaty of Rapallo, signed in April 1922. Hans von Seeckt, the German army’s commander in chief, who immediately after the war had transferred regular troops into Border Defense East (Grenzschutz Ost) and commanded them in the fight against Polish armed units, expressed German hopes as follows: “Poland’s existence is intolerable, and incompatible with Germany’s living requirements. It must disappear, and will disappear through its own weaknesses and through Russia, with German assistance.”⁷² Here, von Seeckt was not only reflecting the revanchist mood of the German military, but also describing the core of governmental policy, as was confirmed by Joseph Wirth, a liberal parliamentarian from the Center Party who was chancellor of Germany when he signed the Treaty of Rapallo and declared thereafter that “Poland must be dealt with. It is toward this goal that my policymaking is geared. . . . On this point, I am entirely in agreement with the military, especially with General von Seeckt.”⁷³

      It was only with the accession of Gustav Stresemann, who was initially both chancellor and foreign minister before continuing as the Weimar Republic’s longest-serving foreign minister, that a major shift occurred in 1924 in the German attitude toward Poland. As Stresemann made clear during a confidential meeting of all German national-level and Prussian state-level ministries shortly after entering office, he also felt that a revision of the Versailles Treaty was necessary: “The creation of a state whose political borders encompass all parts of the German people, meaning those who live within a contained settlement area in central Europe and desire union with Germany, is the distant goal of German hopes.”⁷⁴ He was willing, however, to accept the politically feasible as the basic premise of a new German foreign policy. Instead of an undifferentiated course of overall confrontation, he pursued a policy that combined cautious rapprochement with a step-by-step revision of Versailles, a strategy that essentially aimed to create a split in Europe. It was hoped that concessions in Western Europe, particularly in satisfying France’s security needs, would engender sympathy for Germany’s desire to change the status quo—without military force—in Eastern Europe.⁷⁵ This tactical shift showed great promise, as shown by the signing of the Locarno Treaties in December 1925, through which the Weimar Republic formally recognized its new western border in exchange for (among other things) its acceptance into the League of Nations and the withdrawal of French troops from the Rhineland. In contrast, plans for an “eastern Locarno agreement,” meaning comparable border guarantees for Poland and Czechoslovakia, fell through in the face of German resistance. Speaking to the Reichstag’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Stresemann himself rejected any explicit renunciation of force in amending Germany’s eastern border, for this would have implied a recognition of the existing land possessions.⁷⁶ Therefore, it would not be an exaggeration to identify Locarno as the starting point for the “decline of the European security framework.”⁷⁷ After all, the Weimar Republic had thereby taken the “first step on the path toward the desired revision of the Versailles Treaty,” and Poland was forced to accept the subordination of its own security interests to those of its Western allies, thereby downgrading Poland’s western frontier to a “second-class border.”⁷⁸

      The Weimar Republic thoroughly exploited the newfound latitude resulting from the détente on its western border. Having learned from experience that Poland was certainly not just a “one-season state” (“Saisonstaat”), as it had been scornfully called after the war, Berlin now tried to take advantage of Warsaw’s economic difficulties by suspending German-Polish trade.⁷⁹ According to Stresemann, economic relations were to be suspended until “Poland’s economic and financial emergency has reached the maximum degree and brought the entire Polish state edifice to a condition of powerlessness,” making the country “ready for a settlement of the border question according to our wishes.”⁸⁰ Although it did not bring the Weimar Republic any closer to its goals, this economic war was nonetheless able to count on widespread support from all political parties, for the “demand for a comprehensive revision of the eastern border” had long since become “one of the few truly national integrating factors.”⁸¹

      The Weimar Republic tried to establish moral legitimacy for its anti-Polish destabilization policy by pointing to the German minorities. It was argued that these people had not only been forced into the Polish state in direct violation of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but had also been subjected to an assimilation process that the ratified minorities treaties should have prevented. This invocation of Wilson, however, did not hold water, for his peace program had explicitly provided for the establishment of a sovereign Polish state with access to the sea; furthermore, the minority treaties did not endow collectives of any description with group rights but instead—and in accord with the Western understanding of liberalism—focused on the legal person of the individual, securing the individual’s right to choose his or her own ethnic identity.⁸² The intention of the treaties was “to prevent the oppression of minorities, not the assimilation of ethnic groups”; in fact, the latter was seen as an unavoidable process by supporters of the League of Nations, one that was even to be welcomed—if it proceeded peacefully—as a solution for the nationalist tensions of the period.⁸³ The interpretation was different at Germany’s Foreign Office. According to a memorandum from July 1928, the German minorities were to be maintained “through all means,” for doing so represented “the prerequisite for a favorable solution to the Corridor Question and Upper Silesia Question.”⁸⁴ Because of their function as “the living symbol and bridgeheads of revisionist claims,” the German minorities received Berlin’s undivided attention and massive support.⁸⁵ As Martin Broszat put it, “behind this minorities policy stood the border question, and it was only through the latter that the former also became politically