Solution for the Oder-Neisse:
WOLFE, HENRY C.
Forthcoming German-Polish negotiations may seek a SOLUTION FOR THE ODER-NEISSE By Henry C. Wolfe LAST WEEK'S announcement that the first postwar negotiations on relations between West Germany...
...This was true not only of trade union leaders, socialists and pacifists, but also industrialists, bankers, journalists, clergymen, members of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's Christian Democratic party and the average German I met on trains and buses...
...On the basis of the 1937 ethnic record, then, Poland has no valid claim to the German lands east of the Oder-Neisse line...
...This region, reaching northward from Romania to Lithuania and Latvia, is an ethnic mosaic, a permanent legacy of the Völkerwanderung (the great migrations...
...But were the 1937 frontiers equitable to the Poles...
...In the Marienwerder zone, for example, they polled only 8,018 votes to 96,923 for the Germans...
...Although Tsarist Russia had occupied this area over a long period, Great Russianization had failed...
...In his August 28 Dusseldorf address to Silesian refugees, Erhard appealed for "peaceful neighborliness with Poland, which was stricken down by both German and Soviet arms...
...Vilna's university was established in 1579 by Polish King Stephan Batory...
...German irredentists, knowing that the Kremlin would be delighted to make a "Third Rapallo" deal al Poland's expense, would follow a pro-Soviet orientation...
...There was the Kremlin's murder of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn...
...Ukrainians and White Russians made up the majority, the Poles a minority...
...Any progress toward a rapprochement between the two peoples, it is obvious, would weaken the Soviet hold on the entire satellite belt of captive nations...
...its university was founded by the Poles in 1658...
...We fought three terrible wars with the French in 75 years," he explains...
...The solution of the Oder-Neisse problem can be reached only by a reconciliation between Poles and Germans...
...Rut, it may be objected, the Soviets militarily control both Poland and East Germany...
...It must be remembered that Poland lost more than she gained in Stalin's geopolitical chess game of 1945...
...We were united by more than the common fate of the concentration camp...
...And obviously a reasonable date must be settled on for a count of heads...
...Millions of the best young men in France and Germany perished in those conflicts...
...There were few in Pomerania and Brandenburg, only a small minority in Silesia...
...Lithuanians could point to the vast territories, once under their control, reaching deep into Russia proper and extending from the Baltic almost to the Black Sea...
...It is even conceivable that, in the event of a Polish desire to come to terms with the Germans, Moscow would face an over-extended position such as it had to cope with in Austria...
...By 1945...
...If such a "Third Rapallo" should come about, the Poles will surely lose every inch of former German territory now held by them—and perhaps much more...
...Polish nationalism, as reflected in the attitude toward the former German lands, could conceivably spark a corresponding nationalism in Germany...
...Ethnically, they are indefensible...
...As German power and influence have grown, and public opinion in the Federal Republic has focused attention on the former territories, the Poles have felt increasingly dependent on the USSR- This dependence runs counter to the Poles' traditional attitude toward their imperial Slavic "older brother...
...Machinations of this kind are, of course, an old story in Poland...
...For this reason I say with complete conviction that this Germany, the new Germany, will one day be a good neighbor of Poland...
...But the Chancellor's policy of reconciliation runs head on into Soviet colonial policy...
...In eastern Poland, however, the story was different...
...Before World War 1, Poland's Tsarist rulers used agrarian policies to stir up division between the peasants and the landowners...
...This was recognized in the three-power protocol signed by the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States in London on September 12, 1944...
...Addressing Soviet satellite journalists present at the meeting, Erhard urged: "Report the truth from this assembly...
...In manipulating the frontiers of Central and Eastern Europe, Moscow annexed 68,667 square miles of pre-World War II Polish territory...
...the French have recognized our right to the Saar...
...While the countryside of eastern Poland was largely inhabited by Ukrainians, White Russians or Lithuanians, the towns and the two great cultural centers, Lwow and Vilna, were predominantly Polish...
...During the uprising a Soviet army sat it out only a few miles away, a calculated tactic to aid the Nazis in the destruction of Poland's patriotic leadership...
...We hope to reach such an agreement with the Poles...
...Moreover, they seem to have forgotten the Soviet extermination policy directed against the Polish anti-Nazi resistance members...
...Forthcoming German-Polish negotiations may seek a SOLUTION FOR THE ODER-NEISSE By Henry C. Wolfe LAST WEEK'S announcement that the first postwar negotiations on relations between West Germany and Poland would soon get under way "through official channels" has again revived speculation about the fate of the former German territories east of the Oder and Neisse rivers...
...Previously they had opposed Russia's pan-Slavic strategy of westward expansion and enslavement of the smaller Slavic peoples situated in the path of her expanding empire...
...Yet, in violation of this agreement, the Kremlin annexed the northeastern part of East Prussia — including Koenigsberg — and turned over the rest of the territories east of the Oder-Neisse line to Poland...
...The year 1937 (before the forced territorial shifts began) is commonly accepted as such a date...
...Referring to his own experiences under the Nazis, Adenauer recalls: "During World War II, I was in a concentration camp with Polish soldiers and officers...
...But there were few Great Russians...
...Inasmuch as the Russian position in East Germany is to some extent based on continued Polish antagonism toward West Germany, a Polish-German rapprochement would help cut the ground from under the Soviet occupation of both Polish and German territory...
...This land [Poland] was the victim of Nazi-Bolshevik collusion, and this wrong still has its manifestations...
...the imprisonment, show "trial" and execution of the Polish Home Army commander, General Okulicka, and other Polish resistance leaders who, under the Kremlin's safe-conduct pledge, went to Moscow in 1944...
...In several prewar visits to this region I met many people (especially Ukrainians and Lithuanians) who were dissatisfied with Polish rule, but I never met anyone who wanted to exchange Polish administration for Soviet...
...Significantly, everyone with whom I've talked, including expellees from east of the Oder-Neisse line, rejected the thought of resolving the problem by force...
...Neither ethnically nor culturally have the Great Russians any sound claim to eastern Poland...
...Except along the southern fringe of East Prussia, there were not many Poles in the province...
...There is an aspect of this situation which should cause concern not only in Poland but also in the West...
...Sweden, for example, could lay claim to considerable areas on the Baltic eastern shore now held by the Russians...
...effective...
...When you ask that question of a thoughtful German who is familiar with the Oder-Neisse problem, he usually points west toward the Franco-German frontier...
...According to this document, "Germany, within her frontiers as they were on the 31st December, 1937, will, for the purposes of occupation, be divided into three zones, each of which will be allotted to each of the three powers...
...The answer may be found in the post-World War I plebiscites held under the auspices of the League of Nations...
...There were also Lithuanian and German minorities...
...As long as they try to hold on to what they call their "recovered territories," they are tightening the Russian noose around their own necks...
...Tell your peoples that we Germans want, indeed, we long for, peaceful neighborliness with Poland...
...As a rule, an ethnic basis is the most practical determinant for boundary lines...
...We've abandoned all claims to Alsace and Lorraine...
...of course, dutifully parrots the charges...
...In the Federal Republic, from which I have just returned, interest in these territories also has been spurred by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's recent demand that the Pushtani of Pakistan be allowed to say whether they wished to live in Pakistan or Afghanistan...
...If the Pushtani have a right to decide their fate," the Germans ask, "why not our people in the Soviet zone...
...When the Germans bring up the subject of the "lost provinces," Khrushchev charges Bonn with being "militaristic, fascist and revanchist...
...Yet they owe the Russians nothing...
...This is true...
...And if Polish public opinion came to support the same kind of reconciliation in the OderNeisse region that has taken place on the Rhine, it is reasonable to believe that Gomulka and his Polish Communist minority would have to listen...
...To make up for this loss, Poland was "compensated" with 38,974 square miles of German land...
...The Poles, who claimed lands left to Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, fared badly in the voting...
...In appealing to the Poles for understanding, Adenauer declares: "Present day Germany is different from the Germany under Hitler...
...Poland's Party chief, Wladyslaw Gomulka...
...at that time, borders followed ethnic lines to a fair degree...
...How, then, do they expect to win back their former lands or even part of them...
...The Poles could stake out claims to Russian lands almost as far east as Smolensk and Kiev...
...between us there developed a feeling of fellowship based on profound spiritual and intellectual agreement...
...In the face of all this, Polish public opinion has gone along with the Soviet strategy of "compensating" the Poles by turning over to them lands in which Germans were an overwhelming majority...
...In the light of this, the coming negotiations between Warsaw and Bonn take on added significance...
...Across the frontier in the Soviet Union there was a Polish minority...
...From a historical standpoint, these territorial grabs have extremely doubtful validity...
...A Russian pull-back is not, therefore, beyond possibility...
...so far...
...Why not our people whose ancestors lived for centuries in East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania...
...the Kremlin, following the expansionist chart of the Tsars, had completed that extension, with two new Communist dictatorships, Poland and Yugoslavia, in the vanguard...
...It is to Polish self-interest, therefore, to implement policies that would not inflict on Europe the consequences of another Russo-German deal...
...Nearly a century ago such Russian pan-Slavic spokesmen as historian Mikhail P. Pogodin and scientist Nikolai Y. Danielevsky advocated a westward drive that would extend Slavic power as far as the old Hanseatic city of Stettin on the Baltic, and Trieste on the Adriatic...
...In pitting the Poles against the Germans, the Kremlin has been tactically adroit, subtle and...
...In the Allenstein zone they came off even worse—7,980 votes for Polish annexation against 363,209 for retention by Germany...
...Lwow was 64 per cent Polish...
...By cooperating with Moscow in this territorial finagling, the Poles have made themselves dependent on Russian support to hold the lands east of the Oder-Neisse line...
...and the deliberate Russian refusal to come to the aid of the Polish patriots in their heroic Warsaw uprising against the Nazis...
...Arguing on the basis of historical possession, one could attempt to justify some strange frontier changes in Central and Eastern Europe...
...It is his deep-rooted purpose, he emphasizes, to "establish understanding, respect and sympathy between the Germany of today and the Polish people...
...As long as the Russians can keep the Poles embroiled with the Germans, however, Central and Eastern Europe will remain firmly under Soviet control...
...The Rhine, in consequence, is a peaceful border where two friendly nations meet...
...Henry C. Wolfe, a war correspondent in Europe during World War II and now a free-lance writer, is the author of The German Octopus...
...The Kremlin clearly is trying to increase fear of West Germany among the Polish people and inflame Polish nationalism not only against the Federal Republic but also against the entire rest of the West...
...The Kremlin would hardly stand aside and permit the West German and Polish governments to negotiate an Oder-Neisse settlement...
...Ironically and inexplicably, nevertheless, the Poles appear to have accepted the Kremlin's frontier "rectification" which turned over the eastern part of their country to the Soviet empire...
...On both sides of the Rhine we've come to realize the futility and criminal stupidity of war...
...That this view is not limited to private citizens is clear from policies enunciated in official pronouncements of Chancellor Adenauer and Vice Chancellor Ludwig Erhard...
...His intervention was patently a move to stir up trouble between Pakistanis and Afghans, but his demand immediately reminded the German public that in 1945 millions of their fellow countrymen were driven out of their ancestral homes by the Russians and Poles...
...A major objective of the Russians, certainly, is to discredit the Federal Republic in the court of world opinion and choke off discussion of the lost provinces...
Vol. 44 • February 1961 • No. 6
