Quote:
Originally Posted by Raptor1
The Polish Corridor was part of Polish-Lithuanian territory before it was annexed by Prussia in the late 18th century, it had a majority Polish population which steadily grew in the interwar period and was important to the Polish economy. Certainly its incorporation into Poland was one of many harsh terms the Treaty of Versailles inflicted on Germany, but I don't think it lacked precedent or somehow justified the German invasion, which wasn't interested solely in securing it to begin with.
|
There were two reasons given for creating the "Polish corridor"
1. was that it had a majority Polish population that should be "reunited" with Poland proper.
However, given that the territory had been German for 150 years or over 6 generations, exactly what was a "German" or a "Pole"?. Is a 3rd generation U.S. citizen of latino descent an "american" or a "mexican"?
The second problem was that the ethnic groups were intermingled:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomerelia
In almost every county, the "German" population was close to or over 50%. That is why Poland went out of their way to chase the Germans away to make the corridor more "Polish" after it was annexed.
Quote:
|
French historian Raymond Cartier states that millions of Germans in the Sudetenland and in Posen-West Prussia were placed under foreign rule in a hostile environment, where harassment and violation of rights by authorities are documented.[122] Cartier asserts that, out of 1,058,000 Germans in Posen-West Prussia in 1921, 758,867 fled their homelands within five years due to Polish harassment.[122] In 1926, the Polish Ministry of the Interior estimated the remaining number of Germans at fewer than 300,000.[citation needed] These sharpening ethnic conflicts would lead to public demands to reattach the annexed territory in 1938 and become a pretext for Hitler′s annexations of Czechoslovakia and parts of Poland.[122]
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty...les#In_Germany
Trying to redraw borders based on supposed "ethnic" lines is always asking for trouble. Large groups of ethnic Russians are located in the Baltic states and Ukraine, should those territories be ceded back to Russia?
2. the second reason given was that Poland needed an access to the Sea for economic reasons. The problem was that the only seaport in the corridor is Danzig which was over 95% German. The Allies could not justify transferring Danzig to Poland which is why they came up with the idea of a "free city" which was not German or Polish. So Poland did not really have an access to the Sea since goods had to transit via Danzig.
No matter how to look at it, the real reason why the "corridor" was created was to punish and weaken Germany. It is hard to believe anyone thought it was a viable long term solution.