Challenging the Black Legend

In 1968, American historian Henry L. Roberts summed up the diplomacy of “Colonel Beck” in the following words: “he was not one of the really malignant creatures of the decade,” but his “unfortunate actions,” especially in 1938, “compounded the weakness of the existing international order.”1 This still remains a rather favorable portrayal of Beck in Western historiography, where the last interwar Polish foreign minister continues to be accused of undermining the League of Nations, opposing projects of collective security, anti-French obsession, and causing Poland to drift toward Nazi Germany.2 The few scholars coming to Beck's defense included Piotr Wandycz and Anna Cienciala; one of the latter's articles appeared in this journal.3 Building upon their work, renowned professors Marek Kornat (Warsaw) and Mariusz Wołos (Kraków) deliver the first complete biography of Beck.4 In a monumental opus that counts more than a thousand pages and should be compared to the recent biographies of Churchill and Stalin,5 the authors question Beck's “black legend,” documenting the fascinating life of a soldier and diplomat. Since the process of Beck's becoming one of Piłsudski's closest allies was analogous to the emergence and demise of independent Poland itself, the authors also narrate the implementation of Piłsudskiite imponderabilia, including the belief that a state cannot willingly surrender any part of its territory or sovereignty.The future Polish foreign minister was born on October 4, 1894, in Russian-occupied Warsaw. His father, Józef Beck Sr., was a Roman Catholic and a social lawyer, possibly of Flemish descent, whereas his mother, Bronisława Łuczkowska, was a Uniate Catholic from the Chełm region; the Russian law required that their child be christened in the Orthodox rite. Beck the junior spent his youth not in Warsaw, however, but in Riga, and then in the Galician town of Limanowa, where he was first acquainted with Polish irredentism and perhaps met Piłsudski himself. In 1912, Beck passed his maturity exam in Kraków and began courses at the Lwów Polytechnic. In the last years before the Great War, he began to attend the Imperial and Royal Hochschule für Welthandel in Vienna. There, together with his friend and confidante Tadeusz Schaetzel, Beck seemed to orbit around the Piłsudskiite milieu. Here, Wołos—the author of chapters 1–4 and 9—stresses his protagonist's confusing religious identity, technical and commercial interests, as well as patriotic influences as harbingers of his later policies.In the second chapter, Wołos searches for factors that influenced Beck's political views during his deployment at the Polish Legions, a formation that initially fought alongside the Central Powers. Initially enlisted without rank in the 1st Artillery Regiment of the 2nd Brigade, Beck earned a quick promotion following his brilliant performance at the Battle of Kostiuchnówka (July 4–6, 1916). Now under-lieutenant, after the Oath Crisis of July 1917 he asked to be transferred to the regular Austro-Hungarian army. Wołos points to many instances of the Polish officer's highly critical attitude toward the Germans, including his 1917 report on their policies in the Kingdom of Poland from the fall of 1917 (p. 74) and his outrage at the transfer of the Chełm region to the German Ukrainian client state. Indeed, after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918), Beck decided to desert to Lwów and to carry out clandestine missions for Piłsudski's Polska Organizacja Wojskowa (POW).Beck's first mission was to infiltrate the Polish military formations that operated in Russia during this turbulent time. He found his way into the ranks of the ephemeral 3rd Polish Corps formed to protect Polish estates in right-bank Ukraine, but the plan to find a way to engage the Central Powers failed. After his project for the 3rd Corps to join Gen. Dowbor-Muśnicki's 1st Corps in Belarus also failed, now-lieutenant Beck escaped disarmament and fled to Kiev. His career in POW continued during a mission to Moscow, where he was co-responsible for coordinating resistance to the Germans with Polish socialists. After briefly commanding a small Polish military unit in Oryol, Russia, Beck fled again, only to be delegated to Romania, where POW agents managed to acquire some financial help from the French. Finally, in October 1918, Beck's last mission was to infiltrate Gen. Denikin's army in Odessa and to coordinate the rescue of Polish assets from the Crimea. Wołos underlines that Beck's skillful execution of these quests was noticed by Piłsudski himself and accelerated his career.The third chapter details Beck's first engagements as Piłsudski's hand-picked agent. After summoning the young officer in January 1919, Piłsudski sent him on a mission to Bucharest, where Beck experienced the “theoretical” friendship of the French for the first time (p. 113). More than a year later, Beck became the head of military intelligence at the Northeastern Front during the Polish-Soviet conflict. Wołos stresses that in French eyes, his protagonist, now promoted to major, committed a cardinal sin by intercepting French agents at the front, which will contribute to accusations that Beck was a German agent. In the meantime, Beck developed a dislike for the Czechs, which used Poland's difficult position to take Cieszyń Silesia. Following Piłsudski's instructions, however, in October 1920 Beck politely dismissed Hungarian suggestions of a joint action against Prague. In the following spring, he conducted successful negotiations of a military agreement with the Lithuanians, although this was rendered useless by their intransigeance regarding Wilno (Vilnius). During these formational years as all-but-a-diplomat, Beck learned first-hand about the Czech and Lithuanian challenges.In Paris, as Poland's military attaché in 1922 and most of 1923, Beck made accurate remarks regarding the French fear of engagement in the east, paternalistic attitude toward Poland, impotence during the Ruhr crisis, and growing deference to London. In October 1923, his mission ended. Beck remained an ardent Piłsudskiite and did not hesitate to support what turned into a coup d’état of his “Commandant” in May 1926, overseeing the logistics of Piłsudski's operational group as one of his two most trusted officers. He then became Piłsudski's chief of cabinet at the Ministry of Military Affairs, which was, practically speaking, the country's highest office, as much of Piłsudski's correspondence passed through his hands. But Wołos does not refrain from discussing the less honorable episodes from Beck's life, including his alleged role in the disappearance and potential murder of General Ostoja-Zagórski in August 1927. He also admits that Beck contributed to the disgraceful treatment of another opponent, General Rozwadowski, which contributed to the latter's untimely death in prison, and personally transported political prisoners to Brześć in 1930.6 For this, Beck earned the position of an extraordinary minister in Piłsudski's government, his final promotion to colonel, and–finally–nomination as August Zaleski's deputy in the foreign ministry on November 18, 1930.In the fourth chapter, Wołos discusses Beck's influence from the start of 1931 to his promotion to full minister almost two years later. His appointment of Wiktor Drymmer as head of the Personal Department allowed more of his confidantes to join the ministry. Beck also took part in the formulation of the Polish stance on many important issues of the day, including the useful but futuristic concept of “moral disarmament.” During this time, his lukewarm opinion of the League of Nations was formed amid its ambiguous attitude toward the Manchurian crisis and Berlin's successful appropriation of its structures to “defend” the allegedly endangered rights of the German minority. Furthermore, Beck played a role in negotiating Poland's non-aggression pact with the USSR (July 25, 1932) without any French mediation. At the same time, Piłsudski's decision to threaten the use of force in Gdańsk (Danzig) during the “Wicher affair,” intended to reinstate Polish rights in the city, was not fully consulted with Zaleski, which Wołos views as the final harbinger of the latter's ultimate replacement.Kornat wrote the chapters dedicated to Beck's life as foreign minister (November 2, 1932–September 17, 1939). According to him, Piłsudski and Beck's program can be described as the “upbidding of Poland” (licytacja Polski wzwyż). Piłsudski's non-aggression pact with Stalin was the first manifestation of this policy, while Beck's loud protest against the great powers’ decision to grant Berlin an equal right to rearmament (December 11, 1932) marked a strong start of his term. In fact, Poland's relations with Adolf Hitler's new Reich came to a critical point between February and May 1933. Kornat cannot confirm that Piłsudski really planned a strike against Hitler to preempt a future conflict. As a result of the psychological pressure, however, Beck was able to sign the Polish-German non-aggression pact of January 26, 1934. This agreement became a cornerstone of the “policy of equal distances,” setting the tone for Poland's relations with its neighbors and the Western powers, especially as the British were ready to accept Mussolini's proposition of a Pact of Four deciding the fate of “lesser powers.” In Moscow, Beck negotiated the prolonging of Poland's other non-aggression pact during a brief and fragile détente with the USSR. Kornat is not uncritical of his protagonist, pointing out that Beck made a couple of tactical mistakes in his talks with Soviet diplomats. He also demonstrates that Beck's initial opinion of Hitler was hopeful: the Polish minister viewed the German dictator as a romantic Austrian rebel opposed to Prussian-style colonization.Kornat does not otherwise find much fault in Beck's diplomatic balancing in the years 1932–1935. His protagonist's refusal to sign a treaty of friendship with Beneš stemmed from its lack of military substance, the Little Entente's surrender to the Pact of Four, and Beck's distaste for the Czech “police state” clouded in liberalism (p. 317). Beck also rejected the French proposition of an Eastern Pact, most importantly because it granted the Soviet Union a de facto protectorate in Eastern Europe. Kornat points out that rumors of Beck's Germanophile sentiments stemmed from the Western inability to accept that Poland could pursue its own foreign policy.7 Beck's practical refusal to cooperate with some agencies of the League with regard to the minorities was also partly a response to this “colonial” attitude of the West vis-à-vis Eastern Europe. At the time of Piłsudski's death, Beck lay false trust in the significance of forging personal connections with foreign partners but correctly identified the power of “dynamic” (totalitarian) states in the face of a liberal democratic decadence. Kornat underlines, however, that Beck was still a proponent of multilateralism abroad and moderation at home, following League protocols and supporting the idealist Sławek against the more authoritarian Mościcki as Piłsudski's political successor.The first two years of Beck's attempt to fulfill Piłsudski's “testament” are discussed in the sixth chapter. Kornat stresses that Beck's actions during the German remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936 indicated his readiness to oppose Hitler. Warsaw's surprising rapprochement with Paris during the period of Popular Front rule also took place during this time, resulting in the Rambouillet agreement, although Delbos's trip to Poland in December 1937 was anticlimactic. Beck's other actions during this rather stable period included his attempts to forge a “horizontal axis” that included Italy and a “Baltic Union” that included Sweden. Furthermore, Beck was successful in pressing Berlin to pay its backlog of transit fees in Pomerania and to order its stooges in Danzig (Gdańsk) to abandon their anti-Polish fiscal policies. In contradistinction to his protagonist's critics, Kornat demonstrates that after being told by the Western powers not to expect any military action from them in the summer of 1936, Beck acted as a defender of the Wilsonian status quo and refrained from reducing the question of Gdańsk to a strictly bilateral issue with the Reich.The following chapter is dedicated entirely to 1938, the year of appeasement. By annexing Ethiopia–unfortunately, Kornat does not elaborate on Beck's attitude toward this important conflict–Mussolini alienated himself from the democratic powers, drew closer to Hitler, and became more amenable to the German Anschluss of Austria. Halifax made an appeasement offer to Hitler already in November 1937 in Berchtesgaden; Beck could not affect the course of the German enlargement and only tried to ensure that Warsaw's détente with Berlin was not affected. The decline in international security, however, prompted him to adopt a relentless attitude toward Lithuania after the shooting of a Polish soldier at the border. Kornat argues that Beck's ultimatum from March 17, 1938 was moderate, as it only requested that Lithuania enter regular diplomatic relations with Poland, and also fruitful, as it resulted in the two countries regulating the status of their minorities, among other questions.This was not the only Polish ultimatum issued in 1938, of course: the one delivered to the Czechs on September 30 regarding Cieszyn Silesia continues to be considered Beck's most shameful act. Nonetheless, Kornat–while admitting its questionable morality–argues that it changed absolutely nothing in terms of the road to World War II. Beck requested that ethnic Poles in the disputed territory be granted the same rights as ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland, while Poland lay a claim to Cieszyn Silesia only after the great powers had already decided to dismember the country. Kornat lists the following reasons for this: (1) the enormous domestic popularity of the idea that returning Zaolzie to the “motherland” would mean nothing more than justice; (2) the implications of abandoning the territory's Polish population to the Reich; (3) Beck's refusal to allow any great power to decide on Poland's fundamental interests in Munich. Kornat underlines that Warsaw's claim to Bogumin, which was a gauntlet thrown to Berlin, reflected the Piłsudskiite imponderabilia of independence, and so did his rejection of Moscow's attempt to dispatch troops to Polish territory. Kornat also draws our attention to Beck's unsuccessful but geopolitically sound attempt to build a multilateral “Third Europe” alliance, whose geographic spine would consist of Poland, Hungary, and Romania.Kornat named the following chapter Annus terribilis, but Poland's “horrendous year” 1939 really started on October 24, 1938, with Hitler's proposition of a “global solution” (Gesamtlösung) of issues in Polish-German relations. Beck immediately considered the Führer's “generous offer” concerning Gdańsk both unacceptable and uncompensated for by foggy promises of joint territorial gains in Russia. Kornat makes a contentious claim that Beck was the first European leader in office to note Hitler's true aim of starting a global conflagration. While highly critical of Britain and France's “false” political guarantees, the author argues that his protagonist could not but accept the British declaration of March 31: “a Polish Sadowa would be the foreshadowing of a French Sedan” (p. 764). In fact, writes Kornat, Beck should be credited for finally rendering the conflict with the Reich international. Still, the Polish minister deserves criticism for his underestimation of German military power and of the ability of the Nazi and Soviet regimes to suspend ideological hatred to fulfill pragmatic aims, although not so much for once again refusing Poland's participation in a multilateral alliance with the double-dealing USSR. Beck was not completely illogical, either, in his otherwise naïve belief that Stalin would not order an attack against a Poland allied to Britain and France.In the last chapter of the book, Wołos demonstrates Beck's final stand against Poland's occupiers, namely his effort to build a Romania-based intelligence network in the spirit of Piłsudski's POW. The author narrates the final years of Beck's life under Romanian internment—first in and about Brașov, then under house arrest in Dobroești and Bucharest—which featured the disgraceful cooperation between the French and the new Polish government-in-exile under Gen. Sikorski, meant to keep the despised Piłsudskiite “colonel” interred. At the same time, it is a highly human story, as Beck's close friends and family–Schaetzel, his second wife, stepdaughter, and others–helped him deal with his declining health, deteriorating housing conditions and the increasing chicaneries from the Romanian security police. 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