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Eastern Promises: International Law and the Allied

Treatment of Polish Postwar Territorial Expansions

“With respect to us, Poland might be, in fact, considered as a country on the moon.”

– Edmund Burke, Irish statesman and MP (1793)

Upon the close of the Great War, the convening Allied powers were insistent

on re-establishing the boundaries of a new Polish state that had remained

partitioned from the 18th century until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. In it,

the Allied powers explicitly lay out the establishment of Poland’s western borders,

but decided to leave open the question of Poland’s eastern borders. For four years,

the new Polish state struggled to secure these vague, undefined borders. This

herculean task was further complicated by the postwar machinations of the Allied

powers, specifically France and Britain. The establishment of Poland’s boundaries in

the postwar period was hampered by, and ultimately shaped to accommodate, the

practical (i.e. economic and political) concerns of France and Britain, who had

prioritized security in Europe through (1) the rehabilitation and reconciliation with

postwar Germany, and (2) resolving the issue of a potentially Bolshevik Russia, over

that of aiding a nascent state in expanding and legitimizing its borders.

This constant flux between French desire to establish security from German

aggression, British (especially Lloyd George) pragmatism and realpolitik attempting

to aid a White Russia while considering preservation of economy and trade with

Bolshevik Russia, and combined Allied desire to see a rebuilt Germany meant that

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the actual needs of the Polish government and state were cast aside. Little thought

was given to the historical and cultural backgrounds of the area’s ethnic

composition,1 and when Poland’s aggressive territorial expansion of its borders

threatened the national interests of either Britain or France, they would attempt to

reign in Polish ambitions under the guise of international law. This paper suggests

that the Allied treatment of Polish expansion, and the subsequent Polish reaction, fit

within Carr’s framework of international law—that a better understanding of

conduct in international affairs requires an initial recognition that nations with

differing and conflicting interests adjust their national policy to conform with the

realities of global power, rather than a blind belief in idealism.2 This paper will

analyze the expansion and subsequent regulation of Poland’s borders in the postwar

1For more on legal issues arising from ethnic divisions in Poland after 1918, see George Rankin,
Paper, Legal Problems of Poland After 1918, 26 TRANSACTIONS OF THE GROTIUS SOCIETY, PROBLEMS OF
WAR AND PEACE 1-34 (1940).
2 In his seminal work on international relations, E.H. Carr laid the foundations for classical
realism, noting that the failure of the interwar peace between WWI and WWII arose from the
flawed illusion that complex international issues could be resolved by an international
community of states with shared goals. See E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919-1939: An
Introduction to the Study of International Relations (2d ed., 1964). Carr writes that there have
been two “half-truths” established about international law, the first of which arises from the
naturalist/utopian view of law and sees the law as representative of what ought to be just,
reflecting “the ethical principles of a given time and community.” Carr at 174. On the other hand
lies the realist view, suggesting that law is completely divorced from ethics and is binding
“because there is an authority which enforces obedience to it . . . the law is therefore the weapon
of the stronger.” Carr at 176. For Carr, the utopian view is not sustainable— given the chaotic
nature of the international arena, it is impossible to ignore the impact of global power and naïve
to suggest that all nations had a same interest and reasons in maintaining peace. However,
neither is a strict realist view, where the morality of the law is informed by politics,
sustainable— “the complete realist, unconditionally accepting the causal sequence of events,
deprives himself of the possibility of changing reality.” Carr at 17 (1941 ed.). Carr instead posits
that international law is forever intertwined with international politics, and that a better
framework to consider the international legal system would be to take into account the relations
between law and morality, on one hand, and politics, the manifestation of international power
through economy, military, and public opinion, on the other.

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period through (1) the protracted struggle over Vilnius and its surrounding region

during the Polish-Soviet war; (2) the recognition of these annexations at the Peace

of Riga and their effects on Locarno; and (3) the resulting Polish foreign policy in the

interwar period. It is clear that despite the French attempts at building an Eastern

coalition led by Poland to ensure security from Germany and Bolshevik Russia,

practical national interests would triumph, and Locarno would place Poland’s

expendability on full display. Poland’s ambitious post-Locarno forays into signing

independent agreements with Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany would reflect Carr’s

theory—that differing interpretations of national interests, as developed through

national policy, ultimately take into account the global balance of power, running

counter to the idealistic vision of peace that the League of Nations had attempted to

impose following the close of the Great War.

I. Divided Interests

Poland’s rapid declaration and expansion of its borders was the

manifestation of the age-old desire to re-establish itself as a sovereign state and the

center of Eastern Europe. Ever since 1772, upon the First Partitioning of Poland by

Prussia, Austria, and Russia, Poland had remained divided through the Napoleonic

wars, finally regaining independence at the end of the negotiations at the Paris

Peace Conference. Under the Treaty of Versailles, Poland’s western borders were

deemed established:

“The boundaries of Poland not laid down in the present Treaty will be

subsequently determined by the Principal Allied and Associated Powers. A

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Commission consisting of seven members, five of whom shall be nominated by

the Principal Allied and Associated Powers, one by Germany and one by Poland,

shall be constituted fifteen days after the coming into force of the present Treaty

to delimit on the spot the frontier line between Poland and Germany. The

decisions of the Commission will be taken by a majority of votes and shall be

binding upon the parties concerned.”3

Despite this seemingly solid foundation backed by international law for a German-

Polish border, there was still animosity leftover at Locarno, as well as after, as the

French appeared to be willing to weaken the longstanding Franco-Polish relations4

so as to appease the British and ensure French security in the West.

This shift towards protecting solely Western European security, although

deviating from the long-running French support for the Polish sovereign cause, was

a foreseeable policy change given the treatment of Polish expansion between 1918

and the signing of the Locarno treaties in 1925. Although France and Poland had

shared a storied Napoleonic past,5 the French attitude and policy towards Poland

remained “one of ambivalence.”6 At best, Poland was merely a practical tool for

France to achieve one of two goals—an essential Eastern European barrier in

securing Europe from Bolshevism, or as an Eastern European ally in securing France

3 Treaty of Versailles, Section VIII, art. 87 (1919).

4 Franco-Polish relations, although nonexistent prior to the 18th century, greatly expanded
during the Napoleonic era and continued through the Great Emigration, in which thousands of
political and cultural elites left Poland for France, seen as the bastion of European liberty. See J.
Zubrzycki, Emigration from Poland in the 19th and 20th Centuries, 6 POPULATION STUDIES 248
(1953).
5 Napoleon employed Polish legions in his armies, and even formed the Duchy of Warsaw, which

existed from 1807 to 1812. During the 1830s through to the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s,
French sympathy lay with the Poles, who were seen as “the symbol of struggle against
absolutism and national oppression.” Anna M. Ciencala & Titus Komarnicki, From Versailles to
Locarno: Keys to Polish Foreign Policy, 1919-25 at 13 (1984).
6 Cienciala at 13.

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from Germany. At worst, Poland was an obstacle in the way of a Franco-British

alliance, which desperately sought reconciliation with Germany (especially Britain).

And such an obstacle was what Poland and her territorial ambitions were to

Britain—one that would prevent British reconciliation with Germany (which the

British believed would promote security in the West and act as a barrier against the

Bolshevik threat) and foil the British attempt to engage in continuing trade relations

with a potentially Bolshevik Russian government.7 This sentiment was compounded

by the British government’s lack of prior historical connections with Poland, which

remained the view that “Poland was a little-known country lying on the peripheries

of Europe.”8 The priorities that British statesmen placed on the future peace and

economic security of Europe was in a rebuilt Germany as the primary containment

of Russia. Similarly, Polish ambitions were further restrained by the influence of

Germany, who had its own border issues with Poland stemming from influence by

postwar movements of the League of Nations, and specifically French and British

influence.9 As evident from the 1919 Vilnius dispute, the military and economic

interests of larger international powers would be pitted against Poland’s take on

national policy, and with such a disparity in initial global power which would

undermine and drastically impact the potential gains of Polish successes.

7 The British saw Russia as a large, lucrative market for British industrial goods, and an
untapped pool of food and raw materials for all of Europe. Id. at 6.
8 Id at 5. See also Phillip Kerr to Prime Minister, 2 September 1920, LLOYD GEORGE PAPERS (LLGP)

F/90/1/18 (1920) (Kerr stating that Britain would not play an active role in Europe while
simultaneously shouldering the burdens of Ireland and of empire.)
9 See infra Part III.

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II. Poland and The Vilnius Conflict—Adrift Amongst the Tides of International

Law

Poland and Lithuania were historically bound under the Polish-Lithuanian

Commonwealth from 1569 to 1795, with the Poles remaining as the ruling

aristocratic, landowning class until the late 19th century. As a class and cultural

struggle for a sovereign Lithuania emerged, the foundations for the modern

Lithuanian nationalist movement10 soon gained traction, subsequently creating

qualms against Polish territorial advances. For many Lithuanian nationalists, Vilnius

symbolized the grandeur of old Lithuania, which had unfortunately (and not

happily) been lost from the ensuing Polonization of many Lithuanian regions,

including the Vilnius region.11 For Poland, the Polonization of large swaths of

Lithuania meant that these lands (including Vilnius) were de facto part of Poland’s

territory. In fact, “most Poles envisage a large Polish state with either an

autonomous Lithuanian province or an ethnic Lithuania in some union with

Poland.” 12 This struggle over Vilnius would soon turn into an unnecessarily

protracted conflict due to the clash between Polish internal political desire to

aggressively expand is territory and the British and French unwillingness to accept

such rapid expansion due to their desire to capitalize on the results of the Russian

Revolution and Soviet-Polish war.

10 See W. J. Brockelbank, The Vilnius Dispute, 20 AM. J. OF INTL. LAW 3, 483, 484
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2189032 (July 1926) (suggesting that the first seeds of the
Lithuanian nationalist movement were sown by the publication of the Auszra, the subsequent
nationalist movement created a wave of “Lithuanianizers” that faced a rival, self-formed group
of “Polanizers” who wanted to retain Polish-control of Lithuania); see also C. R. Jurgela, History of
the Lithuanian Nation (New York, 1948) (discussing a short history of Lithuania.)
11 Cienciala at 116.
12 Id at 119.

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Immediately following the end of the Great War in January 1919, Russian

troops occupied Vilnius, forcing the Lithuanian Government to retire to Kovno.13

Already then, as they would a few months later under changed circumstances,

Britain and France were prepared to place their own security and economic

interests over that of Poland’s sovereign interests. The British plan was to exclude

Vilnius (as well as Lvov) from Polish territory, only allowing regional plebiscites to

decide union with Poland, and cultural autonomy if there was no plebscite.14

Although the French had only originally hoped for a quick resolution to the Polish-

Lithuanian issues,15 by March 1919, the French Foreign Minister, Stephen Pinchon,

was fully convinced by Lewis B. Namier’s (the British Foreign Office’s Poland expert)

belief that expanded Polish territorial expansion eastward “would drive Russia and

Lithuania into the arms of Germany.”16 In the span of a few weeks, this belief would

be cemented by the sudden Polish surge against Soviet forces in Lithuania.

On April 20, 1919, Polish troops managed to drive out the weak Russian

defenses at Vilnius, and Józef Pilsudski (the Polish Chief of State) created a

provisional civilian administration to restore order and promised inhabitants of the

Vilnius region an election to decide their own autonomy. The Polish maneuver to

solidify political power in the region heavily threatened the British interests in

Lithuania, which wished to see Lithuania as an autonomous nation that could resist

13 Brockelbank at 483.
14 British Delegation, Memorandum by the British Delegation on the former Russian Empire,
PRINTED PAPERS, Paris, FO, 374/20, pp. 71-73 (Jan. 20 1919).
15 The French believed that in giving the Lithuanians Memel, the lower Niemen valley, and some

form of autonomy, there would be settlement with the Polish. Cienciala at 120, discussing
Pologne, Conference du 29 Janvier 1919, AD/MAE, Pologne, Z-698-1 (1.1-3.3.1919), pp. 228-32.
16 Cienciala at 121, Namier's comments on Sir Esme Howard's report from Poland of 26 March

1919, FO, 371/3898/73/55014/55 (section: Lithuania and White Russia).

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the growing strength of Poland in the east. In spite of this, the Polish managed to

take advantage of the current and timely French desire to establish a strong Poland,

convincing Marshal Foch to draw the Foch Line.17 After several unsuccessful

attempts to finalize the Polish takeover of the Vilnius region18 and the creation of an

autonomous Lithuania, the Polish attempts soon faced strong backlash from the

British, who granted Lithuania de facto recognition on September 25,19 extended

officers, arms, and ammunition,20 and provided a loan to save Lithuania from its

financial crisis.21

By the end of 1919, British aid to Lithuania was justified as part of its

national policy of practical economic preservation—it was clear that the White

Russians were to lose the civil war, leaving the Bolsheviks as the head of

government. By December 1919, the Foreign Office had suggested the British

government open Anglo-Bolshevik negotiations so as to establish trade relations.22

To do so, Britain had to keep out any German or Polish influence in the area, as well

as prevent any conflicts or tensions from erupting, which would disrupt the Baltic

17 This successfully gave Poland even more boundaries than that obtained in the original
demarcation line drawn by the Commission on Baltic Affairs in June 18, 1919, providing almost
all of the Suwalki Province to Lithuania but leaving Vilnius and Grodno to Poland.
18 The failed Kaunas coup, executed at the end of August 1919, was originally planned by

Pilsudki to replace the existing Lithuanian government with a pro-Polish one.

19 Cienciala at 127.
20 Id. (citing Wasilewski's report to Skrzynski on the Special Mission to Kaunas and Vilnius, 24

September 1919, cited in Piotr Lossowski, Stosunki polsko-litweski w latach (Polish-Lithuanian

Relations 1918-1920) 154-55 (1966)).
21 Id. (citing Senn, Great Powers, 22).
22 Similar ideas were taken up by British politicians and statesmen, such as David Lloyd George

and H.P.B. Maxse, who suggested Anglo-Soviet trade would shift Bolsheviks away from
socialism, strengthen the British economy, and placate the British working class (who were
influenced by Soviet propaganda).

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port and rail facilities—the continuing Soviet-Polish war would allow both Lithuania

and Britain to attempt such a blocking of Polish expansion.

By July 1920, the Polish forces seemed to be bowing under the pressure of

the Soviet military. At the Poland’s most powerless moment, its Foreign Minister,

Grabski, was “persuaded” by Lloyd George and the Allied powers at the Spa

Agreement to accept the upcoming Soviet-Lithuanian peace treaty. As expected, this

treaty recognized the Vilnius region as Lithuanian, and in return (under a secret

protocol) Soviet troops were given passage and temporary occupation rights of the

Vilnius region.23 However tides of the Soviet-Polish war again turned,24 this time in

favor of the Polish, and Pilsudski’s successful advances in the adjacent Suwalki

regions meant it was not long until Polish troops once again stood poised to march

into Vilnius.25 The ensuing Lithuanian defense managed to halt and threaten the

Polish advance with a counterattack in the Suwalki region (a defeat which would

seriously hamper the Polish counterattack against the Red Army); this forced the

Polish hand—they requested aid from the League of Nations to pressure Lithuania

into accepting the Polish demand that the Lithuanians move behind the Foch Line.

Although this was insisted as merely a request for the League to exert its influence,

23 Soviet occupation of Vilnius was to end on September 1, 1920 as per the August 6, 1920
Soviet-Lithuanian Agreement in which the Red Army was to evacuate all Lithuanian-recognized
lands. M. P. A. Hankey to Foreign Secretary, 10 October 1919, FO, 371/3907/
28011/140861/55; see also Curzon to Crowe, 13 October 1919, DBFP, vol. 3, no. 723. No. 27, pp.
363-65.
24 This can be attributed to Pilsudski’s successful regrouping of all three Polish armies and

subsequent counterattack at the Battle of Warsaw, which crippled the Red Army and ultimately
brought about the signing of the Peace of Riga. See Witold Lawrynowicz, Battle Of Warsaw 1920;
A detailed write-up, with bibliography Archived 2012-01-18 at the Wayback Machine..
25 This advance culminated in the Battle of Niemen in September 1920, where the retreating Red

Army forces attempted to form a defensive line at the Neman River after their loss at the Battle
of Warsaw. Once again, the Poles managed to outflank and defeat the Red Army, bringing the
Polish-Soviet war into its closing days.

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it opened, as Cienciala so aptly put it, “a hornet’s nest for Warsaw.”26 British interest

in preserving trade27 would take importance as a League priority over Polish

expansion into Lithuania.

At the September 1920 meeting of the League of Nations Council, the British

stressed a pro-Lithuanian argument—that Lithuania be neutral under the earlier

Moscow Treaty of July. Following joint British-French condemnation of Polish

actions at the Battle of Sejny,28 Pulsidski sanctioned a military rebellion, which was

officially disavowed by Warsaw. 29 Surprisingly, the expected breakdown of

subsequent Polish-Lithuanian talks over Vilnius did not lend to further British

action against Polish interests in the region. Instead, practical considerations once

again took over—there were no longer fears of another Soviet offensive, and

Lithuania’s refusal to compromise had taken enough of British patience.30

When Britain began supporting the idea of a Polish-Lithuanian federation,31

it prompted a much more generous compromise to the Vilnius issue on behalf of the

Poles.32 This British warmth soon faded with the third Upper Silesian uprising,33 and

26 Cienciala at 133.
27 The British feared that a Polish-occupied Vilnius would cause a Soviet counterattack, which
would drastically disrupt trade and potentially threaten Germany, the main British priority.
Curzon to Rumbold, 31 August 1920, DBFP, vol. 11, no. 499, p. 537 (therefore calling the Polish
drive into Vilnius a “folly”).
28 See Piotr Lossowski, Stosunki polsko-litweski w latach (Polish-Lithuanian Relations 1918-1920)

at 260, n. 154 (1966).

29 The infamous Zeligowski Rebellion occurred in October 8, 1920, when Polish troops marched

into Vilnius and established the pro-Polish Republic of Central Lithuania with Vilnius as its
acting capital. Zeligowski himself asserted he had acted independent of Warsaw, and when
“asked why he had seized the city . . . he said that he wished to give the population the
opportunity to decide its own fate.” Cienciala at 137.
30 Even after all these considerations, “the Lithuanians’ idea of negotiations was that the main

points at issue should first be conceded to them.” Id at 142.

31 Id.
32 Id.

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the Foreign Office went back to a strong pro-Lithuanian stance. With the newfound

British backing, Lithuania again returned to its uncompromising position, rejecting

both of the Hymans Plans presented to the parties at the 1921 League Assembly.3435

Poland’s hand was again forced, this time to accept the results of the plebiscite to be

held in the Vilnius region in February 1922. The British, tired of struggling with the

Lithuanian issue and coming to the conclusion that Russia was to be Bolshevik, came

to accept the practical realities of the Vilnius dispute, and in 1923, the League had

come to accept the Vilnius region as part of Polish territory. Had Britain and France

initially accepted the Polish concept of a federation between both nations (granted,

Lithuania was also in an uncompromising mood), the Soviet-Polish war would not

have gone on in Lithuania for as long—there would have been the recognition of the

necessity of a cordon santaire to stop the Bolshevik tide either way, or used it as a

bargaining chip in discussions with White Russia (had they won).

The Vilnius dispute was a clear-cut representation of the inseparability of

international law and international politics, and more specifically the economic and

military aspects of international politics. Only ever concerned with their economic

interests in Eastern Europe and Russia and security of Western Europe, the French

and British attempts to use international law in their favor and reign in Polish

ambitions in Lithuania met stiff resistance from Polish political power ambitions

33 Although this is also an essential component of the unfair treatment of postwar Polish
expansion by international law, the scope of the Upper Silesian plebiscites and uprisings are too
expansive to cover within the limits of this paper. See George A. Finch, Upper Silesia, 16 AM. J. OF
INTL. LAW 1, 75, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2187815 (Jan. 1922).
34 Peter Ernest Baltutis, Honors Thesis, The Lithuanian-Polish Dispute and the Great Powers,

1918-1923 at 48, Univ. of Richmond (2001).

35 In addition to rejecting the Hymans Plans, the Lithuanian government also requested a

declaration from Moscow that it would view any Polish-Lithuanian union as a hostile act.

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and desire to appease its public opinion and claim the Vilnius region as Polish. The

constantly changing attitudes to the Polish claims, spurred by these economic and

security concerns, echo Carr’s international framework of national policy as a

reflection of “particular interpretations of national interest at a particular time.”36

Given the realities of global power imbalances, Poland was eventually forced to turn

to the League, subjecting Polish interests to the dominant national interests of

Britain and France. This view would similarly be seen in the Anglo-French treatment

of the Peace of Riga and their subsequent handling of Polish borders at Locarno.

III. The Peace of Riga and “The Spirit of Locarno”

The Polish counterattack at the Battle of Warsaw was the beginning of the

end for the Soviet forces, which were again routed at the Battle of Niemen in

September of 1920. Pressured by the French and British,37 Russia and Poland

agreed to a ceasefire in October, and on March 18, 1921, the Treaty of Riga was

signed. The Soviets conceded much more territory to the Polish than expected,

largely in part due to the increased internal unrest within is borders. 38 The resulting

shift in Soviet foreign policy, in which it changed from expansion of the scale of the

36 Moorehead Wright et al, A Reader in International Relations and Political Theory 191 (2002).
37 See Stanislaw Dabrowski, The Peace Treaty of Riga, 5 THE POLISH REVIEW 3, 19
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25776284.pdf?refreqid=search:b07422a865b35d88d696be7
a920afe13 (Winter 1960).
38 Professor Cienciala suggests that this was due to the implementation of Lenin’s New

Economic Policy, which caused widespread peasant rebellions across Russia, as well as the
Kronstadt rebellion led by a group of Russian sailors, soldiers, and civilians. Anna Cienciala,
Lecture, The Rebirth of Poland, Univ. of Kansas,
http://acienciala.faculty.ku.edu/hist557/lect11.htm (Spring 2002, rev. Fall 2007, Spring 2012).
Lenin himself wrote that “[t]he signing of peace [with Poland] is now essential for us . . . we will
win time and use it to strengthen our army.” Margeret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That
Changed the World 228 (2002).

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Communist revolution to “the best possible preparation for a future world war,”39

allowed Poland to extend their territory about 200 miles east of the Curzon line 40

and gain about 52,000 square miles of land consisting of Ukraine and Belarussia.

The resolution of the Polish-Soviet war, although in line with the French and

British goals, did not mean that the Treaty of Riga would be so easily accepted by

the Allies. In fact, the Entente Powers refused to recognize the validity of the treaty

because they were not involved in the negotiations,41 and it would be another two

years before the Peace would be recognized in March of 1923.42 By then, it was clear

that the Bolshevik threat could only be contained by the formation of a strong

Poland, prompting the intersection of British and French economic and security

interests and promoting the recognition of the Riga treaty. This seeming pro-Polish

stance would not last long however, as economic considerations for a rebuilt,

reconciliated Germany would trump the Polish victory at Riga, as exemplified by the

spectre of Locarno.

Prior to Locarno, the issue of German reparations had reared its head when

France had failed to successfully extract enough reparations from its occupation of

the Ruhr.43 It was clear that there had to be a different solution, which resulted in

the adoption of the Dawes Plan44 in August 1924. This plan reflected the British

39 This world war was considered inevitable by Moscow. See Wojciech Materski, The Second
Polish Republic in Soviet Foreign Policy (1918-1939), 45 THE POLISH REVIEW 333 (2000).
40 The Curzon Line was “established” as an armistice line by the Allies in order to secure the

Polish-Soviet border after the war. Unfortunately, this was violated multiple times by both sides
during the Soviet-Polish war.
41 Michael Palij, The Ukrainian-Polish Defensive Alliance, 1919-1921 at 169 (1995).
42 It was the French support that managed to convince the Britain, Italy, and Japan to recognize

the Riga treaty in March of 1923; the US would follow in April of that year. Id.
43 Cienciala at 223.
44 This plan reduced the scale of payments until 1929/1930.

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interest in strengthening Germany, which entailed revision of the German-Polish

border. French national interests coincided with that of the British, prompting

French national policy to pursue a guarantee pact with Britain and Belgium in

September 1924. Poland expressed dismay and concern at such a purely Western-

based security pact, arguing that by securing only the western borders of Germany,

it would encourage Germany to invade Eastern Europe, specifically Poland, in times

of war. 45 By 1925, British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain was fully

convinced of the importance of French security, which would be the key to

improving French-German relations—to that extent, an Anglo-French alliance was

necessary, and could only be achieved through exclusion of guarantees for Eastern

Europe (where France had many vested interests, one of which included Poland).46

By the time the conferring powers met at Locarno, Germany had already

prepared its goals to be achieved, many of which fell in line with the British idea of a

purely Western security pact. Germany refused to enter the League unless article 16

of the League Covenant was modified, refused to accept French guarantees of their

eastern arbitration treaties (Poland, Czechoslovakia), and refused to accept any

linkages of these French eastern arbitration treaties with a western security pact.47

Although highly insistent and seemingly unworkable, given the French

commitments to the Eastern European blockade against Soviet Russia, British

practical concerns (peace in Europe and restoration of trade and economy) would

45 Skirmunt, Political Report no. 27/24, 2 Dec. 1924, AAN, MSZ, vol 2657 at 227-32 (1924).
46 Cienciala at 231.
47 Id at 260.

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convince France to support such a Western security pact at the expense of Polish

borders.

Although France willingly entered into the discussions at Locarno, they did

so with the primary goal of restraining Germany.48 France sought to change the

imbalance of power between herself and Germany through attempts to reduce

Germany’s size and resources, limiting German war making capacity, and ensuring

any future Franco-German war was fought on German soil and not French

territory. 49 To that extent, France not only needed to secure well-defined

boundaries in the west, but also required an insurance policy in the form of Eastern

Europe to act as allies in case of future German aggression. As such, although France

was ready to negotiate and accommodate German demands at Locarno, its interest

in maintaining eastern allies pushed them to assert the legal preservation of French

rights at Locarno,50 specifically the French guarantee of German arbitration treaties

with Poland and Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, this meant that Poland, despite its

recent territorial gains from the Peace of Riga, would once again be on the chopping

block, this time with its western borders.

The primary treaty the Locarno conference was designed around was the

Rhineland Pact, which formally recognized the western borders of Germany and

created a security pact between Germany, France, and Belgium, with Italy and the

UK acting as guarantors of the pact.51 At the outset of the conference, Germany

48 George A. Grun, Locarno: Idea and Reality, 31 INTL. AFFAIRS 477, 481-483 (1955).
49 FCO Historians, Records & Historical Dept., Locarno 1925: The Treaty, the Spirit, and the Suite,
HISTORY NOTES No. 3 at 9 (2000).
50 Cienciala at 259.
51 See Locarno Final Protocol (1925).

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raised issues with the second part of article 6 of the Rhine pact, which not only kept

intact the same rights and obligations stemming from the Versailles Treaty, but also

applied the right of France to implement the guarantee of the arbitration treaties to

be signed between Germany, on one hand, and Poland and Czechoslovakia on the

other. This French guarantee would be operative if it was not contrary to the League

Covenant, and if one of the signatories (specifically Germany) had recourse to

force.52 The German delegation argued that this was unacceptable to the German

public opinion. Although the French immediately shot back, with Aristide Briand

stating that “France could not abandon her allies by accepting security for herself at

their expense; French public opinion would not stand for it,”53 Briand was willing to

provide concessions, noting that “if the difficulty was one of finding a formula that

would be pleasing to German public opinion, then it could be found.”54

For France (and ultimately Briand), it was the interest for security over

everything else that drove them to the national policy pursued at Locarno—this

appeared more and more likely to be found in the formal establishment and

recognition of Germany’s western borders as opposed to the French support of

Poland and the coalition of Baltic states.55 From the French occupation of the Ruhr

in 1923 until now, it had almost seemed impossible for France to pursue complete

security on both western and eastern borders. It was now being given a chance to

52 Cienciala at 261.
53 Id.
54 Id.
55 See infra Part II. The Soviet-Polish war had agitated ethnic and nationalistic sentiment,

resulting in a Baltic and Eastern European region that had split allegiances to either Poland or
Soviet Russia in the case of a German attack. It was more sensible given the lack of British
interest in Eastern Europe for France to ensure a formalized, secured western border as
opposed to becoming a protector of the east. See George A. Grun, Locarno: Idea and Reality, 31
INTL. AFFAIRS 477, 480, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2604823 (1955).

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resolve one of its two pressing concerns—the guarantee of the status quo of security

in the Western part of the Continent.

On October 13, 1925, agreement was finally reached to effectuate such a

compromise. The issue of France as the guarantor of the Eastern states, which arose

from Article 6 of the Rhineland Pact, was soon resolved by Sir Cecil Hurst of the

British Foreign Office—under article 2, which provides exceptions to the

renunciation of war, the last part states “that another exception would be action

taken on the basis of a decision by the League Council, or on the basis of article 15,

paragraph 7, of the covenant, provided however, that this action be directed against

the state that had been the first to attack.”56 Hurst proposed that this last part thus

“excluded all possibility of war, unless the other party had had recourse to arms . . .

therefore ma[king] it possible to strike out the last part of article 6 of the draft

treaty to which the German government had objected—namely, France’s right to aid

her allies.”57 Given the years of conflict and negotiations, France was by then more

than willing to depart from its old conception of an Eastern European security to

accept the new Anglo-German conception of peace in the west.

As such, the French were willing to replace their guarantee of the Eastern

arbitration treaties with prepared two separate mutual-assurance treaties with

Poland and Czechoslovakia, which were meant to “‘consecrate’ the French right of

intervention.”58 In reality, they were merely restatements of the prior agreements

with the two nations that France had signed only a few years earlier. Though it

56 Cienciala 266. See also Article 2, Final Protocol of the Locarno Conference, 20 AMER. J. INT’L L.
23, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2212881 (1925).
57 Id.
58 Id.

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appeared to be a victory for the French dream of creating a strong defense through

Eastern Europe, in reality, the French (and British) pursuit for practical security

created two distinct frontiers in Europe, and arguably created the justifications for

the invasions of Poland and Eastern Europe during the Second World War.

Specifically, the French guarantee to Poland through the Rhineland Pact (and the

corresponding Annex) largely restricted French obligations under the 1921 Franco-

Polish alliance.59 This was even recognized by British Foreign Secretary Austen

Chamberlain, who had informed the British cabinet “that France had ‘revised’ her

alliances with Poland and Czechoslovakia and had reduced her existing

obligations.”60 Under the new Locarno provision, any situation where France aided

Poland in a war against Germany (in which the League had not declared Germany an

aggressor) would oblige both Britain and Italy to come to Germany’s defense. The

signing of the Rhineland Pact in effect established in the west a “first class frontier,”

as distinguished from the “second class frontiers” of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and

other Eastern European nations.61

Poland feared that the Rhineland Pact’s guarantees to France and Belgium

meant that Germany would immediately turn to Poland as the option for invasion to

open up any leftover issues from Versailles without incurring British intervention.

59 This was entered into during the Polish-Soviet talks at Riga, forming not only a political and
economic alliance between the nations, but also a defensive military alliance in order to defend
against the perceived German and Soviet threats. See Piotr Stefan Wandycz, France and Her
Eastern Allies, 1919-1925: French-Czechoslovak-Polish Relations from the Paris Peace Conference
in Locarno 217-218 (1962).
60 21 Oct. 1925, Cab. 49 (25), CAB, 23/51 p. 30.
61 Coined by Italian legal expert Massimo Pilotti, the “first class” borders are those in the west,

which were permanently memorialized at Locarno and given mutual guarantees by the Great
Powers. The “second class” borders were those of Eastern Europe, which only France was
prepared to guarantee (and under strict limitations), and thus could be subject to revision at any
time. See Locarno 1925: The Treaty, the Spirit, and the Suite at 21.

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Jules Laroche, the future French ambassador to Poland, wrote that Locarno was

more restrictive than the prior Franco-Polish alliance, as it was dependent on the

League Covenant and only dealt with the case of direct German aggression.62 In a

February 1926 memo to the Polish ambassador in Paris, the Polish General Staff

noted further deficiencies in the treatment of Poland under the spirit of Locarno.

Their analysis of the Franco-Polish guarantee treaty, which was primarily based

around articles 15 and 16 of the League Covenant, emphasized the ability of

Germany to wage a “legal” war against Poland with first strike capability and

without any French intervention because of the potential loopholes found within the

articles. The memo noted that under both articles 15 and 16 of the League Covenant,

upon the League Council passing a unanimous resolution naming the aggressor, it

will then pass economic-financial sanctions; then issue directives on military

sanctions; and only then will “immediate” French intervention take place. If there is

no unanimity on the League Council’s report, then France can help Poland under

article 15, paragraph 7. However, under article 12 of the League Covenant, if both

parties submit to arbitration or inquiry by League Council, there will be a three-

month delay of war from the date of the award by arbitration or local council

report.63

Not only did Germany have this three-month grace period to prepare for

strikes into Poland to force her to acquiesce to German demands, but could also wait

until well after the expiration of the three months. In such a case, the of German

Cienciala at 271.
62

Cienciala at 285, citing Attaché Wojskowy I Morski w Paryźu, Pro Memoria dla Pana
63

Ambasadora Paryz, 3/11/1926r (1926).

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aggression would once again have to be reconsidered by the Council, only then

allowing the French aid of the guarantee treaty to come in. This Polish worry would

only be further compounded by the French attempt to rid them as their Allies over

the next few years, as France realized that Eastern Europe was an insufficient

guarantee of security against Germany. France turned way from obtaining security

through its Eastern European alliances and instead recognized the importance of

collective security with its western neighbors. As Poland settled into its role in the

post-Locarno Europe, it continued to simmer over the bitter pill it had to swallow in

the form of the British and French treatment of Polish postwar ambitions. Once

again, Carr’s form of practical realism came into play—because of the initial

disparity in global power prior to Locarno, the national interests of Britain and

France clashed with, and triumphed over that of Poland, allowing the Rhineland

Pact to dictate the terms of security on the European Continent. Thus, international

law through Locarno would reflect the dominant interpretation of economic and

military security in Europe, that of a rehabilitated Germany with strong ties to

western neighbors in France and Britain. This would have far-reaching

consequences, as the Polish national policy in the post-Locarno world reflect its own

desire to achieve its national interest in securing a strong Polish state, free from the

yoke of British and French interests.

IV. Opening Pandora’s Box – The Interwar Years

Although recognizing some territorial gains from the Soviet-Polish war,

Poland left the Locarno conference as a second-class frontier, with its western

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borders subject to open revision by Germany, and its eastern borders constantly

under the shadow of Soviet Russia. The Polish Foreign Secretary, Józef Beck heavily

criticized the Locarno treaty, proclaiming, “Germany was officially asked to attack

the east, in return for peace in the west.”64 On the other side of the negotiations

table, German Foreign Minister Streseman stated, “For me, Locarno means opening

the possibility of taking back from Poland German provinces in the east.” 6566 Such a

vague, open-to-revision concept of a German-Polish border would not sit well with

Poland, and this ideology not only influenced Polish foreign policy going into the

interwar period, but bolstered German aggression as well.

Pilsudski, who had retired from active politics in 1923 to write political and

military memoirs, saw Poland slide farther away from becoming the Eastern

European power that he had worked so hard to achieve. Following Locarno, the

Polish economy faced extreme hyperinflation, resulting in massive unemployment

rates and public unrest.67 The desire to restore internal stability led Pilsudski to

emerge from his retirement, hoping to form a stronger central government capable

of ending the political chaos that had engulfed Polish politics following the war.

Poland had enough of the slowly declining French support and felt betrayed by the

Anglo-French pact formed at Locarno. Pilsudski saw that French-Polish policy was

“going farther and farther” away from the original treaties (1921 and 1924), and

64 Michael Brecher, The World of Protracted Conflicts 204 (2016).

65 Now that France had obtained a western collective security from Locarno, Poland was “the
Moor that had done his duty, the Moor can go.” Stated a few days before the signing of Locarno,
Streseman’s harsh, but truthful, words set the stage for the Polish decisions during the interwar
years. See Miklós Lojkó, Meddling in Middle Europe: Britain and the “Lands Between” 1919-1925
at 285 (2006).
66 Brecher at 204.
67 Bohdan Urbankowski, Józef Piłsudski: Dreamer and Strategist at 502 (1997).

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was compelled to take steps to protect Poland and her national interests.68 As such,

Pidulski desired to pursue an independent Polish foreign policy, one that was free

from the reigns of the Allies, especially Britain and France, who had so limited Polish

expansion both immediately following the Great War and at Locarno. Internally,

Pilsudski began a program of “state-assimilation,” under which citizens were not

judged by ethnicity but by their loyalty to the state.69 This not only began to stabilize

the internal politics of Poland, but also improved relations between ethnic

minorities and Poles. This stabilization, in turn, allowed Pilsudski to focus on

Poland’s international policy, which had grown dire for Poland after Locarno. After

the gutting of Polish borders, Poland was placed in the unenvious position of having

its two potential foes (Germany and Russia) pursue their own military and security

interests through the signing of the Rapallo Treaty and the Treaty of Berlin in April

1922 and April 1926, respectively.70 This Soviet-German military cooperation71 led

Pilsudski to pursue a Polish national policy of “equilibrium,” whereby Poland would

attempt to balance its security interests with that of Germany and Russia so as to

ensure stability and realize the vision of peace that Poland sought.

68 Shawnessy Johnson, Thesis, The Polish “Sickness” and Franco-Soviet Relations, 1934-1939,
Simon Fraser Univ. (Oct. 1997) (quoting Laroche to Paul-Boncour, 29 Jan. 1934, DDF, set. I, V, no.
288).
69 Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999

at 144 (2004).
70 Anna M. Cienciala, The Foreign policy of Józef Piłsudski and Jósef Beck, 1926-1939:

Misconceptions and Interpretations, 56 THE POLISH REVIEW 111, 119-120 (2011).

71 The Treaty of Berlin included secret Soviet-German military cooperation pacts, which

developed planes, tanks, and parachute troops for Germany and allowed them to circumvent
prohibitions laid down in the Versailles Treaty. See Yuri Dyakov & Tatyana Bushuyeva, The Red
Army and the Wehrmacht: How the Soviets Militarized Germany and Paved the Way to Fascism,
1922-1933 (1995).

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This intense desire to become a strong Eastern European state, and not

merely a satellite state subject to the whims of greater European powers, coupled

with the pursuit of an “equilibrium” policy, became a priority for Poland and

Pilsudski, resulting in the signing of the Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1932

and the Polish-German Declaration of Non-Aggression in 1934. By entering into

these agreements, Poland had now managed to secure, by itself, definite relations

with two of its largest, and most threatening neighbors, achieving the security

interest Polish national policy had been pursuing after Locarno.72 Unfortunately,

Poland had no means of enforcing any of these non-aggression pacts, and reliance

on Hitler or Stalin to maintain the integrity of these agreements was shaky at best. 73

Even Pilsudski realized this, stating that “we are sitting on two stools that cannot

last long. We must know which one we shall fall off first and when.”74 In spite of this,

Polish belief in their independent foreign policy,75 and tenacity in distancing

themselves from the French alliance that had sidelined them at Locarno, meant

there would be no collective security agreements signed by the Polish government

in 1930s. In March 1936, Hitler marched troops into the demilitarized Rhineland,

72 Pilsudski had also entered into a Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in July of 1932, which
went into effect December of 1932.
73 Johnson at 17.
74 P. Wandycz, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926-1936 at 326 (1988).
75 In 1935, Beck stated to the French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval,

“Polish policy is based on the following elements: I. Our geographical location and
historical experience both show that our decisive problems consist of Poland’s
neighborly relations with Germany and Russia. These problems absorb most of
our political work and our limited means of action. History teaches us that the
greatest catastrophe to affect our nation resulted from the activity of those two
states. And secondly, in the desperate situation in which we then found ourselves,
no state in the world could be found to hasten with help to us. Therefore, our key
interests depend on the solution of this basic problem.”
Cienciala at 116 (2011) (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Note on the conversations of Foreign Minister
Beck with French Foreign Minister Laval, 16 and 19 January 1935 at Geneva, ARCHIVE OF MODERN
DOCUMENTS, ref. no. 108, trans. by Cienciala).

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throwing Europe into a collective unrest. Although this violation of the Versailles

and Locarno treaties received criticism from Poland, it still continued relations with

Germany, even through the Nazi takeover of Danzig76 and Hitler’s Anschluss of

Czechoslovakia. By the end of August 1939, it was clear the staunch Polish refusal to

establish a collective security with its western allies, arising from the protracted

Polish-Soviet war and its subsequent unfair treatment at Locarno, would not only

prove disastrous for Europe, but for Poland as well, which would soon face a fourth

partitioning by the Nazis and Soviets.

This would be the last time Carr’s realist framework of differing

interpretations of national interests reflecting national policy would rear its head

before the outbreak of the Second World War. Poland, having had its national

interests trumped by those of more powerful nations at Locarno, was determined to

pursue its own national policy at any cost. Recognizing that the balance of global

power lay in favor of nations that did not include Poland, Pilsudski entered into

agreements with Poland’s two greatest threats, Germany and Soviet Russia, so as to

recognize the security interests it had sought at Locarno. Unfortunately, the

realization of this short-term interest would lend a hand in opening up Pandora’s

box, as Poland’s worst fears would come true in 1939.

76In March 1933, the Nazis won the absolute majority in the parliamentary elections in Danzig.
See Catherin Epstein, Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland 58
(2012).

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Conclusion

Poland’s story is one that encompasses Carr’s issue with the idealistic vision

of establishing a unified body of international law with the common goal

international peace and security. Because of the anarchic nature of the international

arena, the pursuit of national interests, as reflected through national policy, will

inevitably clash with one another. It is only by understanding that international law

is impacted by the realities of global power disparities can we begin to reconcile

differing pursuits of international policy through international law.

In this context, Poland’s trajectory leading up to the outbreak of the Second

World War is understandable and even sympathetic. Poland’s history has been one

of tragedy, a constantly divided nation caught between its desire to become a key

Eastern European power and the ambitions of its Western allies (Britain and

France) and its immediate neighbors (Germany and Russia). It is no surprise that

upon its restoration as a modern state after WWI, Poland aimed for rapid territorial

expansion as seen through the Polish-Soviet conflict and the Vilnius dispute.77

However, this went against the British and French ambitions for the Continent,

specifically ensuring the stability of their own economic and security interests in

postwar Europe. While Britain believed in revived economic trade with Germany

and a potentially Bolshevik Russia (and thus wanted to strengthen Germany—to

promote trade/economy and halt the spread of Bolshevism), France was convinced

77 These are but a few of the many attempts at Polish expansion and Polonization of Eastern
Europe after Versailles. For a discussion on the Polish-German borders and the Upper Silesian
plebiscites, see Cienciala Ch. 2 and 3. See also George A. Finch, Upper Silesia, 16 AM. J. OF INTL. LAW
1, 75, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2187815 (Jan. 1922); F. Llewellyn Jones, Plebiscites in
Transactions of the Grotius Society, 13 PROBLEMS OF PEACE AND WAR, PAPERS READ BEFORE THE
SOCIETY IN 1927, 165 (1927).

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of an eastern cordon sanitaire that could not only prevent the spread of Bolshevism,

but act as a check on German aggression as well. Because of such disparate goals,

Poland’s conflict with Lithuania and Soviet Russia dragged on, as negotiations with

the British and French would rotate around their practical (economic and security)

interests at the time.

The subsequent Peace of Riga, signed between Poland and Soviet Russia,

managed to secure Poland more territory than it had expected, but it would not be

long before Locarno acted against Poland. Again subject to the national policies of

France and Britain, Poland left Locarno as a “second-class frontier,” its borders with

Germany subject to revision at any point—a trade-off for a stable security pact in

the west, specifically France, Germany, Britain, and Belgium. The Allies had

unwittingly opened Pandora’s box at Locarno—unable to fully realize its original

territorial ambitions and recognizing the impact of global power on setting

international law, Poland turned to signing non-aggression treaties with both Soviet

Russia and Nazi Germany, a move that would prove fatal only a few short years

later.

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