“I Cannot Comprehend How, Yet it was Done”: Minister Ditleff’s Report from the Besieged City, Warsaw 1939

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ABSTRACT Diplomats usually operate at a safe distance from the battlefield. However, an outbreak of interstate hostilities is likely to create the opposite constellation for those stationed in the capital of a state under attack. For most participants, such a situation is unparalleled, and they cannot rely exclusively on routines and protocols acquired through training and on-site practice. Their response is customarily managed by the head of their collective agency, the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, whose agency transfers from the ceremonial domain towards practical and humanitarian affairs. The role of the Dean is seldom discussed in scholarship, partly due to a limited number of available sources. This article sets out to address this lacuna. It is based on a detailed, richly documented unpublished report that accounts for the activities of the Dean of the Warsaw Diplomatic Corps on the threshold of the most recent global ‘hot’ conflict. It asserts that the rank and its holder’s familiarity with the local environment, which it presupposes, endows small-power diplomats with a degree of agency that circumvents power asymmetries in relationships with their great-power counterparts and hosts. Short Title: Ditleff’s Report