Military aspects in Polish-Czechoslovak confederation plans during World War II

Abstract

The defeat of Poland in September 1939 prompted General Władysław Sikorski, appointed Commander-in-Chief and Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland, to take steps to implement his earlier concept of a close relationship between Poland and Czechoslovakia. The aim of the project undertaken in Sikorski’s talks with Edward Beneš was to create a strong entity capable of countering the German and Soviet threats in the future. The implementation of such a plan, assuming the future expansion of the union to include other countries in the region, would provide a real opportunity to change the then geopolitical system in Central and Eastern Europe. The Sikorski-Beneš talks took place from the autumn of 1939 to the spring of 1943, when the Czechoslovak side adopted the pro-Soviet option in its policy and, in practice, withdrew from joint preparatory work to establish the Confederation Union. One of the main areas taken up during the Polish-Czechoslovak talks was the issue of shared defense policy. It is most broadly presented in two documents: in the Principles of the Constitutional Act of the Polish-Czechoslovak Confederation prepared by the Polish side and in the Czechoslovak Basic Principles of the Czechoslovak-Polish Confederation.