The German Minority in Inter-war Poland and German Foreign Policy — Some Reconsiderations

Abstract

languages.' German efforts have come mostly from scholars with personal roots in the minority itself and are sometimes regarded, not necessarily with justification, as apologetic.2 In contrast, however, to the several significant English-language treatments of the German minority in neighbouring Czechoslovakia, and twenty years after Hans-Adolf Jacobsen drew attention to the need for an adequate western study of the German minority in inter-war Poland, there does not exist a single book in English devoted to this problem.3 Of course, one finds frequent references to the Polish Germans in general works dealing with the inter-war period, but here there is an overwhelming tendency to treat this national group primarily as an object, if not accomplice, of German (especially nazi German) foreign policy. This emphasis may be understandable, given the dramatic consequences of that foreign policy, but it can also distort our understanding of this minority and cause us to overlook the basic dilemma it faced, a dilemma which deserves attention outside the bounds of the foreign policy issues of that era. While one can legitimately wonder if much more can be added to our understanding of inter-war German foreign policy, there is still much to be learned