The Second Republic, 1921-1939

Abstract

American-Polish relations in the period between the two wars lacked dramatic or salient features. For the United States they were marginal. For Poland they were of fluctuating importance. The discrepancy between a great power and a medium size state was accentuated by the underdevelopment of economic cooperation between the rich United States and the relatively weak Polish economy. Still, the interwar relations were significant: for the first time the United States was dealing with a fully sovereign Poland. This state of affairs would not be repeated until the collapse of communism toward the end of the twentieth century.1 In 1921 the Polish Republic crystallized territorially and domestically. At home the first Constitution was adopted. Yet, composed of three partitions devastated by war, with acute problems of land distribution, economically underdeveloped, containing some thirty% of national minorities, the country was in dire need of stabilization and development. The Treaty of Riga established Poland's borders in the east, even though international recognition came only two years later. In Upper Silesia the final division took place. In 1921, Poland, with 27.2 million inhabitants, occupied roughly 150,000 square miles and was the sixth largest state in Europe. Yet, as a French historian aptly remarked, it was a tragedy for Poland "to have been reborn too weak to be a power, yet strong enough to aspire to more than the status of a small country."2 German revisionism and Soviet enmity constituted a permanent threat to Poland's security. To cope with it, the country needed allies, and already in 1921 Warsaw concluded alliances with France and Romania. The