Political-military alliances in shaping the security of Poland in 1918-1939

Abstract

Poland was forming allied relations in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century due to the state’s weakness, mainly in military and economic terms. The Polish state’s situation regarding political and military security guarantees on the part of other subjects of the international community was neither stable nor advantageous during that period. That was influenced, among others, by the following phenomena: changes in the international arena that were unfavorable for the Second Republic of Poland, diplomatic activities of Germany and the USSR aimed at revising the borders of the Polish state, political and military rapprochement between the USSR and Germany in the area of economic and military cooperation, conciliatory and ineffective international policy of the Western powers (mainly the French Republic) towards Germany in the late 1920s, impermanence and low effectiveness of bilateral agreements and declarations concluded by Poland with its eastern neighbor – the Soviet Union and its western neighbor – Germany, ineffectiveness of the political-military alliances concluded by Poland with France, Romania, and the United Kingdom, and significant disproportions between Polish and German and Soviet industrial and military potential, combined with the inability of the western powers to fulfil their allied obligations in practical terms.

Keywords

• international security
• state security
• political and military alliances
• the Second Republic of Poland