The period of the Weimar Republic constitutes an interesting example of the state's approach to the issue of building of the country's security, while being at the same time subject to international military restrictions. In this field East Prussia played a very important role. Reasons of ideological and historical nature as well as the location of the province, turned it into the object of interest of both German and Polish staff officers. Separated from the rest of the state by the sea and the so-called 'Polish corridor', East Prussia had to rely mainly on its own defensive potential. That is the reason of the permanent care for modernization and development of the existing system of stable and field fortifications. This concern with defensive potential of the 'East Prussia bastion', was not determined only by the defensive strategy. In the planning layer, the conspicuous role that East Prussia played in the engagement of Polish armed forces was noticed. Yet, above all, offensive values pertaining to the possibility of capturing of Pomerania or conducting attacks in the rear of the main Polish forces, concentrated in the belt of Great Poland and Pomerania, were appreciated.
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Dostęp do pełnego tekstu na zewnętrznej witrynie WWW
In the interwar period, Polish-German relations were consistently bad, except for a few years when mutual antagonisms were abated after the signing of the non-aggression pact of 1934. The Soviet press presented this objective state of matters in a manner unique for itself. The coverage did not bring any analysis of the situation on the Warsaw-Berlin line, but was an implementation of the political plan drawn up at the Kremlin. For the purpose of presenting the relations between the Republic of Poland and the Weimar Republic a thesis was generally accepted in the Soviet Union that those relations were strained on account of Warsaw's policy: the ongoing territorial dispute caused by inclusion of Germany's eastern territories into the Polish state and repression of the German minority. The authors of the Moscow propaganda claimed the situation to be analogous to what they termed as the Polish occupation of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, and oppression of the Belarussian and Ukrainian minorities by Poles. Playing the Polish card enabled Moscow to maintain close relations with Germany until Hitler's rise to power. The activity of the German diplomacy, hostile towards Warsaw, as exemplified by the case of the revision of state borders, met with full understanding of the Soviet press during the period of the Weimar Republic.
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