believed that the crisis had proven that German-Polish relations were founded on a sound basis, and that Poland’s claims on the Teschen had proven useful to Germany’s Sudeten policy. 152 Such remarks and cooperation demonstrate that, just a year before Germany invaded Poland, relations between the two nations were surprisingly close, with both countries seemingly able to work together effectively. Indeed, such was the closeness of the Poles to the Reich at this time that the then Soviet Prime Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, denounced the country as ‘Hitler’s jackals’. 153 Following the Munich Agreement in October 1938 Germany attempted to further cement its relationship with Poland into a formal alliance based around military and political issues; an alliance crucial to securing Germany’s increasingly anti-British turn in its foreign policy. The Reich hoped, first and foremost, that clearing up their frontier issues with Poland would lead to a broader understanding between the two nations: Danzig would be ceded to Germany, Poland would keep the corridor through which a German autobahn and railway would run, and Poland would also join the anti-Comintern pact and adopt ‘a more and more pronounced anti-Russian attitude’. 154 As such, the role that Germany envisaged for Poland through such a settlement was one in which the Polish army would be its junior partner, effectively securing the Reich’s eastern flank against the Soviet Union, and thereby freeing up the Wehrmacht to focus exclusively on a confrontation against Britain and France. 155 152 Memorandum by the Foreign Minister, Berlin, November 19, 1938, in Bernadotte E. Schmitt et al, (1953), p. 127. 153 Richard Overy & Andrew Wheatcroft, The Road to War: The Origins of World War II , (London, Vintage, 2009), pp. 11-12. 154 Diest et al, pp. 686-687. 155 Ibid., p. 687.
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