The Origins of the British Guarantee to Poland of 31 March 1939

Abstract

During an address to the House of Commons on 31 March 1939, Arthur Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, gave a guarantee to Poland. Today, there is no doubt that the United Kingdom guaranteed only the independence of the Polish Republic and not its territorial integrity, thereby enabling the possibility of a peaceful settlement of the German-Polish dispute over Gdańsk and the so-called Danzig Corridor. This guarantee was a turning point in relations between Warsaw and London, leading to direct political co-operation between both states in the months leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War.

The aim of the present short paper is to determine the essential factors which underlay Chamberlain’s guarantee. For while sharing the established historiographical view that, had Germany not broken the Munich Agreement, it would have been difficult to imagine a serious political dialogue between Poland and Great Britain, it is worth considering whether the first heralds of a direct and common understanding between London and Warsaw can be observed in as early a period as the Sudeten crisis.