Dear Virginia, you asked wrong main question. Not Nazi - Germans. Not all Germans were Nazi.

Dear Virginia,

Very shortly, historically, Poland disappeared in the late 18th century (1795), gulped up by the Kingdom of Prussia and Imperial Russia. Poland as an independent state, was reinstated in 1918-1919 as result of WWI Peace Treaties.

The German-Russian non-aggression pact of August 1939 (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) was the prelude to Nazi Germany's plan to attack the Soviet Union, but before that Hitler swallowed Czechoslovakia, which was the natural route to attack the Soviets through Romania and also because the Czechs had a very modern and diversified industrial park that helped Hitler's military efforts after the outbreak of WWII.

In other words, Poland had zero influence on the outbreak of WWII. It was just another territory that the Nazis occupied in their effort to amplify what they called "Lebensraum" (vital space for the Germans), and also to facilitate their plan to get rid of undesirables, by building all the mass extermination camps in Polish territory.

As a sideliner: the highest number of members of the Nazi party was around 6 million Germans, about 7% of the population. That does not mean that a minority of Germans supported Hitler. On the contrary a very significant number of Germans and Austrians did. Before the incorporation of Austria into the German Reich (Anschluss - March 1938), through a Nazi-controlled plebiscite, almost all Austrians voted for that reunion (99%).

I assume you are asking about the 1934 German-Polish non-aggression pact.  This was most likely done because, 1) Poland was concerned about Germany rearming in violation of the Versailles treaty and was hoping for some measure assurance that it was safe, and  2) because Germany wanted to calm fears related to their rearming.  It was a purely diplomatic move to buy Germany time to complete their rearming to reclaim their pre-1919 borders. 

As to why Germany invaded Poland, probably two reasons, the most obvious of which was because it needed to in order to have a direct border with Russia for its planned invasion of Russia.  But also, keep in mind that after WWI Germany and Russia both were forced to give up millions of square miles of territory to recreate a Polish state, which had not existed for over 100 years, and neither country was too happy about that.

Thank a lot for your answers.

Excellent points John

It escaped to me to mention that the strategic plan to invade Poland dates from 1928 and was initiated by Werner von Fritsch, a high ranking officer and member of the German High Command during the Weimar Republic.

Indeed, von Fritsch's main reason was to recover the huge territory that Germany had to give up after losing WWI. He belonged to the pre WWI German aristocracy, hated the Weimar democratic regime and was a rabid anti-Semite.

Could not precisely say when Hitler conceived his plan to invade Poland (Fall Weiss), but he did inspire himself in von Fritsch's plan.

Dear Virginia,

Also a certain revenge thinking from the German side might have been involved. - In the so-called Weimar Republic (after WWI) under the social democrat Friedrich Ebert, when Germany had no regular Army (not allowed), Polish Troops invaded the Upper-Silesian Territories of Germany (today Gornishlonsk / Poland). Freicorps, semi-regular military units were called to the arms by the social democratic minister of defense  Gustav Noske (SPD), particularly when Bavaria was invaded by communist armed forces. Such Freicorps were fighting also in Silesia and in the Baltic States. - The large majority of the leading people in Hitler's Party (before Strasser's party) were ex-freicorps fighters such as Pfeffer von Salomon (Freicorps Pfeffer), Scheubner-Richter, Rosenberg, Hess, Roehm, Himmler and many more. - Only wanted to highlight this hopefully interesting aspect.

Dear Tom,

I admire your profound knowledge of the "Anschluss of Austria".

I only wanted to give a statement to the term Nazi-controlled plebiscite and wanted to share with you a maybe not widely known aspect:

Before Hitler's party was elected, a large majority of students had already voted for the Nazi-party in their student parliaments. That was the case at not less than seven German Universities. This phenomenon was triggered by a young American (of German decent) [or vice-versa] and very early supporter named Baldur von Schirach (two of his fore fathers had signed the American declaration of independence).

Plebiscite often is linked in a closer context to the Sturmabteilung (SA) of the party. - Otherwise, many German men joined the SA, when the German Crown Prince did so. - After Pfeffer von Salomon, had failed to control these large masses in uniform (more than 80,000 men),  Hitler himself tried without much success to command them himself. Finally he called their early leader Roehm back from his exile in South America. - Roehm paid for his come-back with his life, when the SA was destroyed by Himmler's SS some time later.

Dear Ruediger,

Very interesting episode, I was no aware of it. Thanks for sharing and for your kind words.

Ernst Roehm was the victim of what Jacques Mallet du Pan predicted after the French Revolution: "La révolution dévore ses enfants" (the revolution devours its children). Of course Roehm was also a bully threatening Hitler's leadership and the Nazi Party's political gains, so the Night of Long Knives was a natural consequence of Hitler's need to eliminate the SA.

Regards

Tom

Dear Tom,

thank you, that you like it! Very good characterization of Ernst Roehm!

Kind regards

Ruediger

The attack on Poland occurred because it was facilitated by Joseph Stalin as part of a long political strategy. After the death of Pilsudski in 1935 - who was friends with Göring - the new regime that took over in Poland reassured itself with its various agreements that it could poke the lion to the west without appreciating how the bear to the east was manoeuvring to move on its territory as part of a bigger long-term plan opening the way for Poland-hostile Nazi leadership to further its revanchist objectives. Wilson giving German territories and special priviledges in Danzig to Poland in 1919 set the fuse for 1939.

I worked this strategy out in great detail and it can be downloaded on my page.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234008336_The_Hitler-Stalin_pact_discussion_of_the_Non-Aggression_Treaty_and_the_secret_protocols

Thesis The Hitler-Stalin pact : discussion of the Non-Aggression Tr...

Dear Rüdiger,

About the Anschluss: Austria did hold a plebiscite to join Germany during the Weimar period that voted heavily in favour of joining Germany but the Entente powers nixed it. An interesting side note to the Anschluss: one of the Wehrmacht tank commanders that rolled over the Austrian border was the future Taiwanese defense minister and adopted son of Chang Kaishek. That must have been confusing for the locals at the time. For that matter I wonder if he, when he was in charge of the Taiwanese military, still wore his Anschluss service medal?

Dear Tom,

It should be noted that all militaries have plans on attacking other countries that are just plans. They are not meant to be acted on but are prepared so that in the event a leader wishes to do what the plan is for it is immediately available. It is a basic responsibility of generals to plan for any and every eventuality. That is what they do. It is for the politicians to decide to act on them or not. Remember that Valkyrie was such a plan ready to go - albeit by conspitors. For example, it is a fact that the US has a plan on an invasion of Canada and also one on how to defend against an invasion from Canada. Needless to say I am not baricading my house for such an eventuality here in Ottawa.

Best wishes,

Jeffrey

Dear Jeffrey,

Thank you for the interesting episode about Chiang Kai-shek's adopted son. During the advance to Austria Chiang Wei-kuo served as a 2nd Lieutenant (Leutnant) in the 98th mountain trooper regiment (Gebirgsjäger) under General Kopold and was the commander of a tank. He was trained at the war school of Munich.

With regard to the Anschluss of Austria: One possible reason for Austrians to vote for Hiltler was possibly the fact that they had very unstable conditions in Austria and in February 1934 even a civil war, where the socialist "Schutzbund" and the Christian-conservative "Heimwehr" (under Prince Rüdiger v. Starhemberg) were fighting against each other. Both sides were supported also by regular forces of the Austrian Army.

Austria under their conservative-fascist Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß (and after his Assassination under his successor Schuschnigg) was just on the way to become a fascistic state like Mussolini's Italy. So for many Austrians their country man Adolf Hitler seemed to be the lesser of two evils. - Interesting is also that Hitler had once mentioned, that Starhemberg is even worse than the communists.

 Baldur von Schirach was not an American citizen. He was born in Berlin, his father had been Born in Kiel. His father Carl von Schirach had married the American  Emma Middleton Lynah Tillon, but that did not make Baldur an American by either German or American law. As Baldur von Schirach wrote in his autobiography: "Bis zu seinem Eintritt in die preußische Armee war mein Vater amerikanischer Staatsbürger."

Dear Norbert,

thank you for your input and clarification. I think the citizenship issue of Baldur Benedikt von Schirach is not fully clear. Most likely you are right.

Nevertheless, since his mother only spoke English, he grew up with English as his first language (but that doesn't make a citizenship). The location of birth in this case is irrelevant, anyway:

- Karl (Carl) Benedikt v. Schirach (Baldur's great grand  father) emigrated to the US some years before the Civil War.

- Baldur's grandfather Karl (Carl) was a Brevet Major (of volunteers) in Lincoln's Union Army in the American Civil War (married to Elisabeth Baily Norris - also U.S. American),

- his father therefore was an American Citizen before he joined the Prussian Army, as you rightfully say.

I have revised my earlier write-up (see above) accordingly. - The main information was anyway on the fact that a large majority of German Student Parliaments was already "braun", before Hitler was elected.

More interesting is maybe the question how or why a boy trained earlier as a little American was able to do that?

kind regards

Rüdiger

I am not quite sure about the timeframe we are talking about. Poland had ceased to exist as a country in the 18th century when Russia, Austria and Prussia divided what had remained of the territory among themselves (in 1772, 1793 and 1795).

Poland lived on as a dream but had to be re-created after WW I on territories that had been considered parts of Russia and Prussia/Germany for more than a century.

Poland tried to reclaim more lost territories in the east in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919 to 1921, although that war turned out bad, and Poland narrowly escaped being conquered by the Red Army.

Furthermore, for the planned conquest of Russia Germany needed a clear path for its armies. So, Poland had to go ...

Interesting question Rüdiger: "how or why a boy trained earlier as a little American was able to do that?"

It seems that his early American education influenced little the young Schirach. He joined the military cadet group at a very early age (+/- 9 years old). Certainly this happened under the influence of his parents or relatives.

It is well know that Nazi teachers of those early times of Nazism glorified the Nordic races, instilling in their students the hate of Jews and other people that their beliefs considered inferior.

So maybe at home and among his professors and colleagues at the cadet group he was already absorbing his future prejudices and hates. 

As you wrote, well before Hitler, those kinds of educational institutions of young students were "braun.".

This may have been the jumping board for him, at the age of 17 or 18 to join the NSDAP.

As far as I know, he became a convinced anti-Semite (and also anti-Christian) at more or less the same age.

Such profile of his early youth can eventually explain his attraction to the Nazi ideology and his future deeds, mainly when he was appointed Gauleiter of Vienna (1940?), having been responsible for the deportation of ten of thousands Jews.

But well before that, when Hitler was elected Chancellor (1933) - he was appointed then the leader of the Hilterjugend - and until the outbreak of WWII (1939), Schirach made quite a career in the Party.

Can all this be an exploratory explanation to your question?

Regards

Tom

As I’m from Lithuania which is neighboring with Poland same as in prewar period, same as today, probably it is easier for me to look at the question from different angle. I guess we have to pay more attention to the Baltic states region. Very bed relations between Poland and Lithuania was the main reason that Baltic Entente (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland) was only vision, but not real and functioning military organization. Actually Poland was left alone in the battle fields. With plenty of promises from France and England but still alone in battle field.

Dear Simonas,

Given the appeasing mood that the British and French governments embraced during the Munich crisis (September 1938) and the pact they signed with Hitler, betraying the Czechoslovaks, it shouldn't come as a surprise that they left the Baltic states to their own destiny.

On the other hand, even if the Entente you mention would succeed, it wouldn't change the outcome. In the summer of 1940 the Soviets easily occupied Lithuania and a year later the Germans simply walked in. In Poland, the situation was the same, within two weeks the Wehrmacht broke the Polish resistance (September 1939).

The sad fact is that Poland and all the other Baltic states even, if militarily fighting together, would have no chance to defeat the Soviets and the Nazis.

Another point that deserves discussion about the Baltic states and Poland is that after their occupations a quite sizeable number of locals collaborated with the occupying forces,

For example, 90% of the Lithuanian Jews (already in the first two years of WWII) were exterminated and several Lithuanian police battalions joined the Nazi Einsatzkommandos in those killings.

In the broader scope of European history, the belief that there should be an independent nation called Poland was largely reserved to a set of wealthy aristocrats and men of commerce who considered themselves to belong to the ethnic group known as Poles.

As others have noted, Poland ceased to exist in 1795 after the final partition among Prussia, Austria, and Russia. But this is not quite right: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is the entity that ceased to exist in 1795. This entity, first known as the Polish-Lithuanian Union and then as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth came into being in 1385, and was driven by the Jagiellonian dynasty of Lithuania.

Prior to the union with Lithuania, Poland existed largely as a variety of competing smaller political entities that self-identified as Polish starting in the mid 10th century, with varying degrees of unification up to the point of the union with Lithuania.

So, in a very real historical sense, one can ask whether there was a Polish nation prior to 1918, in a similar way we can ask that of Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia. Also in a very real historical sense, the Polish-Lithuania Union occupied a varying amount of territory, but much of this territory was inhabited by peoples who did not consider themselves to be Poles or Lithuanians. Among these peoples were Ukrainians, Belorussians, Russians, Germans, Latvians, Lithuanians, and many smaller Slavic, Baltic, and Germanic ethnic groups that never achieved the status of having an independent nation.

In other words, Poland-Lithuania was an empire with dissatisfied subjects of many ethnic groups playing the same game of occupying as much of eastern Europe as were Russia, Austria, Hungary, Prussia, and even Sweden for a brief time, as well as the Mongols.

Poland was not land rich in culture and history endowed with specific identity. But the same is true of Germany and Russia.

Germany was perhaps the most confused. People who considered themselves to be ethnic Germans ruled separate political entities for centuries. While the nominal "Holy Roman Empire" was the core, this core was unstable. What is now Switzerland was part of the HRE, along with much of northern Italy. What are now the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg were entirely or partially within the HRE. All of these political entities gradually established themselves as separate smaller multi-ethnic unions. None of these nations currently are considered to be ethnic-based nation states, especially not Belgium.

And what is now the Czech Republic was for many decades an extremely powerful part of the HRE, with Prague being the major city of governance for the Habsburg period.

But the various Germanic orders of knights controlled much of the Baltic coast up to Estonia for centuries, with the Germans always an ethnic minority. Part of Austria was within the HRE, part was not. The other major German power, Prussia, was founded as a vassal state to Poland-Lithuania, and crossed the lines with the HRE when joined with Brandenburg. Indeed, many of the German residents that would come under Prussian rule during the partitions of Poland-Lithuania were invited as settlers by the government of Poland-Lithuania.

After WW1, it was decided that nations based on ethnic identity would be for the best. This was decided despite the UK and the US having no pretense of being ethnic-identity nations. But France, Spain, and Italy were pretending that they were, and that was good enough when combined with the opportunity to dismantle two of the major military competitors of France and Italy, Austria(-Hungary) and Prussia/Germany. The result was the creation of many new nations from parts of Germany and especially Austria-Hungary, with boundaries more or less determined by the ethnic majority of a region, and leaving millions of ethnic Germans and Hungarians in Slavic nations.

The result of this was a series of continuing military conflicts disputing the boundaries of these nations and civil wars within these nations. Large-scale warfare in Russia continued throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, which led into Russia's military conquest of Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Trans-Caucasus areas from Turkey and Persia, reassertion of power over central Asia, and a failed attempt at recapturing Finland.  The Spanish Civil War of the 1930s drew in the major European powers, especially German and Russia. The Turkish and Greek Civil Wars were cataclysmic for both nations, while the Irish Civil War mattered to few aside from the English and the Irish.

But put all of this together and you may reasonably say that the invasion of Poland in 1939 had no impact on the outbreak of WW2 because WW2 is an artificial construct whose main objective was to bolster the claims of the UK and France that they had won WW1, rather than merely bringing the central powers to a temporary low point while the war continued. After the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars, France developed an ill-advised and irrational belief that each war with German would be the last.

Also consider the Pacific theater of WW2. This nominally began in December 1941 when the Japanese attacked Hawaii. From the point of view of the Chinese, the war started about a decade earlier with the invasion of Manchuria, while the Chinese Civil War that commenced around the same time as the European Balkan Wars raged on through the late 1940s. The invasion of Poland had nothing to do with the Pacific War.

So why Poland?

1. Poland never was an independent nation with a clear sense of identity. Its history is intertwined with that of all its neighbors, from the high point of power of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the early 17th century to the low point(s) of all ethnic Poles being subjects of non-Polish peoples.

2. World War 1 never ended. It moved from the trenches of France and Belgium into the vastness of Slavic Eastern Europe, southwestern and central Asia, Spain and Greece, and along the borders and inside the borders of the new nations created by the Treaties of Versailles and Trianon, as well as within the major central powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey, but it never ended.

3. Poland was of no concern to the major actors of the Pacific war, China, Japan, and the United States.

It should be remembered that there is a backdrop of religion and feudalism tied to the question. Russia ruled from the "new Rome" (Moscow) and being Orthodox would be hostile at the get go to a Roman Catholic Poland. When Poland was dissolved in 1795, Prussia, ruled by a Calvinist monarch, would have support against Poland on that basis (although Frederic II himself believed in religious tolerance). However, since the defeat of the Teutonic Order in 1410, their lands that became part of eastern Prussia owed feudal loyalty as a fief to the King of Poland. This vassal status was taken over by the King of Prussia. Prussia had spent great effort to establish itself as a kingdom in its own right in the period leading up to dissolution of Poland and with that dissolution would come full feudal independence for Prussia from Poland.

What is little known and not so well understood is that there was a great ethnic mix in the eastern Prussian lands. In the 1500s Poland was actually more Protestant. Sons of such Protestant Szlachta families that could not inherit their families' property would set off to the outskirts of the feudal domains including what would become East Prussia. Some Germans who did not wish to convert to Protestantism aligned themselves with Roman Catholic Poles. As a result one would have, for example, a "Maslowski" soldier in the Wehrmacht who spoke German or Masurian Polish but was Protestant and identified himself as German. On the other side one can find individuals with clear German names who would identify themselves as Catholic and Polish. Allegiance to Germany despite being of clear Polish heritage yet Protestant did not spare these families from the generalised ethnic cleansing of all Germans in Polish-occupied territories after WW2. The background to what happened in that region is very complex.

East Prussia became independent of Poland well before 1795. In the Treaty of Wehlau of 1657, the Polish monarchy gave up their rights over East Prussia to the Kurfürsten* of Brandenburg. They (the Hohenzollerns) spent a few decades as Dukes of Prussia before declaring themselves Kings in Prussia** in 1701, along with the founding of the city of Königsburg. 

The ethnic composition of East Prussia also included Protestants from France and territories France was conquering under Louis XIV, and people from what are now the Netherlands and Belgium who were not particularly happy with their situation in those places (this could be religious, but it also could just be the offer of land ownership).

*not really a good English translation of Kurfürsten, these were rulers of the 9 territories within the Holy Roman Empire that had the right to participate in the election of the emperor of the HRE. Their official titles varied, and included ecclesiastic officials).

** the Hohenzollerns had to be "Kings in Prussia" because they remained in personal union with the Duchy of Brandenburg and declaring to be "Kings of Prussia" would have entailed claiming to be "King of Brandenburg", and Brandenburg was not a kingdom within the HRE and the rest of the rulers in the HRE were not going to let the Hohenzollerns claim to be kings.

There was a similar situation for the Habsburgs. Austria was a kingdom (and Kurfürstum) within the HRE, but ruled extensive territories outside of the HRE. In those territories, the Habsburgs elevated themselves to the status of emperors, but had to remain kings in Austria itself.

There were most probably Huguenots in East Prussia. None of my relatives though. Huguenots welcomed by the Prince Elector of Brandenburg tended to settle in or near Berlin as tthey were at first required to live in "Colonies". East Prussia did not fall within the Holy Roman Empire (of which the Habsburgs were Emperors), so in that regard it lay outside the main political entity at the time. Eastern Prussia as the Duchy of Prussia remained a fief of Poland despite the lands bein controlled by the Hohenzollerns who had inherited the lands. As a result they could only call themselves King in as there were legally two parts of Prussia with two different feudal relationships as fief. The Hohenzollerns made Königsberg their coronation city, while Berlin was the administrative capital. The details of how the Prussian rulers went from Electors to Kings in to Kings of is another issue. At the most basic level is how the people made their allegiances and in this religion and language played an important role in the region. There is a long collective memory. That is why when Germany signed its treaty with Poland after the fall of the wall, they gave up their claim to the 1937 borders but Poland had to return linguistic rights (includings schools) and Protestant churchs back to the remaining ethnic Germans that managed not to be ethnically cleansed from the region. In this case it does include a few of my relatives.

I think the "kings in" to "kings of" problem was solved by the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire by Napoleon in 1806, so the Hohenzollerns didn't have to be concerned anymore about the Kingdom of Bavaria (etc) demanding that Brandenburg remain lower on the feudal scale of political entities.

But East Prussia was only a fief of Poland until 1657, September 19, when Frederick Wilhelm of Brandenburg concluded the treaty of Wehlau with King Johan II of Poland as part of the Second Northern War. Sweden under (Wittlesbacher) King Karl X had defeated the combined Polish and Lithuanian armies in 1655 and Johan fled to the HRE. In 1656 East Prussia temporarily became a fiefdom of Sweden. That year, the Archbishopric of Ermland was conquered by Sweden and joined with East Prussia. After this, all warring parties agreed that East Prussia would be neutral territory, no longer having an obligation to support the Swedish army. Then Poland convinced the Prussians to break their treaty with Sweden by offering them independent rule of East Prussia, except they had to return Ermland to Poland, while obtaining some additional territory from Poland that was incorporated into Brandenburg-Prussia (which was in the HRE and never a subject of Poland).

Königliche Preußen, also known as West Prussia, remained part of Poland until the partitions of Poland of 1772 and 1793, and was then joined with East Prussia as part of the Kingdom of Prussia.

Sweden retained control of Vorpommern until 1815, as part of the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars.

Dear colleagues,

Besides the pleasant fact that we all have Huguenot forefathers (also -mothers), East Prussia is (was) basically not the major point of friction between "Germany" and Poland. It is more likely Upper Silesia. King Friedrich II (the Great) was fighting against his Empress Maria Theresia for it in the 1st Silesian war (1740 - 1742), after he was the legal heir to follow the dukes of Liegnitz, Wolau and Brieg as a ruler of this area, later known as the "Province Silesia", based on the Liegnitzer "Erbverbrüderung" von 1537. 

I basically don't really like the link from Prussia to Hitler, as it is claimed by various authors, since it is neither logic nor historically correct. - As pointed out above, Upper-Silesia was invaded by Polish Troops and defended by various Freicorps (mainly Students) after WWI, which opened the door for revenge later. We also shall not forget that Mr. Hitler was an ally of Mr Stalin, when they decided to delete Poland from the map, as it was done frequently earlier by the Russian Tsar, the German-Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia (Preussen). - What was not mentioned till now is the murder on about 30,000 (maybe more than 50,000) brave Polish guys (Reserve-Corps-Officers), engineers, lawyers and university professors, the elite of their country, by the Soviet NKWD in Katyn. If you look into their names you will also find some German family names.

Kind regards

Dear James,

with all due respect. Austria itself was never a German Electorate (Kurfürstentum). - All other input in your answer I really like.

regards Ruediger

Dear Ruediger

Hello

I dont know it, this is not to my interested area.

All The Best, Sajjad

Dear Sajjad, Ramadan Kareem!

history is one of my favorite issues. I find military history even more interesting than mineral processing.

regards

Rüdiger

By Eastern Prussia I meant the "Eastern" parts of Prussia including West Prussia, Ermland, etc. Nit picking aside (in all due respect and with no ill will) the animosity between Germany, Austria, Russia and Poland is rooted in the people who lived there and had to swallow the consequences of the powerful who unleashed some pretty nasty policies on largely ordinary peasants. These people had little or likely no say in whichever armies were unleashed onto their lands and this has been going on in this region for centuries. History is not just dates and battles or titles. It the collective action taken by and against individual people, whether those that bear the brunt and those that cause the strife know each other or not.

I could never think that such a question born out of curiosity and interest in the subject could generate such a stimulating and cultured debate. Thank you all for sharing your great knowledge!

Yes, I was incorrect. It was Königsreich Böhmen that gave the Habsburgs their electoral rights. Taking that territory out of Austria and into Czechoslovakia was another major source of anger for Hitler. But it had no real relations with the UK or France as it had been part of the Holy Roman Empire from the foundation of the HRE.

So if it hasn't been mentioned already, if the UK and France had taken military action against Germany when it invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland wouldn't have been the trigger for WW2.

And the discussion of the political status of various bits of Prussia, to me, has been more of a tangential matter than something critical to the main point.

Also, Spiegel Geschichte allows free access to its back issues that are at least 1 year old, and has issues devoted to just about everything mentioned in this discussion. They are very densely packed with information, 3 columns of small font text per page, and close to 150 pages long each.

2011 features issues on the 30 Years' War, the Hohenzollerns, and the history of Germans in eastern Europe.

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelgeschichte/index-2011.html

You will want to view the articles in pdf form for the pictures and formatting. Clicking the "pdf drucken" link will open a pdf but will not automatically trigger a printing of it.

That was slightly biased. I mean the part that I read before my exaggeration containment unit was full.

The Republic of Venice and the parliamentary-to-direct democracies of Iceland, the Faroes, Gotland, and Norwegian coast would be surprised to find that the Polish-Lithuanian "nobility elects king" system was the first attempt to establish a democratic state in Europe since "ancient times". Unless you consider the 11th century "ancient times". However, the developments in England, the Netherlands, and Switzerland certainly not ancient compared to P/L.

As for claiming control of the area north of the Black Sea, there's *still* a war going on there.  No one really controls that area for more than a few decades it seems.

Yes, more tangent from original question.

Once upon a time, instant reference would be made to A.J.P. Taylor's once-famous work, "Origins of World War II," nowadays widely condemned as "revisionist" with all the unplesant implications, though in fact it is nothing of the kind. It is still in my opinion required reading on the subject.

Ancient history is really not very relevant here. Whereas anti-Polish hostility was a national cause in Germany after World War I, due to much legitimately German territory having been given to Poland under the Versailles treaty, plus German imperial ambitions for "lebensraum" in the East, in fact Hitler, The Decider, unlike his generals was not anti-Polish.

Indeed he rather admired Polish leader Pilsudski thinking of him if not quite a fellow fascist at least as a great anti-Soviet campaigner. And that Polish popular anti-Semitism was stronger than German was another point in  Poland's favor to Hitler.

So why did he invade Poland, even though Poland was a German ally during the 1930s? Because Hitler's guiding star was Barbarossa, the desire to invade the Soviet Union to extirpate the "Judeo-Bolshevik menace to civilization." He fully expected Poland, which after all had fought a war with the Soviet Russia, to be his ally, so as to be able to reestablish historic Polish imperial dominion over all of Belarus and Ukraine. However, the Polish colonels refused either to accept a pact with Hitler, fearing German dominion, or to accept the Soviet offer of alliance against Germany, foolishly believing Poland could be independent from both. Thus making the demise of Poland as an independent country inevitable.

And why did Stalin sign a pact with Hitler to invade? Crass "realpolitik," with no connection whatsoever to his claimed intent of liberating Polish ruled Ukrainian and Belarusian lands from Polish rule. As the Allies after Munich refused to ally with the USSR against Hitler, and Poland had refused Soviet offers, Stalin thought a temporary pact with Hitler to divide Poland would be a better way to prepare for the inevitable war with Germany than letting Hitler seize all Poland. He was of course dreadfully wrong.

It was göring who was befriended with Pilsudski (They went hunting together). In any event Pilsudski had died by 1935 and was replaced by a right-wing anti German week government under Rydz-Śmigły and the "regime of Colonels". Hitler was very much anti-Polish state because of the lands they had taken as a result of Versailles and the Polish government's pressure on Danzig despite being a militarily inferior state to the German war machine. If a mouse continually pokes an elephant with a small thorn, the elephant may just roll over on to it - hence 1939. Stalin provided a shove.

There were certainly national tensions between Poland and Germany, as for that matter there were between Hitler and Mussolini over Austria. Hitler was certainly annoyed with Poland over Danzig, but hoped to pacify the colonels and get Poland fully on the German side by first offering Poland a chunk of Czechoslovakia after Munich, an offer gleefully accepted but for which the colonels were not particularly grateful, and then of course offering the Poles a starring role in Operation Barbarossa, which they turned down. At which point he decided that the Poles should be punished for foolish ingratitude, which to a Hitler meant subjecting them to national annihilation and outright genocide. Thereby making his generals happy.

Virginia asked about the 19th century, yet discussion here is mostly about WWII. How did that happen?

Because 19th century must have been a typo. She surely meant 20th, as that of course is when World War II took place. For that matter, Poland was originally partitioned in the 18th not the 19th century,  No such country as Germany existed at the time, and the three absolute monarchs who partitioned her had no interests in the Polish nation or its culture or traditions or for that matter the German or any other. As emperors, they simply saw Polish territory as up for grabs and seizable for their feudalistic, non-national empires. That nations and/or their cultures and traditions should be seen as important was a result of the French Revolution, which they all opposed and which was going on simultaneously, and which the Poles by the way strongly identified with.