GERMANY AND DANZIG

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 2, 3 July 1939, Page 8

GERMANY AND DANZIG

PLANS LAID FOR A COUP

The recent incident at Kalthof, near Danzig, where Polish Customs officials were attacked and driven off by a German crowd, had rather more significance than was at first apparent, though not serious enough to be the immediate cause of armed .conflict, writes the diplomatic correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian."

The incident was the fourth of its kind within a fortnight. There was at the time some suspicion that the Germans wanted to eliminate the Polish frontier control so that they could send war material from East Prussia into the Free City of Danzig. This suspicion turns out to be correct —war material was, indeed, dispatched from East Prussia to Danzig when the Polish frontier officials, whose duty it would have been to hold it up, had been driven off by their German assailants. It would therefore seem that the Germans are preparing to take armed action in the Free City. For some time the Danzig Nazis have undergone military training and have been accumulating arms and ammunition, although the statute of the Free City forbids the' presence of armed forces except the police who are needed to maintain order: COMPLETE MILITARISATION. It would seem that Germany is now completing the militarisation of the Free City—that is to say, she is carrying out the military occupation of the city from within. The strategic importance of Danzig is immense; to Poland Danzig is what the Sudetenland was to Czecho-Slovakia, or what Gibraltar is to the British position in. the Mediterranean. But if the Poles intervene, as they would be fully entitled to do, their intervention would be construed as an attack on a "German" city. Poland would, in German eyes, be the aggressor, although in truth Germany is, even now, the aggressor in so far as she is accomplishing the armed occupation of a vital strategic point which was demilitarised by international treaty. If Poland does not intervene (and she has no intention of doing so at the moment), will the armed forces now at Germany's disposal inside the Free City remain quiet? It is to be feared that they may not and that they may, at a given signal, seize the Customs offices, turn out the Polish labour authorities, announce that Danzig has been "liberated," and ask for the "protection" of the Reich and its armed forces. In accordance with the now familiar plan the Reich forces would march to the help of their "oppressed brethren," who would be sufficiently well armed and trained by that time to hold up-the first Polish attack while the German regulars arrive.