Security of the Second Polish Republic : Polish ideas and geopolitical realities (1919-1932)

The aim of the paper is to provide a critical perspective on the concepts of the international security of Poland as defined by the policy makers responsible for the international policy in 1918–1932, that is, before Józef Beck became the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which gave rise to the doctrine of balance between Germany and the Soviet Union. The author’s main conclusion is that the attempts to provide the Polish state with real “material”security in the reality of unstable international order were like squaring the circle. The hopes for alliance with the victorious superpowers of the Entente were not fulfilled because the United States had returned to isolationism and Great Britain did not give any guarantees to any state of continental Europe except France in Locarno. The multilateralism offered by the League of Nations did not yield any fruit because the idea of the collective security turned out to be an illusion. Both the Central-European Bloc and the Intermarium project were merely theoretical concepts. Basically, it is impossible for a historian to provide an ex post outline of a convincing alternative to the activities of Polish diplomacy in relation to those of which we know, no matter how critical their assessment of those actions would be.