Talk:Shiela Grant Duff

The "Danzig for Prague" plan

This article could present a better version of Trott's "Danzig for Prague" plan, under which Germany would pull out of the newly created Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia (which is the modern Czech republic sans the Sudetenland, which Trott wanted to keep for Germany) in exchange for the British government was supposed to pressure Poland to allow the Free City of Danzig to rejoin Germany and for Poland to return Upper Silesia and the Polish Corridor to Germany. First thing, the term Widerstand (resistance) is being used like it was what a single movement whereas there were a number of such groups in Germany.

Second, this "Danzig for Prague" plan came from Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, the State Secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt who sent Trott to London to make the offer. There has been a lot deal of nonsense written about Weizsäcker who is incorrectly portrayed as a "resistance fighter" working to sabotage the Nazi regime. It bears noting that initially after World War II that Weizsäcker denied being a "resistance fighter" and only conveniently "remembered" that aspect of his career after he was charged with war crimes in 1947 for his role in arranging the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz. Hans Mommsen in his book Alternatives to Hitler called Weizsäcker a "borderline" member of the resistance, which is about right. Weizsäcker was in agreement with the the Nazi goal of making Germany into world's number one power, and just disagreed with the means, feeling that Hitler was about trying to achieve "world power status" for the Reich in a reckless and dangerous sort of way. Weizsäcker's efforts to "moderate" Hitler's foreign policy were about trying to save Hitler from himself instead of trying to overthrow him, so one should regard these efforts as a form of loyalty rather than disloyalty.

The "Danzig for Prague" plan called for Britain to end the "guarantee" of Poland if the Polish government refused to allow the Free City of Danzig to rejoin Germany, which was pretty much a given. There a number of differences between the 1938 Sudetenland crisis which almost caused a world war and the 1939 Danzig crisis, which did. One of the most important was the Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš did not see Czechoslovakia as a great power whereas the men running the Sanation military regime in Poland did. Beneš could be pressured in a way that the men running the Sanation regime, especially the foreign minister, Colonel Jozef Beck, could not be. So this whole idea that Neville Chamberlain just pick up the phone and tell Colonel Beck to let Danzig rejoin Germany and Beck would meekly agree shows a grotesque misunderstanding of Anglo-Polish relations in 1939. Maybe Trott believed that this "Danzig for Prague" would result in another Munich type agreement under which Germany would peacefully take the lands in dispute, but Weizsäcker knew better. Not the least of the problems with the "Danzig for Prague" plan is that it assumed that Poland was a some sort of British protectorate and the Poles would agree to a deal under which they would lose much in exchange for nothing in return. Had Chamberlain accepted the plan, the Poles would have rejected, at which point the British would end the "guarantee" of Poland. That in turn would allowed Germany to attack Poland without fear of a war with Britain, which accorded precisely with Weizsäcker's priorities as he was all for a war with Poland, but rather less keen on a war with Britain in 1939. So this plan is actually about letting Hitler achieve his plans for a war with Poland without a war with Britain. It is wrong for this article to say this plan was really all about overthrowing Hitler by "delaying" war to give the German opposition more time to overthrow Hitler.

In this regard, I'm not certain what is meant the British "misunderstood" the opposition to Hitler in 1939. What seems to be implied here is that British "misunderstood" here was a great opportunity to overthrow Hitler in 1939 without a war, and later on Churchill could had seen Hitler overthrown if he had avoided the demand for "unconditional surrender", which was adopted in January 1943. This is a very bad history. In the summer of 1939, various opposition leaders like Admiral Wilhelm Canaries and Carl Goerdeler had told Whitehall if the British warned Germany firmly that a war with Poland would mean a war with Britain, then the Wehrmacht would overthrow Hitler. In the summer of 1939, Chamberlain did indeed sent Hitler very firm warning that Britain would declare war if Germany attacked Poland. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland and on 3 September, Britain declared war on Germany. And the Wehrmacht did absolutely against Hitler, continuing on with the conquest of Poland . In October 1939 and January 1940, Chamberlain gave speeches appealing to the Wehrmacht to overthrow Hitler, promising that Britain would give Germany a "honorable peace" if that happened. The Wehrmacht stayed loyal to Hitler and in the spring of 1940 proceeded to conquer Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. If the British had little faith in the ability of the Widerstand movement to overthrow Hitler, it is because their promises that the Wehrmacht was going to overthrow Hitler always proved to be worthless. This whole argument that if only the British were more supportive of the resistance, then Hitler would been overthrown is an alibi for all the Wehrmacht officers who stayed loyal to Hitler right to the very end, making it sound like if it the fault of Chamberlain and Churchill that they chose to be loyal to Hitler, not their own. --A.S. Brown (talk) 06:37, 16 August 2018 (UTC)