The 1939 German ultimatum to Poland refers to a list of 16 proposals by Nazi Germany to resolve the Danzig crisis, including a demand for the return of the Free City of Danzig to Germany and for a plebiscite to be held on the status of the Polish Corridor.
On August 29, Adolf Hitler asked the United Kingdom to instruct Poland to send a plenipotentiary to Berlin within 24 hours to negotiate a settlement of the Danzig crisis. The United Kingdom considered this an ultimatum with an unrealistic deadline and refused. Germany did not give Poland or the United Kingdom a copy of the 16 points until the deadline had expired. At 9 pm on August 31, German radio announced that Poland had rejected the German proposals, even though they were never officially presented to the Polish government. Like the false flag raid on the Gleiwitz radio station on the same day, Polish "rejection" of the ultimatum served as a pretext for the German invasion of Poland on September 1, which initiated the Second World War.
In the aftermath of World War I, as part of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany ceded the Polish Corridor to the newly-established Polish Republic and the city of Danzig and its nearby localities were declared a free city under the protection and oversight of the League of Nations.
Poland incorporated the Corridor into its own territory and Danzig was joined to it under a customs union in an effort to allow Poland "secure access to the sea."
The majority of the population of the Corridor was understood to be Polish, with a substantial German minority. Danzig, however, was largely populated by Germans. The substantial number of Germans in these territories caused tension between Germany, Poland, and Britain and France throughout the interwar period. Danzig, particularly, deeply injured German national pride and German nationalists spoke of "the open wound in the East" in reference to the Free City.
From March 1939, Adolf Hitler put increasing pressure on Poland to agree to the handover of Danzig to Germany, claiming that Poles were mistreating Germans in Danzig and Poland. Meanwhile, the German military developed plans for an invasion of Poland.
On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the MolotovâÂÂRibbentrop Pact. This pact had a secret protocol that defined German and Soviet spheres of influence: Lithuania for Germany; Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia for the Soviet Union; and Poland to be partitioned between the two powers.
The pact ensured that Germany would not face a war with the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland. Immediately afterwards, Hitler ordered the attack to proceed on 26 August, but upon hearing that the United Kingdom had concluded a formal mutual assistance pact with Poland and that Italy would maintain neutrality, he decided to delay it.
Germany offered Britain an alliance if Britain helped Germany gain Danzig, the Polish corridor and its former colonies. Britain replied that it would honour its guarantee to Poland and that Germany should negotiate directly with Poland to resolve their issues regarding Danzig, the Polish Corridor, and the alleged mistreatment of ethnic Germans in Poland.
On August 29, 1939, Hitler told British Ambassador Nevile Henderson that he was ready to resume negotiations with Poland. For this purpose, Hitler demanded that a Polish plenipotentiary come to Berlin within 24 hours.
In principle, Poland and Great Britain were ready to negotiate. However, Britain regarded the timeframe as so unrealistic, it amounted to an ultimatum. Britain refused to deliver the request to Poland.
As intended by Ribbentrop, the narrow time limit for acceptance of the ultimatum made it impracticable for the British government to contact the Polish government about the German request for a Polish plenipotentiary, let alone allow the Poles to prepare an envoy to arrive in Berlin and negotiate a solution to the Danzig issue the following day. This allowed Ribbentrop to claim that the Poles had rejected German proposals that neither the British or Poles had yet seen.
At midnight on August 30-31, the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, read the 16 point German proposal for resolving the Danzig crisis to Henderson. However, against all diplomatic custom, he refused to hand him the relevant document. Ribbentrop then stated that as no Polish representative had appeared by the German deadline, the proposal had become void anyway.
In the morning of August 31, the Swedish businessman Birger Dahlerus, an unofficial emissary of Herman Göring, gave the British a copy of the German proposals. At 11 am, Dahlerus met the Polish Ambassador, Józef Lipski, but Lipski refused to accept any representations from him as he had no diplomatic accreditation.
As noon, Lipski appeared at the German Foreign Office and sought an audience with Ribbentrop. Five hours later he was shown in, but since he did not have the negotiating authority demanded by Hitler, Ribbentrop quickly dismissed him, telling him that he would inform the "Führer" of this. At 9 pm, German radio announced the Polish "rejection" of Germany's 16 point proposal although, by this time, Hitler had already given the order to attack Poland on September 1.
In his 1 September speech to the Reichstag announcing war with Poland, Hitler cited false-flag border incidents and Poland's "refusal" to negotiate as justification for Germany's "defensive" action against Poland:
In 1959, the historian expressed the view that Poland had refused "to show any objective accommodation in the questions that had to be settled since the unfortunate provisions of the Treaty of Versailles". In doing so, it had weakened its own "moral position" in the face of German "impositions against Polish integrity and independence." In contrast, the historian Klaus Hildebrand points out that the German offer of negotiations was only made as an alibi to its own population. Its decision to go to war had been made long ago. According to , the 16 points were not intended as a basis for negotiations at all, but to let them "burst." Peter Longerich also emphasizes the "purely propagandistic character" of the 16-point memorandum, since the Germans gave neither the Polish nor the British side the opportunity to comment on it before they began their invasion.
The American historian Gerhard Weinberg described the HendersonâÂÂRibbentrop meeting regarding the ultimatum:<blockquote>When Joachim von Ribbentrop refused to give a copy of the German demands to the British Ambassador [Henderson] at midnight of 30âÂÂ31 August 1939, the two almost came to blows. Ambassador Henderson, who had long advocated concessions to Germany, recognized that here was a deliberately conceived alibi the German government had prepared for a war it was determined to start. No wonder Henderson was angry; von Ribbentrop on the other hand could see war ahead and went home beaming.</blockquote>