To Die for Danzig
Cameron Watt in his “How War Came”
devotes an entire chapter to Danzig: “Hitler Steps up the Pressure: “Die for Danzig.””
The events in William Walker’s book occur prior to 1939; more specifically the
period between 1934 -1936 when Sean Lester was the League of Nations High
Commissioner for the “free city” of Danzig. Walker places Danzig at the fulcrum
of the growing struggle between Hitler and the rest of Europe.
The mostly German city of Danzig (pop.
400,000) was established by the Treaty of Versailles as a “free city” that
would give Poland an outlet to the Baltic Sea. Today it is the Polish city of
Gdansk. The League of Nations was responsible for maintaining its
constitutional safeguards which would have worked well in more harmonious
times, but with the rise of Hitler the German majority of the city moved
sharply in the direction of the NDSAP (Nazi Party) thereby creating a crisis
for the League.
Although this is far from the best
written historical novel Walker integrates the actions of some very real people
with his protagonist, Paul Muller an upper-class League diplomat of
Swiss-English parents. In the novel he
is Lester’s chief aide and we find him fighting battles in Geneva, the League’s
headquarters and on the streets of Danzig. He sees up close the role of Nazi
thugs intimidating their opposition and the appeasement policy of Anthony Eden
in Geneva as he continually sells out Lester. Eden would later break with that
policy, but early on he was an appeaser.
Through Muller we become a fly on the
wall in meetings at the League and in Danzig where Lester tries to negotiate
with NDSAP leaders Arthur Greisser and Albert Forster who are following direct
orders from Berlin and we also get a sense of the opposition Social Democrats
who are fighting a losing battle. We also see which is timely for today, the
very real risks diplomats and their families take in difficult environments.
I recommend William Walker’s book to
those readers who want to get a sense of what dealing with the growing Nazi
threat diplomats faced on a day-to-day basis as they struggled to maintain a
semblance of collective security.
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