SOVIET PRESS ON POLISH-GERMAN RELATIONS DURING THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

In the interwar period, Polish-German relations were consistently bad, except for a few years when mutual antagonisms were abated after the signing of the non-aggression pact of 1934. The Soviet press presented this objective state of matters in a manner unique for itself. The coverage did not bring any analysis of the situation on the Warsaw-Berlin line, but was an implementation of the political plan drawn up at the Kremlin. For the purpose of presenting the relations between the Republic of Poland and the Weimar Republic a thesis was generally accepted in the Soviet Union that those relations were strained on account of Warsaw's policy: the ongoing territorial dispute caused by inclusion of Germany's eastern territories into the Polish state and repression of the German minority. The authors of the Moscow propaganda claimed the situation to be analogous to what they termed as the Polish occupation of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, and oppression of the Belarussian and Ukrainian minorities by Poles. Playing the Polish card enabled Moscow to maintain close relations with Germany until Hitler's rise to power. The activity of the German diplomacy, hostile towards Warsaw, as exemplified by the case of the revision of state borders, met with full understanding of the Soviet press during the period of the Weimar Republic.