The alliances signed between the German government and the aging Josef Pilsudski made the largest difference in calming relations between the Polish government and the German minority. If they were willing to take a sensible attitude towards the German minority and join the anti-Comintern pact Poland would have the opportunity to regain all lost territory in Lithuania, Russia and Ukraine as an ally of Germany.ДЄlthough Moscicki and Rydz-Smigly were generally harsh on most of the ethnic minority groups, during the first few years of their rule the Germans were actually given more sovereignty were not monitored as closely as before. The Poles refused to grant equal rights and protection of law to Germans in Poland. The biggest problem was that though the Polish government was also authoritarian and anti-Semitic it was also anti-German. Polish-German relations improved after Hitler gained power as he signed the non-aggression pact. Germany could not invade Poland without a valid casus belli as the German people would not be motivated to fight a world war without a justification.ДЄnother option is that Poland and Nazi Germany would come to an agreement. In that case Poland would be forced to give Danzig back to Germany and there would be no war. If Germany hadn't annexed Czechoslovakia in March 1939 Britain probably wouldn't have backed Poland in the Danzig crisis.

Taking conflict for granted as a matter of world-view, he saw only one solution to Germany's predicament - the domination of Europe, which required the defeat of France and at least the acquiescence of Britain, and the conquest of Lebensraum in the East which required a war of conquest against the Soviet Union and which would provide the material basis for the holy grail of Hitlerian geopolitics - German autarky. Here one has to take into account Hitler's extreme social darwinism and lack of any confidence in the possibilities of international co-operation and interdependence. From Hitler's point of view, an accruement of German strength based on export penetration and political dialogue was not merely insufficient, but dangerous: It merely increased Germany's dependence on the outside world, and hence her vulnerability. He rejected this policy path for much the same reason that he rejected a war of limited aims (ie, the reversal of Versailles and a return to the pre-14 borders) - it would not change Germany's basic problem, which was a fundamental dependence on other states who could always combine to overwhelm Germany. Hitler wasn't interested in peace and prosperity, and the things he was interested in could never have been achieved by such peaceful and gradual means. I would add also that it is not just a question of means but also of ends. Germany might even have been a leading member of an anti-Soviet alliance prefiguring NATO in some respects.Д«ut alas, Hitler could not envision greatness without war, destruction, and bloodshed. Had Hitler not been intent on war, had Germany rearmed at a much more gradual pace, had Hitler been more intent on steady and stable economic growth for Germany, had Germany not been perceived as a threat to its neighbors, there is little reason to suppose that it would not have enjoyed peace and prosperity comparable to what it did beginning twenty years after the war. Could diplomacy have accomplished much more than this, under the circumstances? All the great powers were naturally vested in the existing order, and Germany allied with 2/3 of the other revisionist states. Maybe Germany's diplomats had an impossible task, given Germany's geography and its desire to reverse Versailles. Such an alignment should have guaranteed defeat. Essentially, Germany was at war with every other great power in the world. Likewise, it seems that Germany's ultimate defeat was the logical consequence of diplomatic failure. Finally he managed to get a non-aggression pact with a nation that he had pretty much gone on record as being determined to destroy. He had almost reversed all of the losses from the First World War, and by combining Germany with Austria, had achieved the first unified German state in history.

Throughout the 1930's, he was very successful in getting accommodations from the Western allies.

Ironically, Hitler, the ultimate advocate of hard power, earned his greatest victories with diplomacy and lost everything in war. But it seems to me that the Second World War was won and lost with diplomacy. Naturally, war is usually discussed in economic or military terms.

Axis history forum why gone