Best international policy for interwar Poland?

Yup. Be a good neighbor and join the Little Entente with a firm alliance with Czechoslovakia etc. Then Germany (or the USSR) can't pick them off one by one.

Reasons why such an alliance was never signed have already been given in this thread. There was more to it then just Poland not being a good neighbor. I cannot see such an alliance without Czechoslovakia considering the Soviet Union/Russia a threat. Perhaps if Germany went red and received Soviet support? Or if the Hungarian Revolution succeeded in keeping Hungary red, and the Soviet Union then supported it.
The Little Entente was an anti-Hungarian alliance. Joining that alliance in its OTL form would have made little sense for Poland. It had no direct disputes with Hungary, and each of the Little Entente's members could have easily defeated Hungary by itself. Perhaps if Hungary had remained red and received Soviet support this enlarged Little Entente would have made sense. With Franco-British support such a grouping could have indeed deterred both German and Soviet revisionism. Such a version of the Little Entente actually seems quite reminescent of "Międzymorze". But again, Poland had little influence over the internal affairs of Hungary or Germany.
 
Any Ukraine other than Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic makes the Polish situation better.
How achievable was a settlement over Galicia and Lviv? Just assuming for a moment that the West Ukrainian People's Republic and a Ukrainian People's Republic made up of say the land to the west of the Dnieper somehow managed to hold eastern Galicia and Lviv would a serious peace deal with Poland be possible? Nationalist sentiment seems to have been ridiculously high that suggests tensions might of broken out again later. It would of certainly helped the Ukrainians though as IIRC it would of meant they could of continued swapping oil from the Drohobych oil fields for Czechoslovakian weapons and ammunition.

Reminds me of a quote from an article in the Economist entitled 'A guide to Eastern Europe's most tedious arguments'. The bit that stuck in my head because it amused me the most was,

Ukraine/Poland Anyone who spells the capital of Galicia as Lwów is a Polish nationalist who bayonets Ukrainian babies for fun. Anyone who says it is spelled Lviv is a Ukrainian fascist who bayonets Polish babies for fun. Anyone who spells it Lvov is a Soviet mass murderer. And anyone who calls it Lemberg is a Nazi. See you in Leopolis for further discussion.
 
Yup. Be a good neighbor and join the Little Entente with a firm alliance with Czechoslovakia etc.

A change to Polish foreign policy alone cannot achieve that, for reasons pointed out above.

How achievable was a settlement over Galicia and Lviv? Just assuming for a moment that the West Ukrainian People's Republic and a Ukrainian People's Republic made up of say the land to the west of the Dnieper somehow managed to hold eastern Galicia and Lviv would a serious peace deal with Poland be possible? Nationalist sentiment seems to have been ridiculously high that suggests tensions might of broken out again later. It would of certainly helped the Ukrainians though as IIRC it would of meant they could of continued swapping oil from the Drohobych oil fields for Czechoslovakian weapons and ammunition.

Tensions would break out later, no side would accept losing the city.

In OTL, there was an Entente attempt at arbitration between the fighting Poles and Ukrainains.
Here's a map:

Linia_Barthelemy.PNG


The orange-ish line is Ukrainian demands. Purple line is Polish demands. Red line is the compromise proposed by the French general Joseph Barthelemy. As you can see, it has Lviv/Lwów as well as the Drohobych oil on the Polish side. Additionally, 50% of the oil revenue was to go to the Ukrainians.

The Poles were willing to accept that, but the Ukrainians rejected it, feeling confident (they controlled most of this territory). There was supposed to be another attempt, and they even signed a ceasefire, but eventually it all went to shit. Poles destroyed the WUPR, and when Piłsudski formed his alliance with Petlura, he was the one who could confident, and got all of Galicia - which made Petlura look even more like a Polish tool.

IMO one of the better (as in: marginally plausible) ways to achieve this would be if both sides grudgingly accept a compromise line offered by the Entente (either the Ukrainians feel much less confident, western Ukrainians have much less say in this decision, or the line is different and easier to accept for them), and it sort of sticks, because while neither side would be content, they wouldn't want a war.
 
Hhmm. I can't lay hands on it at the moment but I seem to recall reading that the ruler of Austria-Hungary agreed to seperate Galicia into seperate western and eastern provinces but that the war got in the way. If this had happened either pre-war or during the war would these facts on the ground of possibly changed anything, or would France still favour the Poles from their wanting an ally against Germany?
 
Top