Polskie Dokumenty Dyplomatyczne 1939 styczeń-sierpień

The 1939 (January–August) volume of the series Polish Diplomatic Documents contains 523 documents on the activity of the Polish diplomatic service in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of World War II. Created mostly by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, these documents come from the Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw, the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London, the Hoover Institution (based on microfilms at the Central Archives of Modern Record), and the Canadian Public Archives in Ottawa (several document from the collection of Tadeusz Romer, the then Polish Ambassador to Japan, available on a microfilm at the Sikorski Institute). As with most of similar foreign publications on diplomatic activity, documents created by military and civilian intelligence remain outside the purview of this volume.

Most of the source materials in the 1939 (January–August) tome have never been published previously, although some were already brought out. But the editors followed the rule of publishing documents based only on the originals kept in archives, rather than referencing to previous editions (where documents happened to be printed without important passages, and with quite a number of editorial lapses). Legal and political acts, such as treaties, agreements, declarations and communiqués, were not included, as being accessible with relative ease in fairly many reprints. Also omitted are the texts of speeches (often of major weight for the history of Polish foreign policy) and documents of purely military provenance related to the defense of the state, minutes of general staff discussions, etc.

The documents are presented in chronological order. The volume contains a name index with information about public positions filled in 1939 (to 31 August) and an extended subject index.The thrust of the Polish diplomatic effort in the first eight months of 1939 was on looking for ways to get out of a crisis that developed in relations with Germany. There is an exceptionally rich literature on this period in the history of Polish foreign policy, and yet some research desiderata still remain relevant. Right from the beginning, this policy was the subject of disputes and arguments, which however tended to subside with the passage of time. The consensus today among Polish historians is that in 1939 the government had a very limited room for maneuver. According to the dominant view, Warsaw’s decision to reject German offers, and later threats, was correct. Differences of opinion are about, especially, an assessment of the analytical skills of the leaders of the Polish diplomatic services, and particularly Minister Józef Beck.