Sir, - In his review of Hitler's Thirty Days to Power by Henry Ashby Turner Jr. (November 16th) Brian Fallon mentions the author's belief that, even without the Nazis, war with Poland was inevitable, "given the infamous Polish Corridor which cut off East Prussia and made Germany's frontiers in the East virtually indefensible."
The inter World War isolation of East Prussia was no more "infamous" than the present arrangement. East Prussia, or rather its northern part with its post 1945 Russian population, is isolated from Russia proper by Lithuanian and Byelorussian territory. Alaska, once Russian territory, is in similar isolation vis a vis the United States. .
The Polish Corridor was not unlike Poland's border with Prussia before the partitions of the 18th century. Almost all of the German land awarded Poland at Versailles had been grabbed by Prussia at the time of the partitions.
It is to Germany's shame that the Weimar Republic had never accepted what it regarded as the Polish mutilation of the Reich. In 1922 General von Seeckt of the Reichswehr had advised his government:
"Poland's existence is intolerable and incompatible with the essential conditions of Germany's life. Poland must go and will go - as a result of her internal weakness and of action by Russia - with our aid . . . The obliteration of Poland must be one of the fundamental drives of German policy and is attainable by means of, and with the help of Russia" (Sword and Swastika by Telford Taylor, London 1953). - Yours, etc.
Meadowgrove,
Blackrock,
Cork.