The CODOH Revisionist Forum

Here is a forum post on the documentation regarding the August 1939 Danzig-Polish Customs dispute:

https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic ... &p=1480887

The gist of it is that Danzig had a problem with the Polish customs poking around in Danzig and so put a stop to it, which caused negotiations to be under way. Correspondence between German officials indicate that they wanted to continue to raise demands until the negotiations fail. This is used by historians and others to show how duplicitous the Nazis were and how they really just wanted war.

Udo Walendy addresses this in his book Who Started WWII?:

The negotiations on the question of customs inspectors in Danzig were broken off by Poland on the same day, 24 August. Even if the documentation as reprinted in the files of the German foreign politics (Akten der deutschen auswärtigen Politik, ADAP), according to which the Danzig Senate was “employing delaying” tactics in the negotiations with Poland, be genuine, it is surprising that Poland did not complain about the manner of negotiation and demand that the talks be put in concrete terms.
...
As no record proving the contrary can be found in the Polish documentation and, since Veesenmayer, who is named in these ADAP files as signatory, was acquitted in the Wilhelmstraße trials 1946-1949 of charge no. 1 (“conspiring against peace”) on the grounds that he “had no knowledge of Hitler’s offensive plans,” or rather, could not have had, raise doubts as to the authenticity of these documents printed in the ADAP (concerning Danzig during the last days of peace). “Das Urteil (verdict) im Wilhelmstraßenprozeß,” p. 43.

In my opinion, I don't think these documents are all that damning, even assuming authenticity. All the German officials are saying here is that they will raise demands until negotiations fail. However, they presume that this will make the Poles look bad. So their whole plan here is premised on themselves looking reasonable in the negotiations. This indicates that they expect the Poles to behave unreasonably and are planning accordingly. Yes, they are planning for and expecting the negotiations to fail, but it's all because of how they expect the Poles to behave. And there is nothing wrong in and of itself with raising demands (depending on what the demands are) in negotiations. Not to mention the end goal of the German government is for Danzig to be completely free of Poland and a part of Germany. From their perspective, it is completely reasonable for there to be zero Polish customs agents in Danzig especially as long as it's not a part of the Reich, so negotiations reflecting that would be within their rights (although it should be pointed out that these documents nowhere claim zero as being the end point).