Foreign News: Birthday Present?

• Share

Adolf Hitler has given Germany so many territorial presents in the past three years that, as a present for Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday this week, the German Government thought of giving one to him—Danzig.

The Free City of Danzig, ostensibly governed by Poland and the League of Nations, is Poland's No. 2 port. It handles two-thirds the tonnage of nearby, all-Polish Gdynia. For four years Danzig has been run by a German Nazi Government. For Germany to take Danzig would be, politically, like the Italians taking Albania. The question that made Danzig a birthday box with a bomb in it was: how much more grabbing will the "Peace Front" permit the Axis?

Characteristically, the German press built up a horror campaign, screaming that Polish excesses toward Germans were "increasing in an alarming manner." In the village of Altdorf, said one report, "three Germans were beaten by Poles with clubs and wire whips and injured considerably because they spoke German." German divisions were moved up to Poland's western border. On their part, the Poles ordered Polish Nazis to take off their distinctive white socks, and moved new divisions into place opposite the German Army concentrations. In Danzig itself, newspapers reported that Adolf Hitler would be made an honorary citizen of the Free City on his birthday.

Three days before the Hitler birthday, the Danzig crisis took an apparent turn for the better. A "deal" was reported in the making, whereby Poland would voluntarily give Danzig to Germany. The Germans were said, in any case, to be planning no invasion of Danzig across Polish soil: to save Poland's face, the invasion would come from adjoining East Prussia.