 Dear ladies, dear gentlemen, at first I have to thank you, Professor Hoppe, for your kind invitation to this splendid conference at this marvelous hotel. I've been invited to speak about my book, 1939, The War That Had Many Fathers. When I was a young general staff officer, I had to develop a plan for future armored forces of the Bundeswehr beyond the 15 years time horizon. So I searched for examples of similar armament plannings before World War II worldwide. To do that, I had to read a lot of American Czech-British and French literature of the pre-war period. What I found to my surprise were many pointers and artifacts about the preparations and intentions of American, British, Polish, and French politicians of the 20s and 30s to wage war against Germany. I had never seen a reference of that in writings of German historians before. So I became curious, looked at the list of references which the authors quoted, went to the mentioned archives, and found many interesting facts which were hitherto unknown in Germany. After I had retired, I decided to write a book about it. One can put blame on oneself by causing an ingesting, by triggering an ingesting, and by committing. It is remarkable that since the end of World War II, it has only ever been discussed and described who has triggered the war, namely Germany. But that is only one part of the war guilt of World War II. It has nearly never been examined and described or else has participated in causing the war and thus shares in the war guilt. You will, for instance, discover nothing about the conduct of Poland, France, and Czechoslovakia towards Austria and Germany towards the prior 20 year period. The current and accepted historiography begins only ever when Germany commences to react and to resist. The causes of World War II that had occurred within the 20 years before are not taught in high schools and universities and thereby they are extinguished from the collective memory of the world even as far as teachers and historians are concerned. Hence only the partial guilt of triggering the war remains present in the collective memory. Thus by consigning the other part of the guilt to obscurity, namely that of causing the war, our share in the war guilt becomes our sole responsibility for the origin of World War II. By the way, the same treatment applies to Japan regarding the war in the Pacific. It is impossible for me to condense the 670 pages of my book into a 30 minutes lecture. If you want to acquaint yourself with the sources, circumstantial evidence, and proofs on which I have based myself, I request you to turn to my book, The War That Had Many Fathers. I therefore have to confine myself to state in the conclusions through which the archive material and the original documents have led me. Since the end of World War I, international law knows two conflicting principles. That is the inviolability of territories and boundaries on the one side and the right of self-determination on the other. Until the end of World War I, Great Britain, the USA, France, and Russia had waged wars without restraint to acquire more territories. Having shared the war beauty of 1918 among themselves, the colonial powers, Great Britain, USA, and France suddenly emphasized the inviolability of territories and boundaries and made it the predominant principle of international law. The second idea that had been raised to a principle of international law was the right of self-determination. From the very first, this right was mainly a lever to legitimize stripping the vanquished Germans, Austrians, and Turks of their foreign language population and territories. But the vanquished countries were deprived of much more than their foreign language territories and populations, which by itself shows that this amendment of the vanquished was the favoring motive. Thus, 20 years before World War II, a new Europe was created in which 7.8 million German-speaking Germans and Austrians were handed over to foreign states without plebiscite and against their explicit wishes. Relying on the proclaimed right of self-determination, the constituent assembly in Vienna in its first session in November 1919 had decided to merge with a newly created Republic of Germany. This was specifically prohibited by the Vienna States, so the right of self-determination was abrogated for another 7 million German-speaking citizens. Thus, after World War I, the right of self-determination had been repealed for nearly 15 million citizens of German language, just as for 14 million citizens of other nations, thereby creating an ethnic disorder which had high potential for future conflicts. Some far-sighted comments from the camp of the winners concerning the separation of millions of people from their home countries are interesting. For instance, the British Prime Minister, Lord George, he wrote, I can hardly envisage a stronger cause for a future war, or the French Marshal Foch, who shortly before had led the Allied ceasefire delegation at Compiègne, he said. That is not a peace. That is a ceasefire for 20 years. All the American former assistant secretaries of state, William Bullard, who was also a member of the U.S. delegation in Versailles, he wrote, the unjust decisions of the Versailles conference make a new international conflict sure. Here one of the causes of World War II is stated by the statesman responsible. Most probably it wouldn't have come to a new war after only 20 years if the gainers of World War I had their new and alien subjects treated as equal citizens and had peacefully integrated them. In the meltreatment by the gainer nations of their new minorities, one has to see some of the further causes of World War II. Here in particular, the Czechs and the Poles are a case in point. I continue with a British contribution to the outbreak of the war. With the peace treaty of 1919, England made its first disastrous contribution towards the likelihood that the next war would follow soon. The British government, in conjunction with the other victorious Allied powers, constructed a new variant of its balance of power politics in Europe, which was based on the intention of keeping a long-term conflict among Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland on the boil. Especially Danzig and the so-called Polish corridor were someday to lead to new conflicts. New wars, therefore, were in sight. This was even recognized in England, France and in the United States of America. Here you see red framed the free state of Danzig and blue framed the war gains of Poland. The small blue framed link from West Prussia in the center to the Baltic Sea in the north was the new connection from the Polish mainland to the Baltic Sea, the so-called Polish corridor. Back to the comments. Churchill said on 24th November 1932, in a speech to the House of Commons, if the British government really wishes to promote peace, then it should take the initiative and reopen the eschew of Danzig and the corridor. If these matters are not resolved, there can be no hope for a lasting peace. And the U.S. President Hoover, who was in office before Hitler's time, wrote in his memoirs that he and the French Prime Minister Laval agreed during the latter state visit in the United States that Danzig should be given back to Germany and that the Polish corridor between East Prussia and Germany should be pruned back to the necessary minimum. However, England failed to eliminate the disruptive factors created in Versailles. Britain let the mammal question slide, let the Danzig and the corridor problem continue, and left the armament questions unresolved. Britain ignored the hardship of the minorities in Poland, in France, and in Czechoslovakia. She took no notice of Austria's desire for union with Germany, and she tolerated France's demand that Germany's border should remain permanently unprotected. In the Sudeten crisis, England for the first time endeavored in earnest to repair some of the damage done in Versailles. But with the annexation of Rump Czechia, Hitler then went too far. England used the situations so created to construct for Germany on the Danzig problem, an obstacle at which the letter must stop or jump. The British government offered the Polish government a guarantee against Germany, although Germany had not yet even threatened Poland, and although Poland and Germany were confederates at the time. At that time, German government was negotiating with the Polish government for the return of Danzig and the construction of an X-territorial transport link between East Prussia and the German mainland through the corridor. It offered in exchange the recognition of the Polish territorial games of 1918, and the preservation of the Polish economic and port privileges in Danzig. Poland had the opportunity to reach a negotiated agreement with Germany, but broke off negotiations after London's guarantee of March 1939. It was a tongue twister for me. It had virtually removed any reason for Warsaw to respond positively to Berlin's proposals. Poland changed sides after that. Britain's last and very direct contribution to the outbreak of the war was the double dealing with which the British government at the end strung along the German government. Thereby, the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, gave Hitler the impression he were interested in a German-British alliance which was untrue, and that he wanted to play the fair broker between Poland and Germany. However, at the same time, Foreign Minister Halifax, that ambassador cannot in Warsaw convey the advice to the Polish government that one would only demand talks from the Poles, but no concessions. Even in relying the venue and the date of such negotiations, the British initially left the German in the Ford's belief that they had recommended the German conditions for the talks to the Poles. So, at five minutes before 12, they played for time until Hitler acted and opened the war. The British government managed cleverly to feign the role of mediator and seemingly to pursue the course of peace. Thus, it could enter into the war with a clean slate. On 3 September 1939, Great Britain declared war on Germany, well knowing that she wouldn't have the slightest chance to support Poland. France's contribution to the outbreak of the war. After the peace treaty of Versailles, France concluded no real peace with its neighbour Germany. Along with the other victors it created the already mentioned hotspots, which made the next war almost inevitable. France tried on four ways to undermine German sovereignty and its external security. Firstly, the French in breach of their disarmament obligations under the Versailles Treaty did not comply with their obligations. Secondly, the French government from 1927 to 1933 successfully blocked the Geneva disarmament negotiation and so prevented Germany from becoming again capable of self-defense. Thirdly, France took advantage of Germany's weakness and on two occasions had its troops march into Germany in breach of the sense of the peace treaty. And fourthly, France within a few years walled in Germany with a number of military treaties. France succeeded in putting together an alliance with military strengths was superior to Germany's 12-fold in peacetime and roughly 95 times including their reserves. So Hitler and the rice armed forces had to orient themselves to this level when determining the level of buildup of the new Wehrmacht in 1935. Even before, Hitler had occupied the reminder of the Czech Republic in January 1939 and thus before he had delivered a Casus Belli to France, the French government intervened from Paris in the Polish German negotiations about Danzig and torpedoed them. At that time, Hitler's modest proposal was still valid and that proposal reads, Danzig politically comes to Germany but economically remains with Poland. On the 26th January of 1939, thus before the Czech occupation, the French Prime Minister Daladje and his Foreign Minister Bonnet advised the Warsaw government to reject the requests of certain neighbors with a categorical no. Yet Paris knew Hitler well enough to know that he wouldn't let the Danzig issue remain unsolved. Thus Daladje's advice of the categorical no for the German request meant nothing other than deliberately to opt for war. This does not only allow the suspicion but permits the conclusion that French government as early as January 1939 had attempted to bait Poland into a war to serve French interests. In May 1939, the French commander-in-chief, General Gamelin, promised the Polish war minister, Kasper Cziky, that France together with Poland would enter into a campaign against Germany. The French Prime Minister Daladje knew that Gamelin did not intend to honor this promise if and when the need arose. He left the Poles and the Forts believed that they together with France could be victorious against Germany. France hoped with the minimal effort of its own part to defeat Germany with the joint forces of an allied alliance, assembled alliance. On 3 September 1939, France declared war on Germany and the full knowledge that it wouldn't save Poland. Poland's contribution to the outbreak of the war. After World War I, the victorious powers had allocated several former German territories to Poland. The province of West Prussia with merely 35 Polish but a majoritarian German population and the province of Pozen and the most eastern part of Upper Silesia with a Polish majority. The city of Danzig with a 97% German population had become a so-called free state under the sovereignty of the League of Nations, thus a small republic. According to the Treaty of Versailles, particular customs and rights, postal, railway, traffic, harbour rights and authorities were vested to the state of Poland together with the external representation of the free state. However, Poland did not acknowledge the other sovereign rights that remained with the free state. It demanded that they be transferred to Poland. Poland applied to the League of Nations to be declared protectorate power for Danzig and to gain ultimate sovereignty over Danzig. It tried to garrison troops in Danzig and to establish its own postal network there. It attempted to exchange the passports of the people into Polish passports. It placed 24 Polish governmental offices in the city and it transferred warships into the port of Danzig. Even before Hitler came to power, the League of Nations had to intervene on 106 occasions in clashes between the free state of Danzig and the Republic of Poland. The League of Nations rejected almost all of the Polish claims. In summer 1939, the disputes between Poland and Danzig culminated in a conflict about arming of Polish customs officials on Danzig territory. The Danzig Senate, which means the Danzig government, refused to accept the arming and terminated the cooperation of the Danzig and the Polish customs services. The Polish government, their open, threatened war to the free state. It was Hitler who three weeks before the actual outbreak of the war urged the president of the Senate of Danzig to give way. He said he didn't want a dispute with Poland. He wished to keep the door open for further negotiations. If it was anybody who brought the Danzig issue to the boil, it was a state of Poland with its Danzig policy up to 1939. Now I will turn to the corridor problem. In 1921 Germany had to cede West Prussia to Poland, and there was the territory between East Prussia and the German mainland. This part of West Prussia was called the Polish Corridor. Across West Prussia ran eight former German railway routes. You see them in the sketch red marked. Two-thirds of the transport running across these routes were carrying coal from German mines to the energy supply of East Prussia. The transit fees for it had to be paid to Poland in Slotty. This had been contractually agreed. However, after the world economic crisis Germany did not have enough income in Slotty to cover the fees in full. From then on Germany paid the offsetting amounts of Slotty in Reismarck instead and wished to offset the balance against Polish debts. Poland rejected both. As a penalty Poland closed one railroad between Germany and East Prussia after the other. And in 1936 it even threatened to block the corridor completely. Thereby East Prussia would have been exposed to economic ruin, something the Soviet Union had attempted 20 years later with the Berlin blockade in a similar fashion. This led to Hitler's second aim for negotiations with or if necessary a war against Poland, namely to gain an exterritorial rail link between Germany and East Prussia under German sovereignty and management and at its expense. I'm sure I need not dwell on the third reason for negotiations or for war. It is well known how Poland dealt with its 11.9 million people of national minorities, the Belarusians, the Ukrainians, the Jews and the Germans in their country. Hitler demanded that Poland should respect the minority rights of the Germans and Poland according to the guarantee in the Versailles Treaty and again in a later treaty concluded 1937. I should not omit that the Polish government in 1933 three times proposed the French government to open a two-front war against the Midway Germany, what France refused. I believe that Poland had a great share in the responsibility of the outbreak of the war with its endless quarrels about Danzig and its threat to cut off pressure, East Prussia from its energy supply. The Soviet Union's contribution to the outbreak of the war. The Soviet Union has only an indirect share in the outbreak of World War II. Until shortly before the outbreak of war it negotiated for an alliance with England and France to go to war against Germany. When the Soviets noticed that Great Britain didn't intend to participate in such a war with more than a minimum of its own forces, they changed sides. On the invitation of Stalin, the Hitler-Stalin pact was concluded that was to give Hitler cover for his negotiations with or his campaign against Poland. Moscow's primary interest at that time was to recover the parts of Belorussia and Ukraine, which Poland had conquered in 1921. Today, misleadingly known as East Poland, in this allegedly Eastern Poland lived only a 16% share of Polish inhabitants. Thus, the complicity of the Soviet Union and the outbreak of World War II is relatively limited. The contribution of the United States of America in the outbreak of the war. This contribution shouldn't be omitted here. When in World War I the risk of defeat of the Russian Empire was imminent and thereby a victory of Germany not improbable anymore, the USA intervened in the European War in support of Great Britain and France. The USA didn't want to lose their enormous war loans to both countries, should they be defeated. The war loans to the Western Allies added together to the twofold of the national annual budget of the USA. At that time England, France and Germany were worn out and ripe for a compromise peace on equal terms. But that didn't occur now. What followed instead was the German defeat, the disaster of Versailles, the separation of nearly 30 million European citizens from their home countries, the destabilization of Germany, the Third Reich, Hitler and the Second World War. Towards the end of World War I US President Wilson promised Germany and the Habsburg Empire a piece of reconciliation with his famous 14 points offer. Prior to the ceasefire these 14 points moreover had been mutually confirmed as binding for both sides by five note exchanges between Germany and the USA. But then the victors did not keep their word and the USA in Versailles tolerated the harsh conditions that had been imposed on Germany without negotiations. 20 years later these conditions caused the Second World War, that is to say, Danzig, West Prussia, the Corridor, the Memel Conflict, the Sudetenland, the Minority Problems, the Jämtis Armament Conferences and so on. All that hadn't occurred without the unjustified intervention of the USA into World War I. From 1933 onwards the United States attempted to block any mitigation of their Versailles provisions. President Roosevelt insisted on the status quo for the vanquished Germany. From 1933 on the United States reinforced their Navy and in 34 the first instruction was issued to develop war plans against Germany, Austria and Hungary which were designed in 1935 and 2006 at the Army War College as the so-called Rainbow Plans. Interestingly the US Ambassador to London, Joseph Kennedy in December 1945, looked back to his time in London and said, neither the French nor the British would have made Poland a cause of war if it hadn't been for the constant needling from Washington. The United States of America apparently were the warmongers in the background. Now it should be the turn of the German contribution to the outbreak of World War II, but this is so well known that I need not give a lecture on it. My conclusion, when it is about the blame for World War II, all great powers should look self-critically into the mirror. Please let me end. If your curiosity for the subject has been stimulated you can turn to the book The War That Had Many Fathers for details and reference on documentary sources. Unfortunately no English-speaking publisher has issued the English language translation of the book. One can order it only at Amazon as a print-on-demand copy. I would be glad to find still a publisher. Thank you for your patient attention.