True Left

Further information on Piłsudski's life and views. Allegedly he asked France to join him in launching a war with Germany immediately after Hitler came to power! If Germany had won WWII, there is no doubt history would have been framed very differently, and Germany's actions toward Poland would have been framed as a retaliation against Piłsudski's aggression towards Germany and his aggressive geopolitical aims. Hitler even offered Poland an alliance multiple times, yet Piłsudski refused it, apparently still believing Poland could rise to rival both Germany and the USSR.

Józef Klemens Piłsudski (5 December 1867 – 12 May 1935) was a Polish statesman who served as the Chief of State (1918–1922) and First Marshal of Poland (from 1920). He was considered the de facto leader (1926–35) of the Second Polish Republic as the Minister of Military Affairs. After World War I, he held great power in Polish politics and was a distinguished figure on the international scene.[1] He is viewed as a father of the Second Polish Republic re-established in 1918
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After the Polish Constitution of March 1921 severely limited the powers of the presidency intentionally, to prevent a President Piłsudski from waging war. He declined to run for the office.[20]
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Two days later, on 16 December 1922, Narutowicz was shot dead by a right-wing painter and art critic, Eligiusz Niewiadomski, who had originally wanted to kill Piłsudski but had changed his target, influenced by National Democrat anti-Narutowicz propaganda.[105]

For Piłsudski, that was a major shock, which shook his belief that Poland could function as a democracy[106] and made him support government by a strong hand.[107]
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When the Chjeno-Piast coalition, which Piłsudski had strongly criticized, formed a new government,[20] on 12–14 May 1926, Piłsudski returned to power in a coup d'état (the May Coup), supported by the Polish Socialist Party, Liberation, the Peasant Party and even the Polish Communist Party.[113] Piłsudski had hoped for a bloodless coup, but the government had refused to back down;[114] 215 soldiers and 164 civilians had been killed, and over 900 persons had been wounded.[115]
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A supporter of the Franco-Polish Military Alliance and the Polish–Romanian alliance, part of the Little Entente, Piłsudski was disappointed by the policy of appeasement pursued by the French and British governments, evident in their signing of the Locarno Treaties.[144][147][148] The Locarno treaties were intended by the British government to ensure a peaceful handover the territories claimed by Germany such as the Sudetenland, the Polish Corridor, and the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland) by improving Franco-German relations to such extent that France would dissolve its alliances in eastern Europe.[149] Piłsudski felt a profound sense of abandonment by France after Locarno. Piłsudski, therefore, aimed also to maintain good relations with the Soviet Union and Germany.

A recurring fear of Piłsudski was that France would reach an agreement with Germany at the expense of Poland.
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In June 1932, just before the Lausanne Conference opened, Piłsudski heard (correct) reports that the new German chancellor Franz von Papen was about to make an offer for a Franco-German alliance to the French Premier Édouard Herriot which would be at the expense of Poland.[152] In response Piłsudski sent the destroyer ORP Wicher into the harbour of the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk).[152] Through the issue was ostensibly about access rights for the Polish Navy in Danzig, the real purpose of sending Wircher was as a way to warn Herriot not to take Poland for granted as he talked to Papen.[152] The ensuring Danzig crisis sent the desired message to the French and improved the Polish Navy's access rights to Danzig.[152]
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After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933, Piłsudski is rumored to have proposed to France a preventive war against Germany. It has been argued that Piłsudski may have been sounding out France regarding possible joint military action against Germany.[158]
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Hitler repeatedly suggested a German-Polish alliance against the Soviet Union, but Piłsudski declined, instead seeking precious time to prepare for a potential war with either Germany or the Soviet Union.
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After the fall of communism and the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union, Piłsudski once again came to be publicly acknowledged as a Polish national hero.[187] On the sixtieth anniversary of his death, on 12 May 1995, Poland's Sejm adopted a resolution: "Józef Piłsudski will remain, in our nation's memory, the founder of its independence and the victorious leader who fended off a foreign assault that threatened the whole of Europe and its civilization. Józef Piłsudski served his country well and has entered our history forever."[188]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Pi%C5%82sudski


Józef Beck supported many of Hitler's requests to refine post-WWI borders. Poland even invaded Czechoslovakia and attempted to distinigrate it by promoting Slovak indpendence. But, of course, since the Allies won WWII you will only hear about Germany doing such things, not Poland.

Józef Beck (4 October 1894 – 5 June 1944) was a Polish statesman who served the Second Republic of Poland as a diplomat and military officer, and was a close associate of Józef Piłsudski. Beck is most famous for being Polish foreign minister in the 1930s, when he largely set Polish foreign policy.

He tried to fulfill Piłsudski's dream of making Poland the leader of a regional coalition, but he was widely disliked and distrusted by other governments.[1][2] He was involved in territorial disputes with Lithuania and Czechoslovakia.
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He explored the possibility of realizing Piłsudski's concept of Międzymorze ("Between-seas"): a federation of central and eastern European countries stretching from the Baltic to the Black Seas, indeed in later variants, from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean. Such a coalition between Germany in the west and the Soviet Union in the east might have been strong enough to deter both from military intervention. Beck realised that for the immediate future there was no realistic chance of building such a force and so he was prepared to settle in 1937–38 for a diplomatic bloc referred to as a "Third Europe," led by Poland, which might become the nucleus of a Międzymorze federation. Beck's "Third Europe" diplomatic concept comprised a bloc of Poland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania.[13]
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From 1935 to 1939, Beck supported German claims against Czechoslovakia by citing purported mistreatment of Polish minorities in Czechoslovakia.[citation needed] In 1937, he began a diplomatic offensive in favour of Slovak independence.[15] He supported Hitler's position in the Munich agreement in 1938. Within days, Poland invaded and seized Teschen, an industrial district of Czechoslovakia with 240,000 people, many of them ethnic Poles.[15][16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Beck