Trans-Olza

The division again did not satisfy any side, and persisting conflict over the region led to its annexation by Poland in October 1938, following the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The term Zaolzie denotes the territory of the former districts of Český Těšín and Fryštát, in which the Polish population formed a majority according to the 1910 Austrian census.

This prompted signing of a special treaty between Duke Vladislaus I of Opole and King Ottokar II of Bohemia on December 1261 which regulated a local border between their states along the Ostravice River.

[25] On 31 October 1918, at the end of World War I and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the majority of the area was taken over by local Polish authorities supported by armed forces.

As Watt writes, "Over the dinner table, Beneš convinced the British and French that the plebiscite should not be held and that the Allies should simply impose their own decision in the Cieszyn matter.

More than that, Beneš persuaded the French and the British to draw a frontier line that gave Czechoslovakia most of the territory of Cieszyn, the vital railroad and all the important coal fields.

The decision has caused a rift between these two nations which are ordinarily politically and economically united' ( ...."[38] Another account of the situation in 1918–1919 is given by Slovak-American historian Victor S. Mamatey.

On 29 January, the Council of Ten summoned Beneš and the Polish delegate Roman Dmowski to explain the dispute, and on 1 February obliged them to sign an agreement redividing the area pending its final disposition by the peace conference.

Early in April the two councils considered and approved the recommendations of the Czechoslovak commission without a change – with the exception of Cieszyn, which they referred to Poland and Czechoslovakia to settle in bilateral negotiations.

"[39] When the Polish-Czechoslovak negotiations failed, the Allied powers proposed plebiscites in the Cieszyn Silesia and also in the border districts of Orava and Spiš (now in Slovakia) to which the Poles had raised claims.

Within the region originally demanded from Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany in 1938 was the important railway junction city of Bohumín (Polish: Bogumin).

On 28 September, Edvard Beneš composed a note to the Polish administration offering to reopen the debate surrounding the territorial demarcation in Těšínsko in the interest of mutual relations, but he delayed in sending it in hopes of good news from London and Paris, which came only in a limited form.

Beneš then turned to the Soviet leadership in Moscow, which had begun a partial mobilisation in eastern Belarus and the Ukrainian SSR on 22 September and threatened Poland with the dissolution of the Soviet-Polish non-aggression pact.

[47] Nevertheless, the Polish Foreign Minister, Colonel Józef Beck, believed that Warsaw should act rapidly to forestall the German occupation of the city.

The Germans were delighted with this outcome,[citation needed] and were happy to give up the sacrifice of a small provincial rail centre to Poland in exchange for the ensuing propaganda benefits.

[49] The Polish side argued that Poles in Trans-Olza deserved the same ethnic rights and freedom as the Sudeten Germans under the Munich Agreement.

Pope Pius XI, former nuncio to Poland, subjected the Catholic parishes in Trans-Olza to an apostolic administration under Stanisław Adamski, Bishop of Katowice.

According to historian Paul N. Hehn, Poland's annexation of Zaolzie may have contributed to the British and French reluctance to attack the Germans with greater forces in September 1939.

Whatever justice there might have been to the Polish claim upon Zaolzie, its seizure in 1938 was an enormous mistake in terms of the damage done to Poland's reputation among the democratic powers of the world.

[58]Daladier, the French Prime Minister, told the US ambassador to France that "he hoped to live long enough to pay Poland for her cormorant attitude in the present crisis by proposing a new partition."

The Soviet Union was so hostile to Poland over Munich that there was a real prospect that war between the two states might break out quite separate from the wider conflict over Czechoslovakia.

[59] In his postwar memoirs, Winston Churchill compared Germany and Poland to vultures landing on the dying carcass of Czechoslovakia and lamented that "over a question so minor as Cieszyn, they [the Poles] sundered themselves from all those friends in France, Britain and the United States who had lifted them once again to a national, coherent life, and whom they were soon to need so sorely.

It is a mystery and tragedy of European history that a people capable of every heroic virtue ... as individuals, should repeatedly show such inveterate faults in almost every aspect of their governmental life.

[60] In 2009 Polish president Lech Kaczyński declared during 70th anniversary of start of World War II, which was welcomed by the Czech and Slovak diplomatic delegations:[61][62] Poland's participation in the annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 was not only an error, but above all a sin.

We need to draw conclusions from Munich and they apply to modern times: you can't give way to imperialism.The Polish annexation of Zaolzie is frequently brought up by Russian media as a counter-argument to Soviet-Nazi cooperation.

[63] On 1 September 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II in Europe, and subsequently made Trans-Olza part of the Military district of Upper Silesia.

[64] Poles received lower food rations, they were supposed to pay extra taxes, they were not allowed to enter theatres, cinemas, etc.

Katowice's Bishop Adamski was deposed as apostolic administrator for the Catholic parishes in Trans-Olza and on 23 December 1939 Cesare Orsenigo, nuncio to Germany, returned them to their original archdioceses of Breslau or Olomouc, respectively, with effect of 1 January 1940.

Mass killings, executions, arrests, taking locals to forced labour and deportations to concentration camps all happened on a daily basis.

The World War II death toll in Trans-Olza is estimated at about 6,000 people: about 2,500 Jews, 2,000 other citizens (80% of them being Poles)[67] and more than 1,000 locals who died in the Wehrmacht (those who took the Volksliste).