The ‘invitation to the waltz’ caused surprise. That it was even considered met with greater surprise, but to watch the two dancing off together was clearly the last thing anyone expected. Yet this was exactly what happened when Germany and Poland stole the show and signed a non-aggression treaty on 26 January 1934.

The bewilderment of the French ambassador in Berlin, André François-Poncet, was echoed in nearly every corner of western Europe. The German–Polish non-aggression pact was the move least expected from Hitler’s ultra-right-wing nationalist Germany.

What irritated François-Poncet was not so much the German–Polish agreement as such, but the fact that he had dined with Joseph Lipski, the Polish ambassador, the evening before the treaty was signed, and Lipski had not mentioned a word. In contrast to François-Poncet’s excitement, British officials gave the treaty a cautious welcome. The question of the Polish Corridor, Europe’s most dangerous trouble-spot for fifteen years, had been put to rest and with it the danger of a war of revenge initiated by the revisionist powers. Moreover, the German–Polish agreement represented the end of yet another relict of the ‘cold war’ of the 1920s: the Rapallo relationship as synonym for Russo-German co-operation as well as German – and to a lesser extent Russian – revisionism. With the new German–Polish pact Rapallo had lost its ‘right to exist’. It was not, however, the non-aggression pact that dealt Russo-German relations the final blow, but Hitler’s advent to power.

Britain was not particularly excited about the German–Polish agreement, and similarly the French only grudgingly came to terms with their Polish ally’s move towards Germany. Soviet Russia’s subsequent rapprochement with the western powers and the League of Nations came to be regarded by Britain and France as a counterweight to an increasing German strength.