authoritarian regime which he called Sanacja or sanitary cleansing. Davies summed up Poland's dilemma: "independent Poland was poor, weak, divided, and friendless" (157).
The German nationalist right regarded the Versailles peace terms as a diktat, a harsh peace imposed on a weakened but not defeated Germany by the victorious Entente, and achieved through a 'stab in the back' by German Social Democratic and other liberal political parties which dominated the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. When in 1923 Germany failed to meet its obligations with respect to the 132 billion gold mark reparations target set by the Allies, France sent its troops into the Ruhr. The French incursion heightened German nationalism and the resulting prostration of German industry, together with internal civil strife, produced hyperinflation and ruined much of the German middle class.
As a gesture to improve relations with the West, German Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno had proposed in December 1922 mutual pledges by
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