Challenging the Black Legend
Journal: The Polish Review
Year: 2023

In 1968, American historian Henry L. Roberts summed up the diplomacy of “Colonel Beck” in the following words: “he was not one of the really malignant creatures of the decade,” but his “unfortunate actions,” especially in 1938, “compounded the weakness of the existing international order.”1 This still remains a rather favorable portrayal of Beck in Western historiography, where the last interwar Polish foreign minister continues to be accused of undermining the League of Nations, opposing projec