German policy changed drastically in late 1938, after the annexation of Sudetenland sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia, and Poland became Hitler's next target. In October 1938, German Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop presented Poland with the proposition of renewing the agreement in exchange for allowing the Free City of Danzig to be annexed by Germany and the construction of an extraterritorial motorway and railway through the Polish Corridor, with Germany accepting Poland's postwar borders. Since Poland refused, Hitler denounced the declaration unilaterally on 28 April, 1939 during an address before the Reichstag while Germany renewed its territorial claims in Poland. A note to Poland from the German government on 28 April 1938 expressed the view that their denunciation was justified by the signing of the Anglo-Polish alliance. After another few months of rising tension and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, which contained a secret protocol by which Hitler and Stalin agreed to divide Poland between them, Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, which initiated World War II, with the Soviets invading Poland shortly after on 17 September 1939.