Polska Marynarka Wojenna w działaniach dyplomatycznych na rzecz budowania bezpieczeństwa morskiego państwa w okresie międzywojennym

The purpose of the article is to present the diplomatic activity of representatives of the Polish Navy, aimed at creating solid political and military foundations for the foundation, which was the maritime security of the state. Poland found itself in a new reality, becoming a coastal state. It had a maritime border and the company of states that were not satisfied with such a state, namely: the Weimar Republic and Bolshevik Russia. In addition to these countries, new countries have emerged in the Baltic Sea basin, such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. One cannot ignore the eternal Baltic States, i.e., Denmark and Sweden. Poland decided that its foreign policy in the Baltic Sea basin should be based on good neighborly relations with countries that, like it, have regained their independence, as well as with Denmark and Sweden. Today, from the perspective of several decades, it can be said that this task was difficult to implement. This was influenced by many factors, which will be presented in the article. Unfortunately, one of them, independent of the Polish side, were the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, which were not able to prevent the revival of German power and the revolutionary Soviet Union. The Versailles order achieved neither legitimacy nor a balance of power. A key role in the foreign policy of coastal states is played by the navy, which is its most important component. The Navy is the only branch of the armed forces of a country that, through the sovereignty of the decks and their immunity, has a much greater diplomatic „potential” than the land forces or the air force. Therefore, representatives of the navy are participants in universally understood diplomacy and function as naval attachés. It is they who are responsible for maintaining „maritime” relations between the states with which international relations are maintained. It is they who prepare the visits of warships in a given country and take care of their proper setting. It was, it is, and it will be. Poland began to fit into this mechanism practically from the establishment of the Polish Navy and continues to this day. The presented article focuses on the diplomatic missions of PMI officers in the interwar period.