having to communicate directly with the League of Nations regarding the city, which was then governed by the League of Nations high commissioner, Seán Lester. Poland was also able to extract a promise by Germany to accept a quota of Polish coal during the negotiation of the agreement. For Germany, the agreement was the first major Concordat reached during the Nazi era, and gave Adolf Hitler an agreement that he could present domestically as a diplomatic success, and internationally as a sign of his pacific intent. It also helped signal a weakening in the French-led alliances surrounding Germany, particularly through the secrecy in which it had been negotiated. Aftermath International reactions The British government was generally pleased by the German-Polish declaration. They believed this removed a dangerous threat to peace. In Czechoslovakia the agreement angered the Czechoslovak political elite. Announcement of the declaration came just four days after discussions between Jozef Beck and the Czech foreign minister, Edvard Beneš. Beneš, speaking to Joseph Addison (the British ambassador in Prague), claimed that the agreement was a "stab in the back" and went on to say that it showed that Poland was a "useless country" that deserved another partition. At the time Beneš was particularly angered by reports in the Polish government-controlled and right-wing press accusing the Czechs of mistreating Poles in the Zaolzie region and perceived Polish encouragement of Slovak nationalists. The conclusion of the declaration led to accusations from France that the French government had not been kept fully advised of the progress of negotiations between Poland and Germany. The French government had been kept informed of progress during the preliminary phase of the talks in late 1933, but this had not been kept up during the later part of the talks, though the French were given a detailed explanation of the agreement and its motives by the Polish government soon after it being signed. French public opinion about the agreement was negative. French critics of the deal believed it indicated that Poland might be an unreliable ally. The signing of the treaty came as a surprise to the US government despite the US administration's previous advocacy of a Polish-German agreement. Some sections of US public opinion also saw the agreement as signalling Polish support for Germany. Similarly the signing of the agreement caused concern in the USSR, with commentary in Izvestia questioning whether the agreement represented a concession by