Invasion of Poland: When Murphy Comes

[seraphim74]

If we want Murphy to screw with Germans for real, how about sudden weather change on September 1st around noon? Let's say it starts raining - and keeps raining for a week. Luftwaffe is grounded. German armoured advance is much slower, since many Polish roads change into mud - it might not be so bad for tanks, but tracks with supplies get stuck. Poles have time to mobilize rest of their forces using railways, not so affected by weather.

To be honest I'm not so sure if it would have saved Poland, but eventual German success would have been much more expensive.

[burmafrd]

Instead of Blitzkreig you have a slogging slow campaign at least to start with; not a whole lot different then WW1 in 1914.

The Germans are nowhere near as confident in their new tactics since they would really not have been able to test them out as much as they did in the OTL.

England and France are not particularly impressed. Pressure mounts on the French to attack the German border.

Stalin looks this over and maybe does NOT attack Poland (that is probably a long shot)

[Zaius]

Originally Posted by MSZ

Didn't Germany almost completly run out of fuel and ammunition at the end of Fall Weiss? And the entire operation only managed to let them conquer less than half of Poland.

I seem to remember people on this board pointing out sources claiming that this was not the case. But IIRC the German forces in Poland had indeed exhausted most of their supplies by the time of the Soviet attack and there were logistical problems with sending more quickly, precluding large offensives in the near future.

Originally Posted by MSZ

If Murphy strikes the Germans bad enough for Stalin not to engage, and Hitler making something really stupid like say, withdrawing some forces from the east to send them west, that could buy Poland some weeks more, enough for winter to come, a French attack, a military anti-nazi coup...

Agreed, practically everything depends on what Stalin does. If he chooses to leave Poland alone, its chances of survival increase greatly.