AH challenge - free poland

Calgacus

from the nazi invasion of poland in 1939, it seems with hindsight that their fate was sealed - they would be subjugated either by the nazis or the reds.

the challenge is, what circumstances would it take to ensure a continuation of an independent poland post ww2 (non nazi, non soviet, can be either democratic or mild dictatorship as in OTL 1930s)

sub-challenge - do the same for czechoslovakia and austria..
 

King Thomas

Banned
The Warsaw Uprising in launched at just the right time and suceeds. Stalin allows an independent Poland provided that it stays neutral in the Cold War with only a small army, navy and air force.
 

Tizoc

King Thomas said:
The Warsaw Uprising in launched at just the right time and suceeds.
Click to expand...
It started at the right time - it's just Stalin didn't like the idea of independent Poland and ordered his armies not to cross Vistula therefore letting Germans take back Warsaw... For truly independent Poland after 1939 you'd need a successful assassination of Hitler no later than 30.7.1944... and hope for US and UK to force new German government to not squash the Uprising and to move out of Poland and persuade Stalin to do the same.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
What if Poland signed a treaty with Britain, a la the Low Countries in World War I? Poland is declared neutral, with it's neutrality gaurded by the British.
 

HueyLong

Banned
@Mathewannis: Not neutrals. Allied, and guaranteed independence.

I think he means that the British also declare war on the Soviets for violating Poland's "neutrality"
 

MacCaulay

Banned
mathewannis said:
that's what they did, which is why britain was dragged into the war..
Click to expand...

Well...guess that idea goes out the window. Oh, well...I wasn't that attached to it anyway. :)

I suppose...some sort of big Soviet calamity that gets them thin on the ground in Poland...REALLY thin...then the Allies waltz into Germany because the Soviets welched on the Teheran agreements, and the Allies decide to just roll on into Poland and Czechoslovakia.

I was trying to come up with something original. Honest. I'm just not getting anything.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
HueyLong: I like that idea. I'm going with that. You thought way further into what I was suggesting than I did. Good job!
 

Calgacus

oh sorry i thought he meant as in OTL - well i guess it would just lead to the same end - poland was too far away and too surrounded for the allies to really help much...
 

Max Sinister

Banned
For some reason, the western Allies do a lot better and liberate Poland before the Soviets do so. Quite a stretch, but in my WW2 TL I found a way to make that happen (it wasn't initially planned, though).
 

Ruthlesstyrant

Hm. Germany makes a kind of secret agreement with the Western Allies and puts most of the armies to the East, while the US are invading the West. Or the Western Allies are strong enough to make it by themselves. In the end, the Soviets can't advance deep into the occupied territories and meet their American Allies somewhere in Central Europe. In the end, they decide to create a bunch of buffer states along the borders (like the neutral but generally Western-aligned Poland and Czechoslovakia, or Socialist Yugoslavia), while the Soviets incorporate Romania and Bulgaria into their sphere of influence. But probably the Soviets will try to get Greece as a compensation (there was the possibility that Greece will become Communist, too, but since Stalin wasn't really interested in backing the CP there on a scale large enough to come to power, they managed to get out of this one).
 

Bulgaroktonos

The US and Britain decide not to play two level diplomacy and work as the Voice of Poland when conducting negotiations.

Instead, they actually bring representatives of the London Government to talks with Stalin.

Thus, the central meeting at which Stalin lost trust in the Londoners and West never happens. Can't recall the date, but due to our diplomatic methods, the US and UK negotiated the border of post war Poland for Poland with Russia. Problem is they never told Poland. So, the London Government shows up in Moscow to negotiate the border. Something Stalin had thought long settled. After this point, Stalin seems to have made up his mind that the London Poles and West were trying to double cross him, and that the only way to secure Poland was to not allow anybody else to control it other than Russia or the Lublin Government.
 

Max Sinister

Banned
For that you'd need a completely different Polish strategy. This was one reason why the Germans won that fast: At the beginning, the Poles wanted to approach a strategy that defended only the most important center of Poland, but then, they added the fortress of Posen / Poznan to the list of areas to be held (planning for an eventual strike against Berlin), and the corridor with Danzig, and considered a strike against East Prussia... it was simply too much. They wanted to defend everything and had no clear objective.
 
Jasen777

Jasen777

Donor
Wasn't there some thought given by the allies of making a big landing in Yugoslavia? And presumably they would've advanced on Axis territory from there. If they were significant numbers of Western Allied forces in Eastern Europe they would have been in a much better position for post-war settlement issues in Eastern Europe and may have been able to obtain a free Poland.
 

Tyr

Ruthlesstyrant said:
Not to mention they still fought with cavalry against tanks - very brave, but utterly futile nonetheless.
Click to expand...

Urban myth.
Their cavalry were dragoons and the charging of tanks was one instance where a few cavalrymen got mixed up and bundled into the middle of a bunch of tanks.


Landing in Yugoslavia: hmm never heard of that one. Churchill did want to invade Greece I know but not Yugoslavia.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I remember they talked about the Yugoslavian operation in this book called The Brigade, about the Jewish Brigade.

I guess it had something to do with a tangential outcropping of Operation Dragoon, and then how the landings went in Italy. It was thought that if D-Day were to be postponed, they'd reposition most of the divisions into Italy, and then land in Yugoslavia with the help of Tito, while they were landing in the south of France with Dragoon.
 

Tizoc

Max Sinister said:
For that you'd need a completely different Polish strategy. This was one reason why the Germans won that fast: At the beginning, the Poles wanted to approach a strategy that defended only the most important center of Poland, but then, they added the fortress of Posen / Poznan to the list of areas to be held (planning for an eventual strike against Berlin), and the corridor with Danzig, and considered a strike against East Prussia... it was simply too much. They wanted to defend everything and had no clear objective.
Click to expand...
No, no, no. The strike against Berlin wasn't planned - Greater Poland was supposed to be held till the general mobilization was complete. The Corridor - well, in that case I don't know what the Polish Main Command was thinking... And strike against East Prussia - it wasn't planned either; the plans for it were discarded a number of years before WW2... The reasons for so fast Polish defeat were:
1. Too late general mobilisation
2. Lack of Army Corps in the true meaning of the word (there were only Operational(?) Groups - sth like Army Corps ad hoc)
3. Polish Marshal thought he can order every division
4. Failure of airforce modernization programme
...and so on...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top