1939:Poland declares war on Germany

yannik

Banned
If Poland declares war on Germany in August 1939 (or perhaps invade Danzig).
Would France and Britain join the war against Nazi-Germany? And after the successful occupations of Poland, What would be the next step for the military machinery of the Nazis? (Peace is no solution because, Nazi-Germany needed commodities and agricultural products or new credits )
 
Poland really has no reason to declare war on Germany and thus become the aggressor and possibly lose some support in Great Britain and France. For that to happen you are going to have to change the Polish leadership, or change the British/French leadership to one that doesn't guarantee the sovereignty of Poland.
 
Impossible to happen in the first place. Germany already was building up their military along the border, so the Germans can mop up Poland without French or British interference.
 
One possibility. Danzig holds plebiscite and declares reunion with Germany. Poland invades Danzig in response.

There is an outside chance with that scenario. Also, no one knew how outclassed the Polish Army was going to be against the German Army, so they could declare war in that scenario and be confident of victory with the limited objective to retaking Danzig.
 
Danzig holds plebiscite and declares reunion with Germany.

Wouldn't this violate the Versailles Treaty? If they play it right they could invade Danzig to 'liberate' it and still get support from the UK and France. If they declare war it gets trickier, but still possible with good diplomacy.

If the UK and France don't support Poland there may not be a WW2, Hitler wasn't that interested in France (he was still trying to make peace during the phoney war). He could instead concentrate on Russia and he may do better than in OTL.

If the UK and France don't support Poland but Hitler invades France anyway I don't think the big picture would change much. France and the Benelux would be less prepared and fall quicker.

In any case annexing Danzig still wouldn't give the Germans their corridor to East Prussia, they still needed a part of Poland as well.
 

Cook

Banned
This is actually a very interesting question and not in the least bit a far-fetched scenario.

Ever since the creation of Poland with a land route to the Baltic Sea at the Treaty of Versailles relations between the new Polish state and the Weimer Republic had been strained; the land given to Poland had been part of Prussia and there was a significant German minority living there. For most of its history the Weimer Republic was too weak and too riven by internal difficulties to do anything about it except mutter and make claims of reclaiming lost German territory. As early as 1931 the Poles had declared that they were committed to peace with the Weimer Republic, but that any attempt to revise the German-Polish borders would mean war. In a meeting with then US President Hoover, the Polish diplomatic delegate Tytus Filipwicz said that continued German provocations would prompt Poland to invade Germany to settle the issue once and for all.

Relations between Poland and Germany were further strained when Hitler assumed power and began rearming Germany in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Because Poland and its corridor was a product of the Treaty of Versailles, the new German Chancellor’s declared intention of revising the treaty was a clear threat. Poland at the time had one of the largest armies in Europe and had a specifically anti-German alliance with France dating back to 1921 and there was talk of a Polish ‘preventive war’ against Germany in 1933.

Hitler, at the time militarily weak with a miniscule army was more than happy to drop the German claims to Polish territory in return for security guarantees on his Eastern Border and good relations with such a powerful state; especially one whose views in many ways reflected his own; right wing, anti-communist and similarly anti-Semitic. It was for this reason that he signed the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact in January 1934. In it both sides undertook to make no attempts to change the common border or take any aggressive action against the other. It also meant that the Franco-Polish alliance was rescinded. Relations between the neighbours remained good through until 1938, so good in fact that when Czechoslovakia was carved up the Poles were happy to help themselves to part of the Czech Silesian territory.

This all changed in October 1938 when the Germans proposed a renewing of the Non-Aggression Pact under new terms. The proposed changes were by Hitler’s standards minor; Danzig would be annexed by Germany and an Autobahn built across the Polish Corridor between Prussia and Germany proper. The existing pact still had another six years to run and the Poles rejected the proposed revision, rightly seeing it as only the first of what would inevitably be a string of demands until Poland lost the corridor and was then swallowed entirely. In reply Hitler declared the Pact null and void in April 1938.

So the Poles found themselves in the same situation they’d been in in 1933 but facing a much stronger Germany. By August it was obvious to all but the most naïve that Hitler was intent on taking Polish territory and the only way to avoid a war would be if the Poles voluntarily gave up the Corridor. This was not something they were willing to do and even if they had, the fate of Czechoslovakia was clear proof that it would not save Polish freedom to do so anyway.

And while France and Britain had given a guarantee of support to Poland this was hardly something that could inspire confidence; France had been Czechoslovakia’s main ally prior to Munich, where Britain and France negotiated directly with Hitler the stripping of the Sudetenland away from Czechoslovakia, going so far as to threaten the Czechs if they did not acquiesce to the terms and had, after handing all of the Czech border defences to Hitler, undertaken to guarantee the territorial integrity of the rump Czechoslovakia against further German aggression. When the inevitable happened and Hitler’s troops crossed the border, declaring the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the puppet state of Slovakia, the British Foreign Minister Halifax had said that British guarantees no longer applied in the circumstances that now existed and Chamberlain went so far as to blame the Slovakians for the entire thing. What then was to prevent Britain and France from once again walking away from their guarantees?

The British Prime Minister’s guarantee to Poland in the House of Commons on 31 March 1939 was hardly rock solid or inspiring of confidence; he’d simply said that in the event of a threat to Poland which that country resisted by force, Britain would go to Poland’s support. That was weaker than the guarantee to Czechoslovakia that the British had given at Munich and had just days before decided was of no consequence! Had the Poles known Chamberlain’s true feelings on the matter they’d have been even less inspired, in a private letter to his sister three days later he said ‘and it is we who will judge whether that independence is threatened or not.’ Clearly further ‘border adjustments’ in Europe were preferable to him than having to go to war, especially since the only people affected were foreigners in places he’d never visited and had never heard anything positive about anyway. While many in Britain said that ‘Hitler needs to be stopped’ it was hardly universal; the newspapers of Lord Beaverbrook were still running editorials in favour of allowing Germany ‘minor border adjustments’, hardly something to inspire confidence given that Beaverbrook was a member of parliament and close to the Prime Minister.

So the Poles faced tho options: Firstly they could stand firm against Germany and hope that when Germany was good and ready to attack that the Polish armies could defeat them and that their ‘allies’ did indeed come to their aid, which would be a complete about turn from Britain and France’s previous behaviour. This option ran the risk that the British and French could choose to do another deal with Hitler instead; just like the Czechs, the Poles could find themselves cooling their heels in the foyer while their fate was decided by others in a meeting that they were excluded from. The second option would be to mobilize their not inconsiderable army and strike first. Had they known that Ribbentrop was planning to fly to Moscow in late August to divide Poland they would have been in no doubt that it was better to strike before such a deal had been concluded. That they could have found out is not impossible; the news was leaked to the French by General Karl Bodenschatz, Goering’s liaison Officer in the High Command. Had the French chosen to pass this information on to their allies instead of disbelieving it the Poles would have had good cause to act in early to mid-August 1939.

Fully mobilized the Polish army would in theory be formidable and the Polish General Staff at the time had been confident that they could invade Germany and strike towards Berlin, which was only 60 miles from the Polish border. In reality their forces were poorly equipped and organised along World War One lines (So was the French Army), they had only one armoured division with 100 obsolete tanks and their air force had only 420 operational aircraft, most of the fighters were old gull winged, open cockpit types. Had the Poles been fully mobilised their forces would have been stronger than they were IOT when the Germans attacked, but they would have still been trying to defend an extremely long border with forces deployed far too close to the border and lacking depth, any in the actual Corridor have Germans front and rear with no room to manoeuvre at all. A Polish offensive towards Berlin would have only made this situation worse, pushing even more forces further forward, allowing them to be pocketed by the German Armies north and south of them.

The question then becomes whether Britain and France would take the opportunity of Polish ‘aggression’ to wash their hands of their promises, or whether they’d see this as an opportunity to defeat Hitler by helping the Polish attack? A lot would depend on just how quickly the German Army swung into action and how quickly the news reached the outside world.
 

yannik

Banned
Cook:Let's say the German Armed have had much luck and crush the Polish lines in two weeks and the Red Army starts to occupy the eastern parts of Poland.

What would be the next step? There would be a cold war in Europe would Germany occupy France?
If Germany doesn't attack France, what would be the aim of Nazi-Germany?
(Without War, there isn't wartime economy and that means Nazi-Germany is going into bankruptcy )
 
If Poland were shortsighted enough to declare war on Germany it would be the greatest gift anyone had ever given Hitler. He would have had a legitimate cause to go to war with Poland that no one could question.

Chamberlain could not possibly have gone to his people and asked them to begin a new world war in order to support Polish aggression. France was not going to go to war without England. If this occurred in early August prior to the Molotov Ribbentrop pact the USSR would have remained neutral but would have eyed the situation very carefully.

Being fully mobilized and having surprise on their side the Poles would have done a little better, but not much. They might capture Danzig, but I don't see them accomplishing much else. They would be crushed within six months at the very most.

The British and the Soviets would both apply great political pressure to try and prevent the Germans from completely annexing the country. Since at this point Hitler still hopes for an alliance with Great Britain I think he would leave Warsaw and a rump Poland with most of its eastern provinces as a very weak but still independent nation.

He could take back all the eastern territories lost in the Versailles Treaty including Danzig. To the German people he could (with some truth) proclaim he had defended he Reich from attack and returned millions of Germans. His prestige within Germany and in general would be higher than ever.
 
I disagree with Cook concerning a probability of Polish DoW on Germany. A war with Germany (or enybody with possible exception of Lithuania) was the last thing Poland wanted. Polish Army had 40 infantry divisions (including 10 reserve divisions, weaker than regular ones), 11 cavalry brigades, 2 motorized brigades (including 1 still being organized), 3 mountain brigades, relatively weak artillery and weak air force. Polish commanders knew very well Polish Army had no chance at all of defeating the Wehrmacht. However, they believed they might have been able to resist until western allies attack, as it had been promised to the Poles. They knew they could not stand for long in a defensive war, so an aggressive strategy was even less attracticve.
First, mobilization In fact, on September the 1st 1939 Poles had circa 65-70% of their forces mobilized - mostly because western allies pressed on Warsaw to cancel full mobilization started at the end of August fearing that it would provoke the Germans. Allegedly French ambassador even threatened with cancelling any French support for Poland. If Paris and Londodn reacted so in case of defensive mobilization, what would they do in case of Polish aggression?
Two, Poland had no supplies to fight longer than 2-3 months (and that is somewhat optimistic). Polish commanders hoped for western supplies arriving via Romania.
Three, as I mentuioned Polish army was much, much weaker than German Army and Poles knew that.
Four, AFAIK, Poland had no serious plans of any offensive against Germany (not after 1937 for sure); for intervention in Danzig, sure. Bullying Lithuania? Easily. But you don't improvise an attack against so powerful foe Germany was. Even Polish commanders at the time were not so reckless.
Five, it doesn't make sense for Poland to attack Germany because Hitler was about to become buddy with Stalin. Such an alliance would have been made even more attractive to Hitler in case of Polish attack: Germany could use an ally and are willing to pay with eastern Poland; USSR has easier job with Polish Army fully engaged against Germany; neither Moscow, nor Berlin have any warm feelings towards Warsaw. In short, the moment Hitler and Stalin decided to shake hands, Poland was screwed, and Poles knew that.
Six, Polish chances to reach Berlin are small, and capturing it, even smaller. Poles need to leave at least 20 divisions at home, or Germans or Soviets will ride straight into Warsaw; some forces need to cover flanks (Polish Army is rather slow) and secure supply lines; IMHO that would make Polish attack force at best 10 infantry divisions, 6 cavalry and 1 motorized brigade. That force has to cross the Oder (which is not so easy) and assault a big city full of people, with not only the Werhmacht defending it, but also SS, SA, etc. And
Seven, assuming by some miracle Poles capture Berlin - so what? Ther forces are decimated, German HQ and government were evacuated to Hamburd or some other place. The war goes on and Poland has no strength to continue.
 
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