20th Century Polish Great Power

How could Poland (and not an intermarium confederation) be a 20th century Great Power following its independence after WW1?

I think Poland at the least needs to be larger. Accepting the offer of Minsk, gaining all of Upper Silesia, getting Masuria, and getting Danzig would make the country bigger. Lithuania too I suppose, though that'd make the country Poland-Lithuania and not Poland.

Lithuania would make Poland larger as well, but I think that if Lithuania were annexed Poland would end up as Poland-Lithuania.

Avoiding WW2 as we know it would need to be a must as well, but if WW2 is avoided then you're avoiding the nerfing if Germany that's necessary (I think) for a Polish power.

Without WW2 and holding Danzig, Upper Silesia, Minsk, and Lithuania Poland could have a population of around ~90 million today I think.
 
More lands in the east is more burden. Except for Wilno/Vilnius, Lwów/Lviv and Galizian oilfields nothing very valuable there. Underdeveloped Volhynia and Polesia were money sinks-costs of administration was higher than revenue from taxes. Poland took these lands mostly to keep Soviets as far from Warsaw as possible and to be able to trade part of that teritory for peace in the case of future war with USSR, which was expected. To be more successfull during interwar period Poland needs:
-Whites' victory in Russia
-Germanophobe Prime Minister in UK
-No Czechoslovakia
-No Piłsudski
 
Not going to happen, unless one of the great powers decides to change name to Poland. It's the same reason that we won't see a great power Korea or Netherlands either with POD after 1900.
 
Sandwiched between two Great Powers is not a viable launching pad for global domination.

The PoD would have to lead to a LOT more industrialization happening a LOT earlier. You'd have to prevent the partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia, & Russia in the late 1700s. This kept Poland primarily an agricultural nation for far too long. You'd probably also have to butterfly away most of Germany's industrial impulses (or at least isolate them in a Palatine Republic in the west of Germany and keep Prussia in the east a mostly harmless micro-monarchy.

At the risk of offending some people in this forum, you'd probably need to keep Prussia Catholic and make Poland Protestant. So really, if you want Poland to be a super power in the 20th Century, you probably need to go all the way back to Copernicus and have him be the centerpiece of the Reformation, not the Galileo/Luther/Gutenberg triad. Then make the Poles receptive to Calvinism (or whatever takes the place of predestination), which in turn will drive the Poles to the same neurotic work ethic that put Scotland up ahead of England in seeding the industrial Revolution.
 
Poland could have evolved into a medium-sized power on the global scale with out communism or the second world war. It wouldn't be a superpower on the level of the US or the USSR, but it would be as influential as Iran, Germany, or a unified Korea today.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Have the Whites win in Russia and Communists win in Germany. Then have the German Communists institute go full Pol Pot on their own people, then try to invade Poland. France joins the war against Germany, and after Germany is crushed France takes everything up to the Rhine and Poland takes everything they got after World War 2. The defeated Germany is then Morgenthau’d, and a large chunk of the German statelet’s GDP goes towards tributary payments to their French and Polish overlords.
 
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A white victory would mean it's a lot easier for France and Britain to throw Poland under the bus for a Russian alliance.
 
I would argue that Poland OTL was on the verge of great power status in the late 1930s.

The Second Republic was relatively underdeveloped compared to western Europe, a consequence substantially of the damage of the First World War and of the problems of reunification. That said, it was a dynamic and growing polity, with a thriving economy. If not for the Nazis, the Second Republic might easily have joined the rank of the Great Powers of Europe in the 1940s, surpassing Spain and perhaps coming close to Italy. Maybe, assuming nothing else happened.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
A white victory would mean it's a lot easier for France and Britain to throw Poland under the bus for a Russian alliance.
By the time WW1 ended the Whites had decided that Poland and Finland were too problematic for Russia and trying to get them back was not worth it.
 
I would argue that Poland OTL was on the verge of great power status in the late 1930s.

The Second Republic was relatively underdeveloped compared to western Europe, a consequence substantially of the damage of the First World War and of the problems of reunification. That said, it was a dynamic and growing polity, with a thriving economy. If not for the Nazis, the Second Republic might easily have joined the rank of the Great Powers of Europe in the 1940s, surpassing Spain and perhaps coming close to Italy. Maybe, assuming nothing else happened.
Poland could have done better if for example they tried to actively combat the great crisis oand invested in economy earlier. Some minor changes in Versailles regarding industrial transfers. But really useful would be avoiding devastation in WW1 and Polish-Bolshevik War, as Poland lost about 2/3 of industry in that period, and did not replace those losses until '38 or so. So if Germans do better in the beginning of WW1 and blitz through Poland before Russians could evacuate literrally everything that could be disassembled and taken away and blow up the rest, it would be highly useful. That put together would not make Poland great power (as in USA, SU, Germany, France, UK), but it would lessen the distance she had to the Western Europe.
 
How could Poland (and not an intermarium confederation) be a 20th century Great Power following its independence after WW1?

With the right PoD in Poland, in France or in Russia/the USSR, I think it is possible to get Poland up to being as large an economy as Italy in 1939. Enough to be considered a great power if the political factors are favourable.

And then depending on what kind of wars happen in Europe, Poland could continue rising, or end up cut down as OTL. Obviously, a stronger Polish economy like that does translate into better odds to avoid the worst outcomes, but it's still possible for Germany and the Soviets to reduce an Italian-strength Poland between them.

Without WW2 and holding Danzig, Upper Silesia, Minsk, and Lithuania Poland could have a population of around ~90 million today I think.

I suspect it would be closer to 100 million.

More lands in the east is more burden.

The thing is, if you look at how the OUN worked (for example), making Poland bigger would have really hamstrung their operations. Many of the problems in the East grew from them being borderlands where the Czechs and Soviets could meddle and where chaos could blow in off the Russian steppe (that is, the Soviets both intentionally worked to sow chaos in Poland, and had their own chaos overflowing into Poland).

And if you look at the rates of advance the armies of the 30s and 40s could manage, adding Belarus and half of the Ukraine (for example) makes Poland much more resistant to invasion.

Of course, you're right that the east was a burden, though I think if Poland had enough east, they'd have more stable provinces there. So IMO the optimum is at the extremes. Either the Curzon line needs to be the border, or the January 1772 border.

-No Piłsudski

Why? Because he'd make an Intermarium if Poland got this big?

Honestly, I think you need Piłsudski to meet the challenge, have him get tantalizingly close to building an Intermarium, then have it fall apart and have a giant Poland with autonomous regions...

So if Germans do better in the beginning of WW1 and blitz through Poland before Russians could evacuate literrally everything that could be disassembled and taken away and blow up the rest, it would be highly useful.

That's pretty interesting. (And I didn't know that Poland had taken so long to regain the industrial capacity lost in WW1.)

fasquardon
 
I suspect it would be closer to 100 million.

I think a Second Republic Poland that had avoided the Second World War could get up to something around 50-55 million, assuming that it had something like the trajectory of Spain and Italy.

(And I didn't know that Poland had taken so long to regain the industrial capacity lost in WW1.)

Poland did recover quickly from that level of damage, but it took a lot of damage.
 
To get into some ehm... older alternate history there is the Drowned Baby TL by Johnny Pez. Basic premise Hitler dies early, Ernest Rohm comes to power in Germany and invades early in 1935 or 1937 IMS. End result the allies smash up Germany thoroughly with Poland annexing significant territory for her contribution in the war. After that there is war with the Soviets in 1943 or 1944 which is a defensive victory for the Poles and allies. End result by 1950s Poland runs from Ukraine to Germany and is definitely a great power. Of course somewhat to the chagrin of Polish nationalists it has become a federation with German, Ukrainian etc autonomous states within the structure of the Polish Commonwealth...
 
Soviet ideology was inherently expansionist and envisioned communism one day ruling the entire world. White ideology did not.
Whites were not a united faction, I don't see why a Russian nationalist or some other regime wouldn't try to retake Slav or former Russian empire land. Even if they didn't want to take Poland in whole, they would want the Eastern provinces at a minimum and seek to puppet the rest due to Poland's strategic position on the north European plane.
 
To get into some ehm... older alternate history there is the Drowned Baby TL by Johnny Pez. Basic premise Hitler dies early, Ernest Rohm comes to power in Germany and invades early in 1935 or 1937 IMS. End result the allies smash up Germany thoroughly with Poland annexing significant territory for her contribution in the war. After that there is war with the Soviets in 1943 or 1944 which is a defensive victory for the Poles and allies. End result by 1950s Poland runs from Ukraine to Germany and is definitely a great power. Of course somewhat to the chagrin of Polish nationalists it has become a federation with German, Ukrainian etc autonomous states within the structure of the Polish Commonwealth...

It was fun when I first read it and knew virtually nothing about the history of the period. Now my memories of it are actually painful. Important Polish figures from the time don't show up and the story dwells entirely too much on famous Germans in Poland who had good propaganda after WW2. That we now know that many of these "good Germans" weren't very good at all makes it... Seem especially fantastical.

I think a Second Republic Poland that had avoided the Second World War could get up to something around 50-55 million, assuming that it had something like the trajectory of Spain and Italy.

Poland wasn't Spain or Italy though. It was at a different point in its demographic transition before the war.

By the time WW1 ended the Whites had decided that Poland and Finland were too problematic for Russia and trying to get them back was not worth it.

The White's ideas of what "Poland" was conflicted with what Poles thought it should be though. And some of the White leaders really did want to re-subjugate Poland.

fasquardon
 
Wonder if they got their naval wish list post WWI would help (or hinder) them...

Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1906-1921 said:
... In December 1919 only six ex-German torpedo-boats were allocated to Poland, though strong protests were issued by the Polish delegation to Versailles. The delegation demanded 2 light cruiser, 2 destroyers, and a number of submarine chasers, motor boats and auxiliary ship. These Claims were based on the economic potential of inland Polish industrial districts, which until 1918 had been under German and Austrian administration for more than a century: the protests were not approved

... Poland also claimed her share from the Russian Navy during the Polish-Soviet peace talks in Riga in 1921. At these negotiations 2 Gangut class battleships, 10 large destroyers, 5 submarines, 10 minesweepers, 21 auxiliaries and transports, 2 uncompleted Svetlana class cruisers and other equipment (guns, mines, etc) were demanded...

I mean, for a while on paper they would have a fleet as befitting of a major power (sort of)...
 
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