I agree with the second half, but the Polish-Soviet war may also have given them that land at too high a price. Due to the lack of good bean counting in the region amongst all the chaos, it's hard to say exactly how damaging, but it was probably as damaging as WW1 before it. Taken together, the devastation was almost as bad as being occupied by a Polonophobic and anti-Semetic bunch of genocidal maniacs a generation later... This says something, I think.
Ideally, Poland really wanted to avoid fighting so much on its own heartland.
Were you the one who started the thread about Poland getting all their naval demands from both Germany and the Soviets? I thought that could be the basis of a very fun ATL, though I think the main impact of a large Polish fleet in the Baltic would be to get the Germans and Soviets to waste lots of steel building bigger fleets - but of course, that in itself could be tremendously beneficial.
Interesting source. I'll have a read of it when I next have time!
Yanno... I've always wondered if it would be possible for Communist Poland to be a great power. I don't see them ever overtaking the Soviets, but I have always thought it would make things very interesting if Poland had managed to become a second-rate great power during the Cold War.
fasquardon
There's several magnitudes of difference between a border war with 150,000 dead or wounded Polish soldiers and what amounted to a fourth Polish partition in which a fifth of the Polish Republics's 1939 population was killed and WW2 and Warsaw was destroyed. This is like comparing the Russo-Japanese war to Operation Barbarossa's damage.
The Poles actually gave up a considerable amount of territory at the treaty of Riga. Pilsudski, the head of state and commander in chief wanted a federalist, multinational Poland. The National Democrats (endecja) who controlled the parliament wanted a smaller, more ethnically homogenous Poland. When the elections had been held only Congress Poland, Western Galicia, and the former German territories were under Polish control so Endejca gained a disproportionate share of seats from the first election.
The Polish line of control was much farther east than the Treaty of Riga borders, but Endecja willing ceded Minsk and a large portions of central Ukraine to the USSR. The National Democrats aimed to limit their territorial gains based on the maximum population that could be forcibly assimilated/Polonized.
Poland's first Constitution was set up with a strong parliament and proportional representation designed to give Endecja more power, but Pilsudski was a Polish Charles de Gaulle who advocated a more Presidential system with a strong executive. No party had a parliamentary majority and the gridlock between feuding interests groups built up to the Sanacja coup in 1926.