Aftermath of Britain and France not declaring war on Germany over Poland

How would international relations would look like. How about domestic politics? Would countries like the BeNeLux, Denmark, and Norway respond to a powerful Germany and Soviet Union?
 
I guess the thought behind appasment was to get their armies and stuff and up and running and to delay the war as much possible . Altough fighting germany without them being distracted by the soviets wont be fun. Altough germans not having to really worry about stab in the back against the soviets might actually be interesting.

Basicly the french and brits go f eastern europe and we need to rebuild till 41 or something like that before we risk war could kinda be thought behind not guranteeing poland. The could just throw the poles on the danzig corridor under bus but gurantee the rest somehow . Basicly try to repeat czechslovakia but without the germans going for the rest is another thought to pursue .
 
have they guaranteed Poland per historical?

The latecomers in that are the British. You need a POD before 1920 to prevent the French-Polish alliance. This would mean the French don't try to counterweight Germany from the East, and they choose not to do that from the very ready-set moment after WWI - which is suicidal for the French, counter their age-old foreign policy principles, and going to upturn the diplomatic history of the 1920s-30s.
 
The latecomers in that are the British. You need a POD before 1920 to prevent the French-Polish alliance. This would mean the French don't try to counterweight Germany from the East, and they choose not to do that from the very ready-set moment after WWI - which is suicidal for the French, counter their age-old foreign policy principles, and going to upturn the diplomatic history of the 1920s-30s.

On this note a subversive answer the the original prompt might be "France somehow keeps diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union warm, so Germany ends up fighting a 2 front war later on" though I'm not sure how plausible such an alliance would be.
 
On this note a subversive answer the the original prompt might be "France somehow keeps diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union warm, so Germany ends up fighting a 2 front war later on" though I'm not sure how plausible such an alliance would be.

Rather plausible. Consider:

- France did have an old agreement with the SU. It never had military implementation parts, so it was not a proper alliance, and by 1939 it was largely a dead thing. But it was there.

- The French and the British did try, in 1939, to bring the Soviets aboard. They were slow and unconvincing, and Stalin decided Germany had more to offer. But it shows that even that late, the Westerners were at least somewhat interested in recruiting the SU against Germany.

- Things changed radically with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the Westerners seriously considered offensive operations against the neutral USSR in 1940. The Soviets, on their part, were not interested in warming up relations with the Westerners. But...

- Things obviously change again once Germany attacks the Soviet Union. In this scenario - the Westerners not raising a finger for Poland - it is sure as death and taxes that Hitler concludes he's been green-lighted to go East. That's what he wants to do since, I don't know, 1920? So that's what he does, after Poland.

- Once Germany is at war with the Soviet Union, think about what Churchill said about having some good things to tell about the devil, if Germany invades hell. As to Stalin, he has no problem welcoming new allies, not in general and especially not when in need.
 
The latecomers in that are the British. You need a POD before 1920 to prevent the French-Polish alliance. This would mean the French don't try to counterweight Germany from the East, and they choose not to do that from the very ready-set moment after WWI - which is suicidal for the French, counter their age-old foreign policy principles, and going to upturn the diplomatic history of the 1920s-30s.

Well, the French had a defense treaty and pretty close relations with Czechoslovakia, too - and yet, somehow, they managed to be talked into throwing the Czechs over the side.

I'm not at all convinced that the same couldn't happen if London decided to not to make Poland a casus belli.
 
Well, the French had a defense treaty and pretty close relations with Czechoslovakia, too - and yet, somehow, they managed to be talked into throwing the Czechs over the side.

I'm not at all convinced that the same couldn't happen if London decided to not to make Poland a casus belli.

What I was replying to was the question whether Poland had not been "guaranteed" by either Western country, and the point I was making was that for France not to have already "guaranteed" Poland (or more exactly, allied with) you need a pre-1920 POD. I wasn't claiming that France being allied with Poland means they'll never throw Poland under the German bus.

Or try to; because, remember, the one being "talked into" in 1938 weren't the French, but the Czechoslovakians. Had the Czechoslovakians decided to fight anyway, they would have put the French in a bad spot (and that's why everyone but the Soviets convinced them not to fight). Now, could the French convince the Poles not to fight? If the French told them, look, we're allies but we are telling you we won't raise a finger to defend you, would the Poles cave in without a fight? I'm not so sure.
 

thaddeus

Donor
have they guaranteed Poland per historical?
The latecomers in that are the British. You need a POD before 1920 to prevent the French-Polish alliance.
yes, meant from the OP it was not clear if the UK had made explicit guarantees per historical.

if they simply do not declare war in Sept. '39 it shreds any credibility remaining? you might have some immediate effects on policies of Romania and Yugoslavia? (the two remaining little Entente members)
 
What I was replying to was the question whether Poland had not been "guaranteed" by either Western country, and the point I was making was that for France not to have already "guaranteed" Poland (or more exactly, allied with) you need a pre-1920 POD. I wasn't claiming that France being allied with Poland means they'll never throw Poland under the German bus.

Ah. OK. Fair enough.

Now, could the French convince the Poles not to fight?

No one can convince the Poles ever not to fight!
 
How would international relations would look like. How about domestic politics? Would countries like the BeNeLux, Denmark, and Norway respond to a powerful Germany and Soviet Union?
(edited, expanded)
More information required. If Britain and France never guaranteed Poland's security in the first place, the scenario is very different to one where they did guarantee it but Teutonic mental wave projection satellites in orbit or large quantities of lead paint in dinner-time beverages result in Britain and France failing to follow through on such a guarantee.
(Not least in that the Poles aren't stupid, and in a scenario where they never have a French/British guarantee their best bet (at least in the short-term) may well look to sign on willingly with the Reich as a satellite nation/ally/'protectorate' for whatever good conditions they can get out of it...)
 
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Not least in that the Poles aren't stupid, and in a scenario where they never have a French/British guarantee their best bet (at least in the short-term) may well look to sign on willingly with the Reich as a satellite nation/ally/'protectorate' for whatever good conditions they can get out of it...

Hitler seems to have been determined not to make or take any "deal" with Poland, though. He felt frustrated by Munich. He wanted the whole thing (or at least, the whole of whatever he could split with Stalin).

So that means invasion, and invasion means the Poles will fight. They'll lose, but no differently than they did in OTL, since Allied deployments had no material effect on the progress of the Polish war anyway.
 

Deleted member 1487

How do the governments of the Allies survive this? The publics in those countries were demanding war after all the appeasement had failed even though there are indications that the Chamberlain government was willing to continue to appease Hitler over Poland if they didn't invade and force his hand. There was even an outcry when leaks exposed that negotiations were going on in July to give Germany a loan to transition their economy away from armaments.

Personally I think Chamberlain would have been fine with selling out Poland and pushing Hitler east so that the Nazis and Soviets could murder each other and leave the Allies to profit and clean up the pieces after the fact, as it was clear that Germany would end up exhausted trying to manage a conquered USSR even with an easy, quick, cheap military victory.
 
The publics in those countries were demanding war after all the appeasement had failed

"Demanding war." While public opinion was starting to shift, I think that's an excessively strong reading of public sentiment in France and Britain in 1939, at least if available polling (See here also) and newspaper lines are anything to judge by. Distrust of Hitler had rapidly grown (especially after he occupied Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939), as had support for fast rearmament and resistance to further demands by Hitler; but that was all still short of cries for war. Consider, too, that Chamberlain also had to take account of Dominion attitudes as well in any policy he pursued.

Chamberlain and Daladier probably still had the maneuvering room to decline to offer any guarantees to Poland, and in turn to decline to go to war if and when Hitler invaded Poland. But this would have to be accompanied by accelerated rearmamant and a tougher diplomatic line by London and Paris.
 

Deleted member 1487

"Demanding war." While public opinion was starting to shift, I think that's an excessively strong reading of public sentiment in France and Britain in 1939, at least if available polling (See here also) and newspaper lines are anything to judge by. Distrust of Hitler had rapidly grown (especially after he occupied Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939), as had support for fast rearmament and resistance to further demands by Hitler; but that was all still short of cries for war. Consider, too, that Chamberlain also had to take account of Dominion attitudes as well in any policy he pursued.

Chamberlain and Daladier probably still had the maneuvering room to decline to offer any guarantees to Poland, and in turn to decline to go to war if and when Hitler invaded Poland. But this would have to be accompanied by accelerated rearmamant and a tougher diplomatic line by London and Paris.
None of those polls were from August 1939 on the eve of war. In 1938 or even spring 1939 was different than summer 1939 when Hitler was agitating for war with Poland. Offering the guarantee to Poland doesn't really contradict anything the polling said either.
 
I think that in discussing this topic it;s helpful to read Marc Trachtenberg's A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, February 1999). While obviously the whole book isn't online to read, he did publish a supplement to it in PDF form that *is* available. And what it reveals is how messy and complex the decision of Chamberlain's government was to issue the guarantee to Poland.

As Trachtenberg (and not just him) paint it, Chamberlain's decision was something of a hasty panic. As Simon Newman put it, "“The critical decisions in March 1939 were made in an atmosphere of panic, humiliation, and moral hysteria. A frantic urgency to do something—anything—replaced a calm consideration of the alternatives. There arose a clamour for action to cut off the possibility of another surrender to the forces of evil.” (see page 7) More interestingly, Halifax's erroneous imputation to Hitler of a design to to reach a rapprochement with Warsaw to free him to attack the West led him also to support decision for the guarantee. On top of that, it is also clear, as both Newman and Trachtenberg's unpacking of contemporary correspondence shows, that neither Chamberlain or Halifax saw the guarantee as one of Polish territorial integrity (let alone, that of Danzig!) so much as just a guarantee of Polish independence - and even on that, there was some real flexibility.

What all this says to me is that nothing was predetermined about the decision to guarantee Poland in spring 1939; and that Chamberlain's government could certainly have survived declining to do so (or at any rate, that Chamberlain and Halifax were open to that idea) in favor of some other tough line short of that. And if there is no guarantee, then there is no war - at least, beyond Poland. What would happen in that case, however, is that Hitler's credibility would be utterly shot in France and Britain even among their publics, which would then be ratcheting up their rearmament programs to the max.
 
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None of those polls were from August 1939 on the eve of war.

They sure aren't, but that wasn't what I was interested in.

I really focus on the decision to guarantee Poland in the spring of 1939. Because it is that decision that makes it almost necessary for Paris and London to go to war if Hitler invaded Poland. In a sense, Chamberlain's guarantee itself worked to shift public sentiment, by shifting the Overton Window on the whole question.

Take away the guarantee, however, and they can both certainly survive declining to declare war on Germany.

I grant that the OP doesn't ask the question in this kind of detail. But it is open to it as one way of considering it.

Offering the guarantee to Poland doesn't really contradict anything the polling said either.

I am sure you are focusing on that last question in the poll cited in the first link. It's interesting, but when combined with the other question results, it leaves some ambiguity. What did the question mean by a "guarantee?" The polling question did not say. It would have helped if it had said, "Should the British government declare war to preserve the independence of small European states?" Otherwise, the polling still shows what looks like a lot of support for the emerging public sentiment of 1939 which favored buying time to rearm and avoid any further concessions to Hitler.

I'm not saying I agree with that, you know. I think it was a horrific mistake not to declare war on Hitler over Czechoslovakia in 1938, and come to that, to oppose Hitler's militarization of the Rhineland by force in 1936. The longer France and Britain waited, the more difficult it was going to be to stop Hitler.
 
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