AHC: Restore the Danzig Government in exile

Kaiser Frank

I was browsing Wikipedia and I found out that Danzig had a government in exile after WW2, claiming that they were neutral in WW2, and as such the Allies had no right to annex them. They are still around today and even have thier own website.

So the challenge is, with a post WW2 POD, to have the Danzig Government in exile restored. Is it possible and what would it take to happen?

For reference:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_of_Danzig_Government_in_Exile
 
Histor32

Histor32

You would need the west to capture it first.. However with the city being a city state.. There is only one other outcome.. Joining Poland either as a bargaining chip or basically getting a very large US military presence to rebuild it and guarantee its existence.

Last problem is people.. Unless all the people from Prussia flood in there isn't alot of people left

But it could be possible, Poland/ussr could treat it as a special economic zone..

Or you could just have a ussr that says hey all Prussia is ours from memel to Danzig

Not saying it Woukd be impossible, but the west Woukd need to get there first to assure it happens or it should be written in blood on paper signed by all powers.

I just don't see anyone giving a damn about it except Poland for obvious reasons.
 
kasumigenx

kasumigenx

Kaiser Frank said:
I was browsing Wikipedia and I found out that Danzig had a government in exile after WW2, claiming that they were neutral in WW2, and as such the Allies had no right to annex them. They are still around today and even have thier own website.

So the challenge is, with a post WW2 POD, to have the Danzig Government in exile restored. Is it possible and what would it take to happen?

For reference:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_of_Danzig_Government_in_Exile
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What about giving Danzig all of Pomerania? via a Communist Kashubian republic.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

kasumigenx said:
What about giving Danzig all of Pomerania? via a Communist Kashubian republic.
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Not feasible since once the Germans were expelled all that were left were the Poles. As they are officially considered to speak a dialect of Polish and Pomerania was part of East Germany such a plan would not work. So it would have to be limited to pre-War territory, as a Finlandized version of a Soviet satellite, if not an autonomous part of the People's Republic of Poland.
 

God-Eater of the Marshes

I think this is pretty hard without ASB in a post-WWII scenario. The only way I can see this happening is to prevent or alter the course of WWII. Maybe you could have it as a neutral zone between the USSR and the Allies vis-a-vis Trieste? Delay the Soviet advance so that the Allies get there first?
 
kasumigenx

kasumigenx

Dan1988 said:
Not feasible since once the Germans were expelled all that were left were the Poles. As they are officially considered to speak a dialect of Polish and Pomerania was part of East Germany such a plan would not work. So it would have to be limited to pre-War territory, as a Finlandized version of a Soviet satellite, if not an autonomous part of the People's Republic of Poland.
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This is possible since Kashubian is more distant to Polish than the Lesser Polish Dialects and Silesian.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

kasumigenx said:
This is possible since Kashubian is more distant to Polish than the Lesser Polish Dialects and Silesian.
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Here is the problem with that. Throughout the Free City's existence, the non-German locals identified themselves as Poles and would prefer to join Poland. Once Gdansk's Germans are expelled, the only option left that was realized IOTL is as a normal collection of municipalities in the People's Republic of (aka Communist) Poland. Any representation of a Cassubian/Kashubian identity was very minor during the Free City's existence and was suppressed under Communism, in which case linguistics took a back seat and politics took center stage since the locals and Polish officials at the time saw themselves as speaking a dialect of Polish (even if, to be sure, it was divergent from the literary standard). From this POV, whether or not it was true, "Pomerania" is a German imposition that needed to be expunged from any conception of postwar Poland, and hence no mention should be made of it except in a negative sense, wound up in the Sovietized concept of Western betrayal and all that. So any expression of a separate Kashubian identity post-1945 is not feasible, nor for that matter any annexation of what would become part of East Germany.

However, having said that, -

if we alter the course of WW2 to allow the Free City to continue, even with the expulsion of the German population, we could twist it around due to the question of which Poland to transfer Gdansk to. After all, the creation of the People's Republic was pretty shady indeed, so in that case it would be as a Finlandized Hong Kong type of state that could allow the Free City of Gdansk to continue in a Trieste type of arrangement. That could probably work, but how to get to that point I don't know. Thus the Government in Exile could be restored AND we'd get a local take on Polish national identity.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
ASB. Since World War II was started by Germany wanting Danzig, the complete annexation of Danzig by Poland was necessary in order to resolve that conflict as an Allied victory. This is as plausible as the Entente decisively winning World War I then letting Germany keep Alsace-Lorraine and Austria-Hungary keep Bosnia.
 
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marcinL

Kaiser Frank said:
, claiming that they were neutral in WW2.
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They were lying. Danzig SS and order police attacked Polish post office in Danzig at the same time Schleswig Holstein started shelling Westerplatte. They also took part in attacks on Westerplatte and fought in Poland proper.
 

Kaiser Frank

marcinL said:
They were lying. Danzig SS and order police attacked Polish post office in Danzig at the same time Schleswig Holstein started shelling Westerplatte. They also took part in attacks on Westerplatte and fought in Poland proper.
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Yeah it's quite obviously a lie. If they were truely "neutral" they would have set up a government in exile after Germany annexed them. They only made that argument after Germany was defeated, retroactively claiming that they did not want Germany to annex them when they were heavily pro Nazi at the time.
 

Jürgen

Honestly for this to be viable, such exile government need to be established in 1939-41 and in London. It doesn’t need to have wide public support in Danzig under the “occupation”, but it need some legitimacy. So I think we need go back to the interbellum and make the Social Democrats gain full control over Danzig and stay in opposition to the Nazi Regime. As such when the Nazi enter Danzig, they flee in exile and doesn’t recognize the annexation of Danzig (mostly over hostility to Hitler). They gain some public support in UK for their cause, and at Yalta Churchill bring the issue up before Stalin. Stalin end up recognizing Danzig as occupied by Germany rather than cooperating with Germany. At the end of the war Danzig are “liberated” by the Soviets and a “independent” Danzig are reestablished under the newly established Socialist Unity Party. The Free City’s territory are almost doubled with areas of Elbing, Marienburg and Shuhm being annexed to Danzig.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

^ We can go one step further and, to the best way possible given the constraints of the period, have much better local German-Polish relations and have it translated to a much better relationship than OTL with Poland. It would not be utopia, but having a harmonious bilingual city-state with full equality between the languages would be desirable. You could even have the locals give their unique take of Standard Polish based on what already exists for Kashubian, but that's tangential to the project. What matters most of all is that for the AHC to work you have to have the locals feel comfortable/at home with the Free City to a degree that they would be loyal to it even to the point of supporting the resistance to the Nazis. This Gdansk/Danzig resistance would thus need to encompass both a German community who can resist Nazi propaganda (and thus expose the hype the Nazis used about persecution of German communities abroad as a lie) and Poles who are willing to fight and die for an independent Gdansk. How we get to that point I don't know.
 

marcinL

Lautréamont said:
Even then there's still the question of why the WAllies should do for the FCoD what they couldn't do for the Polish Home Army.
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And that aside of FCD being an artificial creation, tbh, satysfying neither Poland nor Germany nor the locals, and existing only because Poland needed sea access and Lloyd George, who probably had to be put in bed with fever every time Poland was being granted some German hamlet of four houses, would not have survived that city being outright given to Poland :) .

Letting it stay in Germany would have put them in control of Poland's economy, and in consequence, Poland's politics. (Economically and politically dominating Poland was the one thing that every political power in Germany openly desired, be it right, left or center.)
 

Catsmate

Hmm, this scenario does have some interesting possibilities for Cold War intrigue, à la Berlin and Casablanca but with the addition of seaborne access.
Maybe a PoD in the '30s perhaps? I'm personally inclined to add some Mad Science or Lovecraftian weirdness (in the vein of Cold City) to the mix.
 

sarahz

Catsmate said:
Hmm, this scenario does have some interesting possibilities for Cold War intrigue, à la Berlin and Casablanca but with the addition of seaborne access.
Maybe a PoD in the '30s perhaps? I'm personally inclined to add some Mad Science or Lovecraftian weirdness (in the vein of Cold City) to the mix.
Click to expand...
hmm as you have to be very ASB to get a Danzig Government I suggest that the Black Pharoh AKA the People's Mandate after taking over the UK s as in Stross' s novels is somehow relocated to Danzig, possibly after losing round 1 of the undeclared war against the American Intelligence agencies serving the cause of Cthullu. He could have some of the laundry in tow, and possibly some elven Mages.
 
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