Best alternative outcome for the Danzig crisis

Best alternative outcome for the Danzig crisis

  • Britain and France remain neutral

    Votes: 40 57.1%
  • Britain and France declare war to Germany and the USSR

    Votes: 30 42.9%

  • Total voters
    70
Well, the fight between Germany and Russia is going to be pretty farily balanced since the former won't have any surprise factor and the latter won't have any US Lend-Lease. I would expect that Britain and France may be able to influence the balance of the war by giving the losing side their own version of the Lend-lease, and shutting it off it the reversal is excessive. And yes, they may still play the extreme card of direct intervention if either side threatens a total victory.

Have you given a minute's thought to the possible political consequences of doing this outside the war, of handing over sovereign military hardware to either of the regimes in question and the possible storm this could kick up? That states are not people (they are millions of people) seems to be something you won't acknowledge.

Then there's the great power logic, or lack thereof. We want Germany's bid for European domination and a colonial empire in the east defeated. Do we:

a) combine support for the Soviets which helps our own military effort with the said effort to defeat Germany and bring as much as Europe as possible under our influence and that of our allies, and secure a stake in the future world?

...or b) just chuck everything at the Soviets in the hope that they will helpfully stick up for all our interests for us, and explain to the Conservative back-bench and the voter why we couldn't be bothered actually growing a spine and opposing Germany but we are prepared to give Stalin all the goodies, and at the same time fervently hope that the Germans don't win?

... or c) just up and start sponsoring Hitler for no adequately explained reason?

Not at all. We have a fiarly extensive amount of info about Hitler's plans, and as much as the man managed to have some coherent ones, everything points out to the fact that he meant to leave the Western powers alone if they had left him alone to do his thing in Eastern Europe.

You're probably referring to his book written in the 1920s. Since that time, 1938 being the decisive moment, Germany had managed to get into an arms-race-by-proxy with the United States, with the western Europeans the ones to benefit from America's industrial power.

Why else wage war on them without a clear idea of how to gain victory? There was nothing to gain by waiting, as the phrase goes. They had to somehow knock out the Entente if they were going to conquer eastern Europe without being bombed to bits.

Well, I heartily disagree with the premise that the USSR was the smaller threat, except as it concers geographic proximity. IMO the choice between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia was like the one between a serial killer that cuts the throats of his victims and another that poisons them.

So what exactly was the Stalinist USSR going to do do the Entente in the 1930s? Moon them?
 
I was going to limit my part to that little wisecrack, but since I've felt compelled to refute Eurofed's usual load of old cobbler's I suppose I had better lay out my opinion clearly.

This is all so much dicker-dacker because it starts with an unexplained premise that cuts directly across OTL's facts, as Eurofed's scenarios frequently do.

What was the situation in late 1939? Germany and Poland were squaring up and neither would back down, the Poles because they knew that the Germans weren't going to settle for anything less than concessions that would end up fatal to Polish sovereignty - look at CZS - and the Germans because they were at about the greatest military advantage they were going to get vis-a-vis the west, thanks to their own growing militarisation and also to the gradual mobilisation of American industrial power behind them, and so they had secured their eastern flank and were fixing for a fight. Vain last-minute attempts at compromise from Chamberlain were quite deliberately shot down from the German side

Although nobody knew what blitzkrieg was or how to do it, the Germans still felt they had a fair shot of a win, with the neutrality of the USSR (who as we know were afraid of German power but so disillusioned at the possibility of a western alliance that they decided to let the Germans and the Entente slug it out) guaranteed. After all, the odds compared favourably with the First World War. If they won, they would be able to carry on to the east with the threat of an American-built military machine off their backs; but they were rolling the dice and everybody knew it. Nonetheless, they were not a bunch of nitwits. They had a view of the world based on ideas that were fundamentally violent and mad, but within that worldview they were quite capable of strategic thinking. Their strategy had been to build up their armed forces whilst grabbing what they could because they already knew Britain was trying to give it away as part of some mirage 'comprehensive settlement' and wouldn't stand up for it. That had run out. The Entente were building up strong armed forces of their own, backed by American industrial capacity, and were not going to get Germany dominate Europe.

They attacked Poland because they were ready, with their Soviet flank covered, to fight the Entente; the Entente defended Poland because they were ready to fight the Germans, Soviet pact or not. We are talking about two power-blocs who had already gone over the edge, perhaps even in 1938. Nobody actually gave a shit about Danzig per se. We had long been of the opinion that Germany should get it back, Beck had resigned himself to the inevitability of this, and as for the Germans Danzig wasn't what they wanted except as a pretext.

So this hypothetical robs the crisis of its entire meaning, and thus the great powers of their strategic logic. So how can we then go on to reason about what's 'best' for so-and-so? So-and-so clearly isn't bothered.
 
Last edited:

Eurofed

Banned
I
Given that neither of these things was done, this is evidently not true. You appear to be relying on the premise that the Nazi and Soviet regimes were in all respects, in terms of both their nature and of great-power politics, the same. Here's a tip: they weren't.

IBC, this. Once again, it is quite clear that this is one of the historical issues where we operate under fundamentally different premises, and in all evidence, not going to convince the other of own point of view, no matter how much we try to debate each other to exhaustion. As far as I'm concerned, we have done it enough already for this decade. So let's do not bother.

The poll is obviously for the guys that have no serious trouble with accepting its premises. As expected, given your well-known views, you do not. No harm whatsoever.
 
Last edited:

Eurofed

Banned
I find it interesting that whereas for Germany 'the core of its strength' includes all its annexations plus some more, the 'core of strength' of the Soviets involves carving off vast slabs of the country including parts of its agricultural and industrial heartlands. Apparently a Germany in the posture that they went to war with IOTL - militarised, with the Rhine, Austria, Czechia, and having nutted Poland - and a USSR controlling much less than it did in 1945 is acceptable to the Entente, whereas a Germany that has carved out a huge colonial empire in Europe and crippled the USSR is... also acceptable.

I've no problem whatsoever in acknowledging that from the Entente POV, under the premises I'm working with, the best outcome to the war would be an exhausted Germany and Russia back to the prewar borders. Nonetheless, a partial victory of either side that still leaves the loser a great power might still be acceptable, if suboptimal. 1939 Soviet Russia was potentially more powerful than 1939 Nazi Germany to begin with, as it concerns manpower, resources, and strategic depth. This has to be taken into account when one eyeballs outcomes for the Nazi-Soviet war that might be 'acceptable' to third party Entente because they would still leave the loser a decent foil to the victor.

My scenario obviously assumes that the Entente powers make political and strategic evaluations based on different premises than "Evul Germany must be crippled at any cost, to hell with the consequences" about how to deal with the Nazi and Soviet threats, their relative seriousness, and the geopolitical situation in Europe.
 
Last edited:
IBC, this. Once again, it is quite clear that this is one of the historical issues where we operate under fundamentally different premises, and in all evidence, not going to convince the other of own point of view, no matter how much we try to debate each other to exhaustion. As far as I'm concerned, we have done it enough already for this decade. So let's do not bother.

I've more-or-less given up on convincing you to abandon the most fundamental and often most absurd points of your view of history, since whenever you get to a bare confrontation over facts - Who were the 'Germanophobe clique' responsible for so much British and American policy over the decades? Why has every statistical authority apparently been lying about Italian coal importation in the earlier 20th century? - you duck out.

However, I don't see this as any reason to stop countering your various scenarios and bugbears with my own reading of the facts, including those facts you're given to ignoring. It's a free forum within the bounds of the rules, after all, and I'm quite within my rights if I object to people going around unchallenged and propagating a view of history that glorifies imperialism, conquest, violence, and uniformity. I'm not trying to score points in some two-cornered contest, I'm trying to promote what I think is the truth to other people.
 
I've no problem whatsoever in acknowledging that from the Entente POV, under the premises I'm working with, the best outcome to the war would be an exhausted Germany and Russia back to the prewar borders. Nonetheless, a partial victory of either side that still leaves the loser a great power might still be acceptable, if suboptimal. 1939 Soviet Russia was potentially more powerful than 1939 Nazi Germany to begin with, as it concerns manpower, resources, and strategic depth.

Certainly it was a greater potential threat: it, Japan, and the United States together were new outside powers that in different ways threatened European empires. The British and French right-wing governments of course preferred fascism to communism all else being equal.

But if the conservative leaders in the Entente had been willing to let Germany get away with anything because it was one in the eye for the USSR, they would have started in May 1938.

The appeasement policy was based on the idea that if you could get Germany to accept economic normality, a limited re-armament, and some sort of final revision of Versailles, good, because fighting Germany, although you would win, would only benefit the outside powers including the USSR (or 'the Cossack and Mongol hordes' as Daladier termed it, showing clearly his obvious pro-Russian sympathies and hatred of the Germans :rolleyes:).

As it turned out, you couldn't. The idea that restoring a powerful but not supreme armed force, building a greater Germany in the middle of Europe, and switching to a civilian export economy was a win was raised several times by factions inside Germany and Hitler dismissed it. He continued to believe that there was a Jewish conspiracy behind the arms race he had started and that salvation meant Lebensraum.

If you want to change this, change Germany. No sensible person can argue that the policy of Chamberlain and Daladier was pro-Soviet and anti-German. Lord Rothermere could, but he was a loony.

This has to be taken into account when one eyeballs outcomes for the Nazi-Soviet war that might be 'acceptable' to third party Entente because they would still leave the loser a decent foil to the victor.

They didn't, as you do, regard the two regimes as identical factors to be bounced off one-another. On the contrary, one of them was a regime that they were almost to the crisis point still trying to win over to the side of conservatism and a stand for Europe against the outside powers; the other was the Mongol hordes. We saw that even the Germans waging war on them didn't immediately shift their pre-occupation with the USSR.

So it is hard to deny that Germany waged war on the west. This is perfectly obvious. They had shown no special desire to imperialise Poland up to that point: after Munich they had made overtures for a pact; invading Poland per se made sense mainly to get to Russia and Lebensraum, but they had started the crisis with a Soviet treaty.

Immediately after Munich, after drawing back from the brink and receiving a chance to think clearly about where their course led, the Nazis for the first time launched some sort of coherent diplomatic and military strategy. And though it fell apart in reality as plans so often do, this strategy was of massive air and naval investments and alliance with Italy and Japan - an anti-British strategy. Lebensraum now couldn't be achieved without getting rid of the Entente-American threat.

My scenario obviously assumes that the Entente powers make political and strategic evaluations based on different premises than "Evul Germany must be crippled at any cost, to hell with the consequences" about how to deal with the Nazi and Soviet threats, their relative seriousness, and the geopolitical situation in Europe.

Laughable, frankly. Where is the equivalent to the racially-charged disdain of both Russia and Japan when it comes to Germany? How can you possibly argue that, when they could have fought and defeated Germany in any of the crises that had come before that date, the Entente was being anything but lenient towards the German regime?
 
Top