Best chance to defeat Hitler without US or USSR? What consequences?

In OTL after his early victories Hitler moved from being an average nasty dictatorial thug to the genocidal monster we know.

I am wondering when he could have been beaten early.

U have three thoughts

1) Hitler starts Czech war, no Munich agreement?

2) Anglo French forces go on the offensive September 1939 and get lucky. I have a picture of all Nazi air bases within 200 miles of France being bombed at 6am on September 3rd with the ultimatums being earlier and war starting 5am/

3) Different luck in the Spring of 1940 and Nazis held.


Two big queries?

What do you do with Germany? There would not be the clear consensus of the right to start again after what happened by 1945 in otl?


What about Eastern Poland?

If the allies had gone to war and clearly been winning in the first couple of weeks of 1939 I suspect Stalin would not have invaded Poland?

However had the Nazis been overthrown after a failure in France in 1940 well Britain and France had guaranteed Poland.
 

Deleted member 1487

Czech war, no Munich was the 'cheapest' option, despite neither Britain nor France being ready. The Germans were less ready and even if it fails the Oster Conspiracy would try to kill Hitler and probably cause a major problem for the German military has Hitler goes on a purge in revenge. Anything later it too risky and Germany too relatively strong compared to the Allies. A 'Blunted Sickle' will just result in Stalin seizing Poland, Eastern Germany, and probably Czechoslovakia and severely weakening the Allies to beat Germany.
 
Don't even give him that much.

In March 1936, Germany re-militarized the Rhineland, a gamble which Hitler's generals really weren't feeling. Hitler himself later said that if the French had shown some reaction besides "Hey stop that," he would have had to have ordered an immediate retreat. Have the French putting some hurt on Germany, and maybe the Oster conspiracy kicks in earlier, or at least there's some effort to remove him by someone fearing worse to come.

...of course, getting the French to react like that, or the Germans to think maybe the Reich Chancellor isn't all there, those are entirely different PODs...
 

Deleted member 1487

Don't even give him that much.

In March 1936, Germany re-militarized the Rhineland, a gamble which Hitler's generals really weren't feeling. Hitler himself later said that if the French had shown some reaction besides "Hey stop that," he would have had to have ordered an immediate retreat. Have the French putting some hurt on Germany, and maybe the Oster conspiracy kicks in earlier, or at least there's some effort to remove him by someone fearing worse to come.

...of course, getting the French to react like that, or the Germans to think maybe the Reich Chancellor isn't all there, those are entirely different PODs...
I actually found a really credible argument that says the French really were not ready to fight in 1936 due to fiscal insolvency and couldn't afford mobilization, as doing so would collapse their banking system. As a direct result of that realization they finally left the gold standard and used their huge gold reserves to start rearmament that had progressed in 1938 to the point that they would have been more able to counter the Germans. In 1938 a significant chunk of their best airmen were in Spain, so despite Germany's improvements in rearmament the French were relatively much more ready to fight in 1938 than their 1936 low point, while the Germans were actually in a really bad place if the Allies declared war, sat behind their defenses, waged economic warfare, and went on a quick spending spree rather than the OTL gradual build up, while having the Czechs as an ally, German airmen abroad, a more favorable Stalin, and Poland potentially jumping in on the Germans at some point. In 1936 both Britain and France were economically too fragile to make a go of things and the US was not favorable to action either, which would have been very problematic. In 1938 everyone was willing to back the Allies to defend Czechoslovakia from German aggression, but for Chamberlain being cautious.
 
I had this odd idea suppose the deal that is done is that Germany/ Austria becomes a constitutional monarchy under the Hapsberge
 
I actually found a really credible argument that says the French really were not ready to fight in 1936 due to fiscal insolvency and couldn't afford mobilization,

It's not like the French would really need to mobilize. Their standing army would have been adequate, as Hitler was well aware (hence his orders to break it off at the first sign of Anglo-French hostility). Of course, in all probability they didn't realize this and overestimated the Germans.

So from a purely-military standpoint, it would have been trivial for the Anglo-French to knock the Germans over in 1936 with the Rheinland as casus belli. But the economic and political (Lord Lothian summed up the British public's view nicely when he called it "no more than the Germans walking into their own backyard") realities of the time made it a non-starter.

than the OTL gradual build up,

I wouldn't call the OTL build-up really gradual. The reality is that full-scale mobilization from scratch takes time and can't be done in a "quick" spending spree. Even with some prior covert measures, it took Germany around three years of reckless, economy-threatening spending to get their army to the point where they could legitimately smash a lower tier nation like Czechoslovakia or Poland and be in a position to wage a multi-year war against the Anglo-French (or even the Anglo-French-Soviets, although the main delay there would be down to how Stalin's purge had eviscerated the Red Army's officer corps). Not coincidentally, it also took that long for the Anglo-French to go from starting their full rearmament in the summer of '38 to being in the process of outstripping Germany when the Battle of France started in mid-1940. If anything, that means that their rearmament program was even more rapid then the Germans despite being more economically sound.
 

Deleted member 1487

It's not like the French would really need to mobilize. Their standing army would have been adequate, as Hitler was well aware (hence his orders to break it off at the first sign of Anglo-French hostility). Of course, in all probability they didn't realize this and overestimated the Germans.

So from a purely-military standpoint, it would have been trivial for the Anglo-French to knock the Germans over in 1936 with the Rheinland as casus belli. But the economic and political (Lord Lothian summed up the British public's view nicely when he called it "no more than the Germans walking into their own backyard") realities of the time made it a non-starter.
The argument given was that the standing German army was more than enough to stop the standing French army, so to act at all the French would have to fully mobilize and reoccupy the Rheinland, as they didn't know about the orders on the German side to call of the reoccupation if there was French resistance. It would take time for the French to get into gear too, even with the standing army. Of course the Brits wanted nothing to do with it and were pressuring the French to do nothing. Things got really bad for France when in a panic over potential war, investors pulled their money out of the French banking system and sent it abroad, which rendered it insolvent and just sitting on a horde of untouchable gold due to the backing of their currency. Even paying for the standing army to move into the Rheinland would have probably been enough to cause a major financial crisis in France and probably would collapse the government. Remember that less than 2 years before there was a coup attempt in Paris by the Far Right, who hated the new Socialist government, so there were internal concerns too. France was not really prepared for war at all in 1936.

I wouldn't call the OTL build-up really gradual. The reality is that full-scale mobilization from scratch takes time and can't be done in a "quick" spending spree. Even with some prior covert measures, it took Germany around three years of reckless, economy-threatening spending to get their army to the point where they could legitimately smash a lower tier nation like Czechoslovakia or Poland and be in a position to wage a multi-year war against the Anglo-French (or even the Anglo-French-Soviets, although the main delay there would be down to how Stalin's purge had eviscerated the Red Army's officer corps). Not coincidentally, it also took that long for the Anglo-French to go from starting their full rearmament in the summer of '38 to being in the process of outstripping Germany when the Battle of France started in mid-1940. If anything, that means that their rearmament program was even more rapid then the Germans despite being more economically sound.
Exactly why it was gradual. The French couldn't spend too much for political and practical reasons. They got a late start and it cost them dearly. Also for Germany the big issue was rebuilding their demolished armaments industry, so their spending wasn't really even on the military per se as much as it was the industrial base behind it. For France they had to build up the necessary industry and try and do something about the fact that they had neglected not just R&D, but also personnel, equipment, and bases for their air force and army. Germany too had really been rearming covertly since the 1920s in terms of having shadow personnel, R&D, and even equipment stashed away. France in the meantime had cut their military budget to the bone and spent far too much on the Maginot line. And there was the fact that France was per capita just poorer and less industrialized than Germany, despite the higher standard of living in the 1920s-30s.
Also the outstripping of Germany in 1939-1940 was largely due to the reckless binge spending on US weapons, machine tools, and raw materials, which was even greater than what Germany had been able to afford during her rearmament period during the 1930s. They realized how badly they screwed up by taking a leisurely pace in the mid-late 1930s for their rearmament, so did it by busting their finances in 1939-40 (Britain was out of hard currency by the end of 1940). The Allies were buying so much from the US in 1939-40 US industry couldn't keep up and was buying back ammo and weapons from the US army to resell to the Allies with congressional approval.
 
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