Blitzkrieg fails

I'm going to pose the following question- what could the Poles have done differently that might have given them a fighting chance when Germany attacked on 9/1/39? Or perhaps what if the Soviets didn't attack on the 17th, could Poland have held out? This is all assuming non-intervention by the Western Allies. What would the failure of the blitzkrieg in '39 have meant for the war as a whole?
 
I'm going to pose the following question- what could the Poles have done differently that might have given them a fighting chance when Germany attacked on 9/1/39? Or perhaps what if the Soviets didn't attack on the 17th, could Poland have held out? This is all assuming non-intervention by the Western Allies. What would the failure of the blitzkrieg in '39 have meant for the war as a whole?

1. No USSR intervention = Poland falls anyway. Wikipedia =/= reality.
2. ASBs save Poland to foil the Blitz, however, is very likely End of War. Perhaps the French are drole de guerre-ing no longer.

Best ASB moment (but still requiring a fair number of bats) - Anglo-French manage to secure a deal with the USSR and Poland is guaranteed by both sides. Hitler feels like he can gamble, France and Britain enter war immediately, USSR supplies Poland in its war in exchange for free hand somewhere else.
 
I'm going to pose the following question- what could the Poles have done differently that might have given them a fighting chance when Germany attacked on 9/1/39? Or perhaps what if the Soviets didn't attack on the 17th, could Poland have held out? This is all assuming non-intervention by the Western Allies. What would the failure of the blitzkrieg in '39 have meant for the war as a whole?

The Poles offered an almost successful resistance to the German landings at Westerplatte. Nothing they could do might have saved them, but non-intervention of the USSR might make the conquest of Poland more protracted and bloody.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I don't think the Poles could have actually repelled the German invasion, but they could have done better than they did IOTL. What if they had not insisted on a forward defense of their borders with Germany AND the Soviets did not invade?
 

Cook

Banned
Soviet intervention in Poland was irrelevant to the outcome since it didn’t take place until Polish forces were all but defeated.

The bulk of Poland’s forces were located in Eastern Upper Silesia, between Germany Proper and East Prussia.
They were deployed in the expectation that Germany would try a land grab of the border regions just as they had with Czechoslovakia at Munich and the Polish plan was to prevent large losses of land before British and French intervention or a cease fire was forced upon them.
The result unfortunately was that Polish forces found themselves attacked from multiple fronts at once.
In addition the Polish Air Force didn’t get past the first day of combat. All Polish manoeuvres were then observed and under nearly continuous Luftwaffe attack.
Len Deighton’s “Blitzkrieg: From the rise of Hitler to the fall of Dunkirk” gives a very readable account of the problems they faced.

So let’s see what they could have done differently.
Firstly their Air Force needed to be dispersed to camouflaged combat ready airstrips. This would not have saved them. The aircraft themselves were a decade obsolete compared to the Me-109, but maybe they could have been in the air a few more days and forced the German fighters to escort the Stukas and Bombers instead of straffing the Polish Army and civilians during their retreat.
More Polish Army deployment in depth. Difficult given the huge length of border that Germany and Poland shared at the time but worth a try. This could have made a big difference if they had strong defences around Warsaw. Especially if the Poles realised just how bad German Nazi occupation was going to be.

In OTL the German invasion of Poland in 1939 took about two weeks.
The Jewish Ghetto uprising in 1943 lasted from January to May 1943.
The Warsaw uprising of ’44 lasted 63 days.

A determined “To the death” defence of Warsaw may have resulted in enough public pressure being put on the French generals that they’d have to make some kind of push into the Saar region. If they had they’d have discovered that there was nothing between them and The Rhine at Frankfurt and would pushed on.

But that is going away from the original proposal of no intervention by the Western Allies.
 
What is this idiocy about Polish Air Force not getting past 1st day of combat? It kept fighting up to 17th September. Afterwards the ramaining planes mostly evacuated to Romania. Also, what is that talk about Polish Air Force needing to be dispersed & camouflaged? It was.

And German invasion didn't take 2 weeks. It took a month. Check your facts first before saying anything.

Now, about a deployment of Polish Army. It must've been positioned more-or-less as it was. But the organisation should've been different. Instead of 7 armies & an Independent Operational Group there should be 5 armies - 1st: north of Vistula (OTL Modlin Army & Narew IOG), 2nd: in Greater Poland & Pomerania (OTL Pomorze & Poznań Army), 3rd: lower Warta (OTL Łódź Army & north of OTL Kraków Army), 4th: Lesser Poland (OTL center & south Kraków Army & Karpaty Army) and 5th: main reserve, with each of armies further divided into 3 Corps/Operational Groups. Putting divisions in a Corps would prevent OTL situation, where after breking up the army command each division had to fight on its own. And bigger armies would make much easier coordinating defence on each of Wehrmachts axis of advance.

I believe that having a prepared strategical plan for a war would help too...
 
Poles could not hold the Germans out. Not by themselves. Frankly, Polish commanders never believed they could. Poles had a lot of (grudging) respect for German army, altough they still miscalculated numbers of German equipment - simply because they couldn't believe Hitler was ready to kill his own economy by so rapid rearmament.
Tizoc is right about organization of Polish army, but I personally would put Polish forces a little farther from the border. Polish battleplan was to fight Germans close to the border (1 phase) to show that Poland was ready to fight and ensure western Allies' help. Then Polish forces were supposed to withdraw to more defensible positions. Unfortunately, German mechanized forces moved faster wreaking chaos while Polish troops moved slowly because of Luftwaffe attacks and thousands of refugees blocking the roads. Bad communication did the rest.
It would have been also nice if western Allies didn't force Poland to call off general mobilization in August 1939 - French ambassador threatened even with stoping any French help of Poland if the war were to be started because of Polish "provocative" behaviour. That German army was already mobilized, he somehow missed.
I think a nice POD would have been elimination of Marshall Śmigły-Rydz - death in an accident or of illness, say, in 1938. Hopefully, his place would have been taken by general Kazimierz Sosnkowski. Politically he was not so ambitious as Śmigły so perhaps he would have concentrated only on military side of conflict.
Anyway, let's assume Poland has better organized and coordinated defense and Polish army is fully mobilized. What's then.
The campaign in Poland lasts longer, German losses are much bigger, but without western help the result is pretty much the same. Poland falls and is fully under German occupation.
 

Thande

Donor
Dale Cozort had a go at this on his AH webzine and concluded you need some pretty early PODs, like Poland inventing the RPG in the Thirties and keeping it secret or something.
 
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