Danzig to germany

WI poland gave up the danzig corridor to germany? would germany still try to fight poland even though they would look completly stupid?

i think germany would keep looking to other places for expansion like africa or luxombourg, maybe switzerland.
 
WI poland gave up the danzig corridor to germany? would germany still try to fight poland even though they would look completly stupid?

i think germany would keep looking to other places for expansion like africa or luxombourg, maybe switzerland.

Hitler was looking for a reason to attack Poland and would have eventually found it. Heck, negotiations for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia brought a relived cry of, "Peace in our time"........:cool:
 
Yes, sure, or maybe Liechtenstein, or Greenland, why not Antarctica?

The Germans did conquer Antarctica, unless all those stories I read on the internet about nazi's hiding in secret southpole bases aren't true. But it is on the internet, so how can it be untrue.
 

Typo

Banned
He would have demanded the Polish corridor next

Germany was going to keep demanding whatever until someone stood up to them
 
He would have demanded the Polish corridor next

Germany was going to keep demanding whatever until someone stood up to them

Yes. However, there's a bit more to it, that one can understand if he asks himself _why_ did Hitler do that.

It's not as if he'd keep demanding anything and everything until somebody said no, or until he was the owner of the world. He _was_ megalomaniac, but not to that point.

The reason why he kept upping his demands was that the demands were only a tool. He wasn't actually interested in the welfare of the German minority in the Sudetenland, for instance; he was interested in the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel. So demanding something less was a way of putting the counterpart with their backs to the wall. They could say no, thus giving him the chance of claiming they were the unreasonable ones, who broke the negotiations, and allowing him to have recourse to arms. Or they could say yes, which would give him something, after which he could always do what he did – up the demands.

But, and it's a great but, that doesn't apply to everything under the sun. He did want everything, in the case of Czechoslovakia. But he would have happily refrained from wanting everything in the case of, say, Great Britain.

One doesn't understand Hitler if he doesn't understand his key objectives, which were, in this order:
1. Exterminating the Jews,
2. Giving Germany its "rightful" place in Europe,
3. To achieve #3 above, gaining Lebensraum in the East,
4. Reuniting the Germans under one Reich.
The order is important. #1 is the priority and it was very hard to make concessions on that; #4 is way less important, was used as an excuse at times, and it was perfectly possible to leave German-speakers outside the Reich, provided they were generously treated by a friendly government (Italy, for instance).

This is why talking about a German expansion into Luxembourg, for instance, is ridiculous; it doesn't promote any of the points above, save maybe for the extermination of those few people in that statelet who would be unlucky enough to be Jews. Likewise it is ridiculous to talk about German ventures in Africa. Hitler was not a player of worldwide wargames, happy with just any region to be added to his map color.

Now. We do know that several countries in Europe accepted "limited" demands from Germany, which proves both that a) Hitler was capable of not wanting everything and b) that, provided you were willing to give him everything he wanted and to see yourself as his vassal, you could maintain a degree of sovereignty.
So the question actually is: would a "limited" set of demands on Poland be compatible with the shopping list above? Well, just maybe.

We do know that at the highest point of the German-Polish negotiations, the Germans were demanding Danzig and, essentially, a cut across the Corridor. But on the other hand they were offering Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact. Which is tantamount to saying, they were offering Poland a place in the anti-Soviet alliance. According to an internal memo of Ribbentrop's Foreign Ministry, a veiled offer was made of indemnification for Danzig and the transit rights in the Corridor: a slice of Ukraine.

So. Danzig to Germany, full stop, is irrelevant. Danzig was not the point. But suppose that Poland:
- agrees to lose its symbol city, as well as to reduce its sovereignty on the Corridor;
- grants protected status to the German minorities;
- allows unlimited access to German troops for Barbarossa and actually joins it;
- carries out a vigorous enough anti-Semite persecution to satisfy Hitler;
then Poland might achieve a status of satellite ally of Germany, much like the other Eastern European countries. And with it, maybe they would have received Kiev, which still had a Polish minority.

Was the offer sincere? We don't know. Hitler mightily disliked the Poles and once there were German boots on Polish soil, it is possible (and, IMHO, likely) that things would have gone from bad to worse for the Poles.

Could the Poles accept the pact with the devil? I don't think so. Even if the government had wanted to give up Danzig, there would have been rioting in the streets. Smigly-Rydz, as nationalist as he was, wasn't the far end of the nationalist spectrum at all. If he so much attempted such a "Czechoslovakian" solution, cries of treason would have been heard from the far right, as well as a few pistol shots into his direction, personally, I think.

Anyway. Let me conclude by showing, in the words of the interested person, how Danzig, in and by itself, was not really important, and how a tiny, densely populated country like Luxembourg was not important at all, and how African colonies were not interesting. The following is one continuous quotation, not a patchwork, yet the three parts address exactly these three points one after the other:

[Danzig not really the issue]
Danzig ist nicht das Objekt, um das es geht. Es handelt sich für uns um die Erweiterung des Lebensraumes im Osten und Sicherstellung der Ernährung, sowie der Lösung des Baltikum-Problems. Lebensmittelversorgung ist nur von dort möglich, wo geringe Besiedelung herrscht. Neben der Fruchtbarkeit wird die deutsche, gründliche Bewirtschaftung die Überschüsse gewaltig steigern.
[Expansion into Luxembourg irrelevant]
In Europa ist keine andere Möglichkeit zu sehen.
[African colonies not interesting]
Kolonien: Warnung vor Schenkung kolonialen Besitzes. Es ist keine Lösung des Ernährungsproblems. Blockade!
 
[Danzig not really the issue]
Danzig ist nicht das Objekt, um das es geht. Es handelt sich für uns um die Erweiterung des Lebensraumes im Osten und Sicherstellung der Ernährung, sowie der Lösung des Baltikum-Problems. Lebensmittelversorgung ist nur von dort möglich, wo geringe Besiedelung herrscht. Neben der Fruchtbarkeit wird die deutsche, gründliche Bewirtschaftung die Überschüsse gewaltig steigern.
[Expansion into Luxembourg irrelevant]
In Europa ist keine andere Möglichkeit zu sehen.
[African colonies not interesting]
Kolonien: Warnung vor Schenkung kolonialen Besitzes. Es ist keine Lösung des Ernährungsproblems. Blockade!

Excellent analysis... although a translation of this bit might be nice. I think i got the first two sentences but "living-middle-with-sorghum" lost me.
 
Excellent analysis... although a translation of this bit might be nice.

Danzig ist nicht das Objekt, um das es geht. Es handelt sich für uns um die Erweiterung des Lebensraumes im Osten und Sicherstellung der Ernährung, sowie der Lösung des Baltikum-Problems. Lebensmittelversorgung ist nur von dort möglich, wo geringe Besiedelung herrscht. Neben der Fruchtbarkeit wird die deutsche, gründliche Bewirtschaftung die Überschüsse gewaltig steigern.

Danzig is not the object we are talking about. We are talking about an extension of the living space in the east and about securing the food supplies and about a solution of the Baltic question. Supply of food is only possible where settlement is low. Besides the fertile soil the german and thorough agriculture will greatly increas the surplus [of food].

In Europa ist keine andere Möglichkeit zu sehen.
There is no other solution in Europe.
Kolonien: Warnung vor Schenkung kolonialen Besitzes. Es ist keine Lösung des Ernährungsproblems. Blockade!

Beware of colonies. No solution for the food problem, danger of blockade.

I think i got the first two sentences but "living-middle-with-sorghum" lost me.

Have you translated it with google?:)
Lebensmittelversorgung means food stuff supply.


The interesting question about Poland giving in to german demands is: Would Hitler feel secure enough to march directly against the USSR and leave western Europe (which has sold out both Czechoslovakia and Poland) alone?
 
Poland Giving Danzig would have no more saved Poland then giving Sudetenland to Germany saved Czechoslovakia , after getting the Danzig Corridor he would have likely pushed to expand the Third Reich , getting more of Western Poland it lost in World War I , lands given to Hungary after Taranov *small little bits in austria , nothing major* , and possibly , after everything else was consolidated , Alsace Lorriene.
 
Poland Giving Danzig would have no more saved Poland then giving Sudetenland to Germany saved Czechoslovakia , after getting the Danzig Corridor he would have likely pushed to expand the Third Reich , getting more of Western Poland it lost in World War I , lands given to Hungary after Taranov *small little bits in austria , nothing major* , and possibly , after everything else was consolidated , Alsace Lorriene.

I see the meaning of my previous post did not get through to you. Pity.
 
The order is important. #1 is the priority and it was very hard to make concessions on that; #4 is way less important, was used as an excuse at times, and it was perfectly possible to leave German-speakers outside the Reich, provided they were generously treated by a friendly government (Italy, for instance).

If I believe wikipedia, the Germans in South Tyrol were offered the choice to move to Germany or accept italization.
So this is not what I call being treated generously by Hitler's allied government.
But this goes in the same direction as you were pointing that one could speculate that the wellfare of the German minorities was not really Hitler's main preoccupation.
 
If I believe wikipedia, the Germans in South Tyrol were offered the choice to move to Germany or accept italization.
So this is not what I call being treated generously by Hitler's allied government.

Much depends on the severance package one gets. The Volksdeutsche choosing to opt out of the Soviet-controlled Baltic states largely came away with very little. The German-speaking Italians were treated way better. Those who remained saw their culture undermined, yes, but weren't persecuted as it happened to minorities elsewhere.

But this goes in the same direction as you were pointing that one could speculate that the wellfare of the German minorities was not really Hitler's main preoccupation.

Yes.
 

Tellus

Banned
Hitler definitely wanted more than Danzig and a thin corridor to East Prussia. He was if anything, concerned that someone might force him to accept to settle for just that, delaying a war he wanted by then.

It would have been a second Munich; but if the Allies used the time to prepare for war aggressively, it might have made France too formidable to defeat by 1941, and the USSR more likely to be able to intervene for its own sake.

If anything, 1938-39 was the best window Hitler had to start a general war, unless the Allies are sleeping at the switch. And since Munich, they had been rearming pretty aggressively.
 
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