It is amusing in retrospect how after the World War, so many people had ovewrought visions of how another such catastrophe might occur. Take for example this memorandum of Sir James Headlam-Morley to Austen Chamberlain in February 1925:
"Has anyone attempted to realize what would happen if there were to be a new partition of Poland, or if the Czechoslovak state were to be so curtailed and dismembered that in fact it disappeared from the map of Europe? The whole of Europe would at once be in chaos. There would no longer be any principle, meaning, or sense in the territorial arrangements of the continent. Imagine, for instance, that under some improbable condition, Austria rejoined Germany; that Germany using the discontented minority in Bohemia, demanded a new frontier far over the mountains. . . and that at the same time, in alliance with Germany, the Hungarians recovered the southern slope of the Carpathians. This would be catastrophic, and, even if we neglected to interfere in time to prevent it, we should afterwards be driven to interfere, probably too late." https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.227068/2015.227068.Studies-In#page/n191
Can anyone see a scenario where Headlam-Morley's nightmare actually comes true--unlikely as it seems today after a century of peace in Europe? You need a militaristic German regime, presumably led by the East Prussian Junkers--but exactly this makes the business about an Anschluss and the Sudetenland as a German irredenta so implausible. The Junkers had no use for an Anschluss which would bring too many Catholics into the Reich. Nor did they have any real interest in Czechoslovakia--as with Austria, it had too many Catholics and had never been part of the Kaiserreich, anyway. Their beef was with Poland.
The "new partition of Poland" seems more plausible but still unlikely. True, Germany could cooperate with Soviet Russia in the 1920's when Russia was still backward. But as the USSR grew in strength in the 1930's, would any sane German government really want it as a neighbor? Keeping Poland as a buffer state and gradually using economic and diplomatic moves to get it to adopt a pro-German foreign policy--and maybe even to make territorial concessions, especially Danzig, which could safely revert to Germany once the port of Gdynia was developed--makes more sense.
"Has anyone attempted to realize what would happen if there were to be a new partition of Poland, or if the Czechoslovak state were to be so curtailed and dismembered that in fact it disappeared from the map of Europe? The whole of Europe would at once be in chaos. There would no longer be any principle, meaning, or sense in the territorial arrangements of the continent. Imagine, for instance, that under some improbable condition, Austria rejoined Germany; that Germany using the discontented minority in Bohemia, demanded a new frontier far over the mountains. . . and that at the same time, in alliance with Germany, the Hungarians recovered the southern slope of the Carpathians. This would be catastrophic, and, even if we neglected to interfere in time to prevent it, we should afterwards be driven to interfere, probably too late." https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.227068/2015.227068.Studies-In#page/n191
Can anyone see a scenario where Headlam-Morley's nightmare actually comes true--unlikely as it seems today after a century of peace in Europe? You need a militaristic German regime, presumably led by the East Prussian Junkers--but exactly this makes the business about an Anschluss and the Sudetenland as a German irredenta so implausible. The Junkers had no use for an Anschluss which would bring too many Catholics into the Reich. Nor did they have any real interest in Czechoslovakia--as with Austria, it had too many Catholics and had never been part of the Kaiserreich, anyway. Their beef was with Poland.
The "new partition of Poland" seems more plausible but still unlikely. True, Germany could cooperate with Soviet Russia in the 1920's when Russia was still backward. But as the USSR grew in strength in the 1930's, would any sane German government really want it as a neighbor? Keeping Poland as a buffer state and gradually using economic and diplomatic moves to get it to adopt a pro-German foreign policy--and maybe even to make territorial concessions, especially Danzig, which could safely revert to Germany once the port of Gdynia was developed--makes more sense.