Italy Guarantees Poland.

Lets imagine that over 1938 and 1939 Italy and Poland become more and more freindly.
So by the 20th of August 1939, Mussolini announces that he will guarantee Polands independence angainst any German attacks.
What would the result of this be?
 
Lets imagine that over 1938 and 1939 Italy and Poland become more and more freindly.
So by the 20th of August 1939, Mussolini announces that he will guarantee Polands independence angainst any German attacks.
What would the result of this be?

UK and France have a party?
 
What if Italy guaranteed it against Soviet attacks? That certainly would put the secret agreement out of whack.
 
Lets imagine that over 1938 and 1939 Italy and Poland become more and more freindly.
So by the 20th of August 1939, Mussolini announces that he will guarantee Polands independence angainst any German attacks.
What would the result of this be?

What does Poland have to offer to Italy? Why would Mussolini choose a weak Poland over a powerful Germany?
 
I've seen one or two threads trying to postulate the idea of Italy not siding with Germany in the 1930s.

The Stresa Front in the spring of 1935 marked the start of attempts to build an anti-German alliance. However, it was undermined almost immediately by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement which Britain concluded without reference to France and Italy.

IF we can butterfly that away it becomes possible to butterfly the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in favour of concessions in Somalia or similar. Mussolini comes to London in early 1936 and meets a young Edward VIII who is impressed by him and for a while all things Italian are in fashion.

1936 is a pivotal year in European and world history where the new Stresa Alliance is put to the test. In early March Italian contacts in Germany reveal Hitler's plan to send German troops into the Rhineland. The French and Italians undertake a partial mobilisation to the German borders and on 7 March Hitler backs down keeping his forces on the east bank of the Rhine.

The biggest problem the Stresa Alliance would face was the collapse in Spain following the Popular Front victory in the February election. In July, a series of politically-motivated murders triggered an uprising of army officers led by Francisco Franco on July 17th. All three Stresa powers called for peace and while Britain and France sent delegations to Madrid, Mussolini went personally to meet Franco in North Africa. Mussolini would later recall it as one of the most difficult meetings of his life but the Stresa powers brokered a cease fire and agreed to organise a political conference under the auspices of the League of Nations in Geneva.

Despite his reversal in the Rhineland, Hitler still continued to agitate in Austria and Czechoslovakia inciting German minorities to push for union with Berlin. However, the Rhineland debacle had instilled significant caution in the German armed forces none of whom fancied a war with Britain, France and Italy. Hitler had also sought an accommodation with Moscow but Stalin had preferred to remain neutral.

Hitler's fall can be traced from the events of 1936 - his attempt in the autumn of 1938 to annex the Sudetenland led to the short-lived Bohemia War which ended in a second German humiliation with an ignominious retreat from the Czech border. The coup against the Nazis did not in itself instigate a return to democracy in Germany but began the long road which would lead to the Hamburg Declaration and the Second German Republic.

The fall of Naziism eased tensions but did not remove them. The new threat came to be seen to be the Soviet Union but with a network of hostile states to the west led by the Stresa powers, Stalin preferred to meddle in the Far East and we all know how well the Sino-Soviet War ended.

Stresa itself would eventually become the kernel of a new network of European Security - the EDTO (the European Defence Treaty Organisation) based in Rome initially in a new building instigated by Ciano and part of the New Italian Republic which emerged as the Fascist regime withered in the 1960s and 1970s. The German Republic joined EDTO in 1971 under Chancellor Brandt.

Eventually, even the threat from Moscow faded as after Stalin, later Soviet and then Russian leaders abandoned Communism in favour of a more liberal and democratic system. Gorbachev still called himself a socialist when he visited Rome in 1991 but no one believed him any more.

The architects of Stresa are all now gone and in November 2018 all of Europe commemorated a century of (relative) peace. EDTO now faces new challenges from the Middle East and Africa while relations with America remain difficult as that powers continues to tussle with Imperial Japan for dominance in the Pacific and within the fragmented Chinese Republic.
 
What if Italy guaranteed it against Soviet attacks? That certainly would put the secret agreement out of whack.

it would seem logical that a treaty would be against any country?

the most likely prompt would be earlier German-Soviet cooperation that spikes German-Italian relations? not sure whether German-Soviet pact would frighten putative Stresa Front into action or allow Germany to invade Czechoslovakia and annex Austria? (earlier)
 

CalBear

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Lets imagine that over 1938 and 1939 Italy and Poland become more and more freindly.
So by the 20th of August 1939, Mussolini announces that he will guarantee Polands independence angainst any German attacks.
What would the result of this be?
What do YOU think it would be?

Discussion Board, not "ask a question and have others amuse me" Board.
 
I've just realised my fantastically imaginative piece (above) which is an embryonic Turtledove winner if there ever was one, has missed a couple of things.

The absence of WW2 and the rapprochement between Paris, London and Rome leads to an earlier economic and political convergence. In order to bolster the settlement in Spain, France and Italy form an economic free trade area (known pejoratively as the Catholic Pact). Belgium, Holland an Austria soon join but it takes off when Britain joins in 1940 under the new Halifax Government.

Economic convergence leads to defence and political cohesion - the Stresa Powers form the EDTO and take a single seat at the League of Nations which America doesn't join until the Robert Kennedy Presidency in the 1960s.

Prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s ensued as Germany began to shift from its militaristic status under the Nazis and the Generals to a more co-operative stance leading to the Hamburg Declaration in 1964 and the first full elections to the new Bundestag in 1966. The SPD win these and Brandt becomes Chancellor in 1970 pledging German accession to EDTO.

With Germany and the other central European states joining the European Economic Pact (EEP), deeper political integration was possible even as the last dictatorial holdout, Portugal, saw its own bloodless revolution in 1972.

Under Prime Minister Jenkins, the British Social Democratic Government moved the notion of full political union. It wasn't an easy journey for some states but on January 1st 1999, to much fanfare, the European Federation (or EuroFed) was born. Using a new currency, the florin, EuroFed was a well meaning if a little unfocussed.

While mainland Europe was at peace, there was, as ever, trouble on the peripheries. By extension, much of North Africa and the Middle East was part of EuroFed but both Russian and American agitation among nationalist and religious groups ensured the colonial powers had little peace. Indeed, from Morocco through Libya to Egypt and beyond to Palestine and Syria the region was often in tumult. American backed groups supporting self determination for the Arab and Berber peoples caused tension throughout the region in the 1950s and 1960s and this was combined with the issue of Turkish revanchism, the instability of Transjordan and of course Persia.

The British also had the thorny issue of India - since the rise of Gandhi, Indian calls for greater autonomy has continued and the Pan-Indian Congress Movement under the joint leadership of Nehru and Jinnah had published a manifesto calling for a full British withdrawal from India as early as 1948. With Washington backing calls for greater self-determination, the Conservative Governments of Eden and Hogg had moved only slowly but with the election of Jenkins and the Social Democrats ending 15 years of Conservative rule in 1970, the mood music changed. There was no repeat of the rapid and unplanned withdrawal of the Portuguese after the 1972 revolution which led to horrendous violence in Angola and Mozambique and led to South African forces occupying both countries.

Jenkins sent Lord Mountbatten and a League of Nations delegation to Delhi to broker a political deal and it proved an outstanding success. Queen Elizabeth II was able to declare an independent India on March 1st 1980. The "Mountbatten Model" as it came to be known, was copied by France, Italy and the other colonial powers in their dealings. It didn't always work but more often than not the transition to new democracies was smooth. Decolonialisation led to improved relations with Washington in the 80s and 90s as the various Caribbean Islands found themselves joining the League of Nations. We all remember the pictures of President Hart and Prince Charles trying their hand at reggae with Jamaica's first President, Robert Marley.

Yet for all the good news, Africa remains backward and behind. EDTO troops found themselves far from their usual theatre defending themselves against South African forces in Zambia and Congo. For a time in the 1960s and 70s, South Africa enjoyed an alliance with Washington especially under Republican Presidents but that ended with the election of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and the start of the twenty four years of Democrat rule. The Pretoria Government found itself isolated with only Japan left as a nominal ally and in the end isolation and military overreach took its toll. Trying to hold down resistance movements in Angola, Mozambique, Botswana and Rhodesia, the Pretoria Government had no answer when its own people rose in revolt. Out of the wreckage came the Pan-African Movement which spread through the continent in the 1990s and 2000s with a new message of ecology and egalitarianism.
 
What does Poland have to offer to Italy? Why would Mussolini choose a weak Poland over a powerful Germany?

It could give Italy a say in postwar Europe and get a chunk of Germany or reparations paid from Germany. The USSR agreement is secret, so as far as everyone is concerned, if Germany attacks Poland it risks war with Italy, France, the UK and the USSR, which looks pretty bad for Germany.
 
Lets imagine that over 1938 and 1939 Italy and Poland become more and more freindly.
So by the 20th of August 1939, Mussolini announces that he will guarantee Polands independence angainst any German attacks.
What would the result of this be?

You don't guarantee without then declaring at least a Phony War. And unlike France, Italy cannot as easily into basically any German land. So unless at least France does it too, it just would not happen.
 
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