Soviets do not invade Poland

What if Stalin got assasinated days before the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 and Poland won. Who would take over and would there be a war between the Soviets and the West.
 

Susano

Banned
What if Stalin got assasinated days before the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 and Poland won. Who would take over and would there be a war between the Soviets and the West.

People may correct me there, but I think Beria would take over. And how would Poland win? By the time the Soviets actually crossed the border the majority of the Polish Army had been destroyed by the German advance already...
 
People may correct me there, but I think Beria would take over. And how would Poland win? By the time the Soviets actually crossed the border the majority of the Polish Army had been destroyed by the German advance already...

Poland was fighting very fiercely and sooner or later Germany would have to let up. The British would probably send an Expeditionary Corps as soon as Churchill saw that Poland isn't lost completely yet
 

Susano

Banned
Poland was fighting very fiercely and sooner or later Germany would have to let up. The British would probably send an Expeditionary Corps as soon as Churchill saw that Poland isn't lost completely yet

They had been fighting fiercely allright, but nontheless they had lost by the time the Soviets actually invaded. Really, the Soviets didnt do any real fighting, they just picked up the scraps.
 
Poland was fighting very fiercely and sooner or later Germany would have to let up. The British would probably send an Expeditionary Corps as soon as Churchill saw that Poland isn't lost completely yet

Like it did OTL?

Susano pretty much summed it up. I don't see how the assassination of Stalin would allow for Poland to win.
 

wormyguy

Banned
How would the British even manage to send an expeditionary corps to Poland? It would have to travel through Romania, which would mean that Britain would have to convince Yugoslavia or Turkey to give up their neutrality in the conflict.
 
They had been fighting fiercely allright, but nontheless they had lost by the time the Soviets actually invaded. Really, the Soviets didnt do any real fighting, they just picked up the scraps.


We might have been loosing but i heard that one of the German commanders ( can't remember which one) stated that We were fighting so fiercely that if Poland had fought 2 more weeks the Germans would be out of supplies, he also said that it took them half a year to fully recover at the Nuremberg Trials
 
We might have been loosing but i heard that one of the German commanders ( can't remember which one) stated that We were fighting so fiercely that if Poland had fought 2 more weeks the Germans would be out of supplies, he also said that it took them half a year to fully recover

The Germans did have lots of tanks and aircraft damaged but without a MAJOR relieving offensive from the French the Germans would be able to continue to apply the necessary amounts of pressure to completely crush Poland. They took Warsaw by themselves... it was over
 

Susano

Banned
We might have been loosing but i heard that one of the German commanders ( can't remember which one) stated that We were fighting so fiercely that if Poland had fought 2 more weeks the Germans would be out of supplies, he also said that it took them half a year to fully recover

Well, I dont know what commander you might talk about, but the highly successful German campaigns against BeNeLux and France following the Polish Campaign rather proved him wrong about the need for recovery, no?

And I also dont know about the German supply situation at the time, but the point is that the Soviet Forces had no part anymore in destroying the Polish military. That was pretty much done alone by the Wehrmacht. Thus, any changes with the USSR wont change anything - it would have to be changes affecting the Germans.
 
The Polish military had been taken off-guard by the German invasion and truth be told, with air superiority in Luftwaffe hands, there wasn't much Poland could do at this point. Now, clearly you're a Pole yourself, so I'm afraid you'll have to accept that unless we have a POD where Germany is weaker Poland is going to go down by some means.
 
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The Polish military had been taken off-guard by the German and invasion and truth be told, with air superiority in Luftwaffe hands, there wasn't much Poland could do at this point. Now, clearly you're a Pole yourself, so I'm afraid you'll have to accept that unless we have a POD where Germany is weaker Poland is going to go down by some means.


K then :). Let's say the German offensive stops at Wisla Romania joins the allies and British planes with supplies can refuel before going on missions in Poland. Poles from US join the Army in France and under Sikorski's command together with the French n British strike the Germans from the west.
 
K then :). Let's say the German offensive stops at Wisla Romania joins the allies and British planes with supplies can refuel before going on missions in Poland. Poles from US join the Army in France and under Sikorski's command together with the French n British strike the Germans from the west.

But without a PoD to make any of this make sense.....it doesn't make sense.

Actually, that last part of your post is probably workable. If the French and British struck and didn't screw around, the war would probably have gone a bit differently.
 
But without a PoD to make any of this make sense.....it doesn't make sense.

Actually, that last part of your post is probably workable. If the French and British struck and didn't screw around, the war would probably have gone a bit differently.

Yea so let's say Germans lost. would there be a war between the Soviets and the allies?
 
Yea so let's say Germans lost. would there be a war between the Soviets and the allies?

No, at least not immediately. Even if I grant you an allied victory, Britain and France will need to recover and build up for an assault, and the same applies to Stalin.
 
If Stalin dies less than a week before the invasion begins and Beria rejects the arrangement but only after a few days thought this means that the Poles will have time to mobilize several hundred thousand reservists in those parts of Poland occupied OTL by the Soviets, backed by surviving Polish divisions and a few dozen aircraft.

Obviously this isn't going to win a war or even hold for very long but it does mean the Germans have to regroup following the fall of Warsaw and make another effort to occupy all of Poland, which might take through October.

Possible results?

More Poles have time to evacuate to Romania. This could be several divisions worth of trained manpower just needing weaponry...if they aren't lost along with the roughly 100,000 who did make it to France OTL.

France actually launches a small attack in the West. Not likely and not likely to achieve much given the relutance displayed but possibly the French army might learn something useful. As I said, very unlikely.

Germany forced to deploy a few more divisions on garrison duty in Poland. Fairly large country, not the most advanced transport network, very recently had close to two million reservists armed and mobilized and see following.

The following is the big question. Is Beria(or whoever) simply choosing not to invade Poland or is the whole Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact off? If the latter then things have changed massively.

No invasion of Finland means the Red Army may not be aware of problems needing to be fixed but it also means no one else has seen the weaknesses.

Without the invasion of Finland(and the Baltic States?) it becomes harder to present the USSR as a rival aggressor. Specifically, without the Winter War as an excuse for the Anglo-French to land at Narvik Germany's own decision to invade Denmark and Norway may never takes place. Note that the Wehrmacht absolutely hated that plan.

Simply occupying all of Poland would take a few extra divisions but if Hitler can't be sure what the USSR is planning...how many divisions would the Wehrmacht consider the bare minimum to hold if the Red Army strikes? What does this do to the forces available against France? Does the invasion of Denmark and Norway proceed or are those ten divisions needed closer to home?
 
Poland was fighting very fiercely and sooner or later Germany would have to let up. The British would probably send an Expeditionary Corps as soon as Churchill saw that Poland isn't lost completely yet

Churchill wasn't PM yet. And while I'm as patriotic as the next guy, I admit that, at best, we could have gone on fighting until January 1, 1940, and that assumes absolutely no Soviet attack, some French troops invading the Rhineland, and the British Expeditionary Force moving into Northern Germany. And, given the dismal record of the western allies until the invasion of France, I doubt that's gonna happen ITTL.
 
Germany and Supplies

Unfortunately for the Poles, the Germans won too quickly for this to be a factor, but the Germans did have major supply problems toward the end of the invasion of Poland. As I recall it, they were very close to out of bombs. I haven't heard similar reports on other types of munitions, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were running low there too. The Germany military of September 1939 was very much an "all in the showroom window" military.

The Germans had a little over 5 years to build specialized military industry, to train an army, to build tanks, planes, artillery, ships, etc. They were constantly on the edge of running out of the hard currency they needed to import raw materials they needed for the buildup. They couldn't do everything they needed to get ready to fight a war. In the lead-up to September 1939 they built a lot of big-ticket items--tanks, planes, artillery. They didn't make enough ammo or spare parts to keep those big ticket items functional in a long war. That's a major part of the reason the Germans didn't try an attack in the west in November 1939, when Hitler wanted them to.

The Germans sort of learned their lesson, at least for a while. They spent the seven and a half months between the wind down of the conquest of Poland and the invasion of France building up enough ammo and spare parts to take on a major power. Then they managed to forget the lessons of Poland when they invaded the Soviet Union. They produced what they considered adequate supplies for that war before they invaded, and then started retooling to give priority to naval and air power for the war they intended to fight after they crushed the Soviet Union--the one against the British and US. Oops.
 

Lokari

Banned
Without the MR Pact and trade treaties that followed, Germany can't bypass English blockade, and its war industry will be plagued by lack of supplies. Eastern Poland will require more troops to occupy then the Western Poland, due to difficult terrain(infamous Pripyat Marshes)
Western Poland was occupied by around 400-600.000 soldiers over 22 mln people. Eastern Poland had around 13.700.000 people, but far worse transportation system, and above mentioned swamps and marshes over a larger territory. 500.000 soldiers doesn't seem out of the question(especially considering Soviet threat).

Another interesting aspect is that German occupation of Eastern Poland will bring into light the Ukrainian question earlier, and Germans might use Ukrainian nationalists to keep control over those territories-antagonising Soviet side.

If Germans manage to defeat France, which while of lower chance then OTL, isn't out of the question-the lack of resources from Soviets might lead them to more harsh occupation of French territories then OTL and far more agressive policy of plunder and forced labour towards and in consequence repressions in Western Europe.

The lack of Soviet assistance might lead to earlier attempts to introduce a real war economy in Germany on the other hand, and in earlier attempts of British government to bring over Soviets to Allied side.
 
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