The UK refuses to get involved in WWII Europe.

[HenraldGK]

How could things have turned out if The UK had decided not to guarantee Polish independence and not intervened in the German invasion of Europe? How far would Hitler have gone? Could someone stop him?

Personally, I feel that the Third Reich would have collapsed. Although, its downfall would come from within not without. Hitler would probably have died in the late forties and those around him would have fought for power, bringing Germany to its knees. At this point The French Resistance etc. would have secured independence and the last of the Soviets, hiding out beyond the Urals, would have been able to retake Moscow. Germany would grow overall, and this state of affairs could last quite a while, leaving Germany as the most powerful nation in Europe. Not an empire to last a thousand years, but not bad.

 

[Lalli]

I don't see way how Brits would stay outside of WW2. One of their foreign principles has long time been that any European nation shouldn't dominate Europe.

 

[cerebus]

This is Hitler's dream war. Without British suport France would not fight although both countries would be arming like mad.
I am not sure if there was an actual plan for after Poland, other than destroy the soviet union and some have reported Hitler as saying war with the west would not start before 1945. Of course he said a lot of things.
I would expect a period absorbing Poland and reorganising the army before attacking Russia in spring 1940.
Actually without the resources of western europe and with even stalin not surprised I suspect the invasion would go worse than otl. Hitler will expect GB/F to stab him in the back, it is what he would do, so he will have to keep forces facing West.

 

[tomo pauk]

Germany wins big time. Millions of Slavs, Jews and other undesirables die by horrendous death. Japan secures the East Siberia ad FIC for them.

 

[Lalli]

Germany wins big time. Millions of Slavs, Jews and other undesirables die by horrendous death. Japan secures the East Siberia ad FIC for them.

Japan might still be stupid enough to bomb Pearl Harbor. And I don't think that Brits wouldn't allow Japan control Asia.

 

[The Red]

How far would Hitler have gone? Could someone stop him?

 

[Mackus]

Hitler made up his mind to invade Poland only after UK offered their "guarantees".
If UK doesn't guarantee Poland, then Poles will accept German demands.
Poland would:
- join anti-Comintern pact
- cede Danzig and corridor.
- keep access to the sea and her economic rights in Danzig.
What will follow can be Poland either becoming junior ally like Italy, or subservient vassal like Croatia or Slovakia.

Without UK embargoing Germany, when war with USSR starts, there wouldn't be so severe enough food shortages for hunger plan to be implement as conscious choice.
Ideological component of hunger plan, was largely ex-post facto justification of measures that Germans would undertake regardless of their ideology, because they had such shortages, that even "aryan germanic" people under German occupation like Dutch, Danish, and Norwegians, had to get by with borderline starvation rations. Of course, OTL German problems with food were further exacerbated with Nazi general viciousness, corruption, and incompetence.

 

[The Red]

If UK doesn't guarantee Poland, then Poles will accept German demands.

No they won't, the corridor was simply too vital for their economy, they were going to fight regardless of western help. To do otherwise would leave the Germans in control of their majority of the export and import trade, a far more disadvantageous position than the Czechs had agreed to only for the Germans to invade them anyway.

 

[Mackus]

No they won't, the corridor was simply too vital for their economy, they were going to fight regardless of western help. To do otherwise would leave the Germans in control of their majority of the export and import trade, a far more disadvantageous position than the Czechs had agreed to only for the Germans to invade them anyway.

Ever heard of intersections? Or overpasses?
Letting Germans build railroad and autobahn through corridor in itself doesn't give them control over Polish export of import. They can give Germans corridor without being being cut away from Gdynia port.

 

[The Red]

Ever heard of intersections? Or overpasses?
Letting Germans build railroad and autobahn through corridor in itself doesn't give them control over Polish export of import. They can give Germans corridor without being being cut away from Gdynia port.

The Germans offered this historically and the Poles rejected it. Accepting an autobahn instead of direct control of the territory would mean that the Germans could now demand anything they wanted from Poland on the basis that they could cut off access to the Baltic anytime if the Poles refused, not a very attractive proposal from a Polish perspective.

 

[Mackus]

The Germans offered this historically and the Poles rejected it. Accepting an autobahn instead of direct control of the territory would mean that the Germans could now demand anything they wanted from Poland on the basis that they could cut off access to the Baltic anytime if the Poles refused, not a very attractive proposal from a Polish perspective.

Germans might've demanded direct control in pre-war ultimatum in August, ultimatum that was meant to be rejected since war was already decided, but not in earlier negotiations, when they genuinely wanted Poland to accept.
If Germans build overpass through corridor, they cannot cut Poland away without actually invading. Its Poles who can threaten to send military sappers to set up explosives under support pillars.
Those overpasses can still be toll free(and no Polish custom officials) per treaty with Poland, so Germans won't have to pay tolls, which was main reason they wanted corridor in the first place.

 

[The Red]

Germans might've demanded direct control in pre-war ultimatum in August, ultimatum that was meant to be rejected since war was already decided, but not in earlier negotiations, when they genuinely wanted Poland to accept.

The German goal was the eventual conquest of Poland for living space, whether they wanted the Poles to accept loss of the corridor in the short term is irrelevant given that the Poles were never going to accept.

 

[Magnum]

 

[Mackus]

The German goal was the eventual conquest of Poland for living space, whether they wanted the Poles to accept loss of the corridor in the short term is irrelevant given that the Poles were never going to accept.

You're trying to present your conclusions as an inviolable premise: "Poland would never accept". This "allows" you to ignore possibility of terms being up to change during negotiations.
Its possible that negotiations would break down, and war would still erupt. It's also possible that a while after the deal is struck, Germany tells Poland: "I altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further". But it's not a foregone conclusion as you try to paint it.

Hitler said a lot of bullshit, most that he did not end up doing. That he ended up doing some of things he said he would, is not an indicator that he'd do them all under different circumstances. If you make a hundred outlandish promises, and fullfill only five, everyone would remember only those five.
There was no master plan, just hardcore rhetoric and bumbling along the way, making up ex-post facto justifications.
Germany had territorial claims on Italy, but they weren't pressed, because they considered Italy more valuable as an ally.

 

[Hoplophile]

In the event that Germany was able to co-opt Poland, turning it into an ally of sorts, the chief German motivation for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact would disappear. Does this mean that Germany would have accepted the Soviet invasions of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Romania that took place in our time line? Would the Soviets have even attempted these? Or would they have turned their attention towards the East? If that is the case, then we would have had a Soviet war against Japan in China, and thus a Japan that would have been careful to avoid antagonizing either the British Empire or the United States.

 

[Akai]

View attachment 311132

Assuming that invading the USSR will fail is not exactly prudent and the communists managed to maintain power in China easily after the liberalisation of the economy. Speer could easily be the Deng Xiaoping of Germany, especially given the fact he would not divide the part much.

 

[The Red]

You're trying to present your conclusions as an inviolable premise: "Poland would never accept". This "allows" you to ignore possibility of terms being up to change during negotiations.

It essentially is inviolable for the same reasons the Poles rejected the German demands historically. They had no interest in ceding any sovereignty over an area that was vital for their economy, especially after what had happened to Czechoslovakia. It's pretty implausible to imagine they'd even accept any negotiation on the issue, Beck was called many things but "potentially open to compromise" was never one of them.

 

[tomo pauk]

Hitler made up his mind to invade Poland only after UK offered their "guarantees".
If UK doesn't guarantee Poland, then Poles will accept German demands.
Poland would:
- join anti-Comintern pact
- cede Danzig and corridor.
- keep access to the sea and her economic rights in Danzig.
What will follow can be Poland either becoming junior ally like Italy, or subservient vassal like Croatia or Slovakia.

Without UK embargoing Germany, when war with USSR starts, there wouldn't be so severe enough food shortages for hunger plan to be implement as conscious choice.
Ideological component of hunger plan, was largely ex-post facto justification of measures that Germans would undertake regardless of their ideology, because they had such shortages, that even "aryan germanic" people under German occupation like Dutch, Danish, and Norwegians, had to get by with borderline starvation rations. Of course, OTL German problems with food were further exacerbated with Nazi general viciousness, corruption, and incompetence.

You're trying to present your conclusions as an inviolable premise: "Poland would never accept". This "allows" you to ignore possibility of terms being up to change during negotiations.
Its possible that negotiations would break down, and war would still erupt. It's also possible that a while after the deal is struck, Germany tells Poland: "I altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further". But it's not a foregone conclusion as you try to paint it.

Hitler said a lot of bullshit, most that he did not end up doing. That he ended up doing some of things he said he would, is not an indicator that he'd do them all under different circumstances. If you make a hundred outlandish promises, and fullfill only five, everyone would remember only those five.
There was no master plan, just hardcore rhetoric and bumbling along the way, making up ex-post facto justifications.
Germany had territorial claims on Italy, but they weren't pressed, because they considered Italy more valuable as an ally.

Please, don't beat around the bushes.
Nazi ideology deemed the Lebensraum to be at the East, and East of Germany were Poland and Czechoslovakia. Slavs (this obviously includes the Poles) are the main threat to the German race. Form Wikipedia entry about the Lebensraum:

In the lead-up to Anschluss (1938) and the invasion of Poland (1939) the propaganda of Nazi Party in Germany used popular feelings of wounded national identity aroused in the aftermath of the First World War (1914–18) to promote policies of Lebensraum. Studies of the homeland focused on the lost colonies after the rebirth of sovereign Poland which was ratified by the Treaty of Versailles (Volk ohne Raum), as well as the "eternal Jewish threat" (Der ewige Jude, 1937). Emphasis was put on the need for rearmament and the pseudoscience of superior races in the pursuit of "blood and soil".[31]

and:

During the 1920s, as a member of the Artaman League, an anti-Slav, anti-urban, and anti-Semitic organisation of blood-and-soil ideology, Heinrich Himmler developed völkisch ideas that advocated 'Lebensraum,' for the realisation of which he said that the:

Increase [of] our peasant population is the only effective defense against the influx of the Slav working-class masses from the East. As six hundred years ago, the German peasant's destiny must be to preserve and increase the German people's patrimony in their holy mother earth battle against the Slav race.[34]

(end of quotes)
Nazi Germany went to war with a main purpose to secure Lebensraum at the East, and we know explicity who is going away (either on other teritories, or under the territory) from the territories. And it had nothing to do with United Kingdom, that we Slavs, that can actually see beyond our noses, are grateful beyond this day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum#cite_note-Pine-31

 

[Mackus]

Slavs (this obviously includes the Poles) are the main threat to the German race.

Axis members: Croatia, Slovakia, Bulgaria. Cossacks being "aryan" and "descendants of Goth". Field marshal "honorary aryan" Erhard Milch.
Ideology was fanatically followed, until Fuhrer declared something an exception. Then it was an exception, no matter how outrageously arbitrary, and everyone fanatically fell in line.

 

[tomo pauk]

Axis members: Croatia, Slovakia, Bulgaria. Cossacks being "aryan" and "descendants of Goth". Field marshal "honorary aryan" Erhard Milch.
...

That some Croats, Slovaks and Bulgarians were tiny wheels in Axis war machine is a cold comfort for Slavs that expeienced the Nazi rule 1st hand.