Very likely, since the dogfight that would erupt over the "succession" would put all past dynastic disputes to shame. IOTL, Nazi Germany's "Game of Thrones" went on until the very last days of the war; they were obsessed with personal position.
What if Germany didn't attack Poland.
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Very likely, since the dogfight that would erupt over the "succession" would put all past dynastic disputes to shame. IOTL, Nazi Germany's "Game of Thrones" went on until the very last days of the war; they were obsessed with personal position.
Perkeo
Banned
Giving up Danzig just to keep the peace doesn't seem a good idea to me: Poland needs the harbour and it needs the space for defense.
But they were occupied IOTL, weren't they? So why is the OTL strategy so awfully good that it cannot be changed in any TL? After what had happened to Czecoslowakia, the lack of action of France and Britain doesn't seem that unpredictable to me. Neither does it seem illogical that - given the assessment that a German-Russian conflict is unavoidable - the Polish would prefer to fight on a single front with either the Nazis or the Sowjets rather than on two fronts against them both.
Poland DID expand a lot just after WWI. That of course doesn't mean they wanted more, but the world isnt't devided into inherently good and inherently bad nations.
Well THAT is the one obstacle to a Poland-on-the-axis-scenario that is really difficult to remove: In any conflict between Russia and Germany, Poland is geographically between the conqueror and the conquered territories, making too much of a tempting target to sustain any Nazi-Polish (or Sowjet-Polish) alliance.
My interest in the Poland-on-the-axis-scenario isn't due to its likelyhood, but tue to the huge political advantage that it gives to the axis.
Danzig by itself would not have been much of a loss. Once Gdynia had expanded to a reasonable size in the 1930s, the city was no longer that important to Poland's economy. Its annexation by Germany would have hardly changed the corridor's terrible strategic position.
However, this premise was not obvious back then. The Polish strategy assumed that this could in fact be avoided. A Polish-German alliance would at the very least require complete Franco-British passiveness in the aftermath of the occupation of Prague if not a different leadership altogether.
After WWI Poland was confined to parts of the former Congress Kingdom. Its subsequent expansion was hardly surprising. But twenty years later any eastward expansion beyond the new border would have meant a terrible war with the USSR for the dubious privelege of dealing with poor territories populated by even more Ukrainians and/or Belarussians, besides the ones who were already causing enough trouble in eastern Poland. Inherent good will had little to do with this.
MSZ
Banned
I said Eastern Locarno since I assumed it happening in 1926, so that once Hitler is power, the entire storm the Weimar Republic made was gone by 1933 and Hitler not having to overcome suspiciousness, but being treated the same way by the Poles as Mussolini saw him (he had Germans in Italy as well, but that didn't stop the two from collaborating). And the Poles can build themselves their own harbour.
Yeah, but getting occupied wasn't really their plan, Franco-British action was seen as very much plausible and the idea was that a Germano-Russian conflict can't start while Poland was still around (no common border), as well as that Germany wouldn't really want a war with it, as it was obvious it would destroy it. Poles rationally calculated and created something akin to a "conventional arms MAD" with a delayed fuse - if Germany started a war with Poland, that would drag France, the UK and the USSR into a war against it which Germany would lose and be destroyed (along with Poland). It was just as rational as OTL nuclear MAD, and WW2 is often an example used to prove the main flaw of it: "what if it is a crazy person in charge?".
Allying with Germany means allowing German troops on its soil, which means occupation and loss of sovereignty. Poland doesn't wasnt that and it would be very tough to covince it otherwise.
Poland was satisfied with its borders. Case closed. Why start a war if there is nothing to gain? Warsaw knew that and didn't want to be involved, as it also assumed it wouldn't have to - no common German-Russian border kind of makes a war between the two tricky.
An advantage to the axis, yes. An advantage to Poland, no. Making it possible would require a somewhat early PoD, like Locarno covering the east ans subsequent German governments reaching a detente with Poland. Might not butterfly away Hitler, but might butterfly away Pilsudski making room for someone else to take power and use the better Germano-Polish relations for their purposes. I still doubt a "Polish Mussolini" would be OK with a war with Russia, but he might be OK with an alliance with Hitler, joining the Anti-Comintern Pact, etc.
Cook
Banned
To prevent the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 you need to remove or significantly reduce the influence of one man and it is not Hitler: Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Reich Foreign Minister.
One of the key requirements stipulated by Hitler for the invasion to proceed was that Poland should be politically isolated and that the Western democracies could be guaranteed not to take any retaliatory action. Throughout the spring and summer of 1939 the signs that this was no longer the case and that Britain and France would take action became progressively clearer but Ribbentrop chose to ignore them and instead report to Hitler what he knew Hitler hoped to hear: that it was all a bluff and Poland could be invaded without it leading to a wider war.
In 1939 Germany was three years away from being ready for a major war and Hitler knew it. At the Conference held in the Reich Chancellery on 7 November 1937 (recorded in the Hossbach Memorandum) he spoke of two phases of conflict. The first would be localised and comprise the invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia as soon as possible. The second phase, involving a general European war would take place in the period 1943-1945. German rearmament plans conformed to this schedule; armaments production would be trebled, the Luftwaffe increased in strength fivefold ( to 20,000 aircraft) and the Kriegsmarine would have a large fleet capable of challenging the Royal Navy; all ready by 1943.
The invasion of Poland was meant to be a quick campaign to seize territory and resources and to blood the Wehrmacht and came about because of Hitler’s frustration at being unable to obtain concessions from the Poles concerning Danzig, it was not part of a wider plan; Hitler’s only mention of Poland in the Hossbach Memorandum was:
‘If the Czechs were overthrown and a common German-Hungarian frontier achieved, a neutral attitude on the part of Poland could be the more certainly counted on in the event of a Franco-German conflict. Our agreements with Poland only retained their force as long as Germany's strength remained unshaken. In the event of German setbacks a Polish action against East Prussia, and possibly against Pomerania and Silesia as well, had to be reckoned with.’
Poland was not a long term target of attack; prior to March 1939 the Germans were still trying to entice the Poles into an alliance.
If Ribbentrop were not to become Foreign Minister and von Neurath retained his position instead then the likelihood of war breaking out in late 1939 is drastically reduced; a clear assessment of the situation by the foreign ministry would have reported to Hitler that the western powers would no longer acquiesce to German demands, even if they were unable to ally themselves with the Soviet Union. As it was, when despite Ribbentrop’s repeated guarantees to the contrary, the British declared war on Germany Hitler was dumbfounded, turning to Ribbentrop and asking “What now?” Goering was more succinct, yelling on the telephone at Ribbentrop “Now you’ve got your fucking war!”
If Hitler was unable to move against Poland than his most likely target would be to make a protectorate of Lithuania, a la Slovakia. In 1938 he’d considered a joint invasion of Lithuania in the event that the Poles invaded; Goebbels recorded in his diary a meeting with Hitler in which he describes swallowing up the Baltic states ‘like an Anaconda’ and in the initial Nazi-Soviet agreement Lithuania had been assigned to the Nazi sphere, only later being reallocated to Moscow’s sphere of influence. No doubt Hitler would have offered a large part of the Lithuanian protectorate to Warsaw in a further effort to separate the Poles from the western democracies and bring realign them with Berlin, whether he would have been successful is less likely.
Far from armaments spending decreasing in 1939, it increased; going from 17% of Germany’s GDP in 1938, to 23% in 1939 and that GDP was greatly expanded, including as it did by then Austria and Czechoslovakia.
In 1938 Danzig handled 31% of Poland’s exports, Gdynia, moving 8.7 million tons, was responsible for 46% (the rest going overland by rail.) A port handling just under a third of Poland’s trade would have been a considerable loss and since most of the Polish freight that departed Gdynia arrived in the port on river barges using the Vistula, which ran through the territory of the Free City of Danzig and therefore vulnerable to German obstruction, and the loss becomes even worse.
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Perkeo
Banned
Another flaw was that the A of MAD wasn't there: It was NOT assured that France and the UK would act, and indeed they didn't act on time IOTL.
Allowing the Germans to march through isn't the same as occupation - although in this case, it was indeed doubtful wether the Germans would have honored that difference.
The Germans could have marched through the the Baltic states (with or without their consent, they could have landed on the Baltic Sea coast or intervened in the Winter War (if there is a Winter War ITTL)
I don't see what the Polish contribution to an eastern Locarno would have been. There was no occupation to end, no reparations to be reduced. The only advantage to Germany would be to get a more credible casus belli (coalition of the willing against evil communists sounds better than "Polish" troops attacking a German TV Station) and the only advantage that Poland would get is to put at a lower place (likely not even be removed from) Germany's target list.
I agree that even a "Polish Mussolini" doesn't necessarily make Poland a very willing ally. You propably need a "Polish Mussolini" AND a less successful Polish-Sowjet war to accomplish that.
A good point. If Germany chose to immediately block the Vistula, it would be particularly painful for the duration of the construction of extra railways to Gdynia. But still vastly preferable to war.
So, how do you prevent Germany going to war with Britain and France following their declarations of war? Hitler's ultimate objective was war with the USSR - but charging into it while at war with the Franco-British duo undefeated seems insane even by Hitler's standards. Or, by summer 1939, was there a chance that they would simply let Germany get away with invading another country after having guaranteed it?
Hence the M.
Besides agreeing in principle to the possibily of Danzig's return to Germany in the future - I can't think of anything much. A working eastern Locarno would chiefly require German self-restraint.
Hmm. Lvov and Vilna would certainly have been very tempting. Possibly to the point that drifting into Germany's sphere of influence to some extent might have been considered an acceptable price to pay. (Poland had largely managed to get over its desire for Danzig between Versailles and WWII, but I'm not sure to what extent this would apply to the other cities.) However, a PoD this far back could butterfly Hitler away.
Perkeo
Banned
The danger to Poland was even greater: With German Danzig, the Polish Corridor would be so narrow that Poland would loose ALL its access to the sea before their General staff even knew about the attack.
As long as Germany is seen as a thread, Poland needs every meter of space between Pomerania and East Prussia.
I don't know wether Hitler really thought that Britain and France wouldn't intervene at all, but he was certainly right in relying on Franco-British passiveness in the time frame when Franco-British passiveness was crucial, so I see no strategic miscalculation there.
Germany was doomed as soon as they DID attack the USSR with the Franco-British duo (or at least half of it) undefeated, but that is another story
Self-restraint by Hitler's standards - of course. ANY working peace agreement would require that.
But the Polish were in no position to force Germany into self-restraint by any other standards. When France and Britain loose interest in keeping down Germany, the Polish are the only ones who have a lively interest in the continued existence of the Free City of Danzig. So if the German foreign policy is very clever (and if Polish foreign policy isn't), this can end up an eastern Munich rather than an eastern Locarno.
The hard nut to crack is: How do you seperate the Polish and German sphere of influence well enough to make sure that both sides reach a true understanding rather than just temporal alliance of convenience? It is difficult to draw a map where Poland isn't located between Germany and Hitler's Lebensraum - a situation neither side can live with: Germany doesn't want Poland in the way. Poland doesn't want to be surrounded by Germany.
It could indeed, but it doesn't have to. A more successful USSR likely strengthens the democratic AND the antidemocratic fraction of the political right wing in Germany.
The Poles already had those, they had been wanting to keep Danzig about for a while so that they had a port instead of once again having the Germans pile tarriffs upon their exports and controlling their imports. As for Lviv and Vilnus, they were both already Polish at that point. You might as well offer them Slovakia, for all the good it would do.
The corridor in anything resembling its OTL form was indefensible against any determined attack anyway.
IIRC Hitler was quite shocked by the declarations of war (as was Goering).
As of October 1939 managed to achieve his short-term goal (defeating Poland), but the war with France and Britain was not going to go away. As I understand it, the strategic miscalculation was tremendous. Surely it would not have been safe to charge into the USSR with two untouched, very hostile powers right on the western border?
I never claimed otherwise. Ultimately, the dispute won’t be as much about Danzig (which was replaceable for Poland), as about the corridor, which was not.
Poland would not have joined Germany’s rampage across the USSR, which would have by definition meant loss of independence, as long as it could have seen other options. As such an alliance could only have been formed on German terms, I can’t see how this would be a problem. Ultimately the question is, can Germany live with Poland in the way until the USSR is down (at that point it can freely reconsider)?
What, precisely, do you mean by ‘more successful’? Germans from an ATL where Poland failed to take what it did would not have had OTL to compare to. Poland was considered a season state, and there was absolutely no expectation that its eastern border would be where it was IOTL, so I can’t see its modification influencing Germany.
Oh, pretty much any German government would have been interested in some revision. The question is, how much they will want (Will Danzig be enough? Or will they want Lebensraum in the Corridor? Maybe even elsewhere? Will Poland as a neutral buffer between Germany and the USSR be deemed desireable enough to influence these demands? Etc…), and how far they will be willing to go to get it.
The assumption was:
Something like this then?
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/576-baltic-ifs-and-polish-buts
Or this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Map_of_Litbel_1919.svg&page=1
Whatever borders they ended up with, if it did not have the eastern portions the millions of non-Poles then Jews and Germans would probably be the largest minority targets around. Would the Soviets have their own Polish ASSR or SSR in this scenario?
More or less. And of course the ''Mussolini" analogue to make the questionable political decisions needed.
They would have been pretty much the only minorites present. Some friction was inevitable, but they would have become 'targets' or not would have depended on internal political devlopments to a much greater extent then the position of the eastern border.
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Perkeo
Banned
Think twice: If small coridors are indefensible against any determined attack, how do you explain the continued existence of Israel?
You must not loose strategic initiative, you must not trade land against peace until you know your opponent will deliver, but you must not think it's impossible either.
Sure he was shocked: The Siegfried Line was a bluff that - at the time - looked like it was about to be called. But it wasn't. The Allies missed the time window just as expected before the attack on poland - not as expected immedietely after the declarations of war.
The war with France DID go away, and Britain alone would have been no hopeless venture, so I see no miscalculation before Germany started to divert their forces to Africa, the Balkans and last but not least the Sowjet Union.
France and Britain weren't hostile. They tried everything to appease Germany, and I don't think they'd be anti-German when the enemy is Communism alone.
No, the question is: Can Poland be such a fool to support Germany up to the point when it can freely reconsider? As for the German side: The Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact proves that Nazi Germany is perfectly capable of pretending to honor alliances until the time for reconsideration comes.
At the very least, Poland would be pissed of if they actually lost territory to the USSR.
My guess is: No Non-Nazi Government, not even a right wing dictatorship, will go for "Lebensraum". Any German Government will demand all territories lost in WWI and see what they can get. Danzig is unlikely to ever be given up by Germany, so is West Prussia for Poland - which pretty much settles the agreement that Germany and Poland would have made sooner or later if Hitler hadn't come to Power.
Maybe because their neighboring states have been in active competition with each other for dominance of the area up to and including the Israeli declaration of Independence, after which the Israelis spent decades conquering or settling the former bottle necks or the area, cutting off The Palestinian areas from the Egyptian and Jordanian borders, then settling them in a manner so that the West Bank could be easily cut into two, three, or four separate sectors if they every got in a conflict after getting independence with their current borders?
Well, Israel never fought a much more powerful enemy attacking from both sides of its corridor. Or did it? Also, continued existance does not preclude temporary loss of control over a corridor in all cases.
It went away at a heavy cost, i.e. getting even deeper into the deadlock with Britain (with a pro-British USA farther complicating the matter). Conquering the USSR was always Hitler’s primary goal.
Since his plan to get at it resulted in the prolonged war with Britain, I stand by my assertion that it was a huge mistake.
Way back in September I wrote:
You replied:
I answered:
I assumed that we were discussing what options Germany had after blundering into the war with Britain and France (and if they reached the point of declaring war, they certainly were hostile). Your response was:
When did we go back to discussing the appeasement era? Because Summer 1939 was already way past it (Britain and France would not have even tried for an alliance with the communists against Germany if the reds were considered the greatest threat).
Hmm. If Hitler started forcing himself on Poland, and the Poles decide that West won't offer any help, such support is possible. It may be worth remembering that, as of 1939, Hitler hadn’t started with his genocides yet.
Another question might be wether, in hindsight, it would actually have been foolish. Its answer would depend on wether Germany could:
-win a war with the USSR
-fight the West off/keep it out of the war altogether
-resist the urge to destroy ‘well-established’ clients as soon as physically possible, thus sending the message that nobody is safe with the damage to the Axis which this may imply
or not, questions I cannot well answer.
Poland’s OTL choices resulted in the unforgettable experience of complete loss of soverignity and years of occupation by hostile Nazis and the murder of a sizable part of the population (not only the Jews, but also a disturbingly high percentage of ethnic Poles) in which the intelligentsia were specifically targetted. And all this happened before the Soviets came for good. Even a direct transition to Soviet rule would have been preferable to OTL.
Since the borders of Poland and the USSR were not defined before their war ended, technically it’s hard to speak of ‘losing’ territory. But the short answer is: Yes, if Poland fails to obtain certain areas it will most definitely be pissed. But how do annoyed Poles make the rise of Hitler more likely?
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Perkeo
Banned
At the very least, Israel was heavily outnumbered by it's enemies over and over again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_conflict#1948_Arab-Israeli_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War
and still Israel won. Certainly not all reasons for this are applicable to Poland an Germany in 1939, but the very least this teaches us is that one shouldn't use the word "indefendable" too easily, especially not based on geography alone.
That is the story of the half full or half empty bottle. You are absolutely right by saying that Germany paid a price, but so am I when I say that THIS strategic decision did not result in German defeat. Hitler may have rather wanted to avoid a war in the west - at least with Britain - but I do think he accepted it as a necessary evil, since no war at all doesn't seem to have been an optilon to him.
The reaspn for that confusion is that we were mixing two different scenarios:
a) Hitler attacks Poland als IOTL, fights off France and Britain and then makes a wiser choice when to turn back on the Sowjets
b) Hitler somehow manages to win Poland as an accomplice and fights a war with the USSR alone.
OTOH I think that
1) The OTL Polish strategy would have worked if France and Britain had reacted as fast as they promised and/or if the German tactics hadn't had as much tactical superiority as IOTL. Neither was so forseeable
2) Even the direct transition to Soviet rule would have been ugly enough that a Polish leadership not trying option 1) would be called a bunch of idiots.
3) Hitler could indeed have won a war with the sowjet Union if he managed to limit his ambition to some Brest-Litowsk like peace - which OTOH doesn't seem to have been his style.
4) Keeping the West out of the war would have been far from impossible. Note that at the time Stalin had killed a lot more people than Hitler.
5) No alliance made by Hitler survived the minute he began to doubt its necessity, so I see no way a German-Polish alliance of convenience can prevail. The very least you need for this is a "Polish Mussolini".
Not the rise of Hitler, but perhaps the rise of a "Polish Mussolini". The rise of Hitler doesn't have to be more likely since he came to power IOTL.
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