What would happen if the UK let Hitler take Poland?

I see. So mathematically it would have been possible, if the concept of the French Social Party gaining 100 seats in the 1940 elections (which would, of course, have take place in such an alternate tale) is indeed correct and, perhaps most importantly, the various factions actually manage to agree on a leader - no easy task, since I think every one of their leaders would have had his eyes set on the top job.

Actually, the 100 seats would have been for the FSP alone.

I imagine many of those would come from the Republican Federation, much as many of the Nazi votes came from the DNVP.
 
It would fly in the face of 400 years of English/British/UK policy, which was to prevent anyone power from dominating the continent.


Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now when it's worked so well?

Jim Hacker: That's all ancient history, surely.

Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing [the EEC] up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing: set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased, it's just like old times.

Jim Hacker: But if that's true, why is the foreign office pushing for higher membership?

Sir Humphrey: I'd have thought that was obvious. The more members an organization has, the more arguments it can stir up. The more futile and impotent it becomes.

Jim Hacker: What appalling cynicism.

Sir Humphrey: We call it diplomacy, Minister.
 

General Zod

Banned
Well, you have to consider the European consequences of no Uk action, and decide whether you mean the UK doesn't give the early Summer guarantee or that it does but still does nothing ?

Both PoDs are possible, but IMO the former is rather more likely. The former might be justified by the judgement that keeping Western Europe safe from the clash between Germany and Russia is more important than keeping Eastern Europe safeguarded from ending up in the sphere of influence of either power, or that specifically the territorial integrity of Poland is not a worthy cause to fight for, or that exploiting the might of Germany to bleed the threat of Soviet Communism is worthy sacrificing Poland. The latter would be mostly seen as getting chicken at the perspective of real combat.

If the former, then France might find itself in the position of having to consider whether to fight the Germans alone, plus the USSR might still be on the sidelines

Which they won't do. Alliance with UK is far more precious to the French than covering the back of Poland, right or wrong. They were much less willing to fight another great war.
 

General Zod

Banned
You mean after Munich?

Yes, I meant Munich, sorry unwittingly slipped in native language for a while. :eek:

Interestingly, Göring proposed several times to Colonel Beck, the Polish foreign minister, for Germany and Poland to ally against Russia - in return for settling Germany's irridentist claims in the west, Poland was supposed to be compensated with territory in the Baltics and in Soviet Ukraine (naturally one can assume that the Nazis had no real intention to honour their part of the bargain).

Hitler also briefly encouraged such notions, having signed a treaty of non-aggression with Poland in January 1934, especially after France and the USSR signed an accord in 1935 together with the Czechs (Poland also participated in the carving up of what was left of Czechia in 1939, though admittedly they did not gain much territory).

Yes, now this is yet another alternative and possibly fruitful strategy for Germany to deal with the Poland problem successfully, to enrol them in their vassal states squad for their own anti-Soviet posse. This too was made uneffectual by the conquest of Prague.

Now, I'm not entirely persuaded that it would have worked, since it's not sure that Poland would have got the foresightedness that in order to survive the coming clash between the two great powers on their borders, they desperately needed to side with one against the other, and claim a livable place in their sphere of influence. Of course, doing so would have required giving up a sizable part of the territories they had grabbed from their new ally of choice in 1919. The boundaries of 1939 Poland were made only possible by the once in a blue moon circumstance of both Germany and Russia being powerless in 1919, and geopolitically they were living on borrowed time. Stubbornly grabbing on to everything and the illusion of being a middle power able to resist both with the help of France and UK only risked a new partition, which eventually happened.

Nonetheless, Hitler's cause was doomed by the fact that he did not quested for the politically reasonable objective of fulfilling irredentist 1914 German claims on POland and turn the rest into a satellite. He wanted to make Poland the first testing stage of his grand racial realignment scheme.

Nonetheless, had he acknowledged that Germany's long-term expansionst/imperialist benefit was better served by the latter strategy, he could have pursued it to success. Of course, it required giving up naked military conquest of both Czechia and Poland. But had he done it, he would have succeeded. Even if Poland hadn not listened, the British would have. The UK asked but a decent excuse to repeat the Munich strategy, and POland was the last obstacle before Germany and USSR were free to get at each other's throats.

Naturally the whole arrangement came to nothing, especially after the Wehrmacht occupied remnant Czechia,

Yep, this is the turning point that made Hitler's expansionist strategy in Central and Eastern Europe, so successful up to then, a crash course to general war. Had he been more insightful, he could have waited until German-Soviet war had been unleashed, in the confusion few would have really cared about the independence or rump Bohemia and Moravia.

That is true. Under certain circumstances they might hope that both the Germans and the Soviets are decimated in a war, leaving both of them weakened, without Britain being forced to intervene in order to preserve the balance of power.

Or alternatively, they could have judged that a USSR pushed halfway back towards Moscow, and a severe blow given to the prestige of Communism, would have been worth the price of a Germany claiming an extensive sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, which would likely absorbed German energies for the next generation. Of course, few took seriously the Mein Kampf rants about lebensraum. All thought Nazi Germany was after a repeat of the Brest-Litovsk settlement, with fascist headmen instead of Hohenzollern or Hapsburg little kings in Eastern Europe.

The problem is, of course, that German foreign policy gradually became more belligerent. Hitler was quite disappointed that the Sudeten Crisis was not resolved through the use of force, which in his eyes would have enabled him to conquer Czechia.

The man was nuts. :rolleyes: He could have gained it all with little risk or international outrage if he had been content with a philo-Nazi government in Prague for a couple years, then in the midst of the war with the Soviets, quite possibly the UK a friendly neutral or even maneouvred to fight on Germany's side (say Stalin is tricked into attacking Finland or Romania), he would have made a little "police action" in a satellite of his.

So in order to the scenario you described to take place we need to find a plausible reason for why Hitler behaves more cautiously than he did historically.

A little temporary internal trouble in Germany ? Russia being more aggressive ? British being more overt in their attempts to struck a deal with Germany and partition the spoils of Russia ? Hitler being just a little more insightful ?
 
Am in full agreement with you, General Zod. The key would be finding a plausible reason that strengthens the "moderate" (moderate in the manner that they want to conquer slice by slice, though in basic policy alignment they do not differ from the others), led by Göring.

One thing that made Hitler decide to quicken the pace of his quest for lebensraum was that all his past successes in foreign policy - return of the Saar to the Reich, remilitarisation of the Rhineland, reintroduction of conscription, Anschluss of the Ostmark and the Sudetenland and then in the end the annexation of Czechia as the Reichsprotektorat and of the Memelland - all occured quite easily.

That is why during the Sudeten Crisis he was very determined to go to war and crush Czechia - Ribbentrop had convinced him that the western powers would not prevent that, which also fitted in with his prejudiced belief that democracy leads to feebleness, and he was convinced that the Wehrmacht, despite not being prepared, would achieve victory within a short amount of time.

This is also why, in his orders to the Wehrmacht high command, he stressed that hardly any troops should be posted on the border to French, with the bulk being concentrated on the border to Czechia - he was a permanent va banque player (as he once even confessed to Göring).

It is certain that, as you said, the occupation of the Czech remnants was the point at which it was revealed that one could not make deals with Germany, as the Nazi leadership only saw such deals as temporary bargains that could and should be broken at any time.

So that development would have to be avoided, which means that the western powers would have to act more during the time prior to it, or perhaps at least display a more united front. Or we would have to get governments in Britain and France that are inclined to allow Germany to form its own "Warsaw Pact" of semi-independent satellite states in central and eastern Europe in order to deter the USSR - perhaps the Soviets act more expansionistic in the 30s, possibly intervening during the brief crises in the Baltics (as I understand, Estonia and I think the two other Baltic states underwent a putsch in the early 30s, but I could be wrong), or the Spanish Civil War ends with the communists being ascendant (not sure how that can be arranged) or we see more active Soviet involvement in assisting him, thereby strengthening the belief that it is all part of a plot of "World Communism".
 

General Zod

Banned
Or we would have to get governments in Britain and France that are inclined to allow Germany to form its own "Warsaw Pact" of semi-independent satellite states in central and eastern Europe in order to deter the USSR - perhaps the Soviets act more expansionistic in the 30s, possibly intervening during the brief crises in the Baltics (as I understand, Estonia and I think the two other Baltic states underwent a putsch in the early 30s, but I could be wrong), or the Spanish Civil War ends with the communists being ascendant (not sure how that can be arranged) or we see more active Soviet involvement in assisting him, thereby strengthening the belief that it is all part of a plot of "World Communism".

I see this one as the most plausible option. This, combined with Hitler giving up the conquest of Prague, would be enough to explain why the Western powers and Germany do not go at war over Poland. Early Soviet intervention over the Baltics is a rather good idea (there were indeed coups in Estonia and Lativia in 1934). Another possible one might be, just after Munich, the Soviets, PO at being left out of the dealings, openly encourage the Czech to resist the accord and offer extensive military assistance of their own. Nothing eventually comes out of this since Poland and Romania flatly refuse to let Soviet troops march through their territory, but such interventionist attitude from USSR alarms the Western Powers and makes them ragrd German expansion in Central and Eastern Europe more leniently.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Hitler would have attacked France after a Polish war

What folks are correctly absorbing from Mein Kampf is that Hitler was implacably interested in eastern Lebensbraum, and that he greatly desired to avoid conflict with Britain.

What we're missing is that Mein Kampf was a seriously anti-French screed. Hitler thought conflict with Britain was something Germany could and should choose to avoid. By contrast, he regarded conflict with France as inevitable. He never considered the option of leaving an unmolested France to stab him in the back while he went east.

Also, I think a Polish-Nazi alliance, especially the kind that would allow Poland to be an invasion route to the USSR, would not have happened. Yes, the Poles showed more anti-Sovietism than anti-Germanism, but they still would not be stupid enough to believe that German troops would leave once allowed in Poland. And Poland might be interested in alliances that would help it expand, but never in alliances that would contract its territory.

Outside intervention tells us something about why the outcomes of the Munich '38 and Polish '39nat Crises were different, but national character and internal calculations of the Czechoslovaks and the Poles perhaps tell us even more about why there appeasement in one instance and resistance in the other.
 
"What folks are correctly absorbing from Mein Kampf is that Hitler was implacably interested in eastern Lebensbraum, and that he greatly desired to avoid conflict with Britain."

Obviously the Nazis would have some day turned west. There was, after all, still the revanchist desire to crush France in retaliation for the German defeat in the First World War.

One can also assume that the Germans would, after the Endsieg had been accomplished, not have been lenient to the French. In Hitler's Tabletalk and in the diaries of Dr. Goebbels, it is stated that France would never again be permitted to rise again and both the Channel départements and former Burgundy would be controlled by the Reich.

Himmler also once held a speech to senior SS officers in which he stated that all the French territory from the Provence to the Somme would form the new SS state of Burgundy, with the Walloon Rexist leader Léon Degrelle as chancellor and Himmler as Reichsverweser (it was also implied that said Regent would rule over the Großgermanische Reich).

SS-Obergruppenführer Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich's former deputy at the RSHA and the Gestapo and later on chief of administration in the German Military Government in Northern France and Reichs Plenipotentiary in Denmark, developed a plan in early 1940 for the partitioning of western Europe, together with Dr. Stuckart and other SS intellectuals.

Broadly the plan demanded the following:

a) Holland was to be split up into gaue and thus annexed into the German Reich.
b) Flanders (apparently both the Belgian and French parts) was to be annexed into the Reich. Wallonia was supposed to become a protectorate.
c) Brittany was supposed to be split off from France and also turned into a protectorate of the Reich (Best believed that France was an articial nation, as in his eyes the various people living in it were not bound by blood and thus were not one volk).
d) The rest of France north of the Loire was supposed to be annexed into the Reich and germanised (Best dreamt of becoming governor-general there).

Plans for breaking up France are, as already stated, also demanded in Hitler's monologues and Goebbels' diaries.

The Nazi mindset was, after all, not one that knew restraint. Hitler himself said that he had always played va banque and in Mein Kampf it is stated that Germany would either achieve world domination or forever perish. The inability of the Nazi leadership to keep the economy running on a sound basis (massive public expenditure, fixed prices, four-year plan etc.), as described by Nick Sumner in The Dark Colossus, would have meant that in the end it would only have been a matter of time before the Reich once again moved towards war, regardless of whether it would have been waged against the east or the west.
 

General Zod

Banned
Tolkine and Raharris: your points are convincing for Hitler to want an eventual revenge on France in the long term, but this does not change the fact that he was also willing to expand in East first and foremost, that he did not want a two-front confrontation with France or the UK while he was doing so, or he was quite willing to avoid any confrontation with the UK and to leave France alone as the price to do so, for all the years it meant seizing a digesting an empire in the East.
 
My post was not meant to dispute the fact that if he had the choice of waging war against the east or the west, then Hitler and most of his cronies would have decided to go east.

My post merely served the purpose of stating that in the long-term, even if their dreams of conquering all of European Russia to the Urals (or the Volga or to the line Archangelsk-Astrakhan or wherever) and populating it with German peasants and SS garrisons, they would have eventually also tried to conquer the rest.

In the short-term, I am in complete agreement with you, as my previous posts have indicated.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
I dispute that Hitler felt he had a choice.

Hitler probably *did* have a choice of going east first without undue risk, because I do think that France would not have automatically attacked him if he went east first.

But Hitler's writings indicate he did not *think* he had a choice. He assumed that the French knew as well as he that there was an irrepressible conflict of interests between the two, and so, they would do what he would do....attack.

Hitler critiqued the 2nd Reich's foreign policy alot. If was an east-firster he would have said that Germany sshould have attacked east first in 1914. But he did not question the Schlieffen Plan at all.

If Hitler has the initiative, and gets a chance to pick the fight, he would always go west before going for the USSR.

the only way he gets into a general war with the USSR first is if its an improvisation that develops from a border war in Central Europe that escalates due to Soviet action.

Let's face it, Hitler was terrible at reading the strategic character and imperatives of other powers. He was a wishful thinker.

He grossly underestimated Britain's genetic commitment to fighting for the balance of power, a commitment that meant there was no prospect of him getting Britain to agree to his free reign over all Europe.

--he wanted Britain to make a tiger (Germany) and shark (Britain) compromise, so he believed he could make it happen.

Hitler overestimated France's commitment to remain a dominant European power. If he wanted to free his hand in the east by making a compromise in the west, he miscalculated in focusing on the UK instead of France. France could have been far more tempted to accept than the UK ever could.

--but Hitler believed what he wanted to believe about fundamental compatability with the UK and fundamental incompatability with a truly independent France.

Hitler underestimated the opportunity and necessity of building a wedge between the Stalin regime and the Soviet nationalities if he was to defeat the USSR. Colonizing the USSR a la India or North America was not achievable, but creating a band of states in the Western USSR a la Brest-Litovsk was very achievable, and useful in making Germany able to fend off UK-sponsored pressures should they ever materialize.

--but Hitler both believed colonization was a necessity, that the the Reich population could workably do it (doubtful at best. He would have had to make his totalitarian control of Germans far more intrusive than OTL, and settling Germans in the east would have been economically inefficient, especially if he exterminated native populations). He also believed the Soviet peoples were so ultimately helpless that he could be as cruel as he wanted at no cost.
 

perfectgeneral

Donor
Monthly Donor
Had Hitler gone east and the static lines with France been completed...

Would The Commonwealth and USA have contributed to the Soviet war effort through Lend/Lease?
Would Japan prefer to take on an unsupported USSR than an un-distracted USA?
 
I see a British-German allegiance a little far-fetched. However, a Soviet-German one I can see. No matter, Hitler would probably move either southward (Balkan Peninsula) or northward (Denmark and Norway: for racial supremacy), trying to conquer as much as possible without bringing Britain/France into the war.
 

General Zod

Banned
I see a British-German allegiance a little far-fetched. However, a Soviet-German one I can see. No matter, Hitler would probably move either southward (Balkan Peninsula) or northward (Denmark and Norway: for racial supremacy), trying to conquer as much as possible without bringing Britain/France into the war.

Why would Hitler ever want to maintain the pseudo-alliance of convenience with USSR long-term ? He regarded Russia as the worst enemy of the Reich. he would rather redouble the efforts to win the UK to an anti-bolshevik unofficial partnership. And if the UK has let him get Czechoslovakia and Poland, he's already halfway here. Establishing a political-econimical sphere of influence on the minor states of Eastern Europe was his other brief-term strategy, once the czechs and poles were dealt with. He will surely keep these efforts going on, while he builds up the armed forces for confrontation with Russia. Now, getting the UK interested into something akin to an effective alliance, instead of benevolent neutrality would be rather harder, and would require the URSS to turn openly menacing. Now, if there is no British-German war, and Russia makes moves on Finland, Romania, and maybe Persia...
 

burmafrd

Banned
More time for France would have never mattered. They did have good weapons, tanks and planes; but the infrastructure to support them was terrible, the tactics and leadership horrendous, and the political situation was even worse.
 
Hitler may have won WW2 if he had gone east first. Quite honestly if he had left Czechoslovakia alone he would have been able to take Poland without getting France and the UK into the war. Both France and the UK wanted to avoid war at all costs and only committed to fight once it became clear Hitler was going to force a war with them no mater what.

1938 would have been an ideal time to invade Russia (Purges, massive instability). It would have taken 2 or 3 years but the odds are good that they would have conquered most of Russia.
 

burmafrd

Banned
Except that without massive changes there is no way the German military was in shape to go after the USSR even with the purges and everything else in 1938. Just the scale of the undertaking and the manpower needed is beyond Germany of 1938 (in OTL). Also its not mentioned much but the Italians and other countries supplied a lot of troops and help that allowed the german forces to do what they did; in 1938 Germany would be pretty much alone going after Russia. Now if they made a deal with Poland, and maybe Turkey as well, its more possible.
 
Another strategy for the British Government would have been to allow Hitler Poland, encourage him over the SU then fund both sides in the hope that they grind each other into the ground, giving one side larger grants if it loses any ground.

Britain gets richer, France and the low countries remain free and the totalitarian states destroy themselves.

Eventually once the Soviets reach the original border between German and Soviet forces in Poland, declare war on Germany. That way you get the same outcome as OTL, except Britain and France are not bankrupted.
 
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