WI Hitler keeps his end of the Munich agreement

Yeah, another Hitler thread but I've been wondering this for some time. What if Hitler had actually kept to the terms agreed to at Munich and did not occupy rump Czechoslovakia, at least through the end of 1939? This does not preclude him from demanding Polish territory.
 
A larger portion of the worlds leaders remain in denial of nazi aggression & threat, or committed to appeasement. The March 1939 abrogation of the Munich agreement was one of several critical events that strengthened the war factions. The next seminal event would be if Poland is invaded. Post war it became clear there was no 'Polish Crisis' in the previous understanding. The demands ect.. from nazi Germany were a staged sham concealing the intent to destroy Poland. Assuming nazi Germany continues with this intent & invades Poland as in OTL, then a significant portions of the French & British Allied will admit the danger and support war with Germany. Franco/British DoW could be delayed a few days or weeks opposed to OTL.
 
Yeah, another Hitler thread but I've been wondering this for some time. What if Hitler had actually kept to the terms agreed to at Munich and did not occupy rump Czechoslovakia, at least through the end of 1939? This does not preclude him from demanding Polish territory.

If Hitler is going to risk a war over Poland, he will want the arms industry of rump-Czechoslovakia, especially the Škoda Works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Škoda_Works
 
A larger portion of the worlds leaders remain in denial of nazi aggression & threat, or committed to appeasement. The March 1939 abrogation of the Munich agreement was one of several critical events that strengthened the war factions. The next seminal event would be if Poland is invaded. Post war it became clear there was no 'Polish Crisis' in the previous understanding. The demands ect.. from nazi Germany were a staged sham concealing the intent to destroy Poland. Assuming nazi Germany continues with this intent & invades Poland as in OTL, then a significant portions of the French & British Allied will admit the danger and support war with Germany. Franco/British DoW could be delayed a few days or weeks opposed to OTL.
If it is delayed long enough that Poland is clearly collapsing, the most likely event would be a “next time”.
 
If Hitler keeps, at least temporarily, the Munich agreement, how does this affect British, French (and even American) rearmament. Britain and France accelerated their rearmament after Munich collapsed. While the Battle of France was obviously not positively affected by any such acceleration what about the Battle of Britain? Would the air defenses of the UK been where they were OTL if Munich had not collapsed or would they have been just enough "delayed" so that the Luftwaffe does better? The sea mammal is still impossible, but if the BoB is going significantly more the way of the Luftwaffe what does that result in. Also, absent the Munich betrayal what about British morale/resolve when Hitler moves against Poland. Suppose Hitler demands a change in the Polish corridor/Danzig but now he has "kept" his agreements??
 
Didn't Hitler initially demand transit rights (dedicated German-only railways and autobahn) across the Polish Corridor and reunification with Danzig?

In a scenario where he has not swallowed up rump Czechoslovakia, this might be his pitch

The Poles would obviously fear that there was more, and be right, but lack the obvious evidence

Another note is that Germany's swallowing up of Bohemia-Moravia was accompanied by independence for Slovakia (to be a close ally of Germany), until then post-Munich autonomous within the rump Czechoslovak state, so for this purpose the Slovak troops, and Slovak launching grounds, are not available for any general German/allied attack on Poland

How it affects the Soviet Union is more complex. With Munich apparently successful, in and within itself, would the British and French be even courting the USSR? And would Germany think it necessary to one-up them, if they think they can get what they want through another negotiated settlement?
 
If Hitler keeps, at least temporarily, the Munich agreement, how does this affect British, French (and even American) rearmament. Britain and France accelerated their rearmament after Munich collapsed.

Correct, they made a effort to accelerate. However The Munich Crisis was a important wake up call it self & the subsequent agreement was not used as a excuse to stand down. Internally within Chamberlains cabinet the agreement that defused the crisis was seen as buying time for the already started rearmament program to produce results. As with the French cabinet Chamberlains government took seriously the pronouncements of their Marshals that their nations were near defenseless against the German military might of 1938. Rearmament programs had already been kicked off when the nazi government began building the Wehrmacht in 1934, those were added to after the Rhineland occupation in 1936, and the Austrian Anschluss of 1937. At the end of the 1920s the French made the decision to invest 7,000,000,000+ Francs in a defense system to counter a hypothetical German army of less than 500,000 light infantry. Even before the Munich Crisis France had laid out a rearmament program to prepare for total war against German NLT 1942.

Remember that the Spanish war & Japanese invasion of China were concurrent to all this. The French and British leaders had repeated emerging examples of just what modern warfare implied & what was really required for defense. While the electorate was increasingly terrified and demoralized by the threat the leaders took with increasing urgency the proposition that war would be underway in 2-3 years.

While the Battle of France was obviously not positively affected by any such acceleration what about the Battle of Britain? Would the air defenses of the UK been where they were OTL if Munich had not collapsed or would they have been just enough "delayed" so that the Luftwaffe does better?

Not really the funds, orders, and schedules were in place in the Autumn/Winter of 1938. It had been a nasty shock to the cabinet & Parliament when told the RAF could not defend London from air attack. The near panic among the leadership before the Munich meeting led to determination to restore military superiority if at all possible, and to the decision to buy time with Czech territory. This applied as much to the French government as the British.

... Suppose Hitler demands a change in the Polish corridor/Danzig but now he has "kept" his agreements??

One example hardly offsets all the other broken agreements. The abrogation of reparations payments, rearmament, reoccupation of the Rhineland, the Austrian annexation, abrogation of economic agreements like the Young Plan. The nazi government from the start was really good at reassuring their intent to honor treaties & agreements, then a few months, or even weeks later tossing another "scrap of paper" in the waste can. In the weeks leading up to 1 September 1939 there had been reassurances that renegotiation of the German/Polish issues was sought, nothing more. Then abruptly what could only be described as a war of destruction was launched.

As you know the German demands were far more than the Danzig corridor, that Polish government agreed to negotiate it all, and the Anglo French governments backed that willingness to negotiate. The Poles halted the mobilization of their armies reservists, & otherwise avoided some key actions that would have been seen as provocative. Simply that the German armies attacked at all was a shock to the Anglo/French governments, and about everyone else. That from day one the attack was not a limited one to gain some bargaining power was a further indicator to the Allies. Both Britain and France had enough intelligence on the Wehrmacht to understand forces sufficient to destroy Poland were attacking, not something limited to just defeating the Polish army and pushing it back a bit. If there were any residual doubts at the end of the first week the air attacks on Warsaw & other cities further dispersed the idea of a limited negotiating gambit.
 
...
How it affects the Soviet Union is more complex. With Munich apparently successful, in and within itself, would the British and French be even courting the USSR? And would Germany think it necessary to one-up them, if they think they can get what they want through another negotiated settlement?

First the Soviet/Allied talks were more at the instigation of the Soviet government. The Soviet leaders hoped to build a solid alliance on a vague sort of working relationship with France that had sputtered along for over a decade. The French cabinet was lukewarm & Chamberlains group had too many anti Communists. Either way there would be similar low level diplomatic discussions, and those would fail at the behest of the anti Communists in the Brit and French governments.

From early on Hitler preferred the destruction of Poland. Enslavement of the Slavs was one of his more prominent fantasies. He would have postponed had the Allies been strong enough to deter in 1939, but the opportunity to reach a accommodation with the USSR for the destruction of Poland was just to obvious for Hitler. In 1938 he negotiated the Munich Agreement largely because his Marshals told him the Wehrmacht was too weak to properly defend Germany. (Where else did we hear this 'too weak' line in 1938?)
 
The best case scenario for Hitler's rep would be to die just after Munich. He would have gone down in history as a canny, controversial, anti-semitic nationalist who unified Germany but not as a genocidal madman because that hadn't happened yet and wouldn't happen at all in TTL. If whoever took over was the same kind of genocidal loon Hitler was they would take the blame. You might have people wondering what would have happened if Hitler remained in power instead of the madman who took over.
 
Well, most of the likely successors qualified as crazy on way or another. So, pick your poison.

My long odds bet is Heydrich. Perhaps the nastiest & most capable of the lot.
 
Well, most of the likely successors qualified as crazy on way or another. So, pick your poison.

My long odds bet is Heydrich. Perhaps the nastiest & most capable of the lot.

Goering is more likely IMO. In any case yes, they were pretty much all raving loons on top. However, with Hitler dead they would take the blame..
 
[QUOTE="Carl Schwamberger, post: 18596141, member:

One example hardly offsets all the other broken agreements. The abrogation of reparations payments, rearmament, reoccupation of the Rhineland, the Austrian annexation, abrogation of economic agreements like the Young Plan. The nazi government from the start was really good at reassuring their intent to honor treaties & agreements, then a few months, or even weeks later tossing another "scrap of paper" in the waste can.
.[/QUOTE]
All these examples are TOV related which the Nazis had as publicized policy to destroy. Does not destroy credibility that the did that.
Rhineland occupation was breaking the Locarno treaty, but with the claim that the Franco-Soviet defense treaty broke it first.
 
Top