WI: The Danzig Corridor is never taken from Germany

So, how about the Poles get alternate corridor in area of eastern part of East Prussia, from the start? With population exchange?

With right to use Danzig for say next 5-10 years, until they make the port and railway in new area.
 
I am pretty sure twenty five years of butterflies would influence Hitler if he even makes it to the same posting

Undoubtedly so, but to describe the Danzig issue as a "spark" is rather misleading when the Nazis were hell bent on starting a war regardless of any individual grievance.
 
Since the Nazis coming to power was not dependent on the Danzig Corridor in any real way and Hitlers long term plan for Poland being a German heartland having no ethnic Poles in it, as others have said it would only change the excuse to invade. Hitler would probably just claim ethnic Germans were being oppressed similar to the excuse used for the Sudetenland seizure.
 

Deleted member 94680

How did Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria or Switzerland trade without ports? What makes Poland so special that it has to have a port?
 
How did Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria or Switzerland trade without ports? What makes Poland so special that it has to have a port?
On one hand it's due to the river Vistula being the main trade route and on the other hand it's due to the fact that without the port most of the outgoing goods would need to go through Germany.
 

Deleted member 1487

How did Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria or Switzerland trade without ports? What makes Poland so special that it has to have a port?
Hungary was vassalized by Germany because they didn't have a port, Austria could use Italy if Germany was uncooperative, while Switzerland had multiple major neighbors to work with and most traded with their immediate neighbors as I recall. Poland was surrounded by two very hostile neighbors that had territorial claims on her, without a port it was only a matter of time before being economically dominated. See how quickly the Germans got into a customs war with Poland after WW1.
 

Deleted member 94680

Hungary was vassalized by Germany because they didn't have a port, Austria could use Italy if Germany was uncooperative, while Switzerland had multiple major neighbors to work with and most traded with their immediate neighbors as I recall.

Hungary was only vassalised in any meaningful sense in the 30s, after the Great Depression. From what I’ve read anyway. Prior to that, their main issues were a lack of finance and lost territory reducing agriculture and industry.

Poland was surrounded by two very hostile neighbors that had territorial claims on her, without a port it was only a matter of time before being economically dominated. See how quickly the Germans got into a customs war with Poland after WW1.

Fair point.

One wonders why the Versailles peacemakers knowingly left a nation to be surrounded by hostile neighbours and dependent on such a fragile set up.


More I look at it, more I think internationalisation of the Vistula would be a better solution - for all the nations of Central and Eastern Europe.
 
One wonders why the Versailles peacemakers knowingly left a nation to be surrounded by hostile neighbours and dependent on such a fragile set up
Mostly war-weariness. Peace was needed ASAP, the victor's were not strong enough to push for either properly crippling or properly integrating Germany into Europe and so we were left with the peace-of-least-resistance. (Which, I think, actually WAS pretty good given the circumstances.)
 
Seeing as it directly laid the foundations for WWII, it wasn’t that good.
Yeah, but I and other on the board had tried to design a better peace time and time again and we've never reached a satisfying conclusion. Leaner terms usually lead to German domination, harsher terms usually leave the treaty even more unenforceable than it was OTL.
 
You probably need to change the end of the war, either a weaker Allied victory such that both could more or less say it was a draw, an outright draw or very narrow German victory or Germany to lose catastrophically.
 
They could have given Poland parts of Lithuania to get a port.

As was stated before, Lithuania had no port during the time when annexing Lithuania was feasible.

To be specific, besides Klaipėda/Memel, which wouldn't be part of Lithuania until 1923, the only town to the sea was Palanga, a seaside resort town. Poland would have had to turn it into an alt-Gdynia if they needed to utilize the sea. Not impossible (they built Gdynia despite the presence of Danzig/Gdansk primarily because the German-populated port refused to cooperate), but quite a huge investment, and much harder to hold on to without a loyal Polish population as compared to OTL's Polish corridor.
 
How do you give Poland access to the sea without the corridor and Danzig?

The only other option is Internationalisation of the Vistula in the same way the Danube was.

The only other city ports are Riga, which the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had in 1619 but the port structure is not existent from google maps and would need restructuring post WWI. Tallinn is the best but it was never apart of the Commonwealth, but who cares, if the Skyes-Picot agreement can be made anything can happen. However, I can see why they picked Danzig, chunks are taken out of the earth, alternatively, they could have made there own port if they had access to the Baltic through Lithuania or Latvia but this would have been expensive but can be seen in the port of Gdynia. Ironically Gdynia was built in 1926 and that has chunks taken out of the earth as well. Poland built to expand capacity but could only build on the Polish Corridor and not anywhere else like the Gulf of Riga because of their limited access to the sea. Thus they sadly contributed in giving Hitler a port.
 
To be specific, besides Klaipėda/Memel, which wouldn't be part of Lithuania until 1923, the only town to the sea was Palanga, a seaside resort town. Poland would have had to turn it into an alt-Gdynia if they needed to utilize the sea. Not impossible (they built Gdynia despite the presence of Danzig/Gdansk primarily because the German-populated port refused to cooperate), but quite a huge investment, and much harder to hold on to without a loyal Polish population as compared to OTL's Polish corridor.
Lithuania didn't have Palanga, either. It was handed to them by Latvia in 1921-22 border negotiations.
 
How did Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria or Switzerland trade without ports? What makes Poland so special that it has to have a port?
Ports are veeeery important. Though other people have already addressed multiple things, such as who several rivers reaching into Czechoslovakia was internationalized, we can also look to the times of Austria-Hungary. Here we had the Hungarians insisting upon a port within the union, eventually getting a codominioum over Fiume. Such a world, where a kingdom in an empire insists on course of a city with their own technical sub-kingdom, and you end up with that port have ending up in the hands of Italy. Anyways, free trade hadn't been a major thing back in the Interwar period. If the Poles didn't have a port they would also need to rely on German shipbuilders and shipping lines, should they decide to be protectionist.
 
Top