WI the UK did not declare war in 1939?

Only two scenarios I can see for Britain not declaring war:

1-Germany doesn't move into Czechoslovakia in March 1939. This was the moment Nazi Germany openly moved from 'reuniting German peoples' to straight out conquest. Without this they might have had the leeway to move against Poland under the pretext of protecting German citizens.
2-The Poles do something remarkably stupid like launching a pogrom against the Germans in Danzig or threatening East Prussia and thus set themselves up as the aggressor.
 
If they end up doing too well the new British PM declares war on Germany with France and invades Germany.
Would they realy? People always say that, but I doubt it. The west generaly did not give a damn about the Soviet Union. Actualy I think many prefered Nazi Germany over the Soviet Union, at least until the war actualy started.

Ig Britain (and I assume France) would not go to war with Germany over Poland, they most certainly would not go to war over the Soviet Union. They would let both parties duke it out and than let Germany (or the Soviet Union if they manage to win) dominate Eastern Europe.
 

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Would they realy? People always say that, but I doubt it. The west generaly did not give a damn about the Soviet Union. Actualy I think many prefered Nazi Germany over the Soviet Union, at least until the war actualy started.

Ig Britain (and I assume France) would not go to war with Germany over Poland, they most certainly would not go to war over the Soviet Union. They would let both parties duke it out and than let Germany (or the Soviet Union if they manage to win) dominate Eastern Europe.
The West wouldn't do it to save Stalin, rather it would just be to topple Hitler before he got too powerful from beating Stalin; best to stab your enemy in the back when he's fully distracted killing your other enemy. Plus the political scene would make it impossible to sit still while Germany invaded another country and became that much more powerful, especially as Chamberlain would NOT be PM after failing to support Poland. Politically it was impossible to do so and after planning on giving a speech in March 1939 about Hitler's violation of Munich saying it wasn't a big deal he found out on the way that he would be lynched if he said it to the angry crowd at the venue and had to write a new speech on the fly taking a hard line against Hitler. The May 1939 guarantee to Poland was a political necessity for him to keep his job after doing nothing over the annexation of rump Czechoslovakia in March.
 
So, they betray Poland and then offer an alliance to Belgium, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, saying:

'Honestly, this time, we will protect you!'

And they believe them why? :confused:

They thought that Hitler would probably not go after them (which he did).
 
Poland had disappeared from the maps of Europe for some 150 years. They were not about to peacefully allow any action that promoted that happening again.

Not when the possibility of stopping or discouraging Hitler appeared to exist.

Um, no. The Nazis had a very specific program for dealing with Jews in countries which they did not specifically control.

In this case:

First, seize Jews of Hungarian, Italian, and Bulgarian ancestry outside of these nations' national borders.

Second, have these three countries hand over all foreign Jewish refugees in their countries' borders and hand them over to the Nazis. Locals keep the property. Get it?

Third, where willing: Have the local fascists round up Jews in neighboring occupied territories (frex Yugoslavia, Romania, and Greece) to get their own hands directly dirty in the Holocaust

Fourth, demand that they force the "Nazification" of their countries in terms of forcing them to adopt all the standard Nuremburg Laws against the Jews of their own nationality within their own borders

Fifth, demand their Jews' property be seized and the people sent to the ghettoes

Sixth, demand deportation of the individual Jewish native nationals to "Nazi German custody".

Only Finland said a flat out no. The less said about Romania's record the better.:( Hungary's record is mixed.

The Bulgarians protected BULGARIAN Jews most emphatically, but sent off not only non-Bulgarian Jews but their own army deported the Jews of Thrace and Macedonia. The only reason the Nazis didn't occupy Sofia to seize Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews was because the Red Army got there first:cool:

However, OTL shows that even if he did ultimately mean to exterminate them, he was not in a particular hurry about it and was often ready to wait for a "better" moment to press some of his claims.

:confused: Could you please expound on this idea?:confused::confused::confused::confused:

My point is basically that Hitler was prepared to make significant tactical concessions to a much greater extent than many give him credit for. I imagine that in a universe where there was no Ribbentrop-Molotov pact for some reason, alt-AH.commers suggesting such a possibility might be told that Hitler would never make any agreement with Slavs because then he wouldn't be Hitler, and so on.
 
Not when the possibility of stopping or discouraging Hitler appeared to exist.

By cutting a deal with him, or fighting him?

However, OTL shows that even if he did ultimately mean to exterminate them, he was not in a particular hurry about it and was often ready to wait for a "better" moment to press some of his claims.
No. The Holocaust had a priority in Nazi Germany that exceeded even that applied by the USA to the Manhattan Project. All that rolling stock...

My point is basically that Hitler was prepared to make significant tactical concessions to a much greater extent than many give him credit for. I imagine that in a universe where there was no Ribbentrop-Molotov pact for some reason, alt-AH.commers suggesting such a possibility might be told that Hitler would never make any agreement with Slavs because then he wouldn't be Hitler, and so on.
Problem: Post-Munich it had become impossible to believe that Hitler would make any agreement that he would not betray with no notice the instant it suited him to do so. This was absolutely apparent to all save the very worst of the now (post-invasion of Czechoslovakia) thoroughly discredited Appeasers like Chamberlain, Lady Astor, Horace Wilson, US Ambassador Joe Kennedy, and Charles Lindberg. Oh yeah, and Stalin:rolleyes:
 
Hitler invades France through Belgium and Netherlands in 1940 anyways.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler lays into the French as much as he lays into the Russians, calling the French the natural enemies of the Germans, and stating flatly that they'd have to be crushed before Germany could achieve her destiny. Militarily, he actually portrays Russia as an afterthought - a bankrupt regime of cultureless barbarians squatting in the ruins of a civilization whose only greatness was transplanted onto it by its now usurped ruling class (Hitler was fond of pointing to all the German blood in the Czars).

Hitler was also fully aware of the increasing pace of French re-armament, something he harangued his generals with repeatedly in October of 1939 when they pleaded with him for more time to rest and plan. Basically, so long as France (and Britain) was mobilizing and re-arming as they were from late-1938 onwards, Hitler was always going to push to attack them as soon as possible.

A German invasion of the USSR in 1940 would go vastly much more poorly then IOTL. The narrower front and a still intact Stalin line allows the Soviets to counter-concentrate vastly more forces in better positions while Germany, without the loot from Western Europe and imports of material from it's commercial agreement with the USSR, would be operating with only a fraction of the logistical assets they had in 1941 and correspondingly only able to reliably supply their forces a fraction of the distance.

However it was politically impossible due to public pressure on Chamberlain;
It was not just public pressure that led Chamberlain to guarantee Poland, but that after Czechoslovakia Chamberlain personally realized that any agreement with Hitler was not worth the paper it was written on and he had to be contained. The man said as much at the cabinet meeting of March 18th, 1939:

"The Prime Minister said that up till a week ago we had proceeded on the assumption that we should be able to continue with our policy of getting on to better terms with the Dictator Powers, and that although those powers had aims, those aims were limited...He had now come definitely to the conclusion that Herr Hitler's attitude made it impossible to continue on the old basis...No reliance could be placed on any of the assurances given by the Nazi leaders...he regarded his speech [in Birmingham of March 17] as a challenge to Germany on the issue whether or not Germany intended to dominate Europe by force. It followed that if Germany took another step in the direction of dominating Europe, she would be accepting the challenge".

Oh yeah, and Stalin

Eh, given his actions in the lead-up to Barbarossa it is pretty clear that Stalin was the last man in Europe to realize that Hitler simply was not a man to trust. At least not so long as Hitler remained at war with Britain that is.
 
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The British could tell the poles to hand over Danzig to the Germans. If Britain can stall this till October, (Have a inquiry blah blah blah) The Germans will wait till the start of 1940 to invade Poland. Simples.
 
Any delay to Britain and France declaring war favours Britain and France

Chamberlain was not appeasing Germany - he was stalling for time

Britain and France were not ready for war in 1938 or 1939 hell they were not ready in 1940 - they would have lost nothing by delaying a declaration - and gained much

How much treasure was lost in 1939 and early 1940 and for what?

They had not enough Escorts not enough planes not enough tanks not enough artillery not enough trained soldiers, sailors and airmen.

The Tonnage lost to enemy action in Merchant shipping alone would probably be worth it....

From Sept - Dec 1939 - 158 British Merchant Vessels were lost during this period along with 17 allied and 148 Neutral ships = about 1 million tons (plus all the tons they would never carry again)

In 1940 - 728 British, 201 Allied and 416 Neutral Merchant Vessels lost = about 4.5 Million Tons

So Assuming a declaration of war at some point in 1940 - that's an awful lot of merchant Marine still plying their trade, cargo not lost and hulls not creating new marine habitats.
 
Any delay to Britain and France declaring war favours Britain and France

Chamberlain was not appeasing Germany - he was stalling for time.

To a large degree, yes. A lot of the excoriation of Chamberlain is built on shaky historical counterfactuals. A lot of the people who consider him a rank coward assume that Germany would have quickly lost a war in 1938. Given the actual details of the military balance, and Czech dispositions this is far from certain. It needs to be re-iterated that in 1938 British and French military leaders were shrilly informing their political masters that a war with Germany would be a slaughter as the endless Teutonic hordes overran the ill prepared armies of the democracies. This was an exaggeration, but the best information the politicians had from their military experts at the time was that if it came to war France and Britain would lose, and lose badly.

In fact Germany wasn't as powerful in 1938 as she would be in 1940, but then, neither were the Allies. While contemporary fears were overblown, in many ways the military balance was still more favorable for Germany in 1938 since she was well into her own mobilization while her enemies were just starting their own. Certainly Czechoslovakia would have been doomed. German military studies of her defences after the occupation found them ill equipped and positioned in ways that left them vulnerable to German artillery, while the historical Czech deployments would have played into German hands and likely seen most of their army destroyed near the border. Arguments that postulate the heroic Czechs repulsing the Germans in a bloody slaughter are based on rosy pre-war assessments by military officers who looked favourably on rows of Czech fixed fortresses, and had no concept of the kind of fighting WWII would bring.

While the Allies may well have had a better chance to beat Germany in 1938, this would have been largely because a war then might have brought the Soviet Union in against Germany as well. Munich's biggest disaster was that it convinced Stalin to come to an accommodation with Hitler. Even so, a war starting in 1938 would still have been long and bloody, and if the Soviets had flinched (their opposition to Hitler alongside the Western Allies was hardly guaranteed, and in any event geography would present some tricky obstacles) then France and Britain could have found themselves in a conflict just as terrible as the historical one.

We might then be lamenting how a horrible war ravaged Europe only a generation after WWI because European leaders still hadn't learned to get together and talk out their differences.

The Czechs were doomed in 1938 if Germany pushed the issue militarily. Czech defense policy (like the Poles a year later) rested on the assumption that the French would launch an offensive to save them, which was never, ever going to happen. Chamberlain was aware a war against Hitler would be a long and bloody affair, one for which the British were not yet ready (a feeling exacerbated by British overestimation of German power), and one which the tottering British Empire likely would not survive. Since his priority was the preservation of Britain's Empire, that basically made the decision for him - avoid a general war on the Continent at all costs, even if those costs included large parts of Czechoslovakia. But Chamberlain didn't blindly cling to the hope of appeasement. Even before Munich he'd begun an expensive military build up, and once it became clear that that wasn't enough for Hitler, Chamberlain committed the British to the path of war with Germany.

Chamberlain's actions at Munich showed a fundamental misappreciation of Hitler, which was ultimately corrected by Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia, but a sound understanding of the nature (and weakness) of British power. Churchill was the inverse - a sound understanding of Hitler's nature, but a complete misunderstanding of what the war was likely to cost the British. Keeping in mind that Churchill was still an imperialist and never intended WWII to also be the death knell of the Empire, but that's exactly what it meant.
 
By cutting a deal with him, or fighting him?

By fighting Germany off (which was possible with Allied help), or discouraging it from attacking a strong coalition. With the west claiming to support Poland, both those options at least appeared to exist. With the west proclaiming its disinterest, it would be obvious that none of those possibilities would exist, leaving only two options: peacefully accept an unpleasant deal, or fight and be treated even worse.

No. The Holocaust had a priority in Nazi Germany that exceeded even that applied by the USA to the Manhattan Project. All that rolling stock...

But not high enough of a priority to antagonize Italy or Hungary over it while the war still continued, which is what we were originally discussing.

Problem: Post-Munich it had become impossible to believe that Hitler would make any agreement that he would not betray with no notice the instant it suited him to do so. This was absolutely apparent to all save the very worst of the now (post-invasion of Czechoslovakia) thoroughly discredited Appeasers like Chamberlain, Lady Astor, Horace Wilson, US Ambassador Joe Kennedy, and Charles Lindberg. Oh yeah, and Stalin:rolleyes:

It was impossible to consider him trustworthy at that point, but untrustworthy is not the same as irrational. It was still possible to believe that he was an opportunist who would conquer anything weak (like the rump Czechoslovakia) and would bluff and posture, but ultimately not want to fight a war with a large coalition or suddenly turn around and invade the USSR before finishing the war with Britain.

The British could tell the poles to hand over Danzig to the Germans. If Britain can stall this till October, (Have a inquiry blah blah blah) The Germans will wait till the start of 1940 to invade Poland. Simples.

Hitler was going to get Poland, either as a client or as a conquered territory, in 1939. He would not have cared about Britain's opinion. Stalin was the only one with the power to prevent both these things from happening (by not signing the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact).
 
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By fighting Germany off (which was possible with Allied help), or discouraging it from attacking a strong coalition. With the west claiming to support Poland, both those options at least appeared to exist. With the west proclaiming its disinterest, it would be obvious that none of those possibilities would exist, leaving only two options: peacefully accept an unpleasant deal, or fight and be treated even worse.

The Poles were neither stupid nor naive. They knew what would happen if you fought tanks with cavalry. And just how could they have been treated "worse"?

But not high enough of a priority to antagonize Italy or Hungary over it while the war still continued, which is what we were originally discussing.

That was a logistical issue of going after easier targets first while there was a war on. Its not like Italy and Hungary contained a vast number of the percentile of European Jewry. If somehow Poland had been a German Axis ally and her people somehow not as anti-semitic as the were OTL then Hitler would have had some hard choices to make. But he would have made them in favor of the Holocaust. Even if it meant initially making more full fledged death camps in Germany over those in Poland.

It was impossible to consider him trustworthy at that point, but untrustworthy is not the same as irrational. It was still possible to believe that he was an opportunist who would conquer anything weak (like the rump Czechoslovakia) and would bluff and posture, but ultimately not want to fight a war with a large coalition or suddenly turn around and invade the USSR before finishing the war with Britain.

That's a very thin line of reasoning though.

Hitler was going to get Poland, either as a client or as a conquered territory, in 1939. He would not have cared about Britain's opinion. Stalin was the only one with the power to prevent both these things from happening (by not signing the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact).

Stalin and Hitler both vied with one another for most irrational. Unless you want to consider the Japanese warlords.
 
The Poles were neither stupid nor naive. They knew what would happen if you fought tanks with cavalry. And just how could they have been treated "worse"?

Doing Germany's fighting for it would be bad, but it would sure beat extermination on an industrial scale.

(Why do I think the earlier German "proposals" for Poland to help Germany in its wars in return for not being anihilated could have been taken seriously? Well, if Hitler wanted to destroy Poland as soon as possible, what reason would he have had to make them at all?)

That was a logistical issue of going after easier targets first while there was a war on. Its not like Italy and Hungary contained a vast number of the percentile of European Jewry.

Hungary was a very easy target, and contained close to a million Jews.

If somehow Poland had been a German Axis ally and her people somehow not as anti-semitic as the were OTL then Hitler would have had some hard choices to make. But he would have made them in favor of the Holocaust. Even if it meant initially making more full fledged death camps in Germany over those in Poland.

FYI the existence of antisemitism does not mean toleration for mass murder.

That's a very thin line of reasoning though.

Why?

Stalin and Hitler both vied with one another for most irrational. Unless you want to consider the Japanese warlords.

Not at all, despite Stalin's hubristic belief that his grand plan of pitting Germany and the west against each other and then jumping in to pick up the pieces at exactly the right moment could be expected to go as planned.
 
Doing Germany's fighting for it would be bad, but it would sure beat extermination on an industrial scale.

IF they knew that was coming, which they didn't. Besides, whatever "deals" might be made, Hitler had Poles on his Death List right below pornographers, homosexuals, communists, Jews, and Gypsies in that order.:eek::mad:

(Why do I think the earlier German "proposals" for Poland to help Germany in its wars in return for not being anihilated could have been taken seriously? Well, if Hitler wanted to destroy Poland as soon as possible, what reason would he have had to make them at all?)

Internal political domestic consumption. Same reason for the "Polish Raid on the German border radio station" bit. Or for that matter, the "mysterious 7 artillery shells" raining into Lake Lagoda "from Finland":rolleyes: No one in the outside world was expected to take such claptrap seriously. These events were solely meant to impress the people of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, respectively.

Hungary was a very easy target, and contained close to a million Jews.

Yes, but the Hungarian Army made up for a lot of the internal security within occupied Russia and (IIRC) Yugoslavia and Poland. It would be very...messy, to put it mildly if Germany were to try to occupy Hungary with the Heer still deep in the USSR and vast tracts of "Axis-Occupied Europe" being occupied by the ally you are trying to occupy yourself.

I think we really are in agreement over why Hitler couldn't go after the NATIVE Jews of Hungary and Italy. Non-native/refugees were another matter, sadly.:( And of course the Finnish Jews (all 2000 of them) were untouchable.
 
FYI the existence of antisemitism does not mean toleration for mass murder.

FYI there is a world of difference between actual first hand knowledge of the gas chambers and ovens and using one's personal anti-Semitism to turn two blind eyes and two deaf ears to the horrors of the ghettoes and forced deportation.

Not at all, despite Stalin's hubristic belief that his grand plan of pitting Germany and the west against each other and then jumping in to pick up the pieces at exactly the right moment could be expected to go as planned.

Only if Stalin never read Mein Kampf. Which I'm beginning to think no politician in the USSR or the West ever did, save for Winston Churchill! usertron2020 in facetious mode:rolleyes:
 

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2-The Poles do something remarkably stupid like launching a pogrom against the Germans in Danzig...

The Poles did not control Danzig; the Polish (trade) Customs zone did include Danzig, but that's as far as it went. Danzig was a 'Free City' under League of Nations authority, with its own legislature, police and security forces. By 1938 the legislature was dominated by the local Nazi Party, a Swastika flew over the town hall, the Prussian Gestapo operated freely in the city and the local 'defence force' - which was strictly illegal - was well equipped with German weapons including several artillery pieces.
 
The Poles did not control Danzig; the Polish (trade) Customs zone did include Danzig, but that's as far as it went. Danzig was a 'Free City' under League of Nations authority, with its own legislature, police and security forces. By 1938 the legislature was dominated by the local Nazi Party, a Swastika flew over the town hall, the Prussian Gestapo operated freely in the city and the local 'defence force' - which was strictly illegal - was well equipped with German weapons including several artillery pieces.

Like I said; the Poles do something remarkably stupid...
 
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