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Ok, how about this scenario

Discussion in 'What If - European Theater - Eastern Front & Balka' started by Dracula, Jul 13, 2019.

  1. Dracula

    Dracula Active Member

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    Everything is equal until September 1st, 1939. Hitler doesn't invade Poland and the idiot Mussolini doesn't go at it with Greece. The Tripartite Pact was signed September 27 1940. The lesser known signatories was Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria,Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Romania.

    Hitler has his invasion route, against Russia, through the Slovakian, Hungarian, and Romanian Corridor. Probably, what's more important is that he hadn't set off any trip wire situations with respect to France and Britain.

    Would France and Britain had gone to war to protect Russia, against Nazi expansion? If France and Britain don't get into war with Hitler, what does FDR do, if Western Europe is not threaten by Nazi Germany? Could Russia have staved off the full attention of the German Wehrmacht and its allies?
     
  2. ColHessler

    ColHessler Member

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    I think he wanted Poland too badly for that to happen. He'd have gone for it, and all that would make your scenario work would be that Britain and France just sit and do nothing. FDR could do nothing also.
     
  3. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    Hungary and Bulgaria allied with Germany because they were threatened by the Soviets, Romania because was invaded by the Soviets.
    Despite being pressured by the Germans Bulgaria maintained diplomatic relations with the USSR all the time during ww2 (and was "rewarded" for that by the Soviet invasion of 1944.)

    Without the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (or rather a Stalin-Hitler pact, in which Hitler gave Stalin large parts of Eastern Europe), without the joint Soviet-Nazi invasion of Poland, the USSR will not be able to threaten any of the minor signatories making the scenario impossible.

    The minor powers weren't really that keen to invade anybody and to cooperate with Germany.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2019
  4. Dracula

    Dracula Active Member

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    Bulgaria maintained diplomatic relations with the USSR all the time during ww2.
    Under this scenario, Germany doesn't need Bulgaria as an invasion route, into Greece, because the idiot Mussolini didn't start a war with Greece, that he couldn't finish. Bulgaria would never have been involved, if Hitler had used the Slovakian, Hungarian, and Romanian invasion corridor.



    The minor powers weren't really that keen to invade anybody and to cooperate with Germa
    ny.
    The minor signatories were only important because they allowed access to the Russian border, without ruffling any feathers in London, Washington, and Paris. I don't see them blocking the Wermacht from crossing their territory.
    There is a joke about a WW2 Polish fighter pilot, who had 2 targets. One was a German plane and the other was a Russian plane. Which one did he attack first? The answer was the German plane because business came before pleasure.This brings up another possibility. Historically, Poland hated and feared Russia. Poland and Germany were not kissing cousins either but I wonder, what would have happened, if Hitler had not invaded Poland but had used the S,H, and R corridor and scored big gains. With the right incentives from Hitler, Would Poland have jumped in and joined the German invasion of Russia?
     
  5. Dracula

    Dracula Active Member

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    Sorry, it has been pointed out that this thread should be moved to the Alternative History forum and I agree, that they should be. I will not be making any new comments on these Dracula threads on the Prelude to War forum. If anybody, has any pull with the MODs of WW2, please ask them to move the Dracula Prelude to War threads to Alternative History. Thanks.
     
  6. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    Poland was occupied by Germany for over a hundred years. In the last decades, the conflict turned quite hot and Germans committed some (minor, but in the heat of the conflict it was like genocide) atrocities against Poles. Then post-ww1 Germany waged political and economic war against Poland.
    The result was Polish national mythology and conscience was built on enmity towards Germany and friendship with France (dating over two hundred years btw.)
    So the people themselves wouldn't do it, they wouldn't ally with the Germans, Germany was the evil next door. It wasn't just some unwilling politicians.

    Poland only became seriously anti-Soviet post-1945 after the Soviets conquered and subjugated Poland. Nobody especially hated Russia earlier, both cultures were/are quite friendly towards each other.
    And Polish leaders actually preferred the USSR over the Czarist Russia or any other non-communist Russia. The thinking was the USSR was the lesser evil.
    And Poland recovered (partially) lost earlier territories from Russia and won the war with the USSR. It's hard to be offended if you are the victor.
     
  7. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    Hitler wanted to create Greater Germany (and a world power), to dominate Europe politically (like today only more) but not counterproductively conquer it. He really wasn't keen on conquering others, the Germans even less. So such wanton aggression (alerting the Soviets and giving them time to prepare) was rather out of a question.

    The plan to achieve that was to neutralize (politically) Poland, defeat France, sign a power-sharing peace with Britain. We know that because Hitler revealed his plan to his generals and politicians before the war.

    We don't know anything about his desire to conquer Russia (at least pre-1940). It was Rosenberg who wrote about it in the thirties and nobody else. But Rosenberg wasn't quite normal and everybody knew it. Additionally, Nazi Germany was surprisingly free in comparison with the USSR so it really didn't mean much.

    In 1938 and 1939 the idea was (and we know that as a fact too) that the USSR was going to disintegrate and Germany, Poland, maybe others would pick up the pieces. But nothing ever was said about conquering the USSR, Hitler wasn't that mad.
     
  8. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    Might I suggest you read Mein Kampf.

    It's a tough slog so you might consider using Audible as a alternative.
     
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  9. harolds

    harolds Member

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    No war with Poland, Drac? What about the Danzig Corridor that almost every German wanted back? It separated E. Prussia from the rest of Germany and after the occupation of the Rhineland and the forcible demobilization, was the most detested part of Versailles.
     
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  10. harolds

    harolds Member

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    Just another thought: If Germany did have a go as was suggested in the OP, and it succeeded, then Poland would be surrounded on three sides by Germany. She probably wouldn't want that and would side with the USSR-holding her nose in the process.
     
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  11. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    I've read it, some of its parts several times.
     
  12. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    Poland couldn't defend herself against Germany, surrounded or not, the Poles gave themselves three months at best - so it didn't matter.
    After defeating France, Hitler was going to annex some (relatively small) Polish territories (but not entire Poland) but it was a minor goal in his plan, that could have been gained later and at leisure.

    The USSR was like the Nazis only worse, its goal was to replace capitalism/democracy in Poland with communism, or at least to annex some (quite large) Polish territories. The USSR wasn't going to help Poland (or any other capitalistic country) - communist doctrine said so openly.

    Any military cooperation with the Soviets would mean a loss of independence and freedom.
    The Eastern parts of Poland were communism prone, a mere presence of the Red Army there would lead to revolution. Soviet propaganda was very effective and parasitic, even against educated people - Nazi propaganda only so-so.

    The Germans detested the Danzig Corridor but weren't going to die for it.
    Hitler said publicly many times he was ok with the Corridor, and in 1938 during the almost a-year-long negotiations with the Poles never demanded it.
     
  13. harolds

    harolds Member

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    Hmmm...are we on the same page here? Poland would be fighting with Russia against Germany, which is a whole different thing than fighting Germany alone or with the Stalin's help.. The reward of doing so might have resulted in her loss of freedom but I doubt the USSR would have employed the mass extermination policies that the Nazis did.
    [QUOTE="The Germans detested the Danzig Corridor but weren't going to die for it.
    Hitler said publicly many times he was ok with the Corridor, and in 1938 during the almost a-year-long negotiations with the Poles never demanded it.[/QUOTE]

    Hitler said a lot of things-most of them lies. Hitler wanted war and nothing but war! If the Poles had caved and handed over the Corridor, then what pretext would he have for invading them. (I don't think OPERATION CANNED MEAT was on the table then.)
     
  14. Carronade

    Carronade Ace

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    That is, they would only be attacking across the Romanian-Russian border? That's a much narrower frontage, easier for the Soviets to defend, with less scope for maneuver by the Germans.

    Historically the only forces which attacked from Romania were the Romanians themselves and the German 11th Army, about half of which was Romanian or Italian. The main fighting power of Army Group South staged in southern Poland: 6th and 17th Armies and Panzer Group 1. Besides the limited frontage, I suspect the transportation network of the Balkans was not up to moving large mechanized forces or supporting them as they advanced into Russia.

    There was considerable ill will between Hungary and Romania, largely over Transylvania which went back and forth several times, most recently to Hungary in 1940 (a deal brokered by Germany and Italy). The Hungarian contingent was under 17th Army and did not move through Romania. As the front lines moved east, Hungarian and Romanian armies always had German or Italian troops stationed between them. The anti-Bolshevik crusade was not exactly one big happy family.
     
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  15. Carronade

    Carronade Ace

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    I suppose we're also assuming that Stalin does not invade eastern Poland or the Baltic states, so there's no land border between the USSR and East Prussia.
     
  16. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    According to Polish diplomats, conducting the negotiations (and this included the Polish ambassador, widely believed to be the best informed diplomat in Berlin), Hitler was sincere and unsure all that was worthwhile. It was Ribbentrop who was forcing the issue.
    We know that he wanted only Danzig because at the same time Goebbels wrote in his diary:

    He [Hitler] is going to try out a little pressure on the Poles (so they would hand over Danzig like Lithuanians handed over Memel a few days earlier), and he hopes they’ll respond to that.
    But we’re going to have to swallow the bitter pill and guarantee Poland’s other frontiers.
     
  17. wm.

    wm. Well-Known Member

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    Up to 1939, the Soviets murdered millions of their own people, by killing them or denying them food and help (google: "The Holodomor").

    Up to 1939 (in 1938 precisely) they murdered over 110,000 Poles in cold blood (google: "The Polish Operation of the NKVD").

    The Stalinist USSR was genocidal and as evil as it gets. In comparison (with the USSR but other regimes too), the Nazis were still the "nice guys", they murdered some of their political enemies but except that (and the fact it was a totalitarian state) they were known for organizing an Olympic Games and saving innocent people (google: John Rabe).

    It was the Nazis who helped the Chinese, trained and prepared their army for the desperate battle of Shanghai in 1937 (called later Stalingrad on the Yangtze, and the finest hour of the Chinese Army.)
     
  18. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    Since this seems to be a alternate history topic, thread has been moved to a more appropriate area.

    Carry on.
     
  19. green slime

    green slime Member

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    There is some serious reinterpretation of reality going on.

    "Unfortunately, a policy towards Poland, whereby the East was to be Germanized, was demanded by many and was based on the same false reasoning. Here again it was believed that the Polish people could be Germanized by being compelled to use the German language. The result would have been fatal. A people of foreign race would have had to use the German language to express modes of thought that were foreign to the German, thus compromising by its own inferiority the dignity and nobility of our nation.
    It is revolting to think how much damage is indirectly done to German prestige today through the fact that the German patois of the Jews when they enter the United States enables them to be classed as Germans, because many Americans are quite ignorant of German conditions. Among us, nobody would think of taking these unhygienic immigrants from the East for members of the German race and nation merely because they mostly speak German. "

    "What we understand by the word hyper-individualism arises from the fact that our primordial racial elements have existed side by side without ever consolidating. During times of peace such a situation may offer some advantages, but, taken all in all, it has prevented us from gaining a mastery in the world. If in its historical development the German people had possessed the unity of herd instinct by which other peoples have so much benefited, then the German Reich would probably be mistress of the globe today. World history would have taken another course and in this case no man can tell if what many blinded pacifists hope to attain by petitioning, whining and crying, may not have been reached in this way: namely, a peace which would not be based upon the waving of olive branches and tearful misery-mongering of pacifist old women, but a peace that would be guaranteed by the triumphant sword of a people endowed with the power to master the world and administer it in the service of a higher civilization."

    "... we National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. And this action is the only one which, before God and our German posterity, would make any sacrifice of blood seem justified: before God, since we have been put on this earth with the mission of eternal struggle for our daily bread, beings who receive nothing as a gift, and who owe their position as lords of the earth only to the genius and the courage with which they can conquer and defend it; and before our German posterity in so far as we have shed no citizen's blood out of which a thousand others are not bequeathed to posterity. The soil on which some day German generations of peasants can beget powerful sons will sanction the investment of the sons of today, and will some day acquit the responsible statesmen of blood-guilt and sacrifice of the people, even if they are persecuted by their contemporaries."

    "Much as all of us today recognize the necessity of a reckoning with France, it would remain ineffectual in the long run if it represented the whole of our aim in foreign policy. It can and will achieve meaning only if it offers the rear cover for an enlargement of our people's living space in Europe. For it is not in colonial acquisitions that we must see the solution of this problem, but exclusively in the acquisition of a territory for settlement, which will enhance the area of the mother country, and hence not only keep the new settlers in the most intimate community with the land of their origin, but secure for the total area those advantages which lie in its unified magnitude."

    "And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break of the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.
    If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states."
     
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  20. Brutal Truth

    Brutal Truth Active Member

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    I don't think that the OP assumes that Hitler would give up its plans to conquer Poland, only that he would postpone them after the invasion and defeat of the SU. I think this implies that everything is equal until spring, not until 1 September. By then the plans for Poland, and the diplomatic consequences, were already too advanced for a complete change of German plans. We could hypothesize a scenario were Hitler, taking note of the Anglo-German guarantees to Poland, decides not to risk an early conflict with the West and to deal with the Soviets first instead. That, I guess, would imply an invasion in May or June 1940. I don't think that Poland and the Anglo-French would have gone to war to help the Soviets. I think before the summer of 1939 Poland feared the Soviets more than Nazi Germany. And, if Hitler had chosen that path, it's logical that he would have taken diplomatic steps to assuage the Poles and the Westerners. Hitler had waved the olive branch before when it was convenient for his end-goals. The problem, as Carronade noticed, is that the Rumanian-Soviet front was to narrow to allow an all-out invasion. Maybe it could have been feasible if the aim was limited to seize Western Ukraine, but even that seems a risky option. The Germans would have needed to funnel all their forces and their supplies through Hungary and Romania, that doesn't seem very realistic IMO. I think that if Hitler had chosen a Russia-first policy he would have needed to have Poland and possibly the Baltic states on his side, as springboards for the invasion. The Soviet Shaposhnikov plan on November 1938 in fact assumed a war against Germany, Italy and Poland, and possibly Rumania, Finland and the Baltic states in the West, and Japan in the East. But the chances that Germany would convince Poland to join such an alliance and allow the Wehrmacht to move on its territory seem to me unlikely.
     
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