Nazi Germany got its way about Poland

[eurofed]

My own version of a classic PoD: WI Nazi Germany was able to get things the way it preferred about Poland in 1939?

PoD is Hitler narrowly escaped assassination in Nov. 1938. Such a close brush with death and time spent recovering from wounds caused a moderate change in his personality. He became more patient, cautious, and calculating, although he remained just as ruthless and his ambitions as grandiose as ever. He realized he needed to leave Czechoslovakia alone for a while and pretend to respect the Munich Agreement to make Britain and France support Germany's claims on Poland.

So he picked a different, more competent Foreign Minister (he realized Ribbentrop was terrible at his job) and started a diplomatic offensive to try and get international support for Germany's claims on Danzig. He made the pro-Nazi government of the Free City publicly agitate for union with the Reich. At the same time, the Germans tried to persuade the Poles to join into an anti-Soviet alliance.

Since Germany was apparently respecting the Munich accords and hence seemed trustworthy, Britain and France remained committed to appeasement and the British showed no willingness to give a military guarantee to the Poles. Nonetheless, Poland remained hostile to Germany's requests and proffers. A frustrated Hitler decided to swallow his anti-Communist scruples and make a deal with the USSR. He also duplicitously planned to use Soviet expansionism both as a tool to fulfill Germany's own claims and a bogeyman to pull Eastern Europe into the German sphere of influence.

Negotiations proved fruitful since the Soviets were eager for an opportunity to recover what Russia had lost after WWI. The two powers were able to agree on a deal to divide Eastern Europe in spheres of influence. As part of the agreement, Germany and the USSR delivered an ultimatum to the Poles to move their borders to the 1914 line and the Curzon Line, respectively. The British and the French were frightened at this overt show of German-Soviet cooperation but also unwilling to fight a Nazi-Soviet alliance unless forced to, even more so to do so for the sake of Poland's territorial integrity.

They acknowledged the new strategic situation made Eastern Europe a lost cause, so they wrote it off and declared their strategic interests stopped at the Rhine and the Turkish Straits. The Poles realized their situation was hopeless and accepted the ultimatum. Germany annexed its 1914 territories and the USSR got the Kresy. As part of the deal, the Germans seized Poland's gold reserves and expelled the vast majority of the Polish population in the annexed territories. A minority was allowed to stay since it was deemed of German blood or otherwise racially suitable for forced Germanization. They also dumped their Jewish minority from the annexed territories and the rest of the Reich into Poland. The Polish areas annexed by the USSR were forcibly Sovietized.

The Germans covertly cooperated with Hungary to support separatist agitation of minorities within Czechoslovakia. Both powers picked it as an excuse to threaten intervention and force the Czechoslovaks to accept partition of their state. Germany annexed Bohemia-Moravia as a protectorate and seized its gold reserves and industrial resources. Hungary did the same with Slovakia. The USSR got Carpathian Ruthenia. Hungary eagerly joined an alliance with Germany and put pressure on Romania with Berlin's support to cede part of Transylvania. The USSR made its own move when it delivered the Romanians an ultimatum for the cession of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Romania deemed its situation hopeless and accepted Hungarian and Soviet demands. Hungary annexed Northern Transylvania and Crisana, while the USSR got the areas it had claimed.

The USSR delivered ultimatums for various territorial and military concessions to Finland and the Baltic states, and these nations reluctantly complied. Soon afterwards, the Soviets escalated their demands to terms that meant annexation in short order. The Baltics capitulated, the Finns tried to resist; however their previous concessions made their military situation bad enough that in a few weeks of fighting they were forced to surrender. The brief war showed the Red Army had various serious flaws that significantly delayed Soviet victory. Ultimate success persuaded Stalin these initial setbacks were the fault of saboteurs and he ordered a new row of purges in the Red Army. The USSR annexed Finland and the Baltic states.

At the same time, tensions between the Soviets and the Japanese at the outskirts of Manchuria escalated into a border war. The Red Army had a definite weapons and doctrine superiority on the IJA but the disruption caused by the war with Finland and the recent purges balanced the equation enough to turn the conflict into a bloody, exhausting stalemate. Both the Soviets and the Japanese eventually made an unspoken agreement to cease hostilities to reassess the situations. Leaders on both sides soon turned to regard the issue as an unfinished business to be settled in the future as circumstances dictated.

The British and the French were appalled at the situation in Eastern Europe but they deemed it beyond their help as long as the alliance of convenience between the totalitarian powers stood strong. They sent feelers to Italy for a possible alliance. However Mussolini decided he might get better terms by staying true to Germany as long as Berlin would support Italian ambitions in the Balkans. Despite his anti-Communist ideological commitments, he realized that if Hitler could put them aside for the sake of convenience and profit, he too could do the same. The Germans proved open-minded to Italian feelers for a Balkans deal and agreed to joint action against Yugoslavia since Hitler was eager to keep Italy on his side. Moreover he realized this course would allow him to expand influence in Eastern Europe by eliminating another pro-Entente spawn of Versailles. However he vetoed an Italian action against Greece as too risky of causing a British intervention.

Italy invaded and annexed Albania as a protectorate and cooperated with Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria to support the separatist agitation of various minorities within Yugoslavia. The fragile Yugoslav state fell into serious instability and the neighbor states picked it as an excuse to intervene and ‘restore order’. The Yugoslav army was quickly overwhelmed and the victor powers imposed a partition of Yugoslavia.

Italy annexed coastal Dalmatia, almost all Adriatic islands, most of Kosovo, the northwestern portion of Macedonia, and half of Slovenia. Germany got the other half of Slovenia and established the Banat as an autonomous area and effective protectorate under control of the local German minority. Hungary annexed the Backa, Baranja, Medimurje, and Prekmurje regions. Bulgaria got most of Macedonia. Croatia became independent as a client state of Germany and Italy and got most of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Montenegro also became independent as a client state of Italy.

Satisfied with their gains and the outcome of their cooperation, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Croatia, and Montenegro formed the Axis bloc. It included a military alliance and a trade pact. Much as Hitler expected, Poland and Romania came to regard cooperation with Germany as the lesser evil option open to them and joined the Axis. Germany sweetened the deal with secret promises of territorial compensations in the East in case of a conflict with the USSR. Bulgaria did not officially join the Axis, mostly to avoid picking a side between it and the USSR, but kept a cooperative stance with Germany and Italy. It exploited the situation to successfully negotiate the restitution of Southern Dobruja from Romania.

Yugoslavia was dismantled and Serbia turned into a rump state that only kept Central Serbia, northern Kosovo, and the eastern portion of Bosnia. An extensive forced population transfer expelled the vast majority of the Serb population from the Axis states into rump Serbia. The Serbian ruling elites tried to salvage the situation by picking a pro-Axis foreign policy, but popular anger for the vast losses the Serbian nation had suffered wrecked their hold on power. A series of coups and uprisings plunged Serbia into civil war. The main contenders were pro-Soviet Communists and ‘Chetnik’ Serbian nationalists and monarchists; the latter showed sympathy for the Entente powers but were open-minded to opportunist cooperation with the Axis against the Reds. A third faction of fascist-militarist overt pro-Axis collaborationists existed as well but was much weaker.

The Serbian civil war at times threatened to spill over in the other ex-Yugoslav states, mostly at the initiative of the Communist insurgents, but pro-Axis governments in the area were ultimately able to contain disorder. This happened because nationalists in the other ex-Yugoslav states often supported the new status quo, while previous ethnic disputes and abrupt collapse of Yugoslavia had discredited the multi-ethnic Yugoslav state solution the Communists supported among the other nationalities. Moreover forced population transfer of Serbs had largely deprived Chetniks and Communists of a sizable support base outside Serbia.

[eurofed]

Besides anti-Communism and a right-wing authoritarian regime, one feature Nazi Germany and its Eastern European allies shared was a strongly hostile attitude towards their Jew and Rom minorities. Moreover, due to the territorial losses and population displacements Poland and Romania had suffered, its leaders were eager to ‘free up space’ in their states by getting rid of such unwanted minorities.

Most importantly, Nazi Germany was always on the lookout for an effective solution for what it regarded as its ‘Jew and Gypsy problem’ and ways to fulfill its ambition to Germanize its annexed territories. While forced population transfers to Poland had effectively settled the issue of the Polish minority in West Prussia, Upper Silesia, and Posen, annexation of Bohemia-Moravia had burdened Germany with a sizable Czech population. Nazi leaders deemed only half of them at most were racially and politically suitable for assimilation and sought for a way to get rid of the rest, much like the Jews and Roma. On the other hand, given peacetime conditions, they deemed systematic extermination of undesirable minorities too much of an economic and diplomatic burden and PR risk.

Thanks to ongoing good relations with the Soviets, they found a solution in a deal with Stalin. According to its terms Germany and its Eastern European allies would transfer their Jew, Rom, and Czech minorities to the USSR, and take the German, Pole, and Romanian people from Soviet territory. The Germans were happy with the deal since they planned to use repatriated ethnic Germans to settle their annexed territories, and made similar deals with the Italians and their Eastern European allies to transfer their German minorities. The Poles and the Romanians were reluctant since they feared the demographic changes would entrench Soviet annexation of their lost territories; however they changed their mind when the Nazi leaders told them in case of a victorious conflict with the USSR the Axis states could always reverse them with a new row of ethnic cleansing.

Stalin was strongly suspicious of ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ minorities such as the Jews and Roma, although he expected displaced Czech refugees cut off from their ancestral homeland might integrate with the other Slav nationalities of the USSR without excessive difficulty. In any case, he reasoned out, the Soviet command economy could always find use for a few millions more of exploitable manpower. At best, if they proved politically reliable, the Soviet state could use them to colonize Siberia and Central Asia; at worst, if they proved troublesome, it could feed them to the gulag system. So he accepted the deal.

The population exchange program between the Axis states and the USSR started in earnest, although the numbers involved and logistic difficulties were such it would take several years for completion. Germany and the Eastern European Axis states were fully engaged; Italy preferred to retain its Jew population, but joined the program as it concerned expulsion of the Roma.

By middle 1940, the leaders of the great powers assessed their countries’ situation and tried to plot out a course for the future. Most of them wavered between various possible alternatives.

The leaders of Britain and France greatly feared the alliance of convenience between the revisionist totalitarian powers (Germany, Russia, and Italy, quite possibly joined by Japan) might get entrenched and engage in a joint effort to dismantle and plunder their empires. The Entente powers reluctantly tried to prepare for such a contingency, although they realized they would be terribly hard-pressed to survive, much less win, this kind of fight. An intervention by America would considerably help to balance the scales, but the American public was still strongly isolationist, so the USA, although sympathetic to the Entente cause, shunned any commitment to military help in case of war.

So the British and the French tried to grasp for an alternative. A few were confident the alliance between fascists and communists was ideologically unnatural and geopolitically instable and would eventually collapse. They suggested the democratic powers should just stand back and encourage the totalitarian powers to fight each other to exhaustion. According to their advice the democratic powers should cling to true neutrality in such a clash, or at most only meddle to try and prevent any side from reaping a decisive success. Others instead advocated an active diplomatic effort to break up the totalitarian compact and make an alliance of convenience with either the fascists or the communists against the other side. Opinions differed on the most preferable option but in the end almost everyone that supported this course agreed either kind of alliance would be acceptable.

Hitler had much to be satisfied about recent events: Germany had fulfilled all its immediate territorial claims, completely dismantled the Versailles settlement, and built an adequate alliance system and sphere of influence in Europe. However the Nazi leader saw this as but a stepping stone to fulfill even grander ambitions of continental dominion. One option he faced was to trust the apparent defensive passivity of the Entente powers as an established fact, leave them alone, and engage in his long-standing ambition of a grand anti-Bolshevik and racist crusade to destroy the USSR and conquer and colonize the Russian lands. Perhaps the weak democratic powers might even be persuaded to support Germany in such an endeavor. Alternatively he could let the alliance of convenience with the USSR last longer, and co-opt the Soviets in a joint effort with the Axis powers to conquer and loot the Anglo-French empires. This would allow Germany to eliminate the potential threat of Britain and France, control Western Europe, and recover the lost lands of the HRE for the Germanic Reich.

Much the same way, Stalin had reason to be satisfied from recent developments, since the USSR had considerably expanded its territory with little effort. Now he faced an alternative: he could trust the deal with Nazi Germany would stand and engage in an effort to crush Japan and expand Soviet power in East Asia, or he could remain wary of Hitler and prepare for a clash with the Axis powers. On the other hand, cooperation with the Axis had been quite rewarding so far, and the totalitarian powers faced a potential common enemy in the democratic powers. So as a possible third option quite possibly he might keep Germany friendly and busy by co-opting it in a combined expansionist drive at the expense of Britain and France. As an added benefit this course would allow Soviet Russia to expand southward with the support of powerful allies and fulfill its long-standing ambition of an access to the warm seas.

Mussolini was happy with his recent gains thanks to the alliance with Germany and persuaded to confirm it. He was willing join Hitler as an opportunist partner in any expansionist endeavor the Germans might pick, be it a glorious crusade against Bolshevism or a joint German-Italian-Soviet effort to tear apart Britain and France. The latter option looked even better for him since it would would allow Italy to fulfill its imperial ambitions in the Med with relatively little risk.

Due to ongoing war in China, the Western powers’ increasingly alienated attitude, and a looming strategic confrontation with the USSR, Japan faced a tough choice. One option was to trust the USSR and the democratic powers would remain or busy with affairs in Europe and stay focused on an all-out effort to reap total victory in China; however the Sino-Japanese war looked more and more like a quagmire and the democratic powers seemed increasingly willing to apply economic pressure on Japan about it. Alternatively the Japanese could exploit Chinese weakness to reap a favorable compromise peace and disengage to focus its resources on containment of the Soviet threat. If cooperation between Germany and the USSR broke down, Japan might even join the Axis powers in an anti-Communist front and reap considerable territorial gains in the Far East. Alternatively, if the totalitarian alliance of convenience stood, Japan could profit by joining it and exploit its power to conquer the European colonies in Southeast Asia.

America remained bound to isolationist neutrality and focused on its own strategic interests in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific, although a growing number was looking at the growing power and aggressiveness of the totalitarian powers with anxiety and fear. Nonetheless, the fact Europe remained in an uneasy peace deprived President Roosevelt of a decent excuse to defy the established two-terms limit precedent. As a consequence, no momentum manifested in the Republican party to draft Wendell Willkie as a dark horse opponent to FDR.

In the Democratic party, Vice President John Nance Garner was too conservative to be deemed an acceptable choice for the nomination by New Deal supporters. A bid by Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace quickly collapsed as he was deemed too radical, especially after the press got leaks about his New Age spiritual beliefs. As a result, the leading candidates for nomination became Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Postmaster General James Farley. Both of them were acceptable choices to FDR, the New Dealers, and the party at large. In the GOP, the leading candidates for nomination were Thomas E. Dewey, who got the support of the moderate, internationalist wing of the party, and Robert A. Taft, an outspoken isolationist that drew the sympathies of the conservative, isolationist faction.

[silentrunner]

I'm sorry, but NO. Hitler would not have settled for simply deporting the Jews. In his mind, the Jews were an existential threat to the Aryan race so long as they continued to live. He would settle for nothing less than extermination.

[eurofed]

Jun 22, 2017 4:34:16 GMT silentrunner said:

I'm sorry, but NO. Hitler would not have settled for simply deporting the Jews. In his mind, the Jews were an existential threat to the Aryan race so long as they continued to live. He would settle for nothing less than extermination.

I am sorry to disagree just as emphatically, but I subscribe to the functionalist historical school about the origins of the Holocaust, by whose conclusions the original Nazi plan to deal with the Jew minority was mass deportation, they only escalated to systematic extermination as a gradual radicalization process driven by wartime circumstances and constraints. Cfr. the Madagascar Plan, which was but one deportation scheme the Nazi leaders tinkered with among several. All historical evidence points to the fact if pre-WWII Hitler had found a country willing and able to take his Jews w/o making him pay through the nose, he would have signed the immigration deal in a heartbeat. Cfr. the Evian Conference. Unfortunately, the harsh realities of the Great Depression and global anti-Semitism meant there was none until too late. Although a few cases came close, such as the Dominican Republic and ironically Japanese Manchukuo. OTL Hitler surely hated the Jews with the intensity of an organized serial killer, but ITTL we are dealing with a change in his personality that considerably enhances the pragmatic component, and practical considerations can certainly determine significant changes in the actions of murderers. History is full of things that were deemed existential threats on paper, but were not actually acted against with ultimate violence because of practical concerns.

ITTL WWII is delayed (and in all likelihood shall take a different character, either an Axis-Soviet war or an Axis-Soviet team-up against the British Empire) thanks to a more practical Hitler being able to enact his agenda for Eastern Europe by peaceful means. This still includes a M-R Pact and rump Poland becomes an Axis state, a practical Nazi Germany sticks to the less economically, diplomatically, and PR burdensome agenda of dealing with its unwanted minorities (Jews, Roma, those Czechs and western Poles deemed unfitting for Germanization) through mass deportation, according to original plan. Circumstances make this feasible, and dictate their destination becomes the USSR (IOTL Hitler and Stalin made a deal to transfer Soviet Germans to the Reich, they could have expanded it to other ethnicities either side did not want and the other was willing to take) or Axis Poland for the western Poles.