Chamberlain offers no Polish Guarantee.

After the German invasion of Czechoslovakia Neville Chamberlain offered the Polish a guarantee of protection from Britain.
However to do so represented a very close decision.
The guarantee backed by military force represented what he called "the crossing of a stream.”
He stated he would "never forget the ultimate decision, the yes or no which may decide the fate of not only a generation but the British Empire rests with me".

What if Chamberlain had decided not to cross that stream and instead offered another warning against Germany but with no Polish guarantee.
How would the course of the war to come be affected?

 

That would prove to Hitler that the western countries and their leaders were a "bunch of cowards" like the thought in the first place and he could continue his politics without hesitation. If anything Hitler would be more greedy earlier, and as I think the Polish Guarantee was made in order to warn Hitler not to start the war, this time there would be no warning and Hitler would be even more encouraged to take Danzig and Poland.

 

In the novel 'The Foresight War' England does not offer a guarantee to Poland but to Norway instead, see THE FORESIGHT WAR for the 1st two chapters.

Sbiper.

 

If there was no guarantee by the west to intervene, then would there be a need for the Nazi-Soviet Non-Agression Pact of 1939? Germany would have been free to absorb all of Poland, which would no doubt cause the Soviet Union to gear up for a sooner war with Germany. Also, the Soviets would probably not invade Finland, although they would still probably occupy the Baltic States. I have read in the past that prior to the non-agression pact signed with the Soviets, Germany had designs on Lithuania, not just the Memel District. That would cause problems too. Who knows?

 

If the USSR did not invade Finland and show how woeful their military doctrine was maybe Hitler might have thought twice on starting Barbarossa.Or maybe with heighten deployments on the German-Russian border there would be no attack in the west.Do the British , seeing Germany turned east launch the invasion of Norway to cut off iron to the Reich while Hitler and Stalin glower at each other across the former Polish border?

 

Of course all we can do here is speculate, but I think that England would do little to interfere with Germany's attempts to obtain the raw materials that were needed to prosecute their enevitable war with the Soviets. With Chamberlain still being the PM, that "appeasement in our time" mindset would probably still be prevelent, since in this scenario, no help or guarantees were offered to the Poles. With Czechoslovakia dismembered, Poland overrun, and Lithuania occupied, the west would probably still gear up for potential war, but it would more than likely be a wait and see type of thing, even less than the "Phony War." They'd probably be content to see the Germans and the Soviets beat each other to death, and be ready to react when if and when the time came....

 

With no assurances from Britain, Hitler would have attacked Poland without doubt, but i think things in the east would turn out a bit different. I suspect that Germany would strike out against the Baltic States as well, but the German invasion of the Baltic would be symbolic and that no armed resistance by the Baltic States and that the Baltic States would welcome protection from Soviet intent so we would see not only Poland but the Baltic as well fully intergrated into the Reich.

v.R

 

The Polish Guarantee itself was only issued as a temporary measure in order to prevent German invading Poland before Britain had began negotiations.
It later was seen as folly by Halifax, Chamberlain, Butler and Hoare as it was seen to an extent as putting the future of war and peace in Poland rather than Britain's hands and with hindsight and of of current time observance as Lloyd George pointed out should not have been issued.
The Guarantee as Chamberlain pointed out also did not guarantee Poland's borders just its independence.
Chamberlain was willing to see the return of the Polish corridor and much of Germany's Great War loses.
However if the Guarantee had not been issued at all we can look into what would have happened.
First up would the Nazi-Soviet Pact still have happened?
I would think this is still likely as it was the best way to avoid a two front war which was still possible without a guarantee.
Also Stalin could get a lot more from Hitler than he could from the West. Namely the Baltic States, Finland and Bessarabia.
With war averted in September 1939 they would likely be an election in Britain in October or November which the National Government under Chamberlain would win but with a smaller majority.

 

In 1940 it would be interesting to see if Germany would attack the USSR or wait another year or two.
Knowing Hitler and the fact that German strength as opposed to Soviet was at its peak and with the very poor showing of the Soviets in Finland I would think he would go for May 1940.
Romania, Hungary, Finland and Slovakia would all still enter the war on the Nazi side too.
Italy would either do the same so as not to miss out on the "glory and the booty" as Mussolini was fond of saying and send a fat larger Italian Force that in real history.
Or it may well invade Yugoslavia as planned and send only several volunteer divisions to Russia.
I would think the first option is more likely.
If Italy does join in the Invasion of the USSR they would be great pressure on Turkey to open up the straits to the Italian Navy could get into the Black Sea.
The German Navy would also be able to operate around Murmansk cutting off a great deal of Soviet trade.
The actions of Japan may well be different too.
They would be much less likely to attack the British and French Empire without Britain at war with Germany and the French occupied.
This would give much greater power to the Strike North Group and Japanese Army in their push for an attack on the USSR.
As planned this would likely only occur when the Germans are in Moscow and on the Volga which would be 1941 rather than 1940.
The future would look very bleak for the USSR with its defeat by 1942 or 1943 seeming very likely.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, (as if I really need to tell people to do that on this site).

One of the fruits of the Polish Guarantee was the despatch of the work that Polish mathematicians had done concerning the breaking of German codes and cyphers. I believe this material was sent to Britain very shortly before Poland fell.

Without nominal support from Britain, would the Poles have felt secure enough to impart their knowledge? And if nnot, what effect would this have had on the course of the British intelligence efforts at bletchley Park? Alan Turing had to start somewhwere, and without the Poles, who knows how long it might have taken him to gain any ground on his work for Brit intelligence. Would the construction of "Collosus" have been setback by months or even years?

As I said before, correct me if I'm wrong....so i'll retire to my anderson shelter and await the bombing to come, my ARP tin-hat at the ready....

 

We declare Volga Boatman to be a outlaw poster and shall begin bombing in 5 minutes!

Actually VB is correct that Britain's pledge certainly made it more likely that Poland would share her code breaking efforts. What is far less clear would be the contention that Britain made the pledge for the work on Enigma.

(OK guys, the bombing threat got VB outta the house, but my aggreeing with him should confuse and slow him up some so we have a narrow shot of hitting him while he's in the open)

 

The Polish Guarantee itself was only issued as a temporary measure in order to prevent German invading Poland before Britain had began negotiations.

British Empire I quote your first line in a post above... It would seem though that it in fact was not issued for that reason, as the guarantee was actioned. Proof in the pudding and all that...As for Lloyd George, the people of Britain were resolute by now, they had tried to avoid the catastrophe of another war, they did not want it, memories were still raw, but Lloyd George assuming the role of a Petain would not have been tolerated, it was far too late...As for Butler, he suffered his own political end game and his future as a leader of the nation died with his games. Halifax too and as for Chamberlain, a basically honourable man, his day was over. The guarantee by the British to poland was real you make the same mistake Hitler made.

 

On the Guarantee

"Hitler should not outflank us on Poland before negotiations had been concluded"
Lord Halifax

He also assured the cabinet that it would be an "interim measure only and designed to meet only what was "apprended to be an immediate threat".

Cab 23/98 31st March 1939

Indeed Chamberlain also told the House that "the present arrangement was only intended to cover the interim period only"

And as mentioned the Guarantee was not for Poland's borders just its independence.
Chamberlain he expected and favoured further changes to the Polish border.

 

The fact it was actioned was also a close call.
As Churchill, Eden and most the Labour party worried in the last days before war broke out that first we were going to not honour any commitment made and then the French were not.
Ciano and Grandi also nearly pulled off a couq when they tried to prevent war at the last minute which would have worked had they not added a demand for German troop withdrawal to the idea.
Finally a offer of a 20 year alliance with Germany from Chamberlain was passed on by Dalharus I believe to Hitler who refused to believe the offer and thus war began.

 

After 1938 Munich settlement Hitler said he wants war and no idiot will stop him next time. There were nothing or no-one to stop him.

 

No you are on the right lines, although the French gave us Brits just as much access to Polish material and kit as the Poles themselves.
Lots more to it though...Gubbins, of British Auxillery unit formation and later SOE fame, was part of the military mission to Poland that half hinched lots of stuff at start of war from Poland. He even went back on a personal mission a few weeks into war to get critical staff out of Poland.

The Brits it should be remembered started the war with an intel service but not as an efficient one as some would say. The rejection of the original British Typex machine was an unbelieveable decision and one that was ammended at a later day. Our Humint was at times pathetic, as per Venlo. Menzies was not the right man for the job, although he did initiate some planning at a later stage which helped the intel field get to where they eventually got. In my view, As important as the Enigma was the receiving voluntary listeners, later taken into uniform and the dissemenatiors, after all Enigma was the machine, it was just a typewriter without the information taken from the ether and the effeicent dissementation to the folk that mattered in good time. And not always in good time. The listeners were the big thing that Enigma needed to do its job. Also I will include the listeners of foreign nations that were sent to BBC Wood Norton to listen in to foreign broadcasts, who later moved to Caversham when the v1 intercept traffic at Malvern was first discovered and the secret squrrels needed room in BBC monitoring station.

Guess what I'm trying to say is that who ever got Enigma it was only as good as the Sigint system behind it which tends to be forgotten when we think of Turring and Bletchley etc.

 

He did want war.
He wanted access to the USSR and his living space and Poland was in the way.
The question is could Britain have allowed this as they had allowed the Sudentanland to be taken and the the remainder of the Czech state has they taken a different path other than the guarantee.
As Stanley Baldwin had desired we may have seen a Nazi-Bolshevik war in 1940 has this happened.

 

Proof ???

 

Of what in particular?

 

We none of us know what is going on in that strange man's mind. We all know the German desire as he has come out with in his book [Mein Kampf] to move East, and if he moves East, I shall not break my heart, but that is another thing. I do not believe he wants to move West, because West would be a very difficult programme for him ... If there is any fighting in Europe to be done, I should like to see the Bolsheviks and Nazis doing it.

Stanley Baldwin to the deputation at the end of July, 1936, as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 947, p. 955.