Polish-German alliance.

A rather tricky subject, today a German friend of mine and i had a chat about WW 2, when asked what was Hitlers biggest mistake he told me "not allying with Poland".

He followed on the logic that Polish army while not modern has proven to be the most effective opponent that Germans faced up to and including Barbarossa and that our countries had mutual interests and together domination in Europe would be possible whereas Germany alone was doomed to failure (Italians werent exactly soldiers of the year and Japan was far away).

So would such an alliance be a bad or a good thing, opinions?

"Impossible" would be more fitting.
Everything I read and learned points me to an annoying, irritating and aggravating Poland which nationalism was as worse as the german one.
And with the feeling of being safe behind the french and british friendship toasts they didn't even see a reason to amend to the neighbor.

It seems the Reich would had said yes if Poland had given some signs...
The nearly complete lack of anti-polish propaganda is still wondrous.

Everything would had gone different!

It was impossible true but we've been discussing a purely could-be situation where despite all unlikelyhood Poland ends up in the German camp.

Ach so...okay...

I think for the Jews it would have been quite the same...Poland would had stayed sovereign and maybe Poland would had allowed the german troops to gather at the border to attack the Bolsheviks and might have even took part in the war.

On the other hand Poland would had sunk with Germany and Stalin would had ruled till East Germany after the end....so nothing new here!

It turned out to be Poland's biggest mistake as well... Allies: Brits and Americans tricked to believe Polish solders that they were fighting for a democratic Poland after war was over, on that behalf Katyn massacre was scrupulously masked, Sikorski killed.... As a result we received 50 years of Bolshevism after war was over. Communism was far more devastating. I think that Poland once and forever should stop looking for "friends" in United States of Israel because we have none there.

I though you were living in the US Juliet.

Germany sunk because of shortages in manpower and equipment, Poland as an ally equals at least a milion more troops at a time when Germans did not have that milion.

Hi Bratwurst Boy,

I've seen you allude to this on a number of occasions, but I wonder if you could explain more fully in what way you believe interwar Poland and the Polish government was equally or more nationalistic than that in Germany, as per your quote below.


Personally, I think the Roman Dmowski and the National Democratic Party offer similarities with Adolf Hitler and the German Nazi party, especially in Nationalism. However, it's clear, ideologically, Hitler held more extreme views in relation to his nationalism, for example; on minorities, where it could be said that they held broadly similar opinions, the actions they took, or in Dmowski's case planned to take, differ widely. To put it frankly, they may have agreed on boycotts of Jewish goods, and I can also see Dmowski passing purity laws, but I can't ever imagine Dmowski setting up extermination camps.

More importantly, Polish politics of the later interwar years was for more complex than that of Germany and not dominated by a sole party proclaiming nationalism. Jozef Pilsudski being the obvious counterbalance to Dmowski. Pilsudski was in many ways a nationalist , but to my mind, it's incomparable to liken him to the nationalist fervour that had gripped Germany by 1935. Let's not forget, the Nuremberg Laws had been introduced in Germany by 1935. Ignacy Moscicki, brings more complexity and even less nationalism to politics of interwar Poland. Overall, there was a large amount of nationalism present in 1930's Polish politics, but it wasn't the single, dominant policy, as it was in Germany.

I wonder if you might also say a little more about


Are you suggesting Poland provoked Germany into WW2? If so, in what ways specifically?

Well...the new Poland had huge groups of minorities and the Poles treated them badly...there were the anti-Jewish laws similar to Nuremberg, there were the anti-German provocations, the Belorussian schools got forbidden etc.

An interesting side:


worldatwar.net/timeline/poland/18-52.html


jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Poland.html#After%20World%20 War%20I

So the whole situation between Poles and Jews, Poles and Ukrainians and Poles and Germans was quite tense and chaotic I would say.
Poland even denying to negotiate over a railway to the German enclaves (enclaves only after this treaty).

Could a war have been avoided if Poland would had been more accommodating to their German minority aka Germany? I dunno! But I like to think so..

Were they as nationalistic as the Germans? You bet! :)

It was the other way around. For whatever reason, being tricked by the allies or fooled with after prophets, as a Nation, Poland chose not to form axis alliance with Germany. Me and many of the Komrades here in the states are a mix of both German and Polish, and this discussion pops up often. We hate the fact that these 2 nations did not work together! If they would have, maybe the outcome of WW2 for europe would have been Much better for All, but then that goes back to an eariler question, why did Poland make a different choice, and work with nations that had influx and influence from jews....BECAUSE GERMANY AND POLAND WOULD HAVE BEEN A DOMINATING POWER. German nationalist Ideals and Polish work ethic, can you think of a better combo at the time?

I don't think this extra million soldiers or so could have helped win the war; at most it would have prolonged the war. Hitler would have made a few more "mistakes" and these additional soldiers would have perished. Maybe the outcome would have been different if Hitler didn't interfere with his generals' plans.

BB, listing Polish crimes you are forgetting the cowardly attack on a German radio station near the German border city of Gleiwitz.

I don't have the information here but I recall that in 1938 Hitler made an overture to Poland where he wanted access across the northern region (Gdansk, et al) and if given that an alliance would be possible. Some here might want to follow up on that.

I am a little confused, as I've always read (in academic literature and research) that Hitler wanted Poland for his own - not the Polish people but the land for Aryans. In fact, Hitler wanted the Russian land too for his Germania... hence Operation Barbarossa.

It is well documented that Hitler believed Gdansk to be Germany's; as well as East Prussia. Those concessions fell to Poland and Russia as the first world war closed.

I would have said the biggest mistake was invading Russia......

Not really he had quite a good shot at defeating Russia, he failed but thats not really Russias doing, mostly it was his own fuck ups.

Have you been to the Allied cemetery in Krakow to put flowers on the graves of the British men who died fighting for Poland in Poland? The same men who you insisted didn't exist until you were provided with their names and exact burial locations.


It would have been better for the Germans (might well have won the war in Russia if they had hadn't had to waste troops in Poland) but would have had much the same result for Poland as was with no alliance.

However, Hitler's really big mistake was no having an alliance with Britain. With Britain and the Commonwealth fighting alongside Germany, the USA and France would have done nothing in the war and Russia would almost certainly have stood no chance attacked on three sides by German and the two Empires.

Maybe, maybe not.
Even if the Wehrmacht had gotten to Moskau, this country would had need another leader but Hitler to become tame and usable for the west.

When he could have brought the anti-communist, anti-stalinist, freedom loving peoples rallying behind the Reich and later working together in an alliance it would have been a good thing for Europe...but Hitler never thought that far, he treated them all as enemies, so there was no other end realistically possible.


Well...Hitler had surely favored it too but the Brits decided otherwise...they would had kept their empire, not gone broke and dependent and more...now look at them!

But at least we are all a happy, multi-kulti, liberal family now, aren't we!

One should read Mein Kampf to see that the idea of Poland - Germany joint venture would have been impossible. Hitler's whole idea of the Thousand Year Reich depended on stealing land from the Slavs.

Not really, lots of Hitlers hatred towards Poland came from the defiant resistance it put up both politically and later militarily.


Britain had little to offer Germany, in fact despite Hitlers positive sentiment Britain would be a natural enemy once Germany would win in the East since III Reich was a perpetum mobile of war, as long as it had ambitions to fulfill it would try to shoulder them and becoming a naval and colonial power was pretty high up on the list.

Poland on the other hand especially pre war Poland was a mirror image of Germany in many respects and had serious potential as an ally unlike Romania, Hungary or even Italy.

Oh, come on. He considered us sub-human long before than.

- How many names have you provided and how many locations? Just because one lost bomber plane, piloted by Canadian volunteers, crashed somewhere in Galicja still doesn't change ANYTHING, regardless what you'd like to think. Poland did not receive any type of formal, military help from its so called allies, when they fought for its own independence and it is fair to say that no Brit ever died for Polish independence, period. Now you can stop being a loonie and finally admit something.

The outcome might have been quite different. Let's not forget that Churchill called alliance with Stalin 'A Pact with the Devil', so I don't think Brits would run to help Soviet Union if they weren't already involved in war with Hitler. And without being at war on two fronts, without strategic bombings to worry about Germany had the potential to win the war with Stalin. But the Nazi ideology proved to be doom of itself in the long run - we all know that Germans were treated as liberators during the initial phase of Barbarossa, but their barbarism towards nations of the USSR soon turned the latter against them.

Yes, that`s correct. To gain Lebensraum in the East was Hitler`s obsession.

And let us not forget: any alliance with Germans would have made Poles active and conscious acomplices in Nazi crimes, especially the Holocaust, but also massacres in the Soviet Union.

Actually I come to think that it's not so true...or at least not the main point as it's made out during war- and after war propaganda.

Hitler wanted to negotiate, lack of anti-polish propaganda of the same kind as the Jews had to endure etc....


ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?ModuleId=10005070

You don't negotiate and plan alliances with "subhumans".

Fact is Poland only concentrated on France and Great Britain and did nothing to soften the differences with the german minority....
Poland surely got signs from Berlin but chose not to listen. But as I said...if Hitler had really only subhuman lebensraum in mind there wouldn't had such signals in the first place.

I think 50 years of commie history teachings with concentration on "subhuman" and "lebensraum" is partly to blame for that...but I think there was more to that!

Interesting link:
And only ONE of the reasons would be "Lebensraum" and the others could be avoided with a german-polish alliance!

johndclare.net/RoadtoWWII3_HitlerInvadesPoland.htm

I like to equate Hitlers approach to ideology in the same way as Teutonic Knights, first they invented a piece of ideology for political purposes then they kept using it untill they believed it, initially Poland was a political adversary and little more.


And? Polish national interest preceds all others, Jews accuse us of being accomplices when we saved them, the other way around they'd at least have some basis, also if Poland allied itself with Germany and Germany would win we would be in the victors camp and guess who's writing history after wars are done?:)


That is incorrect, specifically Russia was Hitlers obsesion, Poland was briefly considered as a viable ally, of course these have been brief musings of several staff oficers but mainly because of Polands opposition rather than Nazi Germany not wanting to.

Yes Jews would have to die, but on the other side there would be no Katyń, no jewish NKVD, no massacres of polish inteligentsia and quite frankly Germany even as a far stronger ally would be preferable to Russia's domination.

Some quotes:


nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/hitler-and-poland.html

Subhumans and Lebensraum did not have priority in those considerations it seems...

Where did you read something that supports this idea? It seems so contrary to everything ever written about Hitler and Nazi Germany?

Even if such alliance would win the war I think that Poland would be weaker. At best I think that Hitler would annex Silesia and whole Pomerania, Poland would lost access to the Baltic Sea. Poland would be expanded in the east, gain more Ukrainian lands. Population of Ukrainians would be too big to swallow them, Ukrainian nationalism would be on rise. This effect would seriously destabilize the state. Such state would be just a German proxy.

However I think that Hitler was insane to such extend that this could turn even worse for Poland.


Because Dmowski was not a racist! He objected the Jews from other reasons. I see very little of similarities between NSDAP and SN. Name some if you can.


It was great opportunity to defeat Soviet Union and restore Russian monarchy. Of course territorially smaller, without Central Asia, Caucasus, Baltic states and perhaps even eastern Ukraine. However Hitler was too deluded to think rationally. If someone else would run Germany...

Why do you lie so much?

https://polishforums.com/archives/2005-2009/news/poland-wars-struggles-others-30159/23/#msg586194

Would you really like me to find the names of all the other British and Commonwealth airmen who died fighting in the Warsaw Uprising? And the location of their graves?

You are pathetic and utterly contemptable. Poles like you make me wish that Britain had joined the war on the side of the Nazis. Fortunately Poles like you are increasing less common.