So, yes, if Poland had become a German ally it was likely to have suffered similar things - the loss to territory to at least one of its neighbours (specifically Germany), the expenditure of its manpower in a German war against the USSR (remembering that Poland's eastern border already ran well to the east of ethnic Polish territory), the take over of its industries by the Reich, the persecution of its Jews at German behest if it didn't address the issue itself, and an extended occupation by the Red Army.
Robert,
The methodological error you are making here is your assumption that, if one historical fact were changed, eg if Poland had become Hitler's ally and not been invaded by him, all the other historical facts would have remained the same. That is, you are assuming that if Poland had joined Germany in making war on the Soviet Union, the result would have been the same as in fact did occur, namely a Soviet victory.
That assumption ignores the fact that a major reason for Germany's failure to defeat the Soviet Union was that it was still bogged down in a war with a Britain materially supported by the United States, and therefore could devote all its resources to the war against the Soviet Union.
The war with Britain and France resulted from the decision of the Polish Government to ally itself with those two countries against Germany, rather than aligning itself with Germany. If Poland had accepted the package deal offered by Germany in October 1938 and subsequently, there would have been casus belli for Britain and France against Germany.
In the absence of war with Britain and France, there would have been no need for Germany to have wasted its resources in subduing and occupying France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Yugoslavia or Greece, since all those occupations resulted from the war in the West. Germany could then have have thrown all its forces against the Soviet Union, and also those of Poland, Hungary and Romania, perhaps also Yugoslavia.
In such a situation, Germany and its allies might well have have defeated the Soviet Union, which would have been isolated. Without a war between Germany and Britain, it is unlikely that the Government of the United States could have persuaded its people to support the provision of material aid to the Soviet Union.
On the other hand, Germany might still have lost, in which case Poland would have been occupied by the Soviet Union as an enemy country. Whether that would have been substantially worse than the Soviet occupation that actually did occur is a moot point; after all, the Red Army treated all non-Communist Polish forces as enemies, even though they had been fighting against Germany.
Robert, you refer to the serious military losses incurred by Hungary and Romania from fighting against the Soviet Union on the side of Germany. But those losses were nowhere near the material and human losses suffered by the Polish people arising from their country's opposition to Germany.
If Poland had allied itself with Germany, it may well have suffered losses similar to those suffered by Hungary and Romania. But the point I am making is that such losses could very well have been far less than the losses it actually did suffer.
You are also ignoring the fact that most Hungarian Jews were deported to their deaths in extermination camps during 1944 by a Hungarian puppet administration
I am not ignoring that fact. I am simply not regarding as a loss suffered by Hungary. Rather, I am counting it as a net benefit, since that is how the removal of the Jewish minority and the transfer of its assets to ethnic Hungarian hands was regarded by the Hungarian Government of the time and by a substantial part, maybe even the majority, of the ethnic Hungarian population.
Let me illustrate that point by an analogy.
Let us suppose that forces of one of Britain's allies, say the US, rounded up all the Muslims living in Britain and caused them to disappear somewhere, no questions asked. Would that be a loss for Britain, or a gain?
I think there can be no doubt that a very large part of the British population would see it as a gain, since thereby a population element generally regarded as a threat would have been removed.
I would not think that way, and perhaps you would not either. But what about the rest of your countrymen?
You also made a similar point about the Jewish population of Poland. But the Polish Government itself had been trying to get rid of its Jewish minority through mass emigration, without success. Accordingly, if Poland had allied itself with Germany, and the latter country had helped it remove the jews, from the Polish point of view that would have been a gain, not a loss.
In September 1938, the Polish Ambassador in Berlin, Jozef Lipski, told Hitler that if he, Hitler, succeeded in solving the Jewish problem in Poland, the Polish people in gratitude would erect a monument to him in the most beautiful part of Warsaw. So much for the persecution of the Jews of Poland being a negative from the Polish point of view.
Finally, if Poland had allied itself with Germany and the two countries, with the help of Germany's other allies, had succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union, there would have been no massacre of the Jews. Instead, the Jews would have been deported far into the Soviet interior, on the model of the large-scale Soviet deportations.
As for the Red Army, the reason why it was given the opportunity to enter any of the Axis satellites was because the failure of German policy in the East had opened the door to Central Europe to the Soviet Union.
Yes, and the decision of the Polish Government contributed to that failure. If it had chosen differently, there may have been no entry of the Red Army into Central Europe.
But then such an alliance was never likely given what actually happened to Poland. Hitler did not simply not set up a puppet state in rump Poland after he conquered it, he refused to recognize any Polish national identity or administration at all (unlikely every other state he over ran), he absorbed the whole of inter-war western and central Poland into the Reich, he embarked on a plan to resettle Germans in place of Poles, 2 million of whom were displaced by 1944 and all of whom were to have been displaced in 20 years.
Again you are making a methodological error, in that are assuming that if Hitler applied a particular policy, then he must always have intended to apply it. The elements you describe above were part of a policy proposed by extreme German nationalists even before the First World War, but there is no evidence that Hitler supported that policy prior to 1939. All the evidence suggests that it was only when Poland aligned itself against Germany in April 1939 that Hitler changed course and adopted an anti-Polish policy based on the Pan-German proposals.
Furthermore, there is a lot of evidence that even after the invasion of Poland, it was Hitler's original intention to set up a rump Polish satellite state in the part of Poland not annexed by either Germany or the Soviet Union, on the model of the statelet proclaimed a Polish Kingdom by Germany and Austria in 1917. However Stalin, in the negotiations leading to the Borders and Friendship Treaty of 28 September 1939, specifically ruled out the continued existence of any POlish political entity, insisting that all Polish territory come under direct German and Soviet rule. That is why a rump state never eventuated.
Until mid-1940, the designation "Government-General of the Occupied Polish Territories" was retained, indicating that there was a Poland under occupation. Thereafter the words "of the Occupied Territories" was dropped, indicating that Germany no longer recognised the existence of territories that were Polish.
Poland was a special case for Hitler and he treated it differently to any other occupied territory.
There is absolutely no evidence dating from before 1939 that Hitler regarded Poland as a "special case" for occupation. All the evidence suggests he genuinely wanted it as an ally.
Above any other state, Poland was never a serious candidate for an alliance. Why? Because it stood on the prime real estate designated for lebensraum for the German people.
Prior to 1939, there is absolutely no evidence that Hitler regarded the territory of Poland as "prime real estate designated as Lebensraum for the German people". When he talked of "Lebensraum", he always described it as situated in Russia and Ukraine.
To be sure, there were German nationalists who did regard Polish territory as Lebensraum for the German people. But Hitler was not originally one of them.
Of course it made more sense to settle Germans in Poland rather than in more distant colonies in Russia. But Hitler's Lebensraum ideology was not entirely rational.
