If Hitler and the Nazis never come to power in Germany, does Poland keep its 1937 borders up to the present-day?

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Futurist
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If Hitler and the Nazis never come to power in Germany, does Poland keep its 1937 borders up to the present-day?

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Post by Futurist » 21 Nov 2019, 04:13

If Hitler and the Nazis never come to power in Germany, does Poland keep its 1937 borders up to the present-day?

I know that the Weimar German government waged an unsuccessful years-long trade war (ironically ended by Hitler with the 1934 Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact) against Poland (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2 ... ustoms_war ) in an attempt to bully Poland to agree to allow Germany to reacquire both Danzig and the Polish Corridor (and *maybe* Polish Upper Silesia as well). Without Hitler and the Nazis, this trade war might very well continue for a longer time period--perhaps a much longer time period. That said, though, I don't see it being any more successful than it was in real life--and it wasn't very successful in real life. Poland would presumably still feel that once it would compromise on its German border, neighboring countries such as the Soviet Union and Lithuania could press their own claims to Polish territory as well--thus leaving Poland as a landlocked and greatly shrunken rump state.

In turn, though, this raises an interesting question--once Germany's government (which will be non-Nazi in this scenario--either a surviving democratic Weimar German government if Wilhelm Marx will win in 1925 and win reelection in 1932 or an authoritarian but non-Nazi right-wing German government if events will go the same way as in real life until the start of 1933) will realize that economic warfare is not going to be enough to get Poland to agree to territorial revision, might it become more open to the idea of a military solution to its territorial conflict with Poland? I mean, a non-Nazi Germany would have in all likelihood absolutely loathed the idea of going to war against Britain and France (this would have been especially true for a German government that remains democratic but would have also been true for a non-Nazi authoritarian right-wing German government). At the same time, though, might Germany want to wait until a point in time (if such a point in time will ever actually come, that is) where Britain and/or France are distracted (for instance, by some colonial conflict--such as one over Indochina and/or Algeria) and thus might be disinclined to militarily intervene if Germany will attempt to militarily conquer Danzig and the Polish Corridor? Of course, even this approach would require some degree of German brinkmanship--albeit much less than the amount of brinkmanship that Hitler had in real life. In addition, there would also be the question of whether Germany would want to have Lithuania and especially the giant Soviet Union as "partners in crime" in regards to attacking Poland at a convenient time or whether Germany--if it would have ever actually decided to attack Poland, that is--would have preferred to attack Poland by itself and then to offer to protect Poland from Lithuanian and especially Soviet revanchism if Poland will agree to its new western border with Germany.

Anyway, any thoughts on all of this?

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