Hitler limits his occupation of Polish territory to Danzig and the Polish Corridor

WolfBear

Well-known member
What if Hitler would have decided, in an out of character move, to limit his occupation of Polish territory in 1939 to Danzig and the Polish Corridor (and maybe Posen as well)? He still has Stalin invade eastern Poland, of course, but he decides that he doesn't want to bother administering and ruling over a lot of Poles, so he decides to keep a rump independent Polish state in central Poland--one that will presumably be hostile towards Nazi Germany, at least initially, but also one that would be landlocked and a military pipsqueak and thus very easy to control.

Anyway, would the Nazis still be capable of quickly knocking out France in 1940 in this scenario? If so, would the rump Poland then proceed to ally with the Nazis in an attempt to regain the Kresy, or would they remain neutral up to the very end, in which case the Nazis are likely to invade rump Poland as a part of Operation Barbarossa? And if rump Poland does ally with Nazi Germany, do a greater percentage of Polish Jews survive the Holocaust in this TL? And what effect does this have on Poland's post-World War II borders? I would imagine that Poland's post-World War II government would say that any rump Polish regime that cooperated with Hitler only did so because it was in a state of distress after the Fall of France and that Poland, as Hitler's first victim, should still be entitled to the Recovered Territories after the end of World War II, but what do you think about this?

Thoughts on all of this?
 

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