This is my last thread for today:
What if Joseph Stalin is given the General Gouvernment (minus Warsaw, which has to fall to the Nazis for public relations reasons so that they and not the Soviet Union will get blamed for Poland's fall) in 1939 as a part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in addition to all of the other territories that he was given? The logic behind this would be for Stalin to be able to loot this territory and for Stalin to be able to use this territory as a bargaining chip in any future negotiations with the Western Allies over Poland's final fate in the event that the Western Allies will defeat Nazi Germany. Stalin could use the General Gouvernment (after thoroughly looting it, of course) as a trading chip in exchange for getting the Western Allies to agree to a Curzon Line western border for the Soviet Union, for instance.
For what it's worth, I'm especially interested in what effect this has on Operation Barbarossa and beyond as well as on just how many additional Jews a more western Soviet boundary allows to be successfully evacuated from the Nazis in 1941-1942. In real life, over a million Soviet Jews were successfully evacuated from the Nazis in 1941 (and a few more in 1942), but this number would almost certainly be even higher here since the Soviet Union's borders will be located even further to the west, especially in the southern sector.
Thoughts?
What if Joseph Stalin is given the General Gouvernment (minus Warsaw, which has to fall to the Nazis for public relations reasons so that they and not the Soviet Union will get blamed for Poland's fall) in 1939 as a part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in addition to all of the other territories that he was given? The logic behind this would be for Stalin to be able to loot this territory and for Stalin to be able to use this territory as a bargaining chip in any future negotiations with the Western Allies over Poland's final fate in the event that the Western Allies will defeat Nazi Germany. Stalin could use the General Gouvernment (after thoroughly looting it, of course) as a trading chip in exchange for getting the Western Allies to agree to a Curzon Line western border for the Soviet Union, for instance.
For what it's worth, I'm especially interested in what effect this has on Operation Barbarossa and beyond as well as on just how many additional Jews a more western Soviet boundary allows to be successfully evacuated from the Nazis in 1941-1942. In real life, over a million Soviet Jews were successfully evacuated from the Nazis in 1941 (and a few more in 1942), but this number would almost certainly be even higher here since the Soviet Union's borders will be located even further to the west, especially in the southern sector.
Thoughts?