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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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While I agree that the inter-war Polish leadership played their bad hand badly, I don't see what the likely good outcome for Poland or the Poles is if you assume that Hitler's grand strategy was to pursue Grossreich and Lebensraum - which is what Hitler had said his grand strategy was when speaking to sympathetic audiences ever since he wrote Mein Kampf. Grossreich, even in its benign form of reversing Versailles, implies the annexation by Germany of the parts of western Poland with large ethnic-German minorities and the reduction of the ethnic Polish population of that territory to second-class citizenship. And the available Lebensraum was either in Poland or beyond it. If Poland allies with Hitler, the eventual double-cross is even more overdetermined than Barbarossa was.

Quite apart from Hitler's designs on Poland itself, any timeline where Hitler eventually attacks the Soviet Union involves Poland being ravaged by the German army on the way out and the Soviet army on the way back. This includes the scenario where Poland allies with the Soviet Union - the fact that Barbarossa happened in our timeline is strong evidence that Hitler would have invaded Soviet-allied Poland, particularly as Poland doesn't benefit from the Anglo-French guarantee in this scenario and the Spanish Civil War is a precedent that no Western country is likely to kick up a fuss if Hitler attacks Communists. Realistically, without western help Nazi Germany curbstomps the Soviets, but even if you rate the Red Army as better ex ante than it turns out ex post the best outcome is that the Soviets successfully defend Poland and Poland ends up de facto occupied by Soviets. The only reason Finland gets Soviet client-state status on as generous terms as they do is that they demonstrated the ability to give the Soviets a bloody nose, something the Poles don't have.

So to get a good outcome, you need Hitler to stop. And you pretty much need him to stop voluntarily - the way things played out in our timeline is strong evidence that the process of making him stop probably involves armies crossing Poland in a way which is catastrophic for the civilian population. The military scenario where Britain and France take the initiative in the phony war period and quickly defeat Germany isn't plausible militarily, and even if it was there was nothing Poland could do to make it more likely. Once you accept that, Polish policy looks sane (though incompetent).

In any case, if you don't count Holocausted Jews then Poland's death toll is in the normal range for eastern Europe. One of the dirty secrets of Polish history is that the pre-war Polish government would not have counted Holocausted Jews when evaluating their own performance.

In real history Poland was moved westward by Stalin. The Germans could've moved Poland eastwards, taken Danzig and so on while giving them land from Russia and Belarus. If there was one thing Russia has no shortage of, it's land. Or if they'd fought alongside Russia, they would've surely gotten more land in the peace and better treatment. The Russians treated Romania better than Poland since Romania switched sides.

There was no good outcome on offer, that's my point. The Poles ordered 'good outcome' in the restaurant and they received a double helping of bad outcome.

Territorially and demographically, it makes sense to pick a nearby ally with a strong army. The Poles did not do this and suffered immensely. One German invasion, one Soviet invasion then at the end of the war another Soviet invasion.