Alternative Scenario
By Brad and Matt are having a conversation that I absolute must comment on. My inner nerd demands it.
Brad Delong, thinking outside the box, concludes that Neville Chamberlain made a mistake in standing up to Nazi aggression against Poland. what happens in the possible world where Chamberlain (and whoever was running France at the time) don’t make their much-criticized decision to appease Hitler at Munich? Instead, they say that if Germany invades Czechoslovakia, they will come to the aid of the Czechs. Does Hitler back down? Then what? Or does he attack? The Czechs had ten divisions, I think, and some solid defensive fortifications. France and Britain still lack the capacity to go on the offensive. Does Hitler invade Poland en route to Prague to try and avoid the Sudeten mountains? Does Stalin invade Poland to “assist” the Czechs? Would combined Soviet-Czech forces have beaten Germany while the West plays phony war and France eventually mounts a last-ditch effort to seize the Rhineland before they wind up with Reds on their border?
A couple issues are worth bringing up. While the Sudeten defense were indeed formidable, they were also irrelevant. Anschluss had created a new border between Germany and Czechoslovakia which would have allowed the Wehrmacht to circumvent the Czech defense. In other words, they would have had no problem crushing the Czechs, and probably would have done so in a much shorter time frame than the Polish campaign.
One of the best reasons for trying to face down the Germans in 1938 instead of 1939 is the presence of Russia in the Allied coalition. Unfortunately, the Red Army of 1938 was incapable of doing much of anything beyond getting its officers shot. This was right in the middle of Stalin’s worst purge of the Soviet High Command. Tukhachevsky was dead, Uberov was dead, and most of the divisional commanders were dead. Zhukov himself escaped only because Stalin needed him to shut down the Japanese at Khalkhin-Gol. In the words of John Erickson, author of Soviet High Command:
The former heads of the naval and air forces were removed, the former to be shot in 1938, the latter to die or be liquidated some time later. The naval and air chiefs of staff were eliminated. Of the army commanders holding that rank in May 1937 only two survived- thirteen were shot. Fifty-seven out of 85 corps commanders were shot, as were 110 of the 195 divisional commanders. At the brigade commander level, of the original 406 officers in that rank on the eve of the 1937 executions, 220 survived the main blow of the purge.
Altogether, about 15000-30000 of the total strength of 75-80000 Soviet officer corps were executed in 1937 and 1938. This, added to the fact that the Red Army was in doctrinal turmoil, meant that it would have been good for just about nothing. Moreover, the Poles never would have allowed the Red Army to cross their territory, anyway. Thus, the situation in 1938 would have been quite similar to that of 1939; a quickly victorious Wehrmacht turning its attention to the West. Unfortunately, the West was not as strong or as united as it would be in 1939.
Of course, that doesn’t directly speak to Delong’s question about resistance in 1939. Sitting back and waiting for the Russians and the Germans to start squabbling over Poland might have been a reasonable decision. On the other hand, no one expected the Polish Army to collapse as quickly as it did, as the allies expected that a two-front war would hold for at least a reasonable period of time. It’s worth noting that we “saved” Poland, yet 5.4 million Poles died. We “betrayed” Czechoslovakia, and 350,000 Czechs died.