History Question: Would it have been better for Poland to have been divided like Germany?

[Boojatta]

Some Nazi death camps in Poland were liberated by US troops. With US troops there, it would seem that there was a chance to prevent at least some of Poland from falling into the hands of the USSR.

Was Stalin given a sweeter deal than necessary? Stalin almost gave up before he gave any orders to his military to do something about the Nazi troops who had invaded the USSR. It seems that Stalin initially didn't have a huge amount of bargaining power within the alliance against Nazi Germany. Why wasn't it possible to strike an early and well-publicized deal that would have prohibited Stalin from crushing innocent third parties under his boot, at least in places where US troops were already on the ground and available to protect such third parties?

[davepc]

1. I've always wondered about this, however never studied it.

Didn't the UK and France declare war on Germany on the basis of the invasion of Poland?

And didn't the USSR *also* invade Poland a few days later?

If the independence of Poland was the flipping point to war for France and UK why did they not insist on withdrawal of Soviet Forces from the same country they invaded in September, 1939?

[realisticphish]

2. As I recall

the Soviets claimed that they were there by invitation, to protect their slavic brothers from the fascists.

Normal Soviet stuff :shrug:

[derby378]

7. It's not like the Soviets didn't have Polish sympathizers

You have to remember the geography of relatively liberal Poland, sandwiched in between authoritarian Prussia, Austria, and Russia in the 1700s - Poland's policy of relative tolerance attracted Jews from all three neighboring nations, produced at least one military genius influenced by American ideas (Tadeusz Kosciusko), and finally prompted her neighbors to try to eliminate Poland from the map by partitioning her between the three nations (leading to a rebellion spearheaded by Kosciusko). This was around 150 years before Germany and the Soviet Union signed that secret pact to divide Poland between themselves again.

I have a personal stake in this - I have Polish blood, and even if I'm no expert on Polish history, I love my fellow Poles dearly.

[realisticphish]

9. of course

and they really WERE Slavic brothers. It's just that there were other incidences of the Soviets using that excuse (though, now that I think of it, most were after WWII. Look at Hungary, in 1956. The Soviets sent tanks back in "at the request of Hungary" to stomp out the revolution

[emilyg]

20. I love you dearly. Sto lat!!!

[derby378]

29. Serdecznie dziekuje!

:hi: :hug:

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. The Poles wouldn't have accepted partition.

The Polish government in exile in London wasn't prepared to accept the loss of Polish territory to the Soviet Union, and demanded restoration of the pre-1939 border. The Soviets already occupied the territory in question, and supplanted the government-in-exile with their own Communist/Stalinist government. And there was a perceived need at the time to make concessions to Stalin (including allowing the Soviet Union to keep gains of Polish territory) to keep him in the alliance against Japan (remember that the war in the Pacific went on for three more months after V-E Day).

[JVS]

4. "Some Nazi death camps in Poland were liberated by US troops."

Really? I'll need to see some evidence of that. US troops linked with the Red Army at Torgau, which is quite a ways west of both the present and former Polish-German border.

[Boojatta]

11. To err is Boojatta, to forgive is JVS.

My understanding was that:

#1. All Nazi death camps were in Poland.

#2. Some civilians had been required by some US troops to see the inside of at least one Nazi death camp, so that there would be a reasonable number of surviving witnesses after US troops left.

Based on 1 and 2, I presumed that at least one Nazi death camp in Poland had been liberated by US troops.

If #1 isn't correct, then it all breaks down. I don't have any specific reference for #1, and would welcome any reference to information showing it to be false.

[Spider Jerusalem]

12. #1 is wrong.

Concentration camps in Germany (incomplete list): Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück (of which Buchenwald and Dachau were liberated by the US Army, Belsen by the British; the others by the Soviets, although some camps in the Soviet occupation zone continued to be used for political detention by the NKVD, forerunner of the KGB).

[DarthDem]

14. Oh, Nonono

Several of the camps were in Poland, and you're absolutely right there - - including arguably the most nefarious and notorious, Auschwitz. However, there were also many located in Germany, including Buchenwald and Dachau, which were both liberated by the Americans, along with several others. The Brits freed several camps in Germany, too. Here's a good resource:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?ModuleId=10005131


As I implied in post #13, I don't think the U.S. Army was in Poland at *all*.

[izquierdista]

16. #1 is not correct

As post #5 has suggested, you should look at the front lines in March and April of 1945. The Red Army was the one that took Berlin and ended the war, and the Soviet zone of occupation pretty much defined the borders of what became East Germany.

France and England were very weak at the end of the war and were in no position to challenge Stalin's influence in the East. And despite hotheaded anti-Communists like Patton and MacArthur, the U.S. was in no position to dictate to the Soviets. They had to hope that the Soviets would withdraw of their own accord, like they withdrew from Manchuria in 1946. In essence, they did, but not until they had set up robust Communist factions in all the areas that they had occupied. They practiced hegemony as ruthlessly as the U.S. did in Latin America and the Caribbean.

[boppers]

21. Your error is conflating extermination camps and concentration camps.

Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau), Chełmno, Bełżec, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka were all in occupied Poland (annexed and otherwise), and were all extrermination camps. Maly Trostenets was in Belarus, Jasenovac was in Croatia, but most of the extermination camps (where a person was often killed within hours of arrival) were in Poland.

Concentration camps, however (where people were worked to death, starved to death, and wracked by disease), were all over Europe, and thus US troops liberated the ones that they got to.

[Captain Hilts]

5. Check out the location of the Red Army on a map of Europe April 1945.

[tabasco]

6. The Russians and Germans split up Polnd before WWII.

The dirty rotten Russkies shouldn't have had an acre of Poland but Poland is in an unfortunate place geographically.

It's been the stompin ground of invasions.

[glinda]

10. True. My grand mother fled Poland where she lived near what was to become Auschwitz.

I am Prussian. Poland has had a very sad history.

[Yupster]

22. I'm reading Harry Turtledove's latest what if book

This one's assuming that the Munich Conference did not give Germany the Sudetenland so Germany went to war in 1938 instead.

Most interesting difference to me is that Poland is allied with Hitler fighting the Soviets.

That's because Poland jumped in to take the Teschen area of Czechoslovakia which Hitler allowed (which actally happened). Russia came in on Czechoslovakia's side and therefore its Germany and Poland versus the USSR, England and France. It could have happened. Poland's geogrophy is such that if either Russia or Germany attacks it,. it needs help from the other to survive.

[Posteritatis]

26. Which book is that?

I'm vaguely surprised I missed one. ;)

[Yupster]

28. This one

http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/hitlerswar.html

I just finished it -- don't know if it will be a series or not.

My favorite is the Lizard series -- looks like he's finished with it, but I want more.

[Posteritatis]

30. Wow, one I actually hadn't heard of

I loved that series and kinda wanna blackmail him into doing a sequel to Homeward Bound someday, but he looks more into exploring comparatively minor divergences these days. Of course, those can get wacky when you run them out long enough...

[Yupster]

31. I've been disappointed lately

For one thing, he's writing about six books a year.

I thought the Fort Pillow and Teutoberger Forest books were weak. In fact, I thought the end of the Civil War series was very weak. Basically just retelling World War II with different names. As soon as the Confederates headed for Pittsburgh, I thought, okay, here comes Stalingrad, and sure enough that's what it was.

The book I linked to was better. I recommend it tio Turtledove fans.

[Posteritatis]

32. I find the retelling aspect to be interesting, actually

When I was reading In The Presence Of Mine Enemies, I figured out halfway through that he was using the fall of the Soviet Union as a template. With that in mind, I started reading it as a different angle on the fall of the USSR, and not only enjoyed the book on its own but feel I got a bit more of an emotional understanding of the actual history, something I was a few years too young to really understand when it was happening.

I got something similar reading about Featherston's rise to power in the Civil War series; when I thought of it as partly writing about Featherston and partly writing about how people felt and acted in Germany in the late twenties and early thirties, I came away from the book with a new angle on the actual events and some more empathy for what people at the time must have been thinking and experiencing. The middle books in that series - The Center Cannot Hold and The Victorious Opposition - stuck with me a hell of a lot more than any other parts of the series except for the ending parts of the final book.

Since he had some educational experience (it's hard not to getting a doctorate) and obviously has a respectable audience, I wonder if that's not a deliberate thing - whether he's only partly writing the stories to write the stories, but is also writing them to put people slightly outside the box as regards their views of actual history, to understand things a little better from another perspective.

(I dunno; I also have an MA in non-traditionally-academic portrayals of history, so I might be seeing that sort of thing all over the place. Either way, stuff like this is right up my alley as far as getting people hooked on the actual past..)

[Yupster]

33. No - I think you're absolutely right about Turtledove

He's half writing and half preaching.

The Lincoln as a socialist is one of the best examples of that.

I'm an old history teacher and textbook author.

[mix]

8. American troops did not liberate any camps in Poland.

Only camps further west inside the Reich. The Allied and Soviet armies met at the River Elbe, well inside Germany. American troops did not reach Poland due to the presence of the Red Army.

After the war, Poland was occupied and fell into the Soviet orbit, as you know. There was no possibility really of Americans preventing the Soviet occupation of Poland or eastern Europe. There was not the political will nor the military capability to take on the Red Army.

Re Stalin and the USSR, I would not diminish either the sacrifice or contribution of the Soviets to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Stalin dithered on military strategy, but nevertheless, he had enormous bargaining power in determining the shape of postwar Europe. Without the Soviets it would not have been possible to defeat Nazism.

[Boojatta]

15. "There was not the political will nor the military capability to take on the Red Army."

Since when does compliance by an ally with a term in the alliance agreement necessarily require military force to be used against the ally?

For example, I don't think that the European Union operates via troops of one member nation of the EU attacking when another EU member nation isn't in compliance with a term in one of the EU agreements.

Of course, a wartime military alliance is different in some ways from a peacetime economic alliance, but even a single country is in many respects an alliance. How are different commanders from different regions of a country made to comply with national goals, national rules, and commands from national headquarters without triggering a series of civil wars to accompany every war between nations?

[mix]

17. I don't follow you.

[Boojatta]

18. I can try to clarify, but without a hint it's difficult to proceed.

Perhaps I'm spreading dogma or confusion without realizing it and there's nothing for you to understand. I was recently in your role in a discussion; I wanted an explanation. Here's what I wrote:
-----------
Is this some kind of Orwellian Newspeak or am I simply not comprehending well enough?

You're arguing a false premise - that those who vote Unrecommend are controlling your ability to have an opinion on that thread. That's not true.

By "arguing a false premise", do you mean "trying to support a false claim"? In other words, are you using "premise" to mean not an assumption that is the basis of some reasoning, but a conclusion that someone is trying to reach?
-----------
Here's the reply I received:

The latter. (In other words, the reply says that Boojatta is simply not comprehending well enough.)
-----------
Here's how I replied to that:

Okay, can you provide an explanation?

If you need more symptoms to help you diagnose the problem, then I can provide them. However, I cannot determine what you mean without your cooperation.
-----------
The other person had the last word:

No. It's clear to all but the purposefully obtuse.

[izquierdista]

19. It's called "diplomacy"

In many ways, the United States bobbled the post-war diplomacy due to Truman being new on the scene and his reliance on James Byrnes instead of Henry Wallace. Byrnes and Dean Acheson were reflexively anti-Communist and took the first opportunity to turn the Soviet Union from ally to adversary. By being antagonistic and dividing the world into East and West, they set up the conditions for the Cold War.

Had FDR not jettisoned Wallace in 1944, I think history would have been very different with a President Wallace instead of Truman. Truman was essentially a "Blue Dog" long before the term was coined. He got on the ticket in 1944 due to his role in accounting for funds spent on the war, i.e. being a "fiscal conservative". Had Wallace been President, Stalin may never have given Kim Il Sung the go ahead to invade South Korea, and the Korean War could have been averted.

[Thothmes]

23. The zones of occupation in Germany were defined

at the Yalta Conference in Feb 1945. Roosevelt, not Truman, signed on them.

[izquierdista]

24. And your point is??

The map may have been agreed to by Roosevelt, but the Cold War was started by Truman's reactionary advisers.

[mix]

25. True, about the Cold War being started by American anti-communist zealots.

Also, what is often forgotten, is Stalin's postwar vision, one that "looked forward to a long-term coexistence, or rather symbiosis, of capitalist and communist systems..." (Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes) The Soviets hoped to continue the "anti-fascist alliance," but the Cold War ended that dream.

[Thothmes]

27. The point is was that it was the Roosevelt administration

that bought into the occupation zones of post war Europe, not the Truman administration. OBTW, Roosevelt did not dump Wallace, the Democratic party power structure in 1944 decided that they did not want Wallace as President. The knew that who ever was FDR's Vice President for the 1944 election would become the President before the end of the term. Roosevelt stayed out of the back room politicking that went into making Truman the VP nominee.

[DarthDem]

13. I Don't Believe . . . .

. . . that the U.S. Army played much of a role at all in liberating death camps in Poland. (If I'm wrong about this, to any expert on the subject, please, I'm very happy to be corrected.)

Moreover, Stalin started making propaganda-based moves directed toward occupied Poland as early as 1943. He actively sought to diminish the influence of the Polish goverment-in-exile in Britain, and also started putting agents into place to undermine democratic, pro-Western forces as it became clear that the Nazis were overextended. Once the Red Army overwhelmingly swept into Poland in 1945, there wasn't much that the U.S., Britain and France could do. They drew the line with West Germany and the enclave of West Berlin. I've never read anything that suggests that they could have done anything different, really, unless they were prepared to go to war with Russia instead of concluding hostilities in the Pacific and ending the conflict.