gumishu: the thing you completely miss is that tripartite Polish-British-French guarantees were purely defensive - it meant that if one of the countries would be attacked by Hitler all other will join the war and help the attacked
Not only in case of attack.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/blbk19.asp
ARTICLE 2.
(1) The provisions of Article I will also apply in the event of any action by a European Power which clearly threatened, directly or indirectly, the independence of one of the Contracting Parties, and was of such a nature that the Party in question considered it vital to resist it with its armed forces.
That article says basically that whenever the gov of PL (or one of the other two) "considers it vital" that its independence is threatened then they are allowed to "resist it with its armed forces."
You see what that means? Germany does not need to do anything and Poland could still claim that they "threaten their independence."
This is a blanco cheque for war.
Poland could have avoided war with Germany even as late as early 1939 by joining up with Hitler - this is what Hitler wanted - up to the moment that he realized Polish rulers will be loyal to their military pact with France (from that point detailed plans for war with Poland started to be drawn) could Poland have avoided the war in the days leading up to September - I think it is possible still - the demands Hitler gave were pretty symbolic and didn't touch any strategic Polish interests - it was actually a stick and a carrot offering by Hitler - Hitler still counted that Poland switches alliances but being a bit humilated by Poles wanted some symbolic punishment on Poles
so I guess if Poland abandoned her western allies in the early to middle August and went for reconciliation, cooperation and then an alliance with Germany there wouldn't have been war with Germany in 1939 Thank you, exactly that is what I am talking about.
- the World War would break out anyway - with Hitler and Poland attacking the Soviet Union jointly (most probably with the assistance of Romania and several other countries (Hungary, Slovakia perhaps Bulgaria) Depends if in that alternate world Stalin also would have deployed massive attack forces on the western USSR borders like he did in 1941. Maybe he wouldn't have. We will never know.
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