if the allies had given into Hitler's demands for Poland would he have stopped?

Question

i think he would only have attacked the east not the west

Answer 1

The east would have happenned, but then the west would have followed eventually.

there was no way he would have been able to endure France and Britain under independant control from him.

He was after revenge, and expansion. We would have been prime targets, and probably by the time it happened, we wouldn't have been able to stop him.

Answer 2

This question brings back a point I was making last month...As to would he have stopped...yes...He would have stopped with gaining Russia...maybe France and Europe too...but not Britain.He admired us and it shows in his actions at the time of Dunkirk and the Battle Of Britain which they lost...unable to defeat us across the pond.
He liked us...wanted the Russians out of the way...At the time it was the chance for right to win over left...We now still face a strong Russia ...so where have we really gained?
This is all part of the big questions that the left and do-gooders and haters don't want asked...Its accepted Hitler was a maniac on the loose...Joe Stalin is forgotten
I'm glad one or two of you are asking this and seeing that history has taken a path...and the victors wrote our history...Germany has been forced...rightfully up to a point...regarding their treatment of people into apologising unreservedly for being totally wrong
They were not totally wrong...
History could have been so different and less life lost if our government of that time..1939-1940 had dealt different cards
Germany would never have threatened America...or the Far East There is question as to Japans intervention too if We in Britain had acted differently
The Jews might have been removed from Germany and re-settled...and there would have been no Holocaust
All this is possible if we in September1939-April 1940 had acted with vision

Answer 3

It is one of the dilemas. Hitlers plan to annex Danzig and have free passage across the Polish Corridor was the basis of attack. If the Poles had relented (which they nearly did) then I believe that Hitler would have waited until Spring and would have then been forced to take further action and demand the rest of the lost German Territory the Poles had recieved in 1919.
One of the big reason Hitler was quick to require more land, was not for conquest sake and aggression, his economy demanded it. Germany was almost bankrupt again in 1939 as most of the economic turn around was based on unpaid arms deals, increased labour work to keep unemployment down and some very strange ideas on exports.
Also he was in fear of being upstaged by Stalin and Mussolini.

Answer 4

I think that England realised their policy of appeasement was not going to work and that Hitler simply used the treaty of versailles and the claim that he must undo the injustice it stood for as an excuse to claim more and more territory.

The allies gave into Hitler's wishes concerning the Rhineland, the Sudetenland, the unification of Germany and Austria and them retaking the rest of Czechoslovakia. It was clear that he would not stop at Poland, as he had vowed to stop at the Sudetenland at the Munich agreement in sept 1938.

Another piece of evidence that Hitler's demands were just a way of getting more territory is that he turns on the USSR, who he had agreed to share Poland with. He immediately turns on his allies once he gets what he wants. Which means that he must have had other agendas other than undoing the injusitces of the Treaty of Versailles.

Answer 5

The "German-Polish War" came out of the appeasement and groveling (sound familiar?) shown to Hitler after his annexation of Austria and most of Czechoslovakia. All the major powers, who had treaty obligations with Czechoslovakia, simply looked the other way and approved of Hitler's actions in the hope that would be his final conquest. Even following the invasion of Poland the French had 90 Divisions sitting on the German border and they did nothing. They could have crushed Germany in weeks and they sat.

Answer 6

Probably for a short while. One of his goals was to revenge the treatment of Germany after WW1.

So he would have gone after the French eventually. No matter there would have been a war later anyway as he was trying to conquer europe. Once he made a move on France war would have been the result.

A few years later maybe but then the army and airforce would have been more powerful and could possibly have achieved the invasion of britian. The German navy would then have been complete with the aircraft carrier being the only ship in construction besides more subs.
Think of the sea battles with the Bismark and Tirpitz and the battlecruisers against a British force.

Anywho just food for thought

Answer 7

He would not have stopped.
You can't judge his actions in terms of what territories he was motivated to acquire, as though he had an objective sense of the boundaries he envisioned for his empire.
Expansionism as a policy begets only more expansionism. Any nation that pursues any line of policy creates interests that are dependent on the continuation of that policy. They convince the population that this policy is not just advantageous, but a matter of life and death.
Thus the policy will continue until outside realities intervene.

Most authoritarian expansionists never stop. Hitler was no different.

Answer 8

No, he wouldn't have stopped IMO. War was essential to maintaining his grip on the Reich. The Third Reich economy was unsustainable, and mobilization/looting was the only thing that kept it going. If the Wehrmacht had time on it's hands, they most likely would have got around to plotting a coup against Hitler, and then there were all the factions within the party itself. It's a myth that the Third Reich was a well-oiled machine, it was actually quite chaotic. Therefore war was the only thing that kept Hitler in power for as long as he was.

Answer 9

I think yes so far as western Europe. Russia he wanted.

Hitler didn't want war with the UK, for racial reasons apart from strategical. He did want to expand into the Slavonic east, in fact he regarded Slavs as little better than Jews.

He did want the acquiesence of his fellow Teutons and must have been gobsmacked when we chose to honour the Polish treaty. This miscalculation cost him his life, apart from 40 million others, and cursed his country's name down the ages.

His confidence wasn't surprising though; we had spent the last 6 years appeasing him.

Answer 10

No he wouldn't have stopped. If Hitler has just wanted the Polish corridor, he could have annexed it and set up a Polish state in the remainder.

Besides, the Nazis had long-term plans for Poland. Half was to be germanised immediately and annexed to the Reich. The remainder known as the 'Central Government' was to be a pool of slave labour for the German economy. Eventually, the Polish in this area were to be "expelled" or extinguished to make way for German settlers. A few Poles would be allowed to remain as domestic slaves until they had served their purpose.

Other Slavic peoples, including any remaining Poles were to be expelled beyond the Russian Urals to make way for German demographic expansion. When Belorussia, the Ukraine, the Baltics, and western Russia were adequately populated, the remaining non-Germanic peoples beyond the Urals were to be put to death to make way for further German settlement.

Answer 11

Probably not. One of the great ironies is that the claim to the Polish corridor was one of the few territorial demands that had some legitimacy - much stronger than the claim to the Sudetenland, for example! But Hitler was committed to Military expansionism, and had his eyes on the east.