Would it have been realistic for Poland to try acquiring the Kresy in this scenario?

[futurist]

Here is the scenario: France doesn't fall in 1940. Within the next year, Hitler and the Nazis are overthrown and replaced by a military junta of anti-Nazis. The new German government is able to make peace with Britain and France whereby Germany would withdraw from Poland and Czechia but would be allowed to keep both Danzig and the Sudetenland. (What would happen to the Memelland would depend on whether the Soviet Union still occupies the Baltic countries in this scenario.) After the war, both Germany and Poland experience a return to democracy.

Several decades later, the Soviet Union still collapses due to rising nationalist sentiment and due to the unwillingness of its elites to use force in order to preserve it. In such a scenario--and please remember that the U.S. never got involved in World War II in this scenario and is thus still mostly uninvolved in European affairs in this scenario--would Poland try going to war with Ukraine and Belarus in order to recover the Kresy (which are Poland's eastern territories that the Soviet Union conquered in 1939)?

Also, please keep in mind that Poland would be much wealthier in the 1990s in this scenario as a result of it not experiencing decades of Communist rule. In addition, with the U.S. being mostly uninvolved in European affairs in this scenario, Poland would have less of a reason to fear negative repercussions. Finally, in this scenario, Poland is not going to acquire any German territory after the end of World War II and thus won't have that issue to deal with; in contrast, in our TL, there was a very real risk that Germany would raise the question of its lost eastern territories if Poland would have laid a claim on the Kresy.

Anyway, any thoughts on this?

[futurist]

Also, Poland is going to be in a real pickle in the post-WWII years in this scenario if the Soviet Union tries to repatriate the Poles and Jews living in the Kresy to Poland (which will be deprived of its eastern half due to the Soviet Union conquering it back in 1939). On one hand, Poland probably wouldn't want to force the Poles and Jews in the Kresy to continue enduring Communist tyranny. On the other hand, though, with every Pole and Jew that leaves the Kresy, the weaker Poland's claim to the Kresy becomes.

[stevep]

  I think there are too many butterflies to tell with any accuracy.  The Polish claim would be weakened as you say if the Soviets evicted a lot of the Polish population from the region, in which they were in the minority anyway.  Think the only region that the Polish had a significant cultural claim was that around Lvov and even here, while they were in the majority in the city itself they were a minority in the province as a whole.

  As such it would depend on the political political situation in Poland and also in Europe as a whole and in the western former Soviet Union.  Poland may be markedly stronger, especially if it avoided much of the WWII massacres and abused but then it might still be a fairly right wing autocratic state.  Also it probably wouldn't get the OTL gains of much of eastern Germany so it could be territoriality markedly smaller.  Europe as a whole may well oppose Poland going on an expansion spree, especially since it might want to encourage the Ukraine especially to distance itself from Russia.  Also the Ukraine is a large and economically powerful state and OTL after the collapse of the Soviet empire it had nuclear weapons.  If facing possible threats from Poland or other states it may be markedly less willing to trade them away as OTL.  Which would make any Polish attempt to gain territory from them very risky.

[steffen]

WIth no ww2 in the sense we know you miss 30 million dead russians,too.
So the USSR of your TL is completly different to our TL...

i also have problems to see germany got defeated and not parted and occupied. If poland survive, they will replace the USSR in the partipation story, maybe worse as OTL.

Poland was a military dictatorship, some people seem to forget this point.

WIth your TL as a fact, why would that poland not try to keep agressive/expansive... after all they invaded russia 1920, they are part of the allies who defeated the nazis (but got "nothing"?), they have tensions with the czechs, they need some transformation into a "real" democracy...

with germany still be powerfull and not separated (as you mentioned), poland would at last use 50% of its military to check the germans, the other 50% would be used to check the russians to keep them on distance.

I think, before russia have nukes poland would try something or got drawn in... for Stalin poland was a problem, that needed to get reduced and pushed to the west.
If germany is not reduced, stalin would try to make poland smaller, expulse the poles (as OTL)... the baltics would also be seen as "need red liberation"...

the question is: WHEN does Stalin strike?
He will strike, if he engage poland 1:1 poland no longer exists (as an independent state), propably also germany would no longer exist.

If we accept the "peace for decades", russia has a much stronger head start, they lost no 30 million people, they had not gutted their economy by the nazis and the brutal war, that basically destroyed anything in the conquered area...

so the chance that the "poles" in kressy want to stay in the USSR are very big.
Again, poland supressed its minorities in quite a brutal way pre-war, i doubt they would change that post-war.

Depending on how germany changes (no special informations about that) you could see lots of polish jews flee to germany or - if stalin dies earlier (or after his death) to the USSR.

[futurist]

Aug 25, 2018 10:12:38 GMT stevep said:

 1.  I think there are too many butterflies to tell with any accuracy.  The Polish claim would be weakened as you say if the Soviets evicted a lot of the Polish population from the region, in which they were in the minority anyway.  Think the only region that the Polish had a significant cultural claim was that around Lvov and even here, while they were in the majority in the city itself they were a minority in the province as a whole.

  2. As such it would depend on the political political situation in Poland and also in Europe as a whole and in the western former Soviet Union.  Poland may be markedly stronger, especially if it avoided much of the WWII massacres and abused but then it might still be a fairly right wing autocratic state.  Also it probably wouldn't get the OTL gains of much of eastern Germany so it could be territoriality markedly smaller.

3. Europe as a whole may well oppose Poland going on an expansion spree, especially since it might want to encourage the Ukraine especially to distance itself from Russia.  Also the Ukraine is a large and economically powerful state and OTL after the collapse of the Soviet empire it had nuclear weapons.  If facing possible threats from Poland or other states it may be markedly less willing to trade them away as OTL.  Which would make any Polish attempt to gain territory from them very risky.

1. I think that Poles were also either a majority or a plurality in Vilnius--at least in the pre-World War II years.

2. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus would also be stronger without World War II. Also, Yes, Poland is likely to be smaller in this scenario.

3. I don't know if Ukraine actually had the launch codes for the nuclear weapons on its territory, though. That said, though, you are very much correct that a Polish attack on Ukraine would probably encourage Ukraine to ask Russia for military assistance and perhaps troops as well in order to defeat this Polish invasion--thus making Ukraine closer to Russia once more and making it less likely that Ukraine could be integrated into the rest of Europe. As you said, I think that the other European powers would be disinclined to piss of Ukraine and thus would try their utmost hardest to restrain Poland.

Also, interestingly enough, even in the extremely unlikely event that Russia doesn't militarily intervene and Poland actually wins its war with Ukraine, the rest of Ukraine would certainly drift into Russia's orbit--very possibly permanently--as a result of losing its most pro-Western parts to Poland. Would Poland have actually wanted that? After all, without Ukraine, there can be no strong Intermarium.