They would have claimed some or all of those countries the same way they claimed B&M, with a little bit of hardball
Maybe, maybe not.
Might that hardball have included telling Hacha they were going to occupy the country and the Czechs could either fight them and be destroyed or let them in? The occupation had been decided on a week prior
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Slovakia was friendly to Hitler, so if he decided to invade even beforehand, then it is justifiable due to his good relations with the Slovak government. Czechoslovakia was a failed state and the government was collapsing, losing control of its territory and military. A dangerous situation that can result in massacres.
Looking for a revisionist who can explain to me why war would have been "inevitable" if they had backed down. Would Poland have invaded a country more than twice it's size? Would B & F initiated a repeat of WW1?
Poland would have continued to engage in provocations until the situation boiled over. Yes Poland absolutely did want war, they were sabre-rattling WAY harder than Germany. They closed down the border between East Prussia and Danzig, and sent in """postmen""" with military hardware like machineguns to occupy the city, and, if you are skeptical of the Nuremberg trials, they were also engaging in raids across the German border and trying to incite an uprising of Silesian Poles.
As a country's leader you can't ignore this sort of hostility, if Poland continued occupying Danzig or outright annexed it, and Hitler did nothing, he would have been couped and replaced with someone who would.
Likely at worst there would have just been a major recession in Germany due to their high debts from borrowing so much to revamp their military, and the party would have grown less popular.
Germany was one of the first countries to recover from the Great Depression, which Britain, France and America were still suffering in 1939.
B & F were arming themselves rapidly in response to Germany's massive remilitarization. That's why the Germans actually hoped Poland would turn down their "reasonable" proposal. Not only would this give them an excuse to invade, but B & F would be weaker so perhaps less likely to intervene.
From Longerich's Goebbels book (Irving doesn't cite any of these entries, probably cause they make Germany look like they started the war lol)
Quote 1:
"That Goering's aim was not to separate England from Poland has been clearly proven by the fact that Goering, to begin with, had transmitted to the British Ambassador in Berlin, Henderson, the text of the note which contained the propositions made by Germany to Poland-propositions which were called moderate by Henderson-and that, hereby, he tried to come to direct negotiations with Poland. Poland, however, obviously did not want an agreement with Germany. Several circumstances point to that."
Quote 2:
“Dahlerus accompanied Henderson and Ogilvie-Forbes to the Polish Embassy in Berlin at 10:00 a.m. on August 31st. Dahlerus carried his copy of the German proposals, and he read them to Lipski in German. The Swedish engineer received the impression that the Polish Ambassador did not grasp their import, and he left the room to dictate a copy of the note to a Polish secretary. Henderson in the meantime telephoned Weizsäcker at the German Foreign Office that he was advising the Polish Ambassador to negotiate with Germany, and he called this his personal démarche at Warsaw. He proceeded to explain to Lipski that the German proposals offered an excellent basis for a settlement between Germany and Poland. He added that it might still be possible to save the situation if Lipski would agree to receive them.
…Lipski exclaimed to Henderson in great agitation that he “had no reason to negotiate with the German Government. If it came to war between Poland and Germany, he knew — since he had lived 5 1/2 years in Germany — that a revolution would break out in Germany, and that they would march on Berlin.”
Henderson shook his head sadly. He knew that there was no longer any point in discussing the current situation with the Polish Ambassador.
(multiple sources attest to him saying this)
High ranking NSDAP officials actually were sending genuine compromises to Poland and Poland genuinely did believe it could defeat Germany for some stupid reason. It was not just 1 person either. The Polish representative in Danzig stated that the Polish government would regard any attempt to open up the border between Danzig and East Prussia as an act of war which Poland would retaliate against militarily. (The border was closed by Polish customs officials, effectively sieging the city).
Poland for their part didn't accept the 16 point proposal because it gave Germany a "corridor" through the corridor (thus cutting Poland off from the sea in the case of war) , and also the Germans demanded a Polish representative (Beck) come with plenipotentiary powers, that it is who could agree to proposals without authorization from the Polish government. Poland was well aware of the entire Czech affair and how the Germans had strong-armed Hacha into signing over his country. The biggest point of suspicion was that Hitler during the Sudeten crisis publicly affirmed that he would have no further territorial demands, a promise which he had repeatedly broken. Germany could not be trusted to remain peaceful in the event of a deal.
It's not on Hitler's moral authority, or Britain's or Poland's to deny the people of Danzig their right to national self-determination. This is a decision that should have been held by referendum. I would not regard it as a territorial claim but as a right of the people.
The "corridor" you are describing is nothing more than a sovereign railway line from Germany to East Prussia. You can always just blow it up in the event of war if you're afraid of crossing the tracks.
In the end Hitler and co still got a little scared Poland would accept.
So again, they didn't give a shit about Danzig. It was an excuse.
You're going to make me hunt down obscure quotes and documents again, aren't you? I hope you know this is really annoying for me, so be very pleased with yourself that you are forcing me to do this. I'll post the quotes from German internal communications some time tomorrow maybe if I can track them down. But the Germans definitely did not feel like the diplomatic situation was in their favor and were looking for ways to resolve things mutually without abandoning the Germans in Danzig.
