Could Poland have been defended successfully in a hypothetical

>>1856758
no

>>1856758
Poland could have held on longer, holding the Romanian bridgehead could have elongated the invasion significantly, but we're only talking weeks at most unless the Allies act more aggressive.

>>1856758

No. Poland was on its last legs when the Soviets finally marched across the borders.

>>1856970
*aggressively.

But your point is correct. Weeks at most. The French and British had literally zero chance of breaking through to Poland.

>>1856758
They could have potentially defended themselves successfully though with more changes than what you describe.

The Poles used a rather daft plan of defence which really played to the German strengths. They've had much better defensive plans on hand too, but they went with a terrible one due to what they perceived as a political necessity.

The key issue was that the enormously long border between Poland and Germany (made even longer by the Sudentenland annexation a year earlier) was largely devoid of natural obstacles and essentially indefensible. Instead the Poles prepared to defend on deeper lines, possibly even as deep as the Vistula line.

The problem with this was the fact the Polish political leadership have recently seen how feeble international response to earlier German gains was and were unsure of how firm the guarantees they have received were.

(splitting my reply into two parts just to bump the thread before it goes off the board)

File: haller2.jpg (884KB, 3027x3854px) Image search: [Google]

884KB, 3027x3854px

Poland had a plan to hold position in mountains near Romania

>>1858551
The Poles thought that letting the Germans advance through one third of Poland with only nominal resistance could be disastrous, as the Allies might see it (or choose to see it) as an immediate, complete Polish collapse and not declare war. Worse yet, it could end in a quasi-Czechoslovak scenario. The Germans would walk in, occupy the Polish corridor, Silesia and the former province of Posen, then not engage the Poles on their terms but simply ask for peace/international arbitration of cleaning the mess up. The allies, seeing a chance for peace for our times again, could then acquiesce and Poland would become a dismembered rump state like Czechoslovakia has.

And so the plan ended up being the mess that it was: an attempt at a "proper" defence of an indefensible border to keep up appearances until the Allies declare war, followed by a full-front orderly retreat to actual defensible lines.

It didn't work very well since an orderly retreat against a more mobile foe who's encircling you from the very start is near impossible, but the Poles did fall back to the Vistula line with some fighting left in them and managed to avoid some major encirclements (while falling for others). They could have defended for a while longer, possibly enough for the French to mount some proper intervention in western Germany (though probably not seeing how sluggish the response was), but then the Soviets came in.

Ignoring the Soviet issue the Poles might have been much better served by simply defending on defensible lines from the start. This could have extended the war by many months and allowed the French and British to do some proper mischief to the German rear. But this is assuming the Polish fears of their allies wriggling out of the war were completely unfounded.

>>1856758
How do we define success?

>>1858595

It also assumes that there's there's no precipitous internal failure over having just ceded roughly 1/3 of the country without a fight, nor thatt the Germans arriving in good order can't overrun a Vistula line; given their overwhelming air and artillery superiority, I doubt very much that said Vistula line could hold for "months", especially if the Germans decide to do something fancy, like cross the river up by Danzig and hit from both sides.

>>1859246
> I doubt very much that said Vistula line could hold for "months"

They fought for a month as it were - not properly mobilised due to allied demands and fighting a war of manoeuvre they were woefully unprepared for based on an ad hoc battle plan forced by the political situation.

Extending this to plural "months" if they were to stick to a deep defence on e.g. Narew-Vistula-Pilica-Nida-Dunajec line as their doctrine would normally demand is not that unlikely.

We are not talking about them defeating Germany on their own here anyway, just extending the war enough for the German unprotected year to become a real hindrance.

Not that it would actually happen, I doubt France would have been able to do anything of substance before at least four or five months.

>>1856758
yes. wehrmacht was on the verge of running out of bombs and shells.

>>1859227
The Capitol isn't taken

>>1859645

>They fought for a month as it were - not properly mobilised due to allied demands and fighting a war of manoeuvre they were woefully unprepared for based on an ad hoc battle plan forced by the political situation.

They held onto a few fortified strongholds for a month. Their field armies were already shattered by the 12th, and offhand, I don't believe any of them were in communication with any of the others by the end of the 12th.

>Extending this to plural "months" if they were to stick to a deep defence on e.g. Narew-Vistula-Pilica-Nida-Dunajec line as their doctrine would normally demand is not that unlikely.

Yes, it is, because A) you have to just assume that the government and/or civilian population won't collapse at giving up almost a third of the country without a fight, B) a more concentrated fighting perimeter helps the side with more fire support (artillery, aircraft) and less in the way of good old fashioned infantry. The Germans were more mechanized and more artillerified (is that a word?) and had clear air supremacy. It is far from clear that concentrating further would have actually bought much, if any time, just shifting the battle further east and getting pasted there.

Plus, the Germans were also not fully mobilized, and as more divisions came online in the middle of September, they could easily have been thrown into Poland should the Poles still be resisting.

>We are not talking about them defeating Germany on their own here anyway, just extending the war enough for the German unprotected year to become a real hindrance.

What unprotected rear? They already had 22 divisions on the French border by September 7th (enough to assume a less than 1:3 inferiority and likely hold onto their ground for at least a little while) and would go on to mobilize another 50 that month, which would steal away the temporary numerical advantage the French had.