Magnus wrote:
Disagree on this point. Hitler was actually upset that he didn't have the opportunity to invade Czechoslovakia in 1938/39 - he wanted war, he wanted to 'pay back' the French for Versailles, he wanted to destroy the USSR. If the French and English (and Poland) had somehow got together with Stalin and provided a united front, Hitler may have backed down - but only to bide his time until he saw enough cracks to again attack their weaknesses. He was going to have his war one way or the other.
Hitler did indeed have a maniacal hatred for the "bastards of Versailles" (Czechoslovakia, Poland) and would not rest until both were destroyed. Poland in particular earned his wrath because of the failed League of Nations' plebiscite in Silesia in 1920 and the Corridor. The Czechs (in Hitler's warped mind) had been "Aryanized" somewhat through their long association with the Holy Roman Empire and therefore deserved some modicum of limited existance in the Reich (as peasants) but the Poles deserved no quarter and got exactly that.
Sensing a new danger, in early 1933 Marshall Pilsudski approached the French with a plan for a preventive strike against Germany (at a time when Polish-French forces were at an advantage to Germany's numerically), but Paris refused. There had been throughout Europe a growing sympathy for the Germans since 1930, with American Secretaries of State, French foreign ministers and British bankers reaching to realize the dead Stresemann's dreams of mitigating Versailles for Depression-ravaged Germany, so it's no wonder the French refused. Pilsudski died in 1935 and his successors - the fools of 1939 - were militarily incompetent as events would eventually bear out. It's not known whether Pilsudski was serious about the strike in 1933, or whether he was just testing the French alliance. (The French were unreliable partners, having allowed their Little Entente alliance to whither and Pilsudski had just cause for concern.) Pilsudski however was quite competent militarily, having defeated the Soviets in 1920, so one must wonder whether a more determined French response in 1933 might have relegated Hitler to the sidelines of history. Perhaps another German nationalist would have come to power anyway in Germany, or perhaps a military coup would have resulted, but even if World War II still managed to break out without Hitler I think it would have been a somewhat less bloody affair.
Magnus wrote:
As to the poll, well Chechoslovakia did not exust in September of 1939 so you cannot list them at all, so I will have to go with Poland because they were annihilated in less than a month, although the German commanders did learn a lot of their blitzkrieg tactics when they invaded Poland and refined them for when they needed to be extra effective - in the invasion of France in 1940.
Magnus, check out my post at the beginning of this thread on Poland (1st post on page 2). It was in many ways more effective an ally than France and the low Countries for the Allies.