[dfwgator]

One of the most interesting "what ifs" would have been, if Pilsudski had survived.

Hitler at Pilsudski's funeral.

Hitler admired Pilsudski, even signing a non-aggression pact with Poland in 1934. He knew of Pilsudski's hatred of the Russians, and perhaps felt he could have been a partner. Most interesting was the fact that Hitler specifically ordered an honor guard to Pilsudski's grave in Krakow when the Nazis occupied Poland.

[Fiji Hill]

There are a lot of interesting WWII "what ifs."

• What if France hadn't surrendered in 1940 and continued to fight from Normandy and Brittany and from its overseas territories? Would Italy, finding its African colonies surrounded by Allied territory and its navy facing a combined Anglo-French fleet, have sued for peace?

• Instead of invading the USSR, what if Hitler had sought to finish off Britain in the Mediterranean? Would the Vichy French forces holding Lebanon and Syria have resisted a German invasion?

• What if Stalin had believed the intelligence about German intentions gleaned from the Sorge spy ring in 1941? Would that later result in the Warsaw Pact stretching to the Pyrenees?

• What if Stalin had aided the Polish rebels in Warsaw and as a result, broke the German defense line at the Vistula and poured into central Europe while the Allies were still mired in Normandy?

• After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, what if Hitler had kept his mouth shut and refrained from declaring war on the US?

[Matt_DZ_PL]

"...when the Nazis occupied Poland."

This is one of the few things I hate in America - calling Hitler's Germans "Nazis". THEY WERE GERMANS. JUST GERMANS, whereas only the small percentage of them were NSDAP officials and operatives.

As far as we look into it, that simplistic Nazi terms collapse at all. For instance, some Poles before the war were Nazis indeed and hated Jews. However they were murdered by Germans too, just because they were Polish, the "untermenschen".

So, when it comes to the crunch and contemporary young men are asked about WWII, its outbreak victims and aggressors, things are not as easy as it seems to be. Although the vast majority says that "Nazis started the war", answering the question "Who were the Nazis?", e.g. many students of the history faculty of the University of Washington say they were...Poles, adding that "In 1939, Polish Nazis invaded peaceful Polish Jews..." :(((((

Anyway, the Polish TV broadcast a documentary about it. The whole nation could see that with their own eyes. My God!!! It was shot in 2010 or so! In the very heart of the sole world's superpower! Answers given by the future intellectual elite of the USA!

So, I wouldn't be surprised at all if in the near future I was called "a son of Nazis", a son of those who on Sep.1,1939 invaded peaceful Germans, created hundreds of death camps etc. etc. etc.