|
The situations are entirely different in 1938 and 1940. Primarily because Italy was still embroiled in the Spanish Civil War in 1938. There weren't a major number of Italian ground troops committed, but it was a serious drain on the Regia Aeronautica and supplying the Nationalists came at the expense of building up Italy's own stockpiles. At most I believe that Mussolini would commit a brigade or so of "volunteers" to assist the Germans. Remember that they'd not yet signed the Pact of Steel and weren't formally allies.
As for the Poles and Russians, the latter had an agreement to ship troops to Czechoslovkia via Romania and didn't _necessarily_ have to try and go through Poland. OTOH I do tend to believe that Stalin would try and revenge himself against the Poles if an opportunity offered itself. Polish seizure of Teschen, despite Soviet warnings not to do so, would likely have been used as the casus belli. This would lead to the unnatural, at least to our modern eyes, semi-alliance of Germany and Poland. I say semi-alliance as I seriously doubt that the Poles would whole-heartedly throw in the Germans, especially since they were quite aware of the German claims against West Prussia, Danzig and the like.
I have a complete RAF OB for the period if you're interested as well.
Jason
|