Could Poland have defeated Soviet Union in any scenarios....

[Kovax]

The issues in the Sudetenland were clearly two-sided, and Allied (notably French) foreign policy strongly favored the Czech point of view almost to the exclusion of all else, mainly because the alternative strengthened Germany. Hitler, quite obviously, took the opposite extreme. The thing that made Hitler's political assertions so dangerous was that they were founded on very real issues which invoked strong sentiment on both sides, not on outright lies. He "merely" played up the less "politically correct" side of the issue and assigned sinister motives to the opposite point of view. It's hard enough to disprove a lie, but nearly impossible to disprove a half-truth or distortion of the facts, especially when you're doing the same from the opposite angle.

Besides, thanks to the heavy handed approach of the Czech government in several respects, two wrongs do not make a right, and Benes being "less wrong" than Hitler doesn't play up well in the press.

 

[Maq]

I wouldn't include the Sudeten occupation as reasonable by any means. You've got to remember that Nazi Germany had been funnelling money and materiel to a fifth columnist organisation within the Sudetenland, Heinlein's Sudetendeutsche Partei, who'd been running a terrorist campaign against the Czech state and civilians for a number of years before 1938 and through Heinlein had been doing everything within their power to frustrate Czech attempts to integrate the Sudeten Germans within their state.

Czechoslovakia was more democratic and more lenient towards minorities than other states in the region. But truth is that the Sudeten Germans hated Czechoslovakia from the very beginning, and the co-existence was far from perfect. The government's attitude was not utterly fair, as well. Distrust on both sides.
So it's kind of easy dismissal to tell that Sudeten nationalism was fuelled by Hitler's fifth column. The pure fact is that the Germans struggled for the right of self-determination from the very beginning, and they were deprived of it. Also, Czechoslovakia did not gather courage to provide minorities with genuine self-administration, autonomy. Far from Swiss model. Individual rights were on the level, but collective rights were largerly denied.
I believe we should have attempted imitating Swiss cantonal scheme from the very beginning, and if lucky, it might have built trust and good partnership. But nobody in Czechoslovakia, neither Czechs, nor the others were on the level of such a breakthrough.
[For your info, I'm a Czech with 50% Sudetendeutsche ancestry, so I know the story from my grandparents and parents quite intimately. It's one of the many bitter nationalist stories we can see in many places on Earth.]

 

[ConjurerDragon]

The Sudeteland was ethnically German. By the logic of Versailles, it should have been given to Germany. ..

Not exactly Germany but Austria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_German-Austria

After all the Sudetenland (and the other regions like german Bohemia that are all thrown into "Sudetenland" despite the latter being only a part of the whole) was part of Austria-Hungary and not Germany before WW I, and Austria did acutally claim those areas right after WW1.

 

[DoomBunny]

Not exactly Germany but Austria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_German-Austria

After all the Sudetenland (and the other regions like german Bohemia that are all thrown into "Sudetenland" despite the latter being only a part of the whole) was part of Austria-Hungary and not Germany before WW I, and Austria did acutally claim those areas right after WW1.

Maybe so, but Austria itself should have been part of Germany by the logic Versailles was supposedly using.

 

[Maq]

Maybe so, but Austria itself should have been part of Germany by the logic Versailles was supposedly using.

Not necessarily. In 1920, the Austrian sentiments were different from those in 1938.

 

[Herbert West]

Not necessarily. In 1920, the Austrian sentiments were different from those in 1938.

Not really. Versailles strictly forbade a union of Germany and Rump Austria, exactly because the logical thing for both of those states was to unify. Unification was the clear course of action since 1848, at least.

 

[Kovax]

Just about the last thing that France and the UK wanted was to strengthen Germany, possibly other than allowing Austria-Hungary to reinstate the Hapsburg dynasty. With the monarchy gone and the former Empire reduced to a minor power, a lot of the differences between Austria and Germany were no longer relevant, so a unification of the two was no longer unthinkable from the Austrian perspective. In essence, they no longer had all that much to give up.

What the removal of Austria-Hungary did on an international level was to remove one of the counter-balances to both German and Russian power, and the externally enforced political situation prevented any Balkan entity from unifying the region into a viable military and industrial factor to fill the void. Instead, the area was fragmented and powerless, which was exactly what the western powers wanted. Turns out, they didn't like what that situation led to: expansionist escapades by both Germany and Russia.