The Atomic Angle on WW2: Stalingrad, Warsaw, Munich, Saxony, Nukes and Bari
Poland's the pawn...
This won't be another one of these typical WW2 stories ranging from propagandesque to hindsight. What you will read here is much more a look at some of the mechanics driving the war which are usually overlooked, but which are essential to understand some of the motives by the various factions.
Why Stalingrad?
Everyone knows about Stalingrad and what a catastrophe it was. Still, few are aware what the German military and political leadership thought about the battle and why they've allowed it to take place in the first place. Luckily, we have a speech by SS-chief Heinrich Himmler from 1943 in which he details the reasons for Stalingrad.
Long story short: The Italian front (yes, Italy and other axis allies were fighting alongside Germany vs the USSR) completely broke down leaving a gap of some 400km in the front line. With thousands of partisans from Poland to Donbass threatening the logistics, this meant an area roughly the size of Belarus being suddenly open. The Red Army could have broken through with ease.
Hence, the purpose of Stalingrad from the German perspective was to keep the Red Army busy until they could consolidate the the front again. It was basically a classic chess move where you sacrifice your knight to protect your queen. Effectively, this meant the loss of an entire army and the death of thousands of soldiers - not to speak of the propagandistic effect - but in the situation, it was perhaps the best they could do.
Warsaw Uprise
With the Warsaw Uprise, there was at least on other battle in WW2 which in my opinion had a very similar character. Of course we remember the Warsaw Uprise very differently, but that is mainly for propagandistic reasons and to keep the Polish people from thinking they were just the pawns of other powers (well, which they were and still are).
The Warsaw Uprise had plenty of similarities to the one in Paris. The difference is that Parisians managed to drive out the Wehrmacht before the US military arrived. Although in a strictly military sense not really a big win, it was very much so from the psychological side of things. The French managed to free their capital without direct outside support.
Things didn't turn out so well in Warsaw. The uprise was kicked off right at the end of the USSR's Operation Bagration, which ended successfully, but too far away from Warsaw. The Red Army succeeded and the Wehrmacht armies mostly beaten, but they were exhausted while remaining German units moved backwards into Poland. Hence, the timing for the uprise was the worst possible: German military was all over the place and no allied forces in sight.
Motives behind the poor timing
You really don't need to be a military strategist to understand why the Warsaw Uprise failed. On the other hand, the uprise would have been devastating for Germany if they had waited until the battle for Poland itself had started. In this scenario, with most German troops being at the front, attacking the German logistics in the Polish hinterland would have cut off the fighting forces from both much needed supplies, but also decreased their tactical maneuverability.
Since the liberation of Paris was timed with Operation Bagration and went down as the scenario I just described, it is close to impossible that the Allied decision makers made a mistake. There must have been other considerations at play, which were much bigger than liberating Poland and specifically Warsaw and which lead to a similar decision as Himmler described it regarding Stalingrad.
Assuming the timing of the Warsaw Uprise was on purpose, the next question is for the motives behind such a dramatic decision. What we can derive with certainty from the decision is that stalling the Red Army was one of the main intentions. It does make sense to hold off an unloved ally from moving forward too fast in order to keep it from catching too much from the cake that Germany at the time still was.
Making such a fateful decision for the Polish people and nation needs more than just some opportunistic tactical advantage, though. It has to be big enough to lose an entire nation to the meat grinder Stalin's USSR was at the time. The mere explanation that the success on the Western and Southern front (France & Italy) didn't come fast enough is not enough. After all, although slowly, they did move forward while the distances to bridge were much smaller than in the East.
Mustard Gas in Bari
Among other aspects, speed as a main driver of the war effort by the Western Allies is underlined by rumors, according to which the US intended to use mustard gas against the Rhein/Ruhr area in Western Germany, which still is Germany's most densely populated and heavily industrialized region. Killing millions of Germans near the Dutch border would have had a deep impact on both the German war production as well as the war logistics for the Western front.
It is known that at least one mustard gas delivery was shipped to Bari in Italy, which was at the time already in the hands of the US. German intelligence learned in time from the delivery, on which a German bombing raid in 1943 ended with the sinking of the ship the mustard fas was delivered on. Using mustard gas would have been no less extreme than nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
While the two nukes were more of a symbolic act, the mustard gas had an obvious practical function as tactical means of war. Using such a weapon of mass destruction - which certainly would have led to a dramatic reaction by Germany's leadership - despite being well on the way of winning the war, puts an even greater emphasis on the need for speed.
Uranium in Saxony & Thuringia
There are plenty of indications that the post-WW2 order had already been drafted before the war even began. Yalta marked only the finalization of the proposed status quo ante, which in 1944 was in the process of materializing on Europe's battlefields. Germany was to be divided and Middle Germany as which Thuringia and Saxony were known at the time, would become part of the Eastern Block.
Two of the regions were Thuringia and Saxony. What makes them special is that the US military moved into both regions, just to move out again when the war was over, giving it to Stalin to exploit. On the other hand, it was the Red Army which "liberated" Berlin, leaving the Sovjets a major propagandistic win.
These two puzzling facts combined with the urge to move forward as fast as possible shows the real intention mainly of the US interests in WW2 regarding Germany: The ground below Thuringia, Saxony and east of the two Bohemia contained major uranium deposits. Much of the German nuclear activities (mining & research both civilian & military) happened in these regions, and it was long thought there was a race between the US and Germany for which side is faster in building the bomb.
When the USSR took over the regions after the war, mining the uranium in the German regions was declared part of the reparations and conducted with priority. By 1989, more than 200,000 tons of uranium were produced and shipped to Russia, which is equal to around 1/3 of the overall uranium production within the Eastern Block of the Cold War.
The Munich Agreement
Getting there in time and both preventing Germany from building the nuke and getting as much of the material and R&D (plus personnel) can indeed be classified as a priority worth sacrificing both Poland and your own reputation by using mustard gas against civilians as well as the USSR's symbolic victory over Berlin.
But there is more to it than just the direct threat of Hitler acquiring nuclear technology and enough material to blow up the planet. Bohemia which is today part of the Czech Republic was also known as the Sudetenland and mostly inhabited by Germans. The question of the Sudentenland again was a major conflict area before the war and lead to the Munich Agreement in 1938.
Assuming the British side secretly knew about the treasure Chamberlain just gave to Hitler, the subsequent carte blanche Chamberlain gave to Poland in the question shines in a very different light. It would have been one thing what a pre-WW1 German Empire would have turned into with the Uranium from Thuringia and Saxony, as well as the Habsburg Empire with the uranium from Bohemia, but a very different one with Hitler having all the uranium.
Teschen for Danzig
There are indications that Hitler honestly intended to find an agreement with Poland on Danzig and Eastern Prussia. Especially the Czech county of Teschen which was given to Poland in the Munich Agreement looks a lot like an offer to trade the Polish majority populated Teschen for the 95% German Danzig. It would have been a logic trade, while the secret amendments to the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty in this perspective were mainly a (strongest possible) signal to make it clear they really wanted this deal, but not the war.
But with uranium interests at the hidden core of the problem, Hitler could have offered Poland the world, a peaceful resolution after the Munich Agreement wasn't possible anymore. Chamberlain had to give Poland carte blanche knowing full well the Polish leadership was eager to use it.
Both, for the British Empire and the rising American Empire, a Nazi Empire at peace for another decade utilizing its uranium deposits for both civilian and military purposes was simply out of the question. World War Two had to happen in order to prevent this scenario from unfolding. The competition had to be shut down before it became too strong to defeat.