@Rich
You said Rich that;
There was no way that Hitler would ever have made a pact with the Soviet Union except of course that he did.
Only the sort of non-aggression ''pact'' in which both parties know war is coming, a ''pact'' that wasn't a pact at all really. Hitler wasn't stupid, but neither was Stalin.
France was a proud nation, but once militarily defeated it wasn't hard to find a reactionary right wing organically based regime to partner with.
''Reactionary'', but hardly ''organic'', as it required French defeat and German occupation in order for the Vichy regime to even exist. Your point would have been better made for an example, if Marshal Petain had been President of France in May 1940 before the invasion and not after.
Hitler actually showed little interest in Poland. He was an Austrian who spent WWI on the western front.
He showed interest for sure afterwards. The fate of Poland is instructive, because he could still have had an allied Fascist regime in Poland after his victory in September 1939 over Warsaw, but revealed instead a savage bloodlust against Poland, denying him the war he wanted but giving him the war he got, along with a ferocious and primitive anti-slavic mentality.
Poland was a very valuable potential ally, who were eager to seize more territory from the Soviet Union.
Yes, the regime in Poland were Fascist assholes too, just as in Berlin. Few people remember that it was Poland that invaded the Soviet Union in 1920, and was beaten back to the outskirts of Warsaw. It was indeed a miracle they didn't lose then. Too few remember either about that conflict that of the over 100,000 Russian prisoners of war from the 1920 Polish-Soviet war, over 80,000 died from exposure, disease, and guard brutality.
They could also be played off against the Baltic States more valuable anti Communist allies that Hitler threw away.
Should've, would've, could've, Hitler did what he did and everything inclined to produce the outcome that it did.
But Poland didn't even lie on what should have been the invasion route.
''Should''?
Hitler's priorities were to secure the Ploiesti oil fields and capture the Donbas and the Caucus oil fields.
Not initially. First, he wanted Leningrad and Moscow. The Polesti oil fields were already operating full capacity by the Romanians, who were German allies. The drive through Southern Russia, Donbass, the Ukraine, Caucasus oil fields, the Volga, etc.. was only made primary after the setbacks of 1941.
If seizure of the oil fields without major destruction was impossible in a single military campaign, then the next best thing was to establish the German army on the Volga and renegotiate a trade deal with a massively weakened Soviet Union.
Would never happen, nor do I know of a German source that even mentions such a delusion as a possibility.