Poland Was Partly to Blame for World War II, says Russia

[Syt]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/world/europe/russian-ambassador-says-poland-was-partly-to-blame-for-world-war-ii.html

Russian Ambassador Says Poland Was Partly to Blame for World War II

WARSAW — The Russian ambassador to Poland has prompted outrage here for putting some of the blame for World War II on Poland, creating a new spat amid deepening tensions between the nations.

Ambassador Sergey Andreev of Russia on Friday described the Soviet Union's 1939 invasion of Poland as an act of self-defense, not aggression. Poland's Foreign Ministry responded on Saturday, saying the ambassador "undermines historical truth" and seemed to be trying to justify the crimes of Stalin, then the Soviet leader.

World War II began after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sealed a pact in 1939 that included a secret provision to carve up Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. Germany soon invaded Poland from the West, followed by a Soviet invasion from the east 16 days later. Millions of Poles were killed in the war.

In an interview broadcast on the private TVN station, Mr. Andreev also said: "Polish policy led to the disaster in September 1939, because during the 1930s Poland repeatedly blocked the formation of a coalition against Hitler's Germany. Poland was therefore partly responsible for the disaster which then took place."

Poland's Foreign Ministry expressed "surprise and alarm" at those comments, and Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna summoned Mr. Andreev for a meeting on Monday.

"The narrative presented by the highest official representative of the Russian state in Poland undermines the historical truth and reflects the most hypocritical interpretation of the events known from the Stalinist and Communist years," the ministry said in a statement.

Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz of Poland also expressed displeasure with the ambassador.

Relations have never been easy since Poland, a former Soviet bloc nation, rejected Moscow's control and embraced the West, joining NATO and the European Union. But tensions have been especially high since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, a step that Poland has strongly condemned.

I'm guessing Russia is trolling after Poland removed another Soviet war memorial?

[Martinus]

 

[Martinus]

I guess if Poland didn't attack that radio station in 1939...

[Eddie Teach]

It's Poland's fault for having such irresistably huge tracts of land.

[Legbiter]

If Russia goes a week without trolling Poland they start getting the shakes. 

[The Brain]

Uh-oh, grumbler is not gonna be happy with the NYT.

[DGuller]

I guess if Poland didn't attack that radio station in 1939...

I still don't understand what was the whole point of doing it.  Yes, Germany's response was a bit disproportionate, but still...

[The Brain]

Did they play the Devil's music?

[Berkut]

This is not a new idea in Russia - the refrain that Stalin was desperate to form an anti-Nazi coalition, because he saw through the Nazi's while the West was bust appeasing them, is the basic foundation of the Russian excuse for jumping into bed with Hitler once Stalin sadly realized that nobody was going to join him in resisting evil.

[Valmy]

And then when the west did resist evil he had the Comintern help Hitler and undermined the West because...it gave the Soviets more time to fight Hitler in some inscrutable way. It is all in the great noble Stalinist plan.

[Martim Silva]

I'm guessing Russia is trolling after Poland removed another Soviet war memorial?

First off, as Berkut pointed out, Russia has been saying this for many years now. Just google it.


That said, if we take into account that:

1. During the Czech crisis, when there was a chance of formation of a united front to stop Hitler, Poland actively said it would not allow Soviet troops to pass through its territory to defend the Czechs and would, in fact, attack those troops. This stopped any allied cooperation in its tracks and very much made the Munich Treaty and all that followed possible;

2. Poland happily took part in the dismemberment of Chzecoslovakia, taking the Teschen region for itself;

3. Poland refused to accept that the citizens of Danzig could use their right to self-determination to rejoin Germany, even though Danzig was a Free City under the League of Nations, and not part of Poland;

4. The ONLY territorial demand that Germany did to Poland before the war was the construction of a small extrajudicial [i.e. not subject to the sovereignty of the Polish state] rali line that would link Germany to East Prussia. This request was denied.

[and if this seems to you like a violation of the sovereign rights of Poland, I would like to remember you that Russia demanded the EU the construction of an identical - but rather longer - rail line though Lithuania, in order to link Russia to East Prussia. And nobody today seems to think that the existance of this rail line is some infringement on Lithuania's sovereignity].

Given these points then yes, Poland DOES share part of the responsibility for WW2.


This is basically part of the Polish "selective memory", that only remembers the bad things that happen to them, and always forgets the bad things they do to others.

A case in point would be the dismemberment of Poland in the late 18th century at the hands of Prussia, Austria and Russia.

Poles keep hammering this as an injustice and claim they got no help at the time, but at the same time totally 'forget' that just a few years before, tiny Prussia [rather smaller than Poland] was fighting for survival against a coalition of France, Austria and Russia [a stronger coalition  than the one that destroyed Poland], and that at the time Poland did nothing to help.

But Polish impassivity in the Seven Years War is forgotten, while the impassivity of other powers in the partitions of Poland is criticized because... well, that time it hurt Poles and not others.

[Hamilcar]

The real question is: why is Russia pushing this idea now as part of their foreign policy?

[Martinus]

Martim Silva 

I used to think Portugal is such a nice country, but based on two Portuguese posters we have, it seems like a shithole full of racists.

[Martinus]

The real question is: why is Russia pushing this idea now as part of their foreign policy?

A better question would be - why not? Russia is not losing anything by doing that, and potentially gains both domestically and abroad, by increasing disinformation among useful idiots and provoking Polish officials to say something stupid.

[viper37]

I'm guessing Russia is trolling after Poland removed another Soviet war memorial?

First off, as Berkut pointed out, Russia has been saying this for many years now. Just google it.


That said, if we take into account that:

1. During the Czech crisis, when there was a chance of formation of a united front to stop Hitler, Poland actively said it would not allow Soviet troops to pass through its territory to defend the Czechs and would, in fact, attack those troops. This stopped any allied cooperation in its tracks and very much made the Munich Treaty and all that followed possible;

2. Poland happily took part in the dismemberment of Chzecoslovakia, taking the Teschen region for itself;

3. Poland refused to accept that the citizens of Danzig could use their right to self-determination to rejoin Germany, even though Danzig was a Free City under the League of Nations, and not part of Poland;

4. The ONLY territorial demand that Germany did to Poland before the war was the construction of a small extrajudicial [i.e. not subject to the sovereignty of the Polish state] rali line that would link Germany to East Prussia. This request was denied.

[and if this seems to you like a violation of the sovereign rights of Poland, I would like to remember you that Russia demanded the EU the construction of an identical - but rather longer - rail line though Lithuania, in order to link Russia to East Prussia. And nobody today seems to think that the existance of this rail line is some infringement on Lithuania's sovereignity].

Given these points then yes, Poland DOES share part of the responsibility for WW2.

You assume that Russians would just cross through Poland to attack Germany.  That is very doubtfull, and we've seen it at the end of WWII, they didn't exactly all go back home.

You assume that Germany's small territorial concessions would have been the end of it and that Germany invaded Poland solely to link up with Prussia and ethnic Germans living there.

You make all those assumptions like:
a) Hitler was a very reasonable man through to his word
b) Mein Kampf was never published

That is the fallacy of your argument.

Poles keep hammering this as an injustice and claim they got no help at the time, but at the same time totally 'forget' that just a few years before, tiny Prussia [rather smaller than Poland] was fighting for survival against a coalition of France, Austria and Russia [a stronger coalition  than the one that destroyed Poland], and that at the time Poland did nothing to help.

But Polish impassivity in the Seven Years War is forgotten, while the impassivity of other powers in the partitions of Poland is criticized because... well, that time it hurt Poles and not others.

But Prussia was an innocent victim fighting for its life, right.  It's not like they were allied with the United Kingdom in a war of agression against France to take over their colonies worldwide.  Prussia occupying French troops on the continent while Great Britain was free to move theirs oversea.

No, really, all it was various European States trying to deny the right of existance of Prussia.  It never was about the money Great Britain gave to Prussia or the territorial ambitions of said country.  Nope.  Prussia was a victim.

Now, who is doing revisionism?