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10-03-2008, 06:07 AM
| #31 |
| The Pop-Tart Whisperer   Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: South Jersey, United States
Posts: 11,824
| So lets not honor individual states and their struggle in WW2 and just give a collective "ahhhh" and carry on, right?
__________________  "If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it's English, thank a soldier!"  |
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10-03-2008, 06:10 AM
| #32 |
| Senior Member  Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Campinas - SP
Posts: 1,102
| lets never forget the horrors of this war, to this never happen again.... even if it allways happens again...
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10-03-2008, 09:17 AM
| #33 |
| Senior Member  Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 2,491
| NJ war brings out the worst, and the best in people, sometimes the same person. However,, I get the impression from what you are saying that we should be accepting of this situation..."what can we do?', "Its all too hard" " We dont want to upset people"!!! I disagree. Sometimes we cant do anything tangible, or real to reverse an injustice, but that doesnt mean we should allow it to pass. if there is injustice, we strengthen that injustice if we just "let it pass". We should not go quuietly in the night, we should stand and be counted. This is why it is still important to hunt down Nazis even if they are in their eighties, or even nineties, and seek justice for those who perished under their rule. The Soviets as a people are guilty of some pretty heinous war crimes, including the rape of Poland. Yet, if we are honest, 13 million Soviets died defeating a regime that was even more malevolent than they were. We could not have done it without them. This is why I am torn about the issue of Soviet war guilt And, i think it was Churchill who summed it up precisely by restating the ancient chinese proverb...."the enemy of my enemy is my friend". This was a policy fully supported by FDR. It was on this basis that the aspiration of the free Polish movement were abandoned by the West. We had no choice. it was accede to the Russians, or risk losing the war. That doesnt make it any easier, nor does it right a wrong....it just puts it into perspective for us westerners In every instance, the Poles were expected to compromise their interests for the sake of the Alliance. In 1943, for example, Churchill could only tell the Polish government in London that it was "probably true' that the eight thousand Polish officers discovered in a mass grave in Katyn Forest were murdered by the Russians in 1939: "The Bolsheviks can be very cruel.' In 1944, he remonstrated with Stalin for stopping just short of the gates of Warsaw while the Polish Home Army, badly overmatched, rose up against the Nazis. Little was done to aid the Warsaw Poles, who in any event were "liquidated' by Stalin upon the Nazis' departure. One can take a certain perverse satisfaction from the Poles' recognizing Stalin for what he was before anyone else (except perhaps Churchill), and from General Wladyslaw Anders's confiding to Churchill, "After having beaten the Germans, we shall beat the Muscovites.' On most occasions, Churchill remained the realist; well before free and open Polish elections proved chimerical, Churchill told one of his secretaries: "Make no mistake, all the Balkans, except Greece, are going to be Bolshevized; and there is nothing I can do to prevent it. There is nothing I can do for poor Poland either.' But the Yalta Conference, with its promise of sanity and order in a world of V-1 and V-2 rockets, firebombing, and Russian greed, beckoned mightily. Stalin knew what he wanted, and he ruthlessly pursued it. And the west did not have the will, or the strength, in my opinion, to stop him
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10-03-2008, 03:18 PM
| #34 |
| Senior Member  Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Cracow
Posts: 4,436
| WWII first step- Pact Ribbentrop- Molotow: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: The Documents
__________________  "A good fighter pilot, like a good boxer, should have a knockout punch..... You will find one attack you prefer to all others. Work on it till you can do it to perfection... then use it whenever possible." - Captain Reade Tilley, USAAF 7 Victories, WW-II - |
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10-03-2008, 08:24 PM
| #35 | |
| The Pop-Tart Whisperer Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: South Jersey, United States
Posts: 11,824
| Quote:
I agree with a lot of what you posted and I respect your view on things as you seem to have a clearer picture of events but the thread appeared to be losing focus.
__________________ "If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it's English, thank a soldier!" | |
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10-03-2008, 11:17 PM
| #36 | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 131
| Originally Posted by stasoid By moving his troops to the Curzon Line in 1939, Stalin restored generally accepted, historical border established in 18th century between Russia and Poland. Although several skirmishes between Soviet and Polish troops, through pure misunderstanding, took place in September 1939, there was no point for polish soldiers to fight and die for something that is not in fact your "home soil" but rather a colony. Quote:
It just happened to be Stalin who returned Poland's eastern border to where it is supposed to be and where it is now. It could've been anyone else, earlier or late all empires desintegrate and perish in history. Thanks V2 for posting those maps of Poland from the middle ages. We can post more maps of Golden Horde, Ottoman, British, Austro-Hungarian etc empires and where all those countries are now. See, the fact is that east of the Curzon Line, Poles were a ruling minority hated by local inhabitants. That's probably why the Red Army was initially greeted with flowers when they took over the lands of western Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania in 1939. Those people, most of them, unaware of Stalin's brutality and political repressions, paid a high price short after, but this is another story. Have you ever heard of term "Polonization"? Ukrainians of Western Ukraine, for example, under Polish rule were treated as subhumans with no rights of governing or even teaching their language in schools. Ukrainian literature was banned. While being Orthodox Christians they were forcefully converted to Catolicism. Same was happening with Belarussians. Lithuanians feared losing their cultural identity ander Poles as well. Now, I have a question to Parsifal. Your comment about Soviets prosecuting and killing a million of Jews??? Could you please be more specific of where, when and why? As far as I know 80% of Stalin's Politburo were Jewish. And Jews were always among bravest and smartes soldiers and officers in the Red Army treated equally as others. | |
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10-04-2008, 02:01 AM
| #37 |
| Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Campinas - SP
Posts: 1,102
| ate least, theres a lot of information in this topic and i thing this is the best way to honor those ho lost their lifes fighting for poland. v2, great links !
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10-04-2008, 03:06 AM
| #38 |
| Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 131
| When the territories of Western Belarus, Western Ukraine and the Wilno region were incorporated into Poland after the Treaty of Riga, Poland rejected its international obligations to grant autonomy to eastern Galicia[10], which she had never intended to honor.[49] Linguistic assimilation was considered by National Democrats to be a major factor for "unifying the state." For example, Stanisław Grabski, Polish Minister for Religion and Public Education in 1923 and 1925–1926, wrote that "Poland may be preserved only as a state of Polish people. If it were a state of Poles, Jews, Germans, Rusyns, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Russians, it would lose its independence again"; and that "it is impossible to make a nation out of those who have no 'national self-identification,' who call themselves 'local' (tutejszy)."[citation needed]. Grabski also said that the aim of Polish policy should be "the transformation of the Commonwealth into Polish ethnic territory."[50][51] Some officials denied the existence of the Ukrainian and Belarusian nations altogether A law issued in 1924 banned usage of any language but Polish in governmental and municipal paperwork. It the area of public education it was postulated that state schools could be only Polish language schools.[41] Local populations could have private local language schools, but only in territories "loyal to the Polish state"[citation needed]. Specifically with respect to the Eastern territories (known as Kresy Wschodnie, or "Eastern Borderlands") it was recognized that "schools can become an instrument of the cultural development in Eastern lands only if Polish teachers will work there"[citation needed]. It turned out to be infeasible for implementation and, in particular cases, bilingual schools ("utraquist schools", szkoły utrakwistyczne) were proposed, while in reality those schools were functionally the Polish language ones The attitude of Ukrainians of that time is well shown in the statements by the reputable Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, who noted negative influence of Polish policies on the Ukrainian culture: "the four centuries of Polish rule had left particularly destructive effects (...) economic and cultural backwardness in Galicia was the main "legacy of historical Poland, which assiduously skimmed everything that could be considered the cream of the nation, leaving it in a state of oppression and helplessness". The land reform designed to favour the Poles in mostly Ukrainian populated Volhynia, the agricultural territory where the land question was especially severe, brought the alienation from the Polish state of even the Orthodox Volhynian population who tended to be much less radical than the Greek Catholic Calicians After the Polish legislative election, 1930, Belarusian representation in the Polish parliament was reduced and since the early 1930s the Polish government started to introduce policies intended to Polonize the minorities. In 1938 about 100 abandoned Orthodox churches were destroyed or converted to Roman Catholic in the eastern parts of Poland.[56] The use of Belarusian language was discouraged. There wasn't a Belarusian school in the spring of 1939, and only 44 schools teaching Belarusian language existed in Poland at the beginning of World War Situation of Lithuanians also was getting worse. During the interwar period of the 20th century (1920-1939) Lithuanian-Polish relations were characterised by mutual enmity. Starting with the conflict over the city of Vilnius (Wilno), and the Polish-Lithuanian War shortly after the First World War, both governments - in the era nationalism was sweeping through Europe - treated their respective minorities harshly.[57] [58] [59] Beginning 1920, after the staged mutiny of Lucjan Żeligowski Lithuanian cultural activities in Polish controlled territories were limited; closure of newspapers and arrest of editors occurred.[60] One of them - Mykolas Biržiška was accused of state treason and sentenced to a death penalty, only direct intervention by the League of Nations saved him from this fate. He was one of 32 Lithuanian and Belarussian cultural activists formally expelled from Vilnius on September 20, 1922 and turned over to Lithuanian army.[60] In 1927, as tensions between Lithuania and Poland arose furthermore 48 Lithuanian schools were closed and another 11 Lithuanian activist were deported. [57] Following Piłsudski's death in 1935, Lithuanian minority in Poland again became an object of Polonisation policies, more intensive this time. 266 Lithuanian schools were closed since 1936 and almost all organizations were banned. Further Polonisation was ensued as the government encouraged settlement of Polish army veterans in disputed regions. [61] About 400 Lithuanian reading rooms and libraries were closed in Poland in 1936-1938 Polonization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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10-04-2008, 03:25 AM
| #39 |
| Der Crewchief  Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Ansbach, Germany
Posts: 34,079
| V2 I am sorry that your thread got derailed by people wanting to take the attention away from the suffering of the Poles.  To the Poles and the suffering they underwent by both the Germans and the Russians. Both Germany and Russia are guilty no matter how you want to look at it. There is no sugar coating it or churching it up.
__________________  fly boy:"isnt that the first jet bomber becasue i have flown one in a flight sim before and i know how it handles" |
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10-04-2008, 04:16 AM
| #40 | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 2,491
| Quote:
I apologize for misunderstanding you. i didnt think that you would say or imply what I first thought, so please accept my apologies for the misunderstanding It seems from the subsequent posts that you are right, the purpose of this post has been derailed. i feel bad about that because i contributed to that derailment. I didnt intend for that to be the case, but it happened. I'm embarrassed actually. So, to V-2 I apologize as well for my part in this. You have to believe that my intentions were good but its just all gone to the dogs by the look of it.... My intent was to highlight Polish suffering, and the benefits we westerners won as a result of that sacrifice. I also wanted to point out my confusions concerning the russians, because even though they mistreated Poles, we westerners have an unpaid debt to the russians as well. Perhaps this was the wrong time and place for that sort of discussion
__________________ Do not judge on abilities, but on choices | |
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10-04-2008, 05:27 AM
| #41 |
| The Pop-Tart Whisperer Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: South Jersey, United States
Posts: 11,824
| No worries, Parsifal, no offense. This stuff happens to threads all over and its a shame. Stasoid, do you understand how Wiki works?
__________________ "If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it's English, thank a soldier!" |
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10-04-2008, 08:49 AM
| #42 | |
| Der Crewchief Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Ansbach, Germany
Posts: 34,079
| Quote:
__________________ fly boy:"isnt that the first jet bomber becasue i have flown one in a flight sim before and i know how it handles" | |
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10-04-2008, 09:07 AM
| #43 | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Cracow
Posts: 4,436
| Quote:
Thank you Chris. No problem for me, I think this thread make a problem for stasoid... We must remember only one thing: Hitler started war together with Stalin. Blitzkriegs in Poland, Belgium, Netherlands,French and BoB were possibly only with Stalin's helpful...
__________________ "A good fighter pilot, like a good boxer, should have a knockout punch..... You will find one attack you prefer to all others. Work on it till you can do it to perfection... then use it whenever possible." - Captain Reade Tilley, USAAF 7 Victories, WW-II - | |
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10-04-2008, 10:06 AM
| #44 | |
| "Shooter"   Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Moorpark, CA
Posts: 15,420
 | Quote:
If anyone notice where V2s location is, Cracow, and knows enough about Polish history, Auschwitz and Birkenau were just outside of Cracow. There were 3.3 million Jew in Poland before the war. 90% of them were killed by the Nazis in what was a near complete annihilation of Polish Jews. Hundreds of thousands of Poles who were not Jewish also perished under the Nazi boot. The Soviet "liberation" of Poland toward the end of the war did not bring relief from repression, sadly.
__________________   For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. Leonardo Da Vinci | |
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10-04-2008, 03:15 PM
| #45 |
| Siggy Master  Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Poland
Posts: 15,998
| I'm with V2 here. In addition I have to mention that over six milions of Poles lost their lifes during WW2.They were civilian mostly.Those killed by Stalin's regime don't mention because it is very hard to estimate how many. What is more, I have been to Oświęcim ( Auschwitz and Birkenau ) several times.I usually visited the concentration camp without watching the documantal film which was shown there in the museum cinema.Then I decided to watch it.Guys, nobody is able to stay there to the end of the movie....
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