Uh, yes they can.
Posted on 11/04/2005 5:08:43 PM PST by Atlantic Bridge
The president of the Federation of Expellees, Erika Steinbach, is hoping for an improvement in relations between Berlin and Warsaw. But this is not stopping her from insisting on setting up a Center Against Expulsion in Berlin -- despite strong objections from Poland.
(Excerpt) Read more at service.spiegel.de ...
Therefore it will be interesting to me, if our Polish friends see the "center" in all cases as a threat to their sight of things. I think it is undoubted, that those expellees had to suffer a horrible fate. Furthermore it is undisputed that they were not responsible for the crimes on Poles or Czechs as individuals. Last but not least all German governments and its representants (including Mrs. Merkel) decline any compensation payment by Poland or the Czech republic or their citizens to expelled persons for taken over possessions.
Personally I understand the necessity of such a museum for the expelled, since they have a right to remember their own history - even if this is not always pleasant for Europeans in the east. It is just essential that the whole thing has to be given the historic frame that shows who started the war and who caused the triggering crimes that lead to expulsion.
PING!
Uh, yes they can.
The experience of German DPs from the East is a lesson to all of us about what can happen should we lose a war, or give up our technological edge in weapons development.
Damn! That's EGG-ZACTLY what *I* was going to post!!
Which expulsions are they referring to?
Read the following link to get another important insight of the issue:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1515977/posts
Wedge issues like this are good news for us (the US). Hostility between the "outer circle" of EU members, and the "inner circle" gives us an opportunity to apply leverage, offer sympathy, offer our good offices, offer our help, whatever. So, whatever the merits of the controversy, the controversy itself is good news.
If the EU were a united front, our lives (and our foreign policy) would be a great deal more difficult. We've seen some of our friends throw us over in an effort to win favor with France and Germany (for example, Spain), and we would hate to see that happen with the other larger members of the alliance (Poland, for example). Its good news for us when France insults Romania. Its good news for us if the EU lets Ukraine join, and its good news for us if they insult the Ukraine and don't let them join. Its good news for us if they let Turkey join (please, please, let Turkey in) and its good news if they insult the Turks and don't let them join.
I'm kidding, of course, but only half-kidding.
Uh...er...is this hyperbole???
A new invasion from the west is impossible and no issue in the current European political reality. It will not happen anymore in the future either. Hitler is death since 1945.
The only visible millitary threat to Poland is maybe Russia and/or Belarus.
The relations between Poland and Germany are much better than you ever could imagine, since both countries have close economical ties. This is something where the US failed completely (i.e. no investments in Poland and the rest of eastern Europe* worth mentioning, except some millitary linked payback BS deals, a refusal to invite Poland into the VisaWaiver program, no mentionable orders in Poland for new Iraq etc. etc. etc.).
If the US should be reliant on the dissension of other nations it would be simply a evidence of their incapacity. Therefore it is good to know that America is such a mature nation that it can abstain from such a primitive policy even if some of its citizens are obviously thinking in such categories.
* Only millitary investment doesn't help those nations to solve their fundamental economic problems. Investment into their economy would be good business for the US and a boost to the relations between eastern Europe and America.
The expulsion of Germans out of Poland and the Czech republic in 1945 - 1948.
When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, his army had 600,000 horses and 3000 tanks. Someone raised on Hollywood movies would think those numbers reversed.
Nonsense. How can you speak so definitely about a country with such a militaristic history? Never say Never.
No nonsense. Germany is probably the most pacifistic country on this planet in the meantime. This is not always in the interest of the USA and (!) Poland, since those German feelings are the reason why Germany refuses to take over a proportionate share of the millitary burden the west has to carry in this world (i.e. in Iraq) as a whole. Furthermore a invasion of Poland makes absolutely no sense to Germany since soil without (willing) people on it is simply useless. Germany and Germans have far enough death space in the eastern part of the country that they can't fill anymore due to the low reproduction rate in central Europe.
Contemporary German millitarism simply doesn't exist and is one of the myths warmed up by uninformed populists.
Germany didn't think that way a mere 60-odd years ago. Germany may still be licking its wounds from the thrashing it took in 1945, but that won't last indefinitely.
Germany learned out of its history. Therefore I am sure that there are no future invasions of its neighbours anymore. The problem is more, that the German gouvernments tend to appease anything since they say we can not be involved because we were once the bad nazis.
Everybody else is appeasing, also -- except the American cowboy -- and Blair, and Howard.
The expulsion of Germans out of East Prussia, Pomerania, and the Sudetenland in 1945-48, to be more technical. Of course, the Poles lost eastern Poland (leading to much of the current conflict in the Ukrane.)
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