Posted on 06/03/2012 10:25:05 PM PDT by aquila48
No debt repayments, higher salaries and freedom from EU-IMF tutelage: Greece under the radical leftists, who are poised to win a June 17 election, seems a world removed from its current recession nightmare. The Syriza party has pledged to tear up Greece’s loan agreement with the EU and the IMF, which is currently keeping the country on its feet but at the cost of an unprecedented wave of austerity cuts and structural reforms. If implemented, such a programme, which would also mean the nationalisation of banks and a halt to privatisation, could well mean Greece’s ejection from the eurozone, potentially sending shockwaves through the global economy. Fed up with two years of salary and pension cuts, Greek voters on May 6 punished larger parties associated with the bailout and catapulted Syriza to second place, within striking distance of the top.
(Excerpt) Read more at gulf-times.com ...
you are correct that after WWII they are completely anti-war, but that's because war was taken to their doorsteps.
I dispute the Germans did experience war like few other people ever had -- I live now in Poland (moved here 2 years ago) and everywhere I go I see how WWII affected the Poles -- they lost the most numbers of people (20% of the population) and were in the process of being eliminated by the GErmans.
on every street corner in warsaw -- sometimes in 2/3 places on the street you will see a memorial saying "on xx date in 194__ yy numbers of poles were killed by Germans"
You can see pictures of how the Germans levelled Warsaw.
In fact, if you go hiking in the mountains in the south you'll find places where Germans killed Poles.
imho the Poles had it the worst in WWII -- more than the Germans or Russians.
They had it pretty bad in WWI as well -- 5 different armies fought on their lands and the lands were exchanged nearly 14 times through the war, millions of soldiers and civilians killed.
No, I had sympathy for the Germans before I moved here, but they got what was coming to them (I mean the Germans in 1945 got what was coming to them).
Even today I see Polish kids with graffitti that says "Pamiętamy" -- or "We will remember". Not that they keep the hate, but they rather remember the sacrifices their ancestors paid for their independance.
I also do think that the Germanic people between the wars were pretty bellicose. Not as much as the Nutzis of course, but in comparison to their neighbors, YES.
A basic problem with electoral politics as captured by “the Simpson's”.
“I can't promise you victory, I can't promise you good times” Bart.
The crowd grumbles and starts to melt away....
“I promise you VICTORY! I promise you GOOD TIMES!!!!” Bart - realizing his error.
The Allies certainly weren't going to make that mistake the second time around.
Every August 1st at 5:00 PM, Warsaw stops for one minute, to commemorate "W Hour" the beginning of the Warsaw Uprising.
The other thing that happened after the war, was that the ethnic Germans were kicked out of Silesia and Pomerania and the Sudetenland, so that there would be no more exploits like before the war.....Of course, Poles were kicked out of Western Ukraine and shipped West to the lands that the Germans were kicked out of.
so if the loan repayment agreement is torn up they don’t owe anyone anything? Gee can I try that with my credit card statement or my tax bill?
We have absolutely no disagreement.
I said few others had experienced War like the Germans. The Poles and Russians are among the few. I have cited the fact that the Poles suffered more in proportion to their population than any other people from World War II, with the exception of the Jews, more than once in other threads. One of the most frustrating aspects about the fate of the Poles is that they were probably the least deserving of that fate; they prepared as best they could for the War and fought valiantly against Nazis and the Russians simultaneously.
In September 1939 there were five German divisions between the Rhine and Berlin. The Belgians and Dutch could mobilize 30 divisions between them. If the Belgian Army had invaded Germany in September 1939, it would have been a race between the Germany Army in the East and Belgians to see who would have gotten there first. Don’t. Even. Talk. About. The. French. Sheltering. Behind. The. Maginot. Line.
The suffering of the Poles was imposed by both the Germans and the Russians.
Speer said that the Nazi leadship comprised people who had, for the most part, never or rarely traveled outside of Germany. Most Germans holidayed in Paris or London or Rome occassionally, and would never have looked forward to the destruction of those cities.
True. And the lessons we learn from this are clear to me — it’s classic Sun-Tzu, when an enemy is down, vanquish him utterly, totally. At the end of WWII, Germany had nothing, no state organizations, nothing. Utter wasteland.
On FR there are quite a few Germanophobes who'll call out nutzi slogans when talking about the euro crises. But I do not share their sentiments. The Germans of today are not the Germans of the 30s and 40s.
After WWII, Stalin solved the German liebesraum problem once and for all -- nearly every person identifying as a German in Central and Eastern Europe outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland were transported to Germany. Even if they had lived for half a millenia, a millenia there, they were shipped to this strange land of 'germania'.
he also "solved" the Polish Kresy problem by kicking Poles out of what were Polish lands (western Ukraine and Belarus -- ok, let's be precise, this was joint Polish/Ruthenian lands, with the people being ethnically and racially the same, just the ones who climbed up in society identified as Poles and the folky, rural folks identified as Ruthenian)
Stalin also "solved" the Polish-German border problem by chopping off what was eastern Germany and giving it to Poland -- places like Breslau, Stettin which were nearly 90% German now became Wrocław and Szczecin -- and created the border on the Oder-Neisse.
WWII ended the middle-ages idea that people of different ethnicities could live together and it created the mono-ethnic states in central Europe.
The Germanic peoples lost the most in this, but arguably they gambled the most.
Now they work hard and in many ways allow others to walk over them.
But the Germans of today while always remembering their ancestors past, are not responsible for it. young Germans are taught from class 1 what atrocities their ancestors committed. They know.
True. i think it’s impossible to forget about the war in Warsaw — it’s there all around you. As a non-Pole, i find it difficult to believe that Poles can forgive Germans and Russians for what these nations did. But most Poles do forgive — especially the young. But the old, the 70+, they can’t stand the sound of German. I’ve seen an old lady cry when she just heard some words...
I love discussing history. And you are correct about them fighting a losing battle.
On hindsight except for ONE option there was absolutely no way for Poland to have had anything but the fate it had.
in 1920 a young nation, just recreated after 130 years of partition, fought valiantly against a new mongol horde -- the soviet army (read Zamoyski's '1920') and pushed it back, but they spent years rebuilding this nation. They could not have stopped Hitler in 1930 - the French and British could have done this, but they didn't.
The Soviets wanted Poland destroyed utterly -- as revenge for 1920 and going further back, for Poland standing in Muscowy's way for centuries. Zamoyski has a good description of the Soviet march on warsaw -- to the Poles, they were fervently Catholic and to them their love of their nation bordered on religious fanaticism. The Bolshevik ideals of atheism and globalism had no fancy for Poles. the Bolsheviks had been used to fighting in the steppes and gathering people to their cause as they moved, but in the Polish heartlands they got none. They couldn't understand the Poles and arguably forcing communism on Poland (as Stalin said 'putting a saddle on a cow') was the worst mistake the Soviets made and was the root of their downfall.
On the other side you had the Nazis who raised their love of Germania to pagan worship levels. To them, the Poles stood in the way of their living room. To them, the Poles had been the enemy since the Wends moved into Brandenburg, since the defeat of the Teutonic knights at Grunwald.
There could be no compromise for the Nazis -- Poland was to be eliminated, utterly. Warsaw was to be made a railway terminus, nothing more. All Polish people: Gentile or Jew were to be eliminated - either killed or deported.
the Poles has no chance between these two.
the only nation that can roughly compare is Finland, but even the Finns had the Germans supporting them as being a "warrior race".
the ONE option was Piłsudski's Międzymorze -- between the seas -- it was viable then and it is viable now. the idea was that Central Europe was neither to fall under Germanic or Muscowite influence, but to form a splendid alliance from Latvia to Bessarabia -- a modern-day Rzeczpospolita (Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth).
The more I read of Piłsudski, the more I admire him compare to Dmowski (a Polish ultra-nationalist) -- Piłsudski's idea of a Poland that was not "pure Polish" but one where Jews, Armenians, Germans, Ruthenians, Poles, Lithuanians. etc. were equal partners, went against the nationalist tones of the late 1800s, but it would have worked -- however Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists with their non-compromising attitudes, destroyed this and laid central europe open to misery for 70 years.
one thing about the Poles -- admirable or deplorable, or perhaps both, is that they won't back down. They will throw caution to the winds and be brave and hussar-like. The Russians have a metaphor -- dumny jak polak -- proud as a Pole. And they are right
the name "poland" or "polska" is derived from pole -- fields. And most of Poland is flat - perfect land to farm or for a small invading force to easily conquer (but not to hold). They could have retreated to the Beskid and Tatra mountains and defended it successfully, but to them giving up their land was unthinkable. Unfortunately it meant they lost everything
The same thing happened at the Warsaw Uprising. Warsawianki today sneer at Prague that the Czechs didn't fight for their independence and so kept their city intact. The Poles, seeing that the Russians were advancing, were determined that warsaw would be freed by Poles. Brave and foolhardy and trusting -- yes, trusting. The Russians were on the eastern banks of the Vistula, but they just sat and watched the Germans level Warsaw. The Allies did nothing. And Polish hopes were dashed.
This nation is brave and foolhardy, yet they somehow have survived through the odds -- you can only say that the Jewish nation and the Armenian nation have done it better
but yet, about Belgium and the Netherlands — in WWI, ypres etc. were on Belgian soil — they saw millions die on Belgian soil. To start another cataclysm so soon was too shocking.
Thanks for that update on the complicated cross-currents of alliances in the Meditteranean.
Turkey is too powerful to be ignored, or slapped into line, but I don’t think they can just enlarge themselves at the expense of Syria and Greece.
Just before the Islamofascists cow everyone in Europe into submission. Greece didn’t mean to, but they might just save Western civilization from absorption into the regenerate Ottoman Empire.
Thanks! They’re the cork in the bottle, and I doubt anyone’s about to help that to change.
The European Left's candidate for the European Commission presidency, Alexis Tsipras, Friday called for the immediate release of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams who is been held for questioning in connection with the 1972 murder of Jean McConville. Tsipras called the arrest a "politically inflammatory act against democracy".
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