Posted on 07/20/2018 5:16:51 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Matthew Luxmoore’s article (Poles apart: the bitter conflict over a nation’s history, The long read, 13 July) contains a gross error likely to lead readers to misunderstand the Soviet Union’s true intentions during the second world war.
There were 1.5 million Poles deported to Siberia, not “hundreds of thousands” as the article states, with no mention of their fate. They were forcibly taken from their homes in eastern Poland to gulags. Most died of starvation and disease under forced labour. To misrepresent this suffering, which took place on a colossal scale, is a crime akin to Holocaust denial.
My grandfather was one of the few who survived. To him and his contemporaries, the hostile Soviet invaders’ motivation was not liberation but conquest. Any such conquest is more successful if it has collaborators, which explains the motivations of the highly selective sample of people cited in the article.
It should be clearly stated that the Soviets and Nazis had agreed to jointly invade and carve up Poland. When Hitler went back on the deal, they fought each other for control of Poland. The Soviets won, and history was rewritten by the winners. They did this with decades of deceit propagated through the Polish school system, denying not just the Katyn massacre but also the bravery of those who, like my grandfather, fought at Monte Cassino, the 1st Armoured Polish Division, which won critical battles in the D-Day landings, and the 303 Squadron pilots who made all the difference in the Battle of Britain. These were disgracefully branded “traitors” by the puppet government of postwar Poland, installed by Stalin in a brazen breach of the agreement reached at Yalta.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
That's what happens when you try to break up a fight between brothers.
So what are you suggesting, that in May 1945, the US Army attack the Red Army in Germany and attempt to drive it back to the Soviet border? While we are still at war with Japan? And you do realize that in the United States at that time, there was absolutely ZERO public support for this idea. Also, while I have no love for FDR, I’m tired of the “FDR gave away Poland” statement. The United States Army never occupied Poland. It was never in our possession to give away. The most cursory look at the map shows that Poland’s fate was sealed by the geopolitical nature of World War II. The Red Army was going to take Poland on its way to Berlin, and as long a Hitler insisted on fighting both of us, there was no way we were ever going to get to Poland before the Red Army did. Not with the Germans blocking our way. And once the Red Army occupied Poland, they weren’t going to leave, period. And we weren’t going to make them. Period.
> And once the Red Army occupied Poland, they weren’t going to leave, period. <
You’ve got a lot of nerve injecting common sense into this thread. But seriously, you’re right. The Red Army of 1945 was a formidable, well-led force. Something like 70% of the German army was marshaled against them. And the Red Army kicked their butts.
Sure, the Western allies could have taken Warsaw, and maybe even Moscow. But that would have meant deploying atomic bombs against our recent ally, and many US casualties.
The American public never would have stood for that.
I sense some highly disputable statements here.
We supplied ussr.
Yalta was a sellout.
Poland and others could and would have fought their own battles.
“...Unfortunately, such an aggressive attempt to erase the communist past...”
It’s NEVER a bad thing to “aggressively erase communists”.
They deserve it.
> We supplied ussr <
The West sure did. And it could be argued that Western support was critical in 1942 and 1943. But by 1945 the Soviet Union was on its own two feet.
> Yalta was a sellout. <
Yalta was certainly a sad event. I suppose that had the West exerted a bit more pressure, they could have gotten a bit more. But how much more? There was no way Stalin was going to leave eastern Europe. It would have taken actual atomic bomb droppings to convince him to do so.
Would that have been worth it? Hundreds of thousands more dead?
I have no problem with respecting the graves, but the monuments have to go.
Remember, a good number of those Soviet troops invaded Poland in 1939, when the Soviet Union was allied with Nazi Germany.
Jaruzelski died a Catholic, I have forgiven him, as his Lord and Savior has.
I saw several plots of buried USSR soldiers and their monuments, while in Poland. They are being left to rot. I had commented on them as we passed them. The old polish saying,”We fought the Germans for revenge, the Russians for fun.” (I don’t remember the exact words but it was like that.)
Fifty feet of chain and an F-350 could fix that.
I was surprised to learn there’s a fairly well maintained German cemetery in Normandy for the German soldiers that fell there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERA1pY9XxoQ
“With the Germans we lose our lives, with the Russians we lose our souls.”
Back a few years ago, someone taped a small button on the downward-pointed finger on his left hand and a small electronic box a little further up his arm. They also taped a little sign next to the finger that said “Pull my finger”.
Yes...it was a fart machine. It didn’t stay there long.
Whatever
If it were not for Hitlers tremendous losses in the winter of 42 trying to take Stalingrad. WWII may have been far different
The Russians were allies in defeating the Nazis
If Stalin doesn’t sign the Non-Aggression Pact, Hitler doesn’t invade Poland.
Bkmrk.
I got to visit the Polish Cemetery at Monte Cassino.
Red Poppies on Monte Cassino
Do you see the rubble on the summit?
There, like a rat, hides your foe!
You must, you must, you must
hurl him off the clouds by his neck!
And so, frantic and fierce, they went,
they went to kill and to avenge,
they went, as always, unyielding,
to fight as always for honour.
Red poppies on Monte Cassino
Instead of dew, Polish blood they drank.
O’er these poppies soldiers fought and died
but anger was fiercer than death.
Years will pass and centuries elapse,
traces of those days will remain
and poppies on Monte Cassino
will be redder, enriched by Polish blood.
The ‘lost men’ charged through the fire,
more than one was struck and fell,
like those mad horsemen from Somosierra,
like those from Rokitny years ago.
With a frantic force they charged,
and they made it. The attack came off.
Their white and red standard they raised
aloft in the rubble in the clouds.
Red poppies on Monte Cassino ...
Do you see this row of white crosses?
That’s where with honour the Poles pledged their all.
Go forward, the further, the higher you go
the more will you find at your feet.
This soil belongs to Poland,
though Poland be far from here
for freedom is measured in crosses.
That is history’s lesson dear.
Red poppies on Monte Cassino ...
A quarter-century has passed.
The dust of battle has settled.
The monastery resurrected with white walls
reaches up to the skies anew.
But memory of those ghastly nights
and of the blood that here was shed
echoes in the monastery bells
tolling the fallen to sleep...!
17 May 1944 Feliks Konarski
The Ukrainians are tearing them down too. There are still people there who remember the “Holodomor” which killed 10 million people by starvation.
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