Warsaw 1945. I don't know what's worse. What the Germans did here, or the Socialist Realist crap the Soviets built there after the war.
Warsaw was a beautiful city before the war.
Posted on 12/27/2019 12:07:48 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
As top Russian officials were summing up the results of 2019, one subject stood out in President Vladimir Putin's pronouncements: Poland and its role in World War Two.
Over the past seven days, he mentioned it no fewer than five times at key meetings - some of which had little to do with history or even foreign policy. In an unusual outburst at a Defence Ministry board on 24 December, he described the Polish ambassador to Nazi Germany as "scum and an anti-Semite pig".
Two hours later, he brought the subject up again at a meeting with parliamentary leaders. State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin thanked Putin and demanded an apology from Poland.
Vladimir Putin's criticism of Poland follows a European Parliament resolution which blames both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany for the outbreak of World War Two.
The USSR's victory in World War Two is one of the most venerated pillars of state ideology, and more than 70 years on it is still celebrated with much fanfare and bombast every year. It is also a key way for President Putin to legitimise himself and his expansionist foreign policy as a successor to the Soviet empire. So the Kremlin sees any criticism of what is known in Russia as the Great Victory as an attack on itself.
None of which is, of course, reason enough for Poland to accept the accusations, which it has described as "false narratives".
They are a highly sensitive subject in Poland, which outlawed suggestions of complicity in Nazi war crimes in 2018. Following an outcry, the law was softened to make them a civil, not a criminal offence.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
You were referring to the eve of the war, not 1944, and that is what my response adressed.
Yes, I understand, the first part of my answer refers to the eve of war.
“I think I explained the motivation just right.”
The motivation for Katyn was to minimize any resistance to Soviet domination of Poland as a future client state.
The motivation for sitting on the east bank of the Vistula until the resistance in Warsaw was wiped out was to minimize any resistance to Soviet domination of Poland as a future client state.
Were there any other motivations in the latter case? Of course there were, as there have to be in anything complex and cutthroat as war, and one might even have a modicum of understanding of those even in the case of operatives as amoral as the Soviets - if they hadn’t encouraged the uprising in the first place.
But the whole point is that Russia always saw Poland as merely a satellite..
“Kurica nie ptica, Polsza nie zagranica” - Poland is not abroad for Russia like a chicken is not a bird
You might very well encourage uprisings without putting boots on the ground. US government does it quite often.
Venezuela is a recent example. US called for the uprising and supported it and some probably expected US troops to back the protests.
Is it a warcrime that the troops didn’t follow?
Poland is a nice country populated by nice people. Let’s hope one day it would stop being a satellite and will be a truly independent nation. It really deserves it.
Is it any different than the Civil War discussions that happen here?
My dream is that of Pilsudski, Miedzymorze (Intermarium)
I don’t think it is possible. Imperial ambitions didn’t serve Poland well. Current foreign policy is somehow strange as well.
Wisdom from The Godfather!
The Russian called the Spam “the Second Front”.
Yep. The American industrial machine propped up the Red Army and that bought us time to invade Europe when we were ready. Saved a lot of American lives.
In fact it wasn’t spam but corned beef.
I do think Poland has a very legitimate beef with both Germany and Russia. 80+ years don’t heal the damage done to Poland at the start of WW2 to the fall of the Soviet Union. I’m not ethnically or family tied to any side in this but do agree Poland as being historically wronged.
Run that scenario by me *after* we put the 101st Airborne on the border, wait until the Venezuelans bleed themselves dry in armed conflict trying to overthrow the current regime, and then once they clear the dead bodies out of Caracas we march on through to take on drug lords in Columbia.
Warsaw 1945. I don't know what's worse. What the Germans did here, or the Socialist Realist crap the Soviets built there after the war.
Warsaw was a beautiful city before the war.
The original Russian independence day is after the eviction of Polish administration from Kremlin. It was a long time ago and you will hardly find any Russian thinking it is any relevant for modern Russian-Polish relations. Polish foreign policy is still revolving around Katyn. Something is not right here.
Almost all local government was left intact with a Nazi administration.
How many Red Army soldiers were killed by their own “Blocking Troops”? And how many died because of Stalin’s incompetence and megalomania?
US indeed encouraged uprising and people have been killed. Death toll wasn’t in the thousands but it is not WWII after all.
Iran is another example. They had more massive unrests a few years ago and expected US intervention too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.