Posted on 01/26/2020 1:18:30 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
WARSAW, Poland — Over the next several days, world leaders will gather twice to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of Nazi Germany’s death camps.
That there will be two competing ceremonies — one in Jerusalem on Thursday and the other at the Auschwitz site in southern Poland on Monday — underlines how politically charged World War II remains...
Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945. But the country had also signed a nonaggression accord with the Nazis shortly before the war began in 1939, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. It contained a secret protocol in which the totalitarian powers agreed to carve up Eastern Europe.
Two years later, Germany turned on Kremlin leader Josef Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union, bringing the Soviets into the war on the side of the Allies. Millions of Red Army soldiers lost their lives in the eventual defeat of Adolf Hitler's Germany.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to shift wartime blame to Poland over anger that historical memory in the West has begun to focus more on the Soviet role in triggering the war and less on its role in defeating Germany.
...Western historians see those allegations as a cynical ploy to minimize Soviet responsibility as Moscow today seeks to glorify what is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War and more generally a Stalinist era that included mass killings of opponents at home and suffering imposed on Eastern Europe during decades of communist rule.
In recent days, Poland's government has been defending the nation's record, recalling how its wartime government-in-exile sought to save Jews by warning the world, and listing cultural and economic damage that Poland suffered after Soviet troops took control of its territory at the end of World War II.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Yep, the irony... Although we may only guess would it end any better for Germany if there was no Lenin.
It’s not a separate issue. The Soviets were absolute butchers. You can’t separate the red army from the subjugation of marxism. No country occupied by the USSR should have gratitude for the police state that were imposed on them.
Ask Witold Pilecki about the Soviets, oh wait, you can’t, they murdered him.
Not true. You are saying that because there was a Cold War, you were on the opposite side and that was a narrative.
Regular Soviet soldiers and even most of their commanders weren’t Communists and didn’t care about the politics. They fought the Nazis not over politics.
Eastern Europe survived under Soviet-backed regimes and in many senses in better shape than Western Europe which was US-dominated.
Pilecky was sentenced by the Polish court. The Polish decided he was a traitor.
“Eastern Europe survived under Soviet-backed regimes and in many senses in better shape than Western Europe which was US-dominated.”
Would you mind providing single metric supporting your claim that Eastern Europe under Soviet occupation survived in better shape then Western Europe?
Look at what is happening in Germany and Sweden. Then at Poland and Hungary.
Stalin was at the gates of Warsaw and encouraged the Poles to start fighting the Germans there. Then Stalin stopped advancing for three weeks so the Germans and Poles would kill each other. That’s how.
What exactly is wrong with it? Are you hinting Russia is guilty and not the Germans?
That is what happened.
If we are debating a Black and White Transcript, no wonder we are debating historical events. It’s what the Left does, rewrites history.
US encourages people of Venezuela and Iran to rebel against the government but then the US military doesn’t arrive to help them. Do you suggest US military is guilty?
Freedom is never free.
I missed any concrete deadlines the Soviets promised for their intervention in Warsaw. And by the way the Germans in Warsaw were beaten by the Soviets and not by the uprising.
The Russians were key in the uprising. The success or failure was based upon how quickly the Soviet forces could link up. However the advance was halted by design and allowed the Nazi’s to focus on the uprising.
In other news Georgia lost the August War in 2008 because US failed to intervene on its behalf despite the fact that US forces were present in Georgia. McCain promised president Saakashvili they would intervene.
The Poles were pretty much killed while the Russians did not advance for 3 weeks. No equivalency to us encouraging an uprising in another country.
And the Russians killed 10,000 Polish officers.
20,000.
You could make the case that around 1956, Poland was a bit more independent of the Soviets, but in 1948, the Soviets were firmly in control of Poland. The decision to murder Pilecki came straight from The Kremlin.
That is a narrow view on it. Pilecky was a British agent. Why should anyone allow Britain to exercise influence in Poland? It has betrayed Poland in 1939, it was not in a position and unwilling to seriously help Poland in 1944. And after 1945 Britain was irrelevant in Polish affairs both based on the above facts and according to Yalta agreements. It didn’t contribute in any meaningful way to the liberation of Poland.
And there were plenty of local Communists in Poland who viewed Pilecky as a traitor for the reasons above.
I fully understand why the man is viewed differently now and he deserves recognition but it was a different time.
Do you also think that Milada Horáková was a British spy?
Czech show trials are the whole different matter. She wasn’t involved in any violent conspiracy for sure. Her trial is the very definition of a Stalinist show trial.
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