Posted on 06/21/2007 10:54:10 AM PDT by RWR8189
The Polish PM has stunned European leaders today with an astonishing attack on Germany for starting the Second World War.
In a spectacularly undiplomatic outburst, he said his country was losing out in today's European Union as a direct result of the millions of deaths that followed its invasion by Germany in 1939.
"We are only demanding one thing - that we get back what was taken from us," said Jaroslaw Kaczynski at the opening of the EU summit in Brussels, chaired by German chancellor Angela Merkel.
"If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a country of 66 million."
The issue of population is at the heart of a heated row over voting rights that could wreck Tony Blair's last EU summit.
A proposed new system of sharing out votes rewards countries such as Germany with the biggest numbers - and Poland is angrily demanding more.
Poland's population is 38 million - implying that Mr Kaczynski blames the Germans for the loss of 28 million people.
Mr Kaczynski and his twin brother Lech, Poland's president, are said to be Second World War obsessives, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of their country's sufferings under occupation.
The identical twins, whose father fought in the 1944 Warsaw uprising, have become infamous for their unrestrained comments and dislike of EU integration.
Luxembourg's premier, Jean-Claude Juncker, said they should stop living in the past. "You have to jump into the present," he told FT Deutschland.
"You will not be happy in the long run if you are always looking in the rear-view mirror."
It sets the scene for a rancorous dinner tonight when leaders of the 27 EU states need to thrash out a series of disputes to avoid a crisis.
Mr Blair, notching up his 47th EU summit, told his Cabinet in London that he was prepared to walk away from the table unless his own demands were met in full.
Before flying out, he and Gordon Brown had telephone talks with Mrs Merkel - indicating that Mr Brown is intensely involved in the negotiations.
Mr Blair came under fire for trying to water down the EU's "son of constitution" treaty. Mr Juncker a veteran federalist, fumed: "We will not stand by and see all the substance removed from the treaty."
New French president Nicolas Sarkozy said there were multiple disputes.
"We don't just have problems with Poland," he said. "We have problems with the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, a little bit with the Czech Republic. The problems are numerous."
Privately, No 10 indicated that Mr Blair wanted his demands met "100 per cent". But European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso retorted: "All the leaders say that they want 100 per cent achievement. But in Europe you've got to be reasonable and rational.
"At the end there has to be some, let's say, agreement."
Mrs Merkel sent an 11th-hour letter pleading with the leaders to compromise, so that Europe could move on from inwardlooking disputes to pressing issues such as climate change, energy supplies and globalisation.
"The European public now expects us to put the necessary reforms of the Union in hand," she wrote. "The time has now come to set out the roadmap for the impending reform of the treaties."
And lets not forget that the russians were complicit as well in the murder of the polish officer corps during the war.
Isn’t the European Parliament impotent in front of the respective national governments of the constituent EU states?
One-equal-vote-per-state-regardless-of-its-size-or-population-policy that you suggested might make a greater mess than the current situation has, with tiny city-states having as much power and influence as the big ones.
Anyway, Europe has always been its own worst enemy, so I don’t know if history is going to come back full circle now. Isn’t it around when this time, last century, WW-I was in the plans?
:^)
You are right. That wouldn't eliminate the Polish complaints, would it. Let's go with 1795. That would solve the problem. http://www.polishroots.org/genpoland/polhistory.htm
Heh heh heh!
Poland’s population losses during World War II were proportionately by far the greatest of any nation participating in the war. Of its 35 million people before the war, Poland lost 6.5 million. An estimated 664,000 were battlefield deaths (this figure exceeds combined losses of the United States and Great Britain in WWII), and the remainder, or 90 percent, were civilians of all ages.
The Nazi German death machine in the Nazi-occupied half of Poland killed:
3 million of the 3.3 million Jews who lived in Poland before World War II, or 90 percent of the Jewish population.
More than 2 million Polish Catholics, with special emphasis on eliminating the national elites.
One out of four (25 percent) of Catholic clergy.
One out of four (25 percent) of all Polish scientists.
One out of five (20 percent) of all Polish schoolteachers.
200,000 Polish children were deported to Germany for purposes of Germanization. 150,000, or 75 percent, never returned to their families in Poland.
The Soviet death machine in the Soviet-occupied half of Poland killed:
21,000 Polish officers murdered by the NKVD in the Katyn Forest and elsewhere.
Between 1.6 million and 1.25 million Poles (the lowest estimate) were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan between 1939-1941 as a result of Soviet “ethnic cleansing”. An estimated four-fifths died either directly or as a result of privations incurred during the deportations.
State Security in Soviet-occupied Poland between 1945-1955 murdered tens of thousands of political, military and intellectual leaders. Exact figures are still unavailable owing to the impossibility to conduct research in this area in Soviet-occupied Poland.
Moscow’s policies designed to debilitate the Polish nation included, among others, the following instruction: “While rebuilding the [Polish] industry and building new industry, make sure that industrial waste is directed to rivers which will be used as reservoirs of drinking water.”
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Circa 1630.
“Should we try to figure out whether the addional population Washington would have had were it not for this murderous Utah resident would entitle Washington to extra votes in the electoral college? “
You have a point that’s well made — however, Poland lost millions of people. I can understand the PM’s opinion, even though I don’t agree that it’s anything Germany could have done anything to stop, given Hitler’s MO at the time.
So basically every EU state has its own national and regional governments to be “taken care” by, then the added headache of the European Parliament, and as icing, the European Council?
That’s a lot of “government” for countries the size of provinces.
How about this:
"If Poland had not lived through the years of 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a country of 0."
By the way, how did Poland's population fare under communism during the Cold War? Not just the death rate, but the birth rate as well. Does Poland today have the same massive abortion problem as Russia?
I'd love to see Silesia, Pommerania, Danzig, and East Prussia go back to Germany (this is nostalgia; I'd be just as happy to see Sweden back in Pommerania too or the huge old Poland-Lithuania ;)). Why doesn't Poland complain about the half of their country Stalin seized and is now in the hands of Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania? What happened to the Poles who lived in those lands? Though a wikipedia article says there were many who weren't Poles over there.
Also, Poland's population is up 43% compared to what it had in 1939. Germany is up 18%. They should quit whining about birthrates when they already have 27 EU votes vs. Germany's 29.
It is less so with each passing year.
One-equal-vote-per-state-regardless-of-its-size-or-population-policy that you suggested might make a greater mess than the current situation has, with tiny city-states having as much power and influence as the big ones.
Similar arguments could be made by Californians about Vermont, with a population not much larger than Long Beach, having 2 Senators.
Anyway, Europe has always been its own worst enemy, so I don’t know if history is going to come back full circle now. Isn’t it around when this time, last century, WW-I was in the plans?
On the German side, yes.
How much real power does the European equivalent of a Congressman have over the European equivalent of a Senator?
Is the post of the Council members, as I am assuming, largely ceremonial?
I don't believe in reperations, what I do believe is that Germany simply should not benefit from a situation it created only a few decades after (and for reasons similiar to those that are motivating it today).
The remedy won't be easy, but creating a situation by using illegal means and then trying to benefit from the fruits of the labor from those illegal means, is not proper.
Using the scenario of different states and the electorial college, if Utah invaded washington and its neighboring states, for the sole purpose of taking control of the country, and killed off large chunks of the population but failed, should Utah still be able to claim, come census time, we should get more electorial votes, why, we have more people, how? Because we killed off chunks of the other states populations. If one state reduces another states population in a bid for power, do they get a pass? that is what you are advocating.
Am I a weirdo for finding this hilarious for some strange reason?
Of course, it is not going to be easy. But it is also impossible to account for, too. That kind of renders the whole argument for undoing the past, aimless.
At most, they can build a memorial to each other's wrongs, and carry on. At worst, they can fight it off again. Like Europeans(and most likely, groups of every living being on earth) have always been accustomed to, and settle it once-and-for-all. Until another issue can be thought of, to seek vengeance for, that is.
The whole point is that. Other than prosecuting those directly involved in the crime, technically and practically, nothing can be done.
The past is the past, If I robbed someone today, 48 hours from, can I use the excuse "past is the past" when my victim is around?.
I don't know what the time frame should be, should it be centries, decades, or just minuits, and hours?
Germany can say the past is the past, Iraq, after being booted out of Kuwait, could have said the same thing the next year. The question, should you do something that is wrong, or illegal, thus creating a situation where you get to enjoy the benefit from those prior bad acts, and dismiss any naysaying with "the past is the past". In theory, I can rob people, and argue that moments later.
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