They are bad guys for knowing their history, apparently.
And if they didn't know it, they would be bad guys for being so ignorant.
Ah, the media.
Ouch!
Suggested compromise - give Poland the extra votes, and move the borders back to their 1938 locations. Everyone should be happy with that, shouldn’t they?
Reparations!
Don’t mention the War. ;)
While our memories are alive, Germany’s crimes are alive.
Seems reasonable to me. Maybe not diplomatic, but true, and thoroughly provoked. Germany is saying they deserve more power in the EU because they’re the biggest boys on the block. Poland is responding that they won’t agree to letting an axis run by the Germans dictate to them.
I think they’re tired of being told to pipe down and do what they’re told, or else.
Frankly, I’m very disturbed that Merkel and Sarkozy agreed to a backroom deal with socialist Tony Blair on imposing what amounts to a new constitution on Europe without any vote, discussion, or national referendums allowed. The sooner the whole thing goes down in flames, the better for the future of Europe.
Heck, Poland should be rewarded for saving Vienna and ending the 2nd Jihad. That action was the catalyst for everything ill that befell Poland since.
Likewise, Germany and France might have larger populations had not Romans invaded and made war on them for many years. Reduce the votes of the Italians. Oh, and remember when Henry V invaded France? Extra votes for the French. I kind of remember some guy named Princip (ok, he wasn’t from an EU nation, but still) executing Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, so that’s two more votes for Austria.
Now THAT’S gonna leave a mark...
ping
The man does have a point...
They’re right.
The Germans lost 7 million soldiers and civilians in WW2, and Poland got 40,000 square miles of German territory. Apparently the “history obsessed” twins aren’t aware of that. And how many Poles did the Soviets kill, hmm?
And lets not forget that the russians were complicit as well in the murder of the polish officer corps during the war.
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.”
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.