Posted on 09/01/2009 8:34:52 AM PDT by traumer
The dignity of ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War in Poland is being marred by furious spats between Russia and Eastern European states over their respective wartime roles.
As world leaders gather in the Polish city of Gdansk today to commemorate the first shots of the conflict, Poles are fuming over what they perceive as an insulting Russian propaganda campaign targeting their nation.
In the days leading up to anniversary, Russian media has aired a string of accusations against Poland, claiming that Warsaw intended to collaborate with Hitler in an invasion of the Soviet Union, and that Jozef Beck, Poland's foreign minister in 1939, was a German agent. Moscow broadcasters have also claimed that there was a "German hand" in the 1940 Katyn massacre of thousands of Polish PoWs, an atrocity generally held to have been the exclusive work of Stalin's secret police.
The squabbling has threatened to overshadow today's ceremonies, in which Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin was due to join other European heads of state on the small peninsula of Westerplatte, which guards the entrance to Poland's Gdansk harbour.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
At least the Telegraph bothered to mention this often overlooked little historical detail.
Oh Yeah, The Polish-Russian mutual admiration continues. LOL!! The Poles would fight the Germans for revenge and the Russians for pleasure.
Viva la Poland.
bump
Isn’t Russia 0-3 against Poland when the Germans aren’t involved?
The Nazis stopped blaming Poland for being invaded in 1945.
When will the Russians catch up?
Russia has some crust, after what it did to Poland. First, the Non-Aggression Pact made it possible for Germany to invade Poland, and work the horrors that it inflicted on the Poles during the occupation. Then Stalin allowed the Polish Resistance to be crushed by the Germans in 1944. Followed by 45 years of Soviet occupation. Russia has no business complaining about anything.
The Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 1939 allowed Hitler to attack Western Europe without having to fear a two-front war, like Germany got itself into in 1914. During the period when the Germans overran the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, and France, the USSR was Hitler’s ally. When the RAF was making its heroic defense of Britain in 1940, the Soviet Union was a source of raw materials for the German war machine. The only reason Stalin later fought Hitler was that Hitler attacked him.
Stalin would have fought Hitler anyway by 1943, but he wasn’t going to stop in Germany.
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