Posted on 05/21/2008 6:49:34 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Last week we noted the bizarre arguments of Seattle Times editorial writer Bruce Ramsey, who tried so hard to defend Barack Obama against President Bush’s “appeasement” speech that he actually ended up defending Hitler for annexing Austria. His exact words were: “What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable.”
If you think that’s an ahistorical pretzel of monumental proportions, though, you ain’t seen nothin’ — because here comes Pat Buchanan. According to old Pat, not only was the Anchluss not a problem, Hitler’s invasion of Poland was also perfectly understandable, given the Poles’ refusal to negotiate.
Those darned stubborn Poles were responsible for starting World War II, according to Pat: Bush Plays the Hitler Card.
German tanks, however, did not roll into Poland until a year later, Sept. 1, 1939. Why did the tanks roll? Because Poland refused to negotiate over Danzig, a Baltic port of 350,000 that was 95 percent German and had been taken from Germany at the Paris peace conference of 1919, in violation of Wilson’s 14 Points and his principle of self-determination.
Hitler had not wanted war with Poland. He had wanted an alliance with Poland in his anti-Comintern pact against Joseph Stalin.
But the Poles refused to negotiate. Why? Because they were a proud, defiant, heroic people and because Neville Chamberlain had insanely given an unsolicited war guarantee to Poland. If Hitler invaded, Chamberlain told the Poles, Britain would declare war on Germany.
From March to August 1939, Hitler tried to negotiate Danzig. But the Poles, confident in their British war guarantee, refused. So, Hitler cut his deal with Stalin, and the two invaded and divided Poland.
The cost of the war that came of a refusal to negotiate Danzig was millions of Polish dead, the Katyn massacre, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, the annihilation of the Home Army in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and 50 years of Nazi and Stalinist occupation, barbarism and terror.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact
[snip] Helping Germany grow strong had accordingly been Soviet policy from 1920 to 1933. A fourth partition of Poland was suggested at regular intervals, satisfying Lenin’s imperative that Versailles be undermined by destroying Poland. Once Hitler renounced the military cooperation between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia that Hans von Seeckt had arranged, Stalin adopted the Popular Front policy, trying to draw the Western powers into war with Germany. [end]
Mr.Buchanan, if you have any brain, make use of it from time to time. Here’s special to you so you might see what an idol of yours, a Mr. Hitler, did to my homeland, Poland.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H5dUsMjt5M
I have no idea why you posted this to me.
Perhaps because I do and will continue to defend Mr Buchanans freedom as an American to think with his own mind and let God sort it out?
But I have spent a great deal of time in what is now Poland and I sincerely, very sincerely, respect the way the Poles have rehabilitated the German lands which they were given by their Russian masters.
Danzig and Breslau are more slendid than Frankfurt or Bremen today and the Poles deserve the praise without question
Thanks, a good video.
Buchanan is certainly not using his brain on this one, and I resent it more thinking of my grandparents once living in Poland.
I saw that video, a few weeks ago.
I’m sure you’ve seen this one as well, but for anyone who hasn’t, this is incredible:
Animated History of Poland (Showcased at Expo 2010 in Shanghai)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr6Q0BpmyG0&feature=recentf
“we should give LA back to Mexico.
” —> I actually think that’s a good idea — give them the whole Democratic-voting California :-P
Pat is a moron. Apples and octopi.
Reagan was negotiating with an ideology and country that had lost faith in itself and was tottering towards its dissolution. Negotiation took time. Time was in the interests of the free world. The longer it took the more ramshackle the Soviet Empire became.
Hitler was in total control of an utterly self-confident, expansionist empire. Time was on his side. Whether it would have been better to fight over the Sudetenland is a debatable question, but that continued appeasement was not long-term a viable option is not debatable.
Pat's point, to the extent he has one, is that if the Poles and Brits had just been more flexible over Danzig WWII would not have happened. That is about as idiotic a belief as I can imagine. The War would have come sooner or later, possibly at a point when it would have been even less favorable to the Allies.
Most critically, Hitler was still working on a Bomb. He jettisoned those plans when war broke out. Given another few years of "peace" he might have opted to continue its development and perhaps have acquired one before the good guys. In which case the world would presently be a horrible place.
Of course, it is possible this was because they weren't given the option.
Thanks for the link. Actually, I haven’t seen it before. The video seems to be really good.
Hitler knew that Poland relished her independence and would fight, unlike the other nations. Their brothers to the south, Slovakia bent over backwards for Hitler thinking they would have their “independence”, but really was only a Nazi vassal state, Poland would have none of that.
Excellent response.
Not all Slavs, he was ok with Czechs and Slovaks as long as they behaved. But he coveted the lands in the East, and Poland and Russia were in the way, so he made up the canard that Slavs were inferior, to attempt to justify his occupation of those lands, the Slavs in the other countries, didn't bother him.
And that’s one of the many inconsistencies in his policies — how can you be nice to “inferior races” like Slavic Croats and Sorbs (O not E) and yet dis Poles, Serbs, Russians? And how could he ignore the facts that all of these were Aryans too? And there are many more blondes in Poland than in Germany (hittie himself had black hair and eyes!)
Hitler also allowed considerable autonomy to the Croats, who were as Slavic as anybody. The Croats mostly used this to launch extermination programs against Serbs, Roma and Jews that shocked even the Nazis.
In general, the Nazis believed all Slavs were racially inferior and would eventually have to be exterminated if they couldn’t be successfully “domesticated.”
Of all the Slavic nations, only the Russians and Poles were large and powerful enough to be an immediate threat, so they were targeted first.
One of the most fascinating aspects of WWII, to me, is that you can make a very credible case that the Nazis’ racial doctrines are the major reason they lost the war. There is considerable evidence that the first German troops to cross into USSR were often welcomed as liberators from the commies. The Germans could have had many, if not most of the Russians fighting on their side.
Yet it didn’t take the Russians long to figure out the Nazis, for them, were even worse than the commies.
Had 5M men been subtracted from the Red Army and added to the Wehrmacht, the outcome of the war on the Eastern Front might have been very different.
you’re right of course — except, I know that they were welcomed in the Ukraine, but in Russia proper?
Indeed given the close similarities between Germany and Russian socialists (which they all were) it is impossible to defend the view that somehow the Nazis were better than the NKVD and Stalin. Rubbish.
The favored treatment of Hitler came from the aristocrats in the Ruhr Valley, who thought they could manage the little socialist, and co-opt the union workers from the Party.
Nazi-— Nationalist socialist. By definition, a socialist, with a nationalist bent.
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