Posted on 06/01/2009 1:05:31 PM PDT by lizol
Poland protests after D-Day celebrations snub
01.06.2009 09:51
A spokesman for President Lech Kaczynski has said that the lack of invitation for the Polish head of state to the D-Day celebrations in France on June 6 has left a “nasty taste in the mouth”.
Polish politicians have said that it is highly regrettable that President Lech Kaczynski has not been invited to the celebrations of the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, marked the allied western offensive which ultimately helped airing to an end WW II. Head of the presidential National Security Bureau Aleksander Szczydło said that Poland made a tangible contribution to the liberation of France, recalling the 15, 000-strong Polish division under the command of General Maczek and the participation of some 50, 000 Poles in the French resistance movement.
In a radio interview today, Szczygło spoke of a, “nasty aftertaste and a sense of resentment”, adding, however, that failure to invite the Polish president will have no bearing on the shape of future Polish-French relations.
The Presidential Chancellery says on its website, however, that the Polish President has received an invitation from the local authorities of the town of Falaise to attend the events commemorating the participation of Polish troops in the Battle of Falaise Pocket on 12 to 24 August 1944 which defeated Nazi troops in Normandy.
Asked to comment on the issue, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that a lack of invitation for the Polish president is “regrettable”, adding that relations between Polish and French presidents have not been too good since President Kaczynski refused to sign the Lisbon Treaty following the Irish referendum last year.
“President Sarkozy made it clear that he treated President Kaczyński’s refusal to ratify the Treaty as a matter of personal concern to him,” Tusk said.
A prominent member of the opposition Law and Justice party, Joachim Brudziński, spoke of “the smallness of the French side and failure to pay respects to the last living Polish war veterans who shed their blood for the liberation of France”.
Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain also expressed her displeasure last week after not receiving an invitation to the D-Day celebrations.
The French side says that it regards the celebrations of battles in what was in the American sector of the war as primarily a "Franco-American affair" and that is why President Obama will be a guest and not heads of state from other nations.
On D-Day, 6 June 1944, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. Apart from British and American troops, personnel from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland took part in the landings.
The invasion marked the beginning of the end of World War II.
I bet it has something to do with not pissing off the Russians....
ZERO apology tour uninvitee.
No it’s probably about the holocast, where little know to most as many as 5 million Polish people were tossed in the ovens.
Obama doesn’t want the whole Jewish issue to come up at his Muslim apology tour.
I hear he going to apologize for Churchill’s decision to bomb Dresden this time out.
President Lech Kaczynski is in good company but I guess this is not the change most were hoping for.
How incredibly contemptible, to ignore, say, the sacrifice of the Polish paratroopers, just to name a few, for a petty political point???
The French officials are woefully ignorant of history. US troops were a minority in the "American Sector"; the British contingent was just as large and the Canadians sent half as many as the Americans did on D-Day.
If I remember correctly, Obama will be meeting with the Russian president and PM/Premier Putin.
If so he'll probably find some way to apologize to the former Axis powers for the US military taking Europe back from them.
The French seem to be messing this up badly.
The Poles and the Queen should crash the festivities by showing up in a landing craft.
Well Dresden is still a very controversial decision. It will always be one.. Did we really have to fire bomb that city? The war was over at that point. Dresden was terror bombing at a massive level. OK ducking. Flame away.
Poles did a lot more to defeat the Nazis than the French ever did.
Goebbels asked for “Total War” and he got it!!!
Awhile back I heard that in his speech Obama will apologize to France for invading their country during WW II. ;)
The best course of action was decided to be to bomb the population, FDR acquiesced to Churchill's desire, so they did. No apologies necessary, none desired.
The exact same arguments could be made about nuking Japan. Was it necessary? In both cases, the outcomes were the same, the wars were ended.
Later writing shows it was nothing of the sort. Dresden was a major German transportation hub in the last days of the war and contained nearly 200 military installations and factories.
Also, the United States didn’t fire-bomb Dresden. The British did, however.
Amended: not “nothing of the sort” as there were of course civilian casualties. Very careless use of phrase for which I apologize. However, Dresden was definitely a military target.
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