Agreed. Poland easily could have experienced what Hungary experienced in 1956. If that would have happened, Walesa would have been shot and Solidarity would have been crushed. Even the Polish army plus the Polish people could not have stopped the Soviet and East German tanks.
So I'm willing to give Jaruzelski the benefit of the doubt here. Perhaps he picked the best out of a number of bad choices.
Lean, you posted: “So I’m willing to give Jaruzelski the benefit of the doubt here. Perhaps he picked the best out of a number of bad choices.”
Yes, it was the best of several bad choices. Jaruzelski was a Polish Patriot and wanted to preserve his nation, but not at the cost of having it destroyed by either totally capitulating to the Soviets or in causing a war that would have destroyed the country. And resulting perhaps in another partition of Poland between “Russia & Germany.”
The Czech’s let the Soviet’s know that they were NOT going to be a third invasion front, and did not want the Soviet Divisions in Czechoslovakia to be used either.
In one of those TV biopics of St. John Paul II, Jaruzelski was portrayed as a self-declared Polish “patriot” who was caught between a rock & a hard place at that point in history, and had made some accommodation with the Pope so as not to incur Russia’s wrath. Whether this story line was based on any actual accounts or pure melodrama, who knows…