Posted on 01/24/2003 9:50:55 PM PST by Pokey78
Brussels
WHEN EUROPE THREW a big party in Copenhagen in December, Poland nearly spoiled the fun. Unhappy with the membership terms offered by the European Union, the Poles held out for a few extra billion euros, knowing full well the "historic" enlargement jamboree couldn't take place without the biggest of the Central European candidates. The E.U. caved and put up extra cash, securing the claim to have "reunified Europe" and "buried Yalta." Polish prime minister Leszek Miller, a veteran of one of his country's last Communist governments, thanked native son Pope John Paul II for getting Poland into "Europe."
The theatrics in Copenhagen may be a foretaste of things to come in the expanded Europe. Not since Britain joined in 1973 has the old guard in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels been so uneasy about a new member. Leave aside Poland's stagnant economy, its dangerous populists, and its corruption scandals. Poland is a pain because its heart isn't in Europe but across the Atlantic.
It's a deeply worrying prospect for the euro-nationalists. The E.U.'s constitutional convention, now underway in Brussels, aims to strengthen the common foreign policy after Europe's failure to stand up to America on Iraq, Kyoto, and the international criminal court. On January 14, France and Germany (a.k.a. Old Europe) backed the creation of the post of European president, in part to give the E.U. a stronger voice, and a week later Paris sided with Germany's pacifistic stance on war with Iraq. A European military force will be up and running this year. And while many different camps have a say in the often tedious debate over Europe's future, most are still tempted to define Europe against America, as in de Gaulle's day, and to see their values or interests as divergent.
The coming expansion of the E.U. to 25 countries and 445 million people (up from 15 countries and 378 million people today) might just make Europe better able to stand up to America in world affairs. But there's a hitch. Poland, the most important of the incoming members, with its 40 million people and strategic location on the E.U.'s future eastern frontier, is Washington's closest ally on the Continent. During the drawn-out negotiations over membership, French president Jacques Chirac pointedly warned Polish foreign minister Bronislaw Geremek that Poland better not be the "American Trojan horse in Europe" or Paris might veto its accession (as de Gaulle once did Britain's). Some in the Brussels press corps casually refer to Poland as a "Fifth Column."
Maybe they're right. Only a few weeks after Copenhagen, Warsaw bought 48 F-16 fighters from Lockheed Martin for $3.8 billion, snubbing two European offers. "As a thank-you present for entry into Europe, what a success!" said a scandalized Serge Dassault, whose French concern, Dassault Aviation, lost out. For three days, his newspaper, the Paris daily Le Figaro, ran letters from readers calling the Poles ingrates and bad Europeans.
The pique in Paris, however, was mostly for show. The French, like the Poles, had known all along that the biggest military tender ever in the former Warsaw Pact would go to a U.S. concern. (Congress gave Poland a favorable loan to cover the purchase, and Lockheed Martin threw in more goodies, including about $10 billion of "offset" investments, than either of the European concerns could muster.) While the jets will help Poland take a bigger role in NATO and any other U.S.-led coalition--the Poles, unlike the Germans, say they're ready to serve in Iraq--the planes were meant to send a clear signal. "With Europe, you have to talk and be on good terms," says Tomasz Lis, anchor of Poland's most-watched evening news show, Fakty. "But the relationship with America is sacred."
Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski didn't seem to care about French feelings. A former sports minister in the Communist era and a savvy politician, Kwasniewski knows polls show the Poles to be among the most pro-American of nations. They're still grateful to Washington for getting Poland into NATO--and ambivalent about the economic costs of joining the E.U. After the jet sale, Kwasniewski went to Washington for the second time in six months. At their White House meeting, President Bush said, "I have got no better friend in Europe today."
From the Polish perspective, the attraction needs no explanation. France and Britain failed Poland in 1939, and again at Yalta (while many Poles rationalize American complicity in the division of Europe, saying Stalin manipulated a frail FDR). Ten million Polish Americans strengthen the bond. The national mythology touts self-sacrifice on behalf of the West against a Barbaric East, going back to the defense of Vienna against the Turks, the Polish army's victory against the Bolsheviks in 1920, and the Polish air force's role in the defense of London in World War II. Less than a year after communism fell, on the eve of the first Gulf War, Polish special forces spirited six U.S. operatives out of Iraq (a story later made into a hit Polish film). Poland's special forces unit, GROM, a standout in an outmoded military, was also deployed in Haiti in 1994.
This eagerness to prove themselves good allies no doubt helped the Poles' cause at NATO and served their narrow national interest. But it also serves America. Through NATO and in many other ways, the United States is a European power. The Europeans aren't the easiest allies; but in the Balkans and Afghanistan, they run the peacekeeping operations. And in a wider Europe, Poland will have potentially broad influence. Inside NATO, the Poles are staunch defenders of the alliance and generally support military engagements abroad. And they sit on a still fragile frontier. Their eastern neighbors include Ukraine, which allegedly sells radar systems to Saddam Hussein, and Belarus, whose president is Europe's last dictator and another Saddam pal. The Poles can be a westward bridge and a good example for these and other former Soviet countries toward which the E.U. has no coherent policy.
AND THERE'S A BETTER REASON to welcome not only the Poles but the other East Europeans into the E.U. For half a century, building Europe was about burying World War II and nudging France and Germany to get along. The current crop of Western European leaders don't have the war to guide them: Gerhard Schröder, ousting Helmut Kohl in 1998, said Germany needed to free itself from its past. Germany's foreign minister Joschka Fischer and the E.U.'s foreign policy chief Javier Solana spent their youth protesting against America rather than feeling grateful for its role in ending the war and rebuilding Europe.
The incoming members had markedly different formative years. Soviet tyranny ended only a dozen years ago. These countries know it wasn't Germany or France that brought down the Soviet empire or that championed their entry into NATO and the E.U. A decade ago, the Europeans stood by as the Balkans descended into war, less than an hour's flight from Vienna. The Balkans aren't that different from Bulgaria or Poland. The Bosnian war remains a useful reminder that Brussels, Paris, and even London haven't yet proven themselves mature enough to look after their messy continent without U.S. help.
So the debate over a divergence in "values" between Europe and America sounds baffling from Warsaw. There, America's "values" aren't rejected. The E.U. may hold the ticket to First World living standards, but America's "moralistic" foreign policy has more appeal to Poles than European realpolitik. And of the 10 incoming E.U. members, only Poland--the most pro-American of the lot--has any strategic weight. Its support for NATO and for U.S. intervention against "rogue regimes," as well as its skepticism about a common European foreign policy and the E.U.'s military ambitions, will have an impact.
Far from widening the trans-Atlantic gulf, the enlargement of the E.U. should change the tenor and substance of relations for the better--as long as the United States retains its leadership role in NATO, and the newcomers master the rules of the E.U.'s sometimes bizarre political game. To succeed in doing this after its accession to the E.U. in 2004, Warsaw will need savvy diplomacy. The link with the United States can help. American diplomats and visiting congressmen, for their part, hope Poland, once inside the E.U., can assist in resolving nasty trade disputes.
For now, the biggest question mark is whether Poland can get its domestic house in order. The recession is hurting. An early post-Communist dose of "shock therapy" sparked an economic boom in the 1990s, but reform has stalled. The farmers are hungry for subsidies that Brussels doesn't want to give. Fringe parties are growing more popular. Poland needs to be a success story to matter in Europe. At the moment, the most encouraging sign is an ambiguous one: No country has provoked so much grumbling in Brussels since Margaret Thatcher lived at 10 Downing Street.
Matthew Kaminski is an editorial page writer for the Wall Street Journal Europe.
While most of these maps are interesting, none provide any detail of the conflict in question. Actually the 38 conflict is only mentioned in brief, as is common with all literature on the subject. But that is beside the point. In 38 Poland created its own downfall, as did France when they chose to allied themselves with Nazi Germany. To solely blame the war on Germany is to ignore vital parts of history.
Revisionist history always seeks to lay blame with whoever is the weakest or least PC in that era so you want to kick Poland because Germany invaded Poland?
Revisionist of history chose to blame whoever fits there bill. The historians who wrote modern history chose to ignore Poland’s role in the Munich agreement. They wanted to see Poland as an innocent victim of an aggressive Germany and USSR. The truth is that the USSR turned on Poland only after Poland turned on the Czechoslovakia an ally of the USSR. Germany followed simply an old pattern using trouble with the German minorities to gain dominance over its neighbours. Poland suffered the same fait that they had prepared for the Czechs just a year earlier, on the same grounds. Then as now did Poland seek to gain advantage over its neighbours by aligned them self with the dominant power (Germany / USA). History shows that it wasn’t wise then and I don’t find it wise now. The US will turn on the Poles as fast as Germany did then, it is in there pattern.
Interesting indeed, line up with or behind some Jews (see the beginning of the thread) and a whole bunch of others who refuse to see the beam in their own eyes. In view of the fact that Poland has now aligned with US perhaps your admonition ("in the case of Poland, the lessons learned should be that if you sleep with a serpent you should expect to get bitten") should be trumpeted at them immediately (since Germany cannot possibly be a serpent that bites). ´
I think Poland’s foreign policy is short sited, and in the long run will cost them dearly.
Who "they"? What are you talking about? There were colaborators among every occupied nation (including Jewish colaborators). Most of Jews in Poland were conspicuous since many of them did not speak Polish well (they spoke Jiddish and went to Jewish schools), those who were assimilated still could be recognised by dark hair or faces (Nazis were very attentitive to the racial features), and those with Slavic look and fluent Polish also could be picked - everyone's personal ID was randomly checked on the street. Poles who were hiding Jews if caught were sentenced to death or concentration came together with their family.
I will give you one story to give you taste of occupation told to me by my father: German military policy was doing random "lapanki" - "catchings" - blocking a street at two ends and packing everyone to tracks to send to the camps (only those with special ID proving they are needed for economy were released) - everyone in Poland knows until this day about lapanki. So what my father told me what he witnessed one time Germans did lapanka, but instead of packing everyone they put people to the wall and ordered everyone to pray Hail Mary continuously. German policemen were walking along slowly and listening - those who did not know prayer were taking for examination since they were not Catholic Poles.
90% of the Jews in Poland were killed in the holocaust. That's a higher percentage than any other European country.
Percentages are not certain - but the fact is that majority of Jews lived in Poland since it was the country most hospitable to them, even Russian Jews come from the formerly Polish territories of Western Ukraine and Bielorus. The reason why Germans were freerer to operate in Poland was that Poland was a defeated country deprived of rights and autonomy. Hungary, Italy or Romania were allies and had more leverage. Even defeated countries of France, Denmark or Netherlands were treated better and had more rights (for politcial or racial reasons). Poland was the first nation to challenge and resist Germans in the battlefield (Serbs and Greeks were the second) and kept resisting through armed underground on a large scale (Warsaw was destroyed as a result of mass uprising). This is why the occupation was harsher there and that is why so many ethnic Poles died.
For you information, Sir. Countries allied with Nazi Germany were Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania etc ... Poland, Serbia, Greece were the first nations to fight against Germans (long time before others, including Americans). And so they paid horrendous price. Most of families lost someone, my mother lost all her direct family (she became an orphan at 13) my wife lost one grandfather, many my friends were affected similarly, etc ... Learn some history, please.
Almost everyone sided with Germans against Czechs. Czechs were demonised by international mass media as persecutores of Germans in Sudetendland same way as Serbs were deminonised as persecutoers of Albanians in Kosovo. Slovakia was pressured to separate as Montenegro today and in the end the remainded of Bohemia got occupied.
It is true that Poles took side of international community against Czechs. I am not justifying this misdeed but the motive was to take back the Zaolzie region which Czechs stole from Poles in 1919 when Poles were fighting against Bolsheviks. If not this sorry dispute, Poles probably would remain neutral or pro-Czech.
Oh, come on! This that Poland took small Zaolzie(Cieszyn) area back from Czechs was the cause of German attack and World War Two? Strange, what do they teach in those schools.
No, that was not what I meant. But by attacking Czechoslovakia, they effectively killed them selves. First they alienated both of Czechoslovakia’s allies, France and the Soviet Union (the later of cause invaded them later) the first never wanted to help anyway. Second if you look at the Polish - German dispute you find that it’s actually the same as the German - Czech one, and after the war was settled the same way. Thirdly militarily it was suicide. The polish foreign policy of the mid war period is not a very proud chapter by any measure. It is short sided egoism at its worst. Unfortunately it hasn’t changed much over the years, sad really. They are quite lucky that it was more convenient for the victors to paint them as Hitler’s first victim and to sort of forget the treaty of Munich.
Poppycock!!! The USSR from day one envisioned Poland as being just another SSR in the Soviet Union. That is why the Poles launched their pre-emptive attack on the Bolsheviks in 1920, they knew the Bolsheviks would eventually attack. Ever since the "Miracle on the Vistula" the Soviets were craving revenge. As far as Nazi Germany, anyone who read "Mein Kampf" would have known that Poland was destined to be "lebensraum."
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