If your ancestors were in the "Wehrmacht"...

Like it or not - these lands were not under occupation, they were part of the German Empire... ;)

Techniaclly yes but against the will of majority living there, so practically under occupation...

Majority?

Silesia for example had a german majority of 75 percent (census of 1905)!
They for sure felt under polish occupation after 1919...

Not many of them still there, right? Tell them about polonization and expellation!
And those who stayed are so messed up with their own heritage during decades of polish anti-germanism they don't know anylonger who they are, what their heritage is...having had no other choice than being more polish than the Poles to survive after war and communist Poland!

Or they just left for Germany....

It will take alot more time to entwine that special mess...we are just starting....at least we are talking about that taboo now!

But of course they were. Polish lands which were directly annexed into the 3rd Reich
after September 1939 were under occupation for well over 100 years (since the partitions
of Poland until 1918.)


Yeah, yeah. Germans were slaughtering us by millions, our elites, women
and children - put them into gas chambers, treated as sub-humans and what
did we do? Polonized some of the Germans and made the rest leave - oh, my
God, what a terrible revenge we took! Those bloodthirsty Poles! *rolls eyes*

Well, Poles responded to some nice germanization and a tiny bit of re-settling also not very well...*rolls eyes even more*

This slaughtering and gas chambering was a follow up of all this ethnical and nationalistic mess in central Europe after WWI if I dare to remind the audience, not the reason...

Nice germanization and a tiny bit of re-settling! *rolls eyes so much that they're practically upside down*


Oh, yes, that's right - you didn't like the Treaty of Versailles so you had right to murder
millions of people, build concentration camps and gas chambers. How could I forget,
it was the Treaty of Versailles that turned you into inhumane murdering beasts, killing
women and children. Thanks for explaining that, BB.

*eye plops*

*goes searching for eye*


In short, yes!

The Nazis came to power with the promise to righten again what nearly all Germans (and foreigners) believed to be a sham (Kosovo anybody? Silesian uprisings anybody?) which had to be taken back again urgently!!!

But Germany wasn't some backward country but the most industrialized, technologically advanced country of that time. So he was as bad as he was because he could!

Ethnic wars are the worst...Ruanda, Balkan...

Well...this racist, subhuman spin was new....

No, officially they were not because Poland didn't exist as a state. These lands were Russian, Austro-Hungarian and German territories. Accepted all around the world at that time with the exception of the Ottoman Empire, Denmark and Spain, I believe - right?. It's a technicality, I know, but you cannot change historical facts. To use the term 'occupation' is just a political tool to show continuity between the pre-partition Poland and the country that reemerged after WW1, IMHO.

That's what I mean.

Look - I can perfectly comprehend that you weren't happy with the Treaty of Versailles,
the new borders and all that - I have no problem understanding that. So, you started the
war, invaded Poland, took 'your' lands back and occupied the rest of the country. As much
as I don't like it - it's, to some extent, understandable.

What I cannot understand and what, in my opinion (and in the opinion of any sane man),
can never be justified by any treaty or border changes, is the racist contempt and murderous
rage that Germans displayed on occupied Polish territories. The Treaty of Versailles
NEITHER justifies NOR explains that.


Well, forgive me if I look at history from the Polish point of view (and Ottoman, Spanish
and Danish in that case) and not from that of the rest of the world ;)

You are excused, although ... you're definitely indoctrinated ... ;)

yes, but I'm properly indoctrinated and proud of it ... ;)

Ha ha ha

You know...I learned much about this in the last years since it became my hobby.
I firmly believe now that the Nazis didn't care one yota for the lost (to us lost that is) territories or the people. It was to them just a welcomed means to gather votes and support.

Hitler would had sold Danzig to Poland for a treaty, he never cared for the Danziger. For them the idea of conquest, domination was much more important than the grievances of the Germans.

As I see it now, the Nazis USED the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles to come to power and to plummet Europe into the abyss.

I've read a very interesting analysis about the much vaunted Nazi-economy...it was an eye opener. All what the Nazis in Germany "achieved" wasn't because of superior leading it was because they were permanently at war and could import all that stuff, not to mention cheap laborers. The Nazi state could never had made any peace, they wouldn't had survived peace. They needed WAR!

But the point is, at that time nobody could possible know it. Most, if not all, believed in the beginning it was for a good, justified end...and as the war did go on....and more hellish by the day...there were not much options left.

PS: I came to translate the "Blitzkrieg" with "Wutkrieg", it wasn't only a new military tactic which let Germans overran so many countries so quickly..there was alot of rage behind it!

The whole first part of WWII was one big vengeance for Germans, and yes, they were brutal.
(So was the vengeance on the Germans as the table turned)

But then, it was a race war in the East...and even today once peaceful neighbours kill each other for just belonging to the "wrong" race, the wrong ethnie, the wrong tribe...(Balkan, Africa)

In this regard WWII wasn't something special...

As you can see from the Western front, if the war is "just a war", not seen as a live and death struggle between deadly enemies, different races, it stayed fairly civil.

That the Nazis used the Treaty and the feeling of injustice in people to come to power
is quite obvious. The fact that German nation fell for their lies is what bothers me.

*sighs*


Don't even compare what Germans did to Poles to the polonization and expelling
of Germans after the war, BB. Two completely different things and you know it.

Anyways - gotta catch some z's. I have to get up really early for work tomorrow. Goodnight, lads.

Just imagine a nation of Crowies! ;)

'night :)

Allmost the same with the Romn Empire, had to be at war all the time I remember that the military took up 50% or more of the economy.


Not a long time ago I found out that the Soviet NKVD came with a proposal of killing/deleting Polish elite (The Germans/Nazi's planned on colaboration first for instance guards at Piłsudski's tomb, release of Polish soldiers) it wasn't until 1941 that the Nazi's starting murdering Jews on a large scale, mostly because they couldn't get them to Madagascar.

One sure doesn't know where it all started, but we all know how it ended :/


Torq we all are :)


lol

Hi,

That aint what I heard, what I heard is that the germans were running low on men,
so they offered tribute to lithuanians, and east european to fight for them.

I could be wrong.

My great grandfather who was a Volksdeutsche was from Gnesen and he was a Prussian soldier in the German Empire in WW1 and a lieutenant in Wehrmacht in WW2.

My grandfather was sent to Germany to go to school and started his training in the Hitler Youth. Lucky for him a couple months before he was to go into the Wehrmacht the war finished.

My grandfather and his family had very Polish first and surnames but were very very German and identified as being ethnic Germans.

My grandfather and his sister were from Category 3 on the Volksliste

--- My late friend was an ethnic German from Poznan. His parents were Germans; at home, they talked with each other only in German, but brought my friend up as a Polish native. In fact, he was a great Polish patriot.

During WWII my friend's father was thrown by the German authorities into a German concentration camp for refusing to sign the Volklist.

It seems throughout Polish history many ethnic Germans were loyal Polish citizens. One of them was the great Copernicus (in Polish: Kopernik).

Later, when I have more time, I'll try to write more on the subject.

By the way, some Germans say Polish literature is full of negative German sterotypes (as if their literature were full of positive Polish stereotypes), but perhaps the most beautiful and poignant description of the German character, spirit and bravery is found in Henryk Sienkiewicz's great novel "Ogniem i mieczem" (By Fire and Sword). He describes a small unit of German mercenaries fighting for the Polish Commonwealth during the Cossack rebellion of 1648. I always get goose bumps when I read the magnificent passage showing the German mercenaries' cool demeanor during a battle with much more numerous Cossack hordes. I dare say the passage is one of the very best in the world war literature.

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1842-1916) wasn't too fond of Germany, or rather of Prussia, as he lived at the time of Partitions and witnessed plenty of abuse of the Polish people by the Bismarck regime.

did they use a german surname or polish ?

German.

I too loved this passage. I loved the bit where the German Captain refuses to change sides over to Bohun on the basis that he was contractually obliged to the Polish Crown, and if he did so, no-one would hire them (notwithstanding his assessment that they would die anyway due to being seriously outnumbered!). I'll have to dig out my copy now and reread it!

One of my grandparents from my dad's side though I'm sure he was half German.

How do we know the 305 found corpses found in Piasnica weren't the remains of ethnic Germans murdered by Polish Chauvinists? The evidence presented for the murdered Poles thesis is rather thin.

Rigorous investigation, eyewitness accounts and a photographic record, that's how. Also, the German government have acknowledged the murders of Polish citizens and others there.

The evidence is far from "thin" and there were many times more than 350 victims. The names of many of those murdered are known.

Recently, there's been all this flap in the press over the German government's referring to Auschwitz aka 'Oswięcim', Treblinka, Sobibór camps as "Polnische KZ's" (Polish Concentration Camps), when in fact they were NAZI camps staffed (by in large), but owned and operated solely by Germans, not Poles or even Polish collaborators!

The Polish government is quite understandably more than a little hot under the collar about all this, as it seems yet another revisionist attempt to whitewash German involvement in the Shoah.

Furthermore, it might be useful at this juncture to re-iterate that, while there were plenty of anti-Semitic Polish Nazi sympathizers, Poland remained the only major occupied continental European country NOT to have an interim Nazi puppet state, a la Vichy France, Czechoslovakia under Hacha, Austria under Seyss-Inquart, Hungary under Horthy and Szilassy or Romania under the Iron Guard.

Hard to believe. Do you have a source for that?

Isn't it though! Just check out the "Nowy Dziennik" back editions of last summer!

A Polish language newspaper from New York? I wouldn't trust any American news outlet when it comes to reporting from Europe. Most of the time they don't even know where to find that continent on the map... :)

Are you sure they weren't talking about Obama?

nytimes.com/2012/05/31/world/europe/poland-bristles-as-obama-says-polish-death-camps.html

Well, the idea was that people in Poland (as well as Polish-American non-Jews) were angry that the emphasis was on Polish concentration camps which, of course, weren't "Polish" at all, but German, built squarely in Nazi-held territory under the clear auspices of Heinrich Himmler and his trusty engineer Max Faust, a name which rarely comes up in average parlance:-)

By the way, Obama made a lovely faux-pas too, but even today, it is known that Germans continue to feel uncomfortable even discussing the Camps etc..., tend to become defensive over the "German national character flaw" notion, and will always want to shift blame wherever they can, even the younger ones!