Poland's biggest historical blunder?

Do you believe there is one chief Polish historical blunder that has adversely affected her developement? If so, what is it? Or maybe there are more than one?

Not exterminating the Teutonic Knights, if they got killed off there wouldnt be Prussia and Poland would never be partitioned.

Not having a good foreign minister to see what Hitler was doing. Britain knew full well but let it all happen as it was on the cards. Britain had been preparing itself for some time whilst Poland was thumped all too fast due to a lack of information gathering. Of course, a lack of money didn't help but still.....

Love for anarchy sometimes called "golden freedom".
Not realising that idea of democracy in XVI century is little... premature. :)

Ya I think we should have destroyed the Teutonic Knights and/or eliminate Prussia before it got too much power.

I wonder what would happen if Poland gave in to that suckers demands prior to WWII. Maybe less would die? Somehow Im doubtful but its possible.


Um are you serious? Poland was the one who was aware of his attacks more than Britain.

Yes, there was a lack of mobilisation due to a lack of information

On Polands part? We were the most aware country that Germany was gonna attack us.
We had "officially" mobilized 250,000 but had 250,000 the next week. And total 1,000,000 during the Invasion of Poland. I even heard somewhere that the Brits were telling us not to mobilize more because it would anger Hitler.

In which year were you aware of Hitler's plans?

Polish foreign minister knew exactly what Hitler was doing.


No it did not, polish secret service did know and was letting UK know but Britain refused to believe untill the annexation of Austria.


More than half of all information fed to France and Britain untill 1939 came from polish secret service.

Can you shut up now, please?


personal comment removed , mobilisation was delayed at the direct behest of UK and France, Poland wanted it to commence a week earlier than it did.


All the time.

He did when the war started, yes ;)

Believe that if it makes you happy, Sok

You were there to hear it, were you?

So you took orders from GB and France? Really? You had no care for your own safety?

Good luck with those revisionist history books, Sok.

We never took orders from them. We took suggestions. When you have an alliance you try to be on good standing with countries.
And yes Poland did care about safety. Thats the whole reason we signed the damn treaties so that Britain and France did something. Damn WASP and frogs.

Then it was the next blunder, to trust Chamberlain and Churchill, two bumptious gits. I don't even know who the French PM was at the time. If you know, you prepare. End of!!

are You kidding?wasnt that a British prime minister who believed Hitler to be a "nice guy" it was the appeasement politics that led Hitler to believe that he can do anything and let him arm his army even though it was against the treaty of versailles. Britain was totally unprepared for the war, France was.

I agree they were both sons of *******.
One did nothing the other sold us to the Russians and "communism".

Poland did mobilize a lot of soldiers. You realize we had the biggest army in central and western Europe from the allies except for the French right? And Polands population wasnt large either.

Poland 1939- 1,000,000; 250,000(mobilized_week1), 250,000(mobilized_week2), 500,000reserves
Soviets 1939- 1.8 mil
Britain 1939- 897,000 men including reserves.
France 1939- 900k plus (5 mil trained)
USA Proir to WWII- 175k

Yeah - they asked us to do it, because they still believed in negotiations with Hitler.
We listened to them, so many of our units had to be formed under German bombs.

Alliance with Great Britain and France was certainly one of the biggest blunders in Polish history.

Neville Chamberlain wanted to give off the impression that peace was the sign of the times but Britain was preparing all the time. Appeasement is fine when what you give away isn't yours. You need to understand the British way of thinking, i.e selfish

I got the thread going. There was Polish intel in large doses but Sok always takes the bait. However, not acting on it unilaterally was a blunder. Yeah, diplomatic niceties being just that, they had to mobilise and prepare for impact.

Tactics, just saving his own asss like "better them than us". ;)


Both weren't, but uk escaped with a blauem Auge. ;)


That should be a lesson for the future. ;)

Well maybe but who else could we have alliance with? Romania, Hungry? I mean thats a joke.
If Poland wanted to stand a fighting chance we would need way more money, years of earlier preparation, etc. We were only just put on the map again and finished Polish-Russian war. Right after this we needed to import, produce and put all resources into war. There is no way we would withstand the German war machine plus the soviets.

*edit* Unless we invaded Germany when their army was still 100,000 or whatever their numbers were limited to after WWI.

What do you mean by "earlier preparation", legend? Sok claims that Poland knew "all the time" so why was such a large army trampled on so quickly? He also denies the effectiveness of blitzkrieg so why the blunder?

Poland was in WW2 the so called Bauernopfer, sadly but true and f and uk just wanted to play time and try to save their assses. ;)

Well I dont know if all the time. But we knew definetly for months if not years (I dont know exactly tbh) We are their damn neighbours.

The large army was trampled so quickly due to 1)being outnumbered 2)they had more modern equipment (not better just more) 3)Luftwaffe


Yes sadly.

And what years of preparation would have made a difference given the lack of funds to invest in modern equipment? What form would the preparation have taken?

I was just giving a theoritical possibility. I dont think there is anything Poland could have done except
invade Germany when its army was limited to 100,000.

Probably not much.

Actually after WW1 Germany was just waiting to take revenge for the humiliation of Versaille. That transition phase until the nuttthead austrian fukkked up Germany and half of the planet was just enough to remodel and strengthen German warpower...having in mind the German mindset, it didn't take too long.

"Erst arbeiten, dann der Spass." ;)

C'mon we went through this so many times, Poland was utterly destroyed and had to rebuild its economy from scratch, polish army while large and well motivated was very poorly equipped.

For example a polish infantry division had 27 anti-tank guns, a german armoured division had 300 tanks, can you imagine stopping a tank division when for each gun they have 11 tanks? That was the difference across the board, from airplanes to mortars and machineguns, Germans had a LOT more of everything and a very flat plain to use it on (Russians alone would not be able to make it on the other way).

You can't win a war if you only have enough heavy weapons and equipment to outfit 5 divisions but you have to spread it out to more than 30 divisions.

Keeping Ukraine under supression instead of inviting it into the Commonwealth as the Third Nation. E.g., in 17 century, before Ukrainian Risings.

Who would you invite? The Cossacks or the serfs? The Cossacks were unreliable at best and the serfs were...serfs.

That's why I asked, legend. What "earlier preparation" did you have in mind?

What are you talking about? Was Polish szlachta/gentry reliable? :):):) They turned down their own king and surrendered to Swedes in Ujście during the Deluge, didn`t they?

No, they built one of the most powerfull states in Europe by being unreliable.


Of course they did, given that the king destroyed the polish army, did everything he could to destroy Lithuania and generally f*cked with people no one wanted him, John Casimir was a pathetic monarch who antagonised everyone around him.