Law / I have to fix Karta Pobytu for EU citizens [20]


Was it really worth it jon? Can't think what citizenship would do for me. When I was actually going to be a good boy and apply for citizenship, there was some tosh about "giving up your British citizenship." Admittedly that was well in the last century:))

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]

Dear oh dear. Poles created the meaning of the word.

Life / Many Problems with UPC Broadband in Poland - Anyone Else? [20]


A lot of things can affect it. Somebody will be along presently who knows what they're talking about, but:

1. What is your wireless card? Configured properly?
2. Wireless carries better in different environments. In my lump of oversized concrete it is shite.
3. How many connections on the box
4. Interference from other wireless.
5. Time of day

I have the same package for a mythical 250 MB. You will never attain anything like that anyway. Average download for me in the city 70 MB wireless/130 MB cable. Download speeds average 6 MB/sec.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


There is, and was, no "boom." If it had escaped your notice, a democratic Poland was starting from complete economic ruin and 30 billion of IMF debt after 40 years of totalitarian decision making. So the benchmark for this "boom" is low. Of course, you wouldn't know, not having visited Poland and seen the present shocking state of some cities, and the broken communities.

If you mean that the population has adapted, and that the GDP is much higher through flow of capital investment, largely brought on largely by EU funding, then yes, living standards are considerably better, despite the efforts of successive governments to mess things up.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]

Anybody who is interested in Churchill could do worse than spend a couple of hours watching Darkest Hour (czas mokru), a tour de force by Gary Oldman (when isn't he good?)

A very realistic portrayal of Churchills' early struggles in the War Cabinet to avoid any peace talks with the Axis - a negotiated "peace" which would have probably doomed Poland to be carved up for at least another 146 years between totalitarian despots on either side of the continent.

Instead of course, Britain took on 140 billion pounds in war debt.
It's now time for revisionists to teach Polish schoolchildren that their parents were brainwashed by the state against the world owing it's freedom today to the greatest war time leader of recorded times.

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


The only screaming I see here is your oft repeated riposte of "Shut up...." :))

History / Polish hatred towards Jews... [1290]


You really are an imbecile, who blathers on about the jews being the fault for all the ills of the world (can't think who said that before), but has to chirp up every time his own religion is mentioned to any degree, like a wounded parrot.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Yes yes TheOther. Everybody knows about those "blips" on Churchills' character and the gross misjudgements, rabid colonialism and so on. Are you trying to say that an aristocratic statesman of those interesting times could have been a solely populist humanitarian, beaming with platitudes as he handed out little parcels of goodies to kids in the streets, and not by necessity of war have to go on to press buttons on the phone in his war room that killed the corresponding kids in the streets in other countries?

Can you name such a person in history - such a statesman who actually went on to save our way of life and civilisation as we know it, so that we can be free to talk about this today? Of course the ruling classes loved the Churchill myth - and were heavily biased in the mans' favour, (so the writer is able to set the facts as he sees them) those who dislike the supposed Anglo-Saxon superior air (in your case through an accident of birth) will grasp at anything to attempt to dilute the legacy - and ignore the fact that Churchill invariably clears the table with all comers every single time in the gloriously cliched "surveys" to see who is the greatest Briton of recorded time.

In exactly the same way Poles engage in character assassination of one of their own, who will go down in history as a great Pole long after the twins have been forgotten:)

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Same to you!

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


The frogs were also the problem. What were they doing with a purely defensive army? If they had struck at the Rhineland and Ruhr it would have been a mortal blow for the Krauts. The first thing was to contain the German fleet so that we could blockade Germany. Unfortunately that didn't come to pass and the genie was out of the bottle. If only we had listened to Churchill in 1933, and armed up, but he was the subject of ridicule because of his stint as Lord of the Admiralty and prolonging the First World War, trying to help Carnogracs' grandfathers after they fucvked up:((


Extremely cowardly you mean? As for the Swedes, some papers recently came to light, and were printed in the Manchester Guardian, that basically said, "We (rightly) stayed out of the First World War, and we'll stay out of this one too, because we don't want our land to be destroyed, and we don't want to be a party to this dispute" (or words to that effect).

You have to feel sorry for such a people.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


When President Dougpol is in power I shall demand that the Swedes and the Swiss serve penance for wiping their hands of humanity. Pure scum.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]



Dirk, there is no point going round in circles and destroying your own argument. We destroyed the Nazis together, you can live in any country you want, your land is free - why not appreciate all that is good? Is that really so hard?


Yep - that has been discredited as absolutely disgraceful drunken rant.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


:)) Sorry Dirk. You are right. It was TheOther who used the "..sold out...cliche".


Those of them that bang on and on and on about something that happened so long ago, then yes. Absolutely. One of those included a doctor on the 500 strong Polish medical council who I used to co-operate with. Sad really.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Well, that's it, isn't it? Nobody said we should all be the same. Maybe Brits and Poles aren't so alike after all? We fight, and then move on.

Poles - it wasn't so long ago that Katowice was plastered with billboards reminding people on every street corner of the 70th anniversary of Katyn. That is a certain type of melancholy, which I don't think the British could share if such a national tragedy had befallen us.

As to the other point, I hold by my statement that some Poles, who ought to know better, are an ungrateful bunch.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Lol Dirk - you are young, and an idealist. I used to think like you, and wonder why we didn't do that.
Then I listened to the facts as to why not. I commend them to you. Search and you will find them.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Not necessarily targeted at you Dolno....
I think you will find it was Roosevelt who was too weak to stand up to the Soviet proposals, and I also believe you will find that Oppenheimer et al were American, and the bomb had as much Englishness in it as a T bone steak.

Churchill is innocent, just guilty of being an 20th century aristocratic drunk. But wait - Poles don't recognise heroes do they? Instead they demean their achievements, when others were soiling their pants inside and outside the Lenin shipyard - and instead give them cartoon character names and ***** about what they did or didn't do in 1970..............

So maybe we shouldn't be surprised. But Dirk really shouldn't be slandering the greatest Briton in living memory. That's disrespectful.


Are the Poles around you aware that your family aided the communists?

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Care to expand rozumiemnic? Do you dispute that Britain did not have an attack force worthy of the name in 1939?

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


But we did. We could of helped France to finish the Maginot Line, and sat behind it, until we had the technology to blitz Germany from the air and blockade it. Instead servicemen laid down their lives in their hundreds of thousands so that the world could be free.

All Poles do though is *****. No concept of gratitude, which shows a certain bitterness and loser mentality, and there is your national psyche in a nutshell.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Have a look at the map of the world Dirk. Here to help.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]

Anyhow TheOther, you can't squirm away from the post you made regarding the economic power of a Nazi Germany, and that being the real reason for war.

That is not true, and as a Briton I object. Australia didn't at first have to prosecute the war. We did, together with the Poles et al. The reason was that Germany, as a tyranny, "such as the world has never seen", after several practice runs, invaded Poland and we had pledged to defend Poland, and we so attempted to do.

Dirk and other nationalists wouldn't be grateful if one ran into a burning building to save his granny, but there you go.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]

Source please?


Source please? Ambassadors certainly can come up with their own agenda, or rather the Foreign Office does. The Foreign Office has throughout history often gone AWOL from what the government of the day actually intends. And anyhow, Dirk is suggesting that Britain was dragging it's feet. As soon as Chamberlain resigned, we cracked on as best we could, and as Dirk paradoxically states, thank God the Poles were there to bolster the defences.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


2-1 is a majority. What was Churchill supposed to do? Challenge a dying man and a professional to a drinking contest?

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


And next time she might well leave Poland to rot. Better get some class and admit that we came good on our pledges.
The facts as laid down by historians are simply these Dirk. Britain was ill prepared after years of appeasement. When we were able to prosecute the war, we did. If we had had Lancaster bombers in 1939 we would have used them. We had no standing army of any size on the continent. Why would we need it? France had the largest field army in the world, at 600,000 troops (defensively deployed, tis true).

We declared war on Germany, knowing from generational memory the Europe wide devastation and sacrifice that would follow. Why don't Poles bleat against the Swedes, who were the real cowards here? If I was British prime minister, I would demand long due for gratitude for the fact. If we hadn't declared war, it might have been better, as America would have had to come in from the off.

In the meantime far more Poles would have died. But true to form, let not any Pole be ever grateful for anything at all.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


He was most likely cuckoo. Wikipedia states this was his last post. I am impressed of course by your diligence; however we were talking about the Third Reich, not the Soviet Union, and you said that Britain and France didn't want Germany to be a world power again as they were as Imperial Germany under the Kaiser.

The war wasn't about that, whatever some old buffer said at the time, though was it?

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Your alter ego boasted about it, that was all. So those Russians can't have been all bad in that case, seeing as your family helped to perpetuate the system that they forced upon Poland?

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Yes we know that Dirk, but thanks for pointing it out, again. But TheOther seems to think that the Second World Was was all about the world economy. At the very least,that doesn't say much about the standard of education in Australian High schools.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Lol - that's rich. And the more fool us for being your allies in 1914. We all know how that turned out.


What is it about people on this board tonight - is it the cold weather affecting the brain cells? The Nazis were evil and had to be stopped, and Britain stood alone against them for quite some time.

Never, ever, forget that. You should be ashamed TheOther.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Make up your mind Dirk. Ziemowits' index notes will tell that your family owned hotels and supplied meat to the commies, all in Katowice, which of course still doesn't explain your unsubstantiated theory that the Nazis were quite pally and all ship-shape, and so less feared than the Soviets.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Go to some villages and they will tell you that communism was better than the situation today. Both that view and the idea that the Nazis were going to allow the Slavs to prosper are moronic. So your point is mute.

History / WWII - who really was the first to help Poland? [900]


Tut tut Dirk. you do talk some bull sometimes. I've told this same story here before, and we all have stories to tell of our Polish families that make you wonder how people ever began to recover from the trauma.My wife's family were from Galicia and maybe the richest family in town, hence the Gestapo took her grandfather off to Auschwitz. They also came for the whole family 3 months later, after tricking them, by returning his wedding ring with a letter apologising for his death ~ "from illness" (but the stationmasters' messenger boy tipped them off with 20 minutes to spare, so they got away across the snowfields, shoe-less, running for their lives).

When the Soviets came it wasn't pretty - but nobody was shot in that town. Nobody who hated and didn't colloborate with the Nazis, that is. Murder and communist purges came later. All from the horses mouth, from the elders of a small satellite town in Slawkow region.

Katowice, where your family was apparently from, or so you suggested, is in parts a different story, and why wouldn't it be, being a border town and being only de-germanised from 1923 onwards.

The line at the end of Schidlers' List about supposed liberation was a cinematic device to get Poles talking, and of course the Soviets were intent on empire, but you clearly are in a minority of one if you insist on babbling on that the Nazis were ever going to peacefully co-exist with the Slav inhabitants. Please stick to corporate finance or whatever it is you do and refrain from talking pure tosh about so murderous a history.