History /
Poland obliged to make war reparations to Austria and Germany after WWI. Why? [119]
I was just reading Zamoyski with some background knowledge on reparations. I didn't find any confirmation, but didn't search very hard. The Polish references I looked at were more concerned with the difficulty of raising revenue rather than international payment obligations. Maybe they considered the creation and saving of Poland was too worthwhile to complain about the resulting burden of payments. I just felt that Zamoyski's 'unbelievable obligation' needed answering: it is too obviously an element of narrow, biased thinking or (perhaps more fair) simply sensationalism to make his book more interesting.
I have his 2009 revised version, now entitled 'Poland - A History', where the claim is maintained. I haven't read the book yet though, as my immediate interest is in the earliest known archaeological history of Poland. His first page of Chapter 1 is wrong and misleading. Between his period of "unwarlike and agricultural people" and "settled by Sarmatians" (if either of those are true) came the mighty warrior tribes popularly known as the Vandals, who, after devastating much of Europe, eventually destroyed Rome. Some of their forebears lived a couple of hundred metres away from my house, making weapons for huge armies. People with magic names like 'Goths' and 'Huns' passed through here as well.
