remember, forget, forgive, blame ... Holocaust Memorial Day in Poland

Unlikely....


There were much more volunteers than the Germans needed, no need to force someone.

And countries where there was real unwill to deport their Jews were left alone mostly too...
The Germans knew very well that they had no means to force it if there was a wide spread "no"....they only had that many men available.

Because of what? The whole infrastructure to locate, imprison and murder was in German hands effiency of extremination would not suffer people still needed to hide in settlements or their general vicinity to survive.


Rubbish, if you werent a major ally like Italy and refused to deport Jews you'd get a bullet everywhere, you're making it sound as if Germans gave people a choice.


The Germans had means to murder 80% of all Slavic people and more then 90% of Poles if Russia failed, German nazism was poised to extreminate any number of people who defied it and had the means to do it everywhere it did not have to oppose an equal enemy (ie Russian/Western militaries).

If shall we say all people in Prague said "no" then Germans would just exterminate all people in Prague, as evident in Warsaw, Stalingrad and a number of other cities Germans had no qualms against emulating Chyngis Khan with the sole difference that Mongols let children that could fit beyond the axle of a carriage live, Germans had their way even with newborns.

Tell me you are joking.


Yes, those Danish heroes who saved all their Jews. All 15 of them ...

I didn't knew they had nukes???

And no, they didn't had the means....look at a map of Europe and then look a the numbers of Germans available!
There was a bloody war still going on, remember?


No, I'm not....

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_collaborators

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_for_the_Holocaust#Other_states



Well, it had been some more and no Dane got killed because of it!

No nukes, take a look at Warsaw, it had thousands of brave fighters who unlike say Czechs were ready to lay down their lives and how did it end?

Civilians dont have the means or the training to take on a military, you can wreck a milion something large city with an understrength infantry division and a couple of weeks of hard work.


Again you fail to grasp the military vs civilians question, a single infantry batalion of 800 men is enough to pacify a city quarter of 40 thousand by sheer superiority of training and arms.

Germans did not extreminate Slavs wholly because A. Slavic people provided manpower for needed facilities. B. Germans wanted servants.

But if it would be required the regular army could easily wipe out all major population centers in all of occupied Europe within months.

Take a 155mm howitzer with 40 RPH, thats 40 shots per hour, thats 40 buildings per hour, 10 howitzers can potentially collapse 400 buildings within an hour, give them a couple of weeks, attach an engineer regiment with satchel charges and a couple of infantry battalions to protect them, you have a force of 10 cannons and maybe 3000 men poised to obliterate a 50.000 city in less then a week.

So yeah Germans had both the means and will to do it if pushed to it.

That is only possible if the 40.000 are already pacified....if they would fight those 800 men have no chance!


Well....it's hard to discuss lofty assumptions....why not stay with the reality!

Countries who didn't "deliver" their Jews were left alone.
Most helpers of the Germans were volunteers.
No, the Germans had never the men available in the occupied countries to shoot everybody.

Lets imagine you live in such a city, have you ever shot a weapon? Do you know how to use it? Do you have any training whatsoever? Logistics support? Can you gather several thousand people who have military grade training?

Because if not then attacking people with automatic weapons, artillery support and armored cars using hammers and knives is a bad idea and if they have even one tank you're sh*t out of luck because its indestructible.

Thats not a computer game, a military thats acting indiscriminately against civilian population can wipe out countries with its thumbs in its arse and sipping coffee.

For the same reason the Polish minority was holding Ukraine by the balls in interwar Poland, you can have a bazilion civilians and it means sh*t if the other side has an army and is willing to use it.


Like which countries?

You never read my links, don't you!;)

Denmark being the most glaring example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_the_Danish_Jews

I was thinking about Poland. I know that the rest of Europe is another story.


"It has been popularly reported that the Nazis ordered Danish Jews to wear an identifying yellow star, as elsewhere in Nazi controlled territories. In some versions of the myth, King Christian X opted to wear such a star himself and the Danish people followed his example, thus making the order unenforceable.

The order was, in fact, never issued (although the yellow star was imposed on Dutch Jews).

The myth may have originated in a contemporary cartoon, published in a Swedish daily paper, depicting the King asserting to a former prime minister that, if the order to wear the star was imposed on Denmark's Jews, "We'll all have to wear yellow stars." "

I especially love this "Danish King refused to wear yellow star" nonsense.

Well, for Germans it's the whole "wild East"....how can we make differences! ;)

But I know Poland was always a special case, one of the few pinned for annihilation, never given even a choice.

I'm sorry you're right i missed it so lets have a look at it:


You do realise that an insistance by a country that just overrun central and Western Europe amounts to an irrefusable demand?


Independent Finland and its small but capable army was crucial to the war effort, it was not about Jews but Finland being strategic for German interests (among others at Leningrad) and Bulgaria was geographically on such a complete sidetrack and with a relatively small Jewish population that it could be left for later.

However its important to mention that WW2 was not fought to kill Jews but to conquer Europe, Jews were killed as a side effect of conquest and were not its purpose so if a country was not important strategically it could indeed be left alone but countries like Denmark did not have such luxury.


Incidentally Hitler was an avid reader into theosophy and Steiner, his aim was by destroying Poland to decapitate the "mind of the Slavs" and by obliterating Russia to "rip out their heart" gotta find that interview.

Poland was always an obstacle in German drang nacht osten and the most culturally and civilisationally developed Slavic State, by killing Poland Hitler was hoping to kill what he viewed was a transitway from "Slavic folk ways" to a more organised and powerfull ethnic structure.

Do you want me to show you the business end of my shot gun? :)

You'd be surprised how many times I read in Jewish newspaper "Why Poles didn't help Jews like Danish did" It pisses me off to no end.

Peace! ;)

Perhaps you could explain how Poles managed to destroy tanks in the 1943 Warsaw uprising using nothing more than bottles and cooking fuel?

The main reason for the Nazi's hatred of Poland was not race, but the outcome of WW1 and the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler wanted to reverse Versailles - nothing more, nothing less.

If that was the case then Hitler would never even consider an alliance with Poland, given Ribbentrops discussions with Beck such a possibility was strongly considered if Poland would yield to the demands.

The main reason why Germans hated Poland was because it was the symbol of their defeat, double that in that Poland heaved itself and won its own freedom which meant that the Empire was defeated not only by the mighty Western armies but also by the very people they looked down upon.


Are you a Nazi? Of course not then why parrot what was Nazi propaganda? Hitlers aims were pretty well pronounced in Mein Kampf, eradication of Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, submission of Western, Central and Eastern Europe, thats a bit more then simple reversing of Versailles.

Interestingly enough even today Germans including BB seem to forget that lands that Poland won back and Versailles ratified were the lands Germans never had any title to and took by an illegal act of forcefull annexation a century earlier.

Well, Poland was the result of WW1 and the Treaty of Versailles. As such, Poland was a symbol of the German Empire's defeat, you are correct.


I believe that the "Dolchstosslegende" is the key to understand what later happened. Hitler, the Nazis and many other Germans at that time believed that the Empire hadn't lost the war, but were betrayed by forces from the inside. It all goes back to this, and Hitler picked up on it when he later wrote 'Mein Kampf'.


Please don't say that, Sokrates. I can take quite a bit, but being called a Nazi is something I do not tolerate.

I said i know you are not but you're unconsciously repeating the apologetic tactic of people with a pro-German outlook, that WW2 was about Versaiiles, WW2 was about the defeat of WW1 and Versailles was just a symbol of this defeat, if there was no Versailles treaty another excuse would be found.


Whether Hitler or Germans actually believed it is arguable, that they chose to believe it is true.

There's a difference between actuall mass perception and a construct entering mass perception as justification or self-delusion.

Hitler and his thugs simply constructed an ideology that Germans would have preferred to the truth, the price for accepting that ideology was physical extermination of other peoples, given that it didnt alter an average Germans life he simply didnt give a sh*t whether a milion kids get gassed somewhere in the East.

This is exactly why i think an average German citizen of WW2 deserved bombings, rape and murder that happened to him, Germans as a nation were guilty of complacency and a choice of their own pride over humanity, everything that happened to them was the consequence of their own collective choice.


We can agree that the ressurection of Poland was the result of WW1 (Poland itself is the result of Poles creating it 1000+ years ago) but not of Versaiiles.

Polish armed forces led a campaign thats goal was to evict German and Russian occupying forces from Polands native lands, Versailles simply acknowledged and ratified the situation Poles themselves have created as a result of WW1.

This is important because there's a big difference between Poland being given its independence and taking it, Poles took their independence back by themselves with very limited foreign aid, otherwise no one would give it to them, Versailles only acknowledged the end result.

It wasn't through a war with Germany that Poland got their independence...quite to the contrary many Poles fighted WWI on the sides of the partitioners.


Well, the new borders where drawn in Versailles, not in Warsaw.
The french send troops to support them...the german side was forced to subscribe to the treaty (or else the blockade would not had ended, killing even more than the already starved to death 600.000 people).

I think we can say that in the mainstream history it's this treaty which destroyed the german and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and carved out of them new countries....

Ask the Hungarians, they feel the same!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland#Formation_of_modern_Polish_society_under_foreign_rule


And it wasn't only about purely polish territory, it was also about territory purely german in history and population.
After the fall of the empires it was a free for all and every nationality which could tried to grab as much land for itself as possible...

/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles#Territorial_changes

If you are talking about Silesia you are wrong.

Of course...Germans are always wrong...as Poles are always right...how could I forget!

Inform yourself:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Silesia

Which territory in regards to Poland would that be?


What does it matter? If the Western politicians gave Poland to Germany it would mean war, as far as Poland is concerned its the Poles who created the situation fully knowing nothing will be given.

Versailles granted Poland something that the Poles have already taken.


To carve a new country out of Germany there would have to be no country there at all, there was one it was called Poland, carving out a new country is not the correct term, legally reinstating a formerly occupied country is what fits the picture.

Austro-Hungary is wholly different and more complex.


War is a big word here, an armed and/or social conflict, apart from the Greater Poland uprisings most of the takeover was done relatively peacefully by sheer weight of numbers but there was always a sharp stick behind if the German soldiers refused to give up arms.

As for Poles fighting for partitioners it was either due to forced conscription or because they were promised a country or because they got a chance to fight against one of the enemies of the state, either way it led to the creation of a formidable and well trained force in 1918-20.

As for Mandel i can understand his point of view thought it would have been different if he was Polish, Poland was there, with its civilisation, culture nation and an army and it would not go away even if there was no Versailles.

Incidentally as always Poland did prove critical to saving Western civilisation, if Mandels vision would come true 2 years later he would be forced into the horror of Soviet communism, Polands existence and its strength so quickly after it Poles resurrected it prevented that.

And you have cheap-tasting white wine too!!!

Well...that is a universal statement, isn't it!
It's hard to exchange your own viewpoint stemming from your own heritage and past with another one...


Why? Because Hungarians and Poles never shared disputed borders? Could hence uphold their "friendship"?

Real interest here...


Oh, now you are getting mean!

Versailles made sure that it wasn't taken away from the Poles again, IMHO.


Legally, your country wasn't occupied. It simply didn't exist, and this was an accepted fact before 1918 (except amongst most ethnic Poles, of course).

No quotation mark needed here. The friendship was, is and will always be very
much real. Confirmed on countless occasions in over 1000 years of history.
How glorious, eternal and pure the Polish-Hungarian friendship is!
Unmatched, unparalleled and uncomparable to any other relations of any other
two nations in the world. If I was a poet, I'd write an epic poem about it!


Turkey never acknowledged the partitions of Poland. Archenemy from the past
had more decency than our dear, Christian neighbours.

I tell you what Torqi....if Germans and Poles were not such close neighbours we would probably too be best friends - on the other hand if Hungary had lost huge towns and big stripes of land to Poland after the war they would barely regard you as friends nor wouldn't you any hungarian group remembering their lost lands watch and observe with hate and suspicion.

That is a given!

It was the same grudge as the Germans felt what made the Hungarians natural german allies...I find it always curious that your "understanding" of Hungarians is sooo great....just exchange the names, Hungarians and Germans have much more in common than Poles and Hungarians! ;)


Another far away country...isn't it interesting that your bestest friends where always from "far away"????

Yes, that's true. Do you know of any other countries in the world that didn't acknowledge the partitions?

That is quite possible (but you would still be stealing our football players ;)).


Well, if Martians invaded Ethiopia and great snow avalanche fell on Hollywood while
the Chinese emperor was having his lunch... ;)


Denmark and Spain as far as I know.

Probably...:)


What lunch!

*get's hungry*