WWII - who really was the first to help Poland?

Stop lying in a particular scummy way.


Is that way you run out of the city when Adrian dropped by?

They were true leaders. It was their leadership which allowed Poland to survive the war and their inspiration which allowed Poland to survive Soviet occupation as well.


Do they? So then name the wreck of a shi-- country you ran away from during peacetime and then explain why you decided on Poland (with the lower tax rates and lower cost but higher standard of living by the way) only after the Polish economy began to boom and while never contributing to Poland's success either before or after your carpetbagging arrival.

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.

Whether they could or whether they couldn't, the British cannot be held responsible for the action or inaction of the French when it came to helping Poland in September 1939. What would you have had the British do, force the French forwards at gunpoint?


Would you mind if we go back to something called reality? Perhaps you've heard of it.
Unfortunately, the thing which you could which would most help the defence of Poland would also be the thing that you can do which would most harm Poland: being here. If you had been in the this country in 1939, it's unlikely that any but the most hardcore of the Waffen SS would have dared to enter the country due to the risk of meeting you; however, a great many Poles would have run away from Poland even faster than the military junta did.


You're denying that the RAF flew bombing raids over with dozens of bombers with the loss of seven planes, one of which was crashed into a German cruiser? How surprising that you also want to lie about history.

Poland survived the war because the Soviets let them survive. Had the Soviets wanted, Poland could have been burnt to the ground and Poles expelled permanently from Polish territory. There's certainly nothing the West would have done about it, and those idiots sitting in London would have been powerless.

Those "leaders" in London contributed exactly the same as you - nil. In fact, their pathetic leadership was the reason why the Soviets were able to take over so easily.

Yet another thread where a group of British immigrants keep complaining and lying about the country they live in.
To sum up: they're fantastic and Polish people are idiots.
Now imagine living among idiots ... scary ...

As for Polesie 'signing up' for the Wehrmacht, Mr Kurski from PiS would love to hear a Brit has a similar attitude. ;)

You're right, living in the II RP between 1935-1939 would be terrifying. Not only was the country effectively under a military dictatorship, but they were proving to be absolutely incapable of organising a foreign policy worth a damn. Poland was isolated and heading straight for disaster, but the idiots in control believed their own hype about how great the country was.

Ordinary people can't be blamed for the actions of the leadership, especially when the eastern part of the country was being run as if the feudal system was alive and well. Nor can they be blamed for the fact that the leadership ran like rats, and the brave people who took part in the Warsaw Uprising had infinitely more courage than those idiots safe and sound in London.

Care to quote any lies which have been told in this thread about Poland? Or will you ignore this question just like you and your ilk ignore the question about what Britain could have done to help Poland in September 1939 but did not do?


Not much the west could have done about it. If the red army has really wanted to push west in 1945, the first thing that would have stopped them would have been the English Channel.

They were certainly an ineffective bunch, riven by infighting. At one point, the former government-in-exile had three factions, each with a 'president' and 'cabinet', each claiming legitimacy.

Even at the start of the war, the way that the capable Sikorski was sidelined says it all. Rydz-Śmigły really was an absolute cretin, especially as he abandoned the fight after building himself up as some sort of military hero. It's also worth pointing out that Rydz-Śmigły ordered the Polish forces to retreat, which is rather at odds with the nonsense that Bieganski is propagating.

I have to wonder if the Warsaw Uprising would have happened at all if Sikorski hadn't died. It's hard to imagine a savvy commander like him putting what little existed of the Polish resistance in that situation.

@Taxpaying voter
Yes, I'd love to name a liar here. It's you. #700 about tens of thousands of Poles who chose to join Nazi forces. (I saw it quoted here and had to find the original post) Poles in the Wehrmacht were those who had signed the Volksliste. If they hadn't, they would have ended dead or in a concentration camp. Like Wilhelm Brasse. There were also those Silesians, Kashuhians and Pomeranians who did it volunteerily. But for most it's a painful part of family history. That's why they deserted the Wehrmacht as soon as they could.

As for other lies, well you also mentioned your grandparents' generation in terms of WW2 experience with the Red Army. Have you answered my question about it yet? I have asked you twice about it. Or have you ignored it (something you have just accused me of). I admit I chose to ignore the four of you bragging about how fantastic Britain was during the war so I haven't read much of your yeah-we-were-so-fantastic debate here. If you have indeed answered that question, where will I find your answer?

There might be other things but I can't be bothered to read it all.
As for what Britain could have done to Poland, (I have just seen the question),well, as I said before it was the Phoney War. Period.

But they (not you personally) did more than other countries. Mostly regular soldiers. Not only from what is now Britain but from the empire like the South African RAF pilots.

There are, however, other bitter things worth mentioning, like the Victory Parade. And other things but I don't want to reach your level of accusing others of the worst only.

And really, why do you choose to live in such a terrible country? Full of narrow-minded people with a loser mentality. I understand some of you are even married to Polish women and have half-loser children. Tsk tsk tsk

I don't know about Harry's grandparents but a few unfortunate Brits (and indeed Irish) ended up in the Gulags as a result of being naive enough to buy into the ideal of Communism as presented by Soviet propaganda. Having upped sticks and trotted off to Russia to live out the dream, they paid a hefty price for their foolishness.

There were certainly some that ended up in the Gulag - as far as I know, more Americans than Brits and Irish went through the system, particularly Finnish Americans who moved to the Soviet Union for work during the 1930s Depression.

@Atch
I have read about such people. I think it was Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski who mentioned people from Western Europe who had come to the USSR to experience communist ideas and ended up in gulags.

But judging from his opinion about the Red Army, I doubt he even knew about it.

those mentioned were mostly blackmailed to sign the Volksliste to be conscripted to Wehrmacht otherwise they or their families would end up in concentration camps - I guess only a tiny (perhaps even a very tiny minority) of them actually volunteered to serve in German army - and as you mentioned they often deserted at the first opportunity even though they were deliberately spread around German units so that no en messe desertions occur. What is more those who deserted often ended up fighting the Germans on the side of the Allies - at least one third of the personnel of the first Polish division of Polish People's Army in Soviet Russia were exactly those deserters and POW's

. Numerous Silesians, Kashubians were taken out of the POW's camps in Italy and offered to serve in the Second Corpse of Polish forces in the West. I read stories that those who decided to return to Poland after serving in the Anders' army faced persecution from the new communist Polish authorities.

They were merely cannon fodder when the Third Reich began to run out of their full blood German boys.

Yet more fiction about history from you, how surprising. The Nazis didn't waste resources killing people who refused to sign the DVL, or even sending them to concentration camps. The thing people were trying to avoid by signing the DVL was being conscripted as labourers. The Mrs' grandfather was given the choice of signing the DVL or being sent to work in Germany. He took the later option, some of his friends signed up and were then conscripted into the Germany army, they never came home.

I love the way that you try to categorise all those who volunteered for the DVL as being something other than Polish.
Your claim about deserting as soon as they could is hilarious; how do you support that claim in light of the fact that only 5% of the Poles who deserted the Nazi forces and joined the Polish army did so before D-Day.


So you choose to simply repeat a lie rather than going into detail about what Britain could have done to help Poland in September 1939 but failed to do. How surprising.


You mean the parade to which Poles received a more privileged invitation than any other nation? Both of the self-appointed Polish governments were invited to send representatives: the internationally recognised government was invited to send an honour guard to accompany the parading of the Polish flag in the same way as other non-commonwealth nations who had take part in the war on the allied side; and the London Poles were invited to send pilots to march in the parade alongside other airforces which had flown from bases in Britain. The Polish government accepted the invitation and then didn't bother to send anybody, while the London Poles rejected their invitation because they didn't think that they were privileged enough. But more than a few Poles have been lying about those events ever since.

Their policy differed on the issue. It dependent of a man in charge. Of course people had families to consider too. Some were offered a choice some weren't.


BS, one gov was a puppet show set up by Stalin. You don't need to be above retread level to grasp that. Meaning you're trolling again.

I was actually referring to British POWs who were 'liberated' by the red army, specifically a particular RAF pilot. It's estimated that tens of thousands of British and Commonwealth servicemen were 'liberated' by the red army and never made it out of the USSR. I wonder if kaprys will ignore their existence or try to claim they never existed.

As to the subject you mention, have a read of The Forsaken by Tim Tzouliadis.

Also Left to the Wolves - Irish Victims of Stalinist Terror by Barry McLoughlin.


I think I know to whom you refer. Is that the one who made it back to England sometime in the 1950s and his experience was hushed up the government?

Also I'm sure I remember in The Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn refers to a British army officer, still in uniform who was very bemused to find himself on a train to the Gulag but was quite confident that it was all a mistake and would soon be sorted out, poor guy.

No, I was actually talking about my grandfather's brother, shot down over Germany and then 'liberated' by the red army, whom he described as being worse than any German he ever saw (and it's not as if "terror fliers" were popular in Germany). I expect that kaprys will claim that men such as him were "phony" and that they never did anything to help Poland.

Harry - ever heard of the Polnische Wehrmacht?

You mean the Legion of the White Eagle? From memory they were SS rather than Wehrmacht.

Why don't you stop putting words in my mouth? If that's what happened to your grandfather's brother, I'm sorry. But if that happened to your family, why did you question the whole thing about the Red Army?

As I said in #731, and of course, you chose not to notice that, it was about regular soldiers. Like him. The Phoney War is a fixed historical term. Argue about it with history teachers.

Were all those thousands of British POWs captured before the German attack on France that marked the end of the Phoney War?

And wait a second ... you seem slightly hurt when Brits are underapprieciated. Hmmm, but talking crap about Poland is ok.

As for the Victory Parade, well, the Soviet backed communist government was invited not Poles who had fought under the British command. Have you studied political propaganda? You seem to be doing great at bending the truth to prove your point.

And the conditions under which Poles were conscripted into the Wehrmacht and those who were forced to do so are also well known. So stop lying again.

It's interesting how they were treated in the Soviet Union in general. Unlike Westerners who went to the European socialist countries, they were often outcasts in the Soviet Union at best regardless of who they were - the stories of how spies were completely lied to about their position in the Soviet Union are remarkable. Kim Philby was a great example - the KGB told him that he held the rank of a colonel in the KGB, when in reality, he had never been promoted. It was apparently one reason why he lived out his life in such rage, because he'd essentially been fed a pack of lies by the system that he believed in.

In comparison, Westerners in places like East Germany and Poland lived as everyone else. I've read one account of some idealistic American that lived in East Germany, and they never gave him trouble as such, only that they wanted him to report his contacts with anyone from the West, which was nothing out of the ordinary for East German society.

I remember seeing that interview with him which was filmed in the 1980s and he struck me as a very sad, lonely character, though he defended Communism to the hilt. He could hardly do otherwise of course.

Stop with the lies, child. Poles who fought under British command were most certainly invited. That was made clear in the British parliament and in British and American newspapers at the time. Of course, you might want to claim that all of those people were lying, because they were British or American, and that only you are telling the truth: before you do that, buy a copy of the memoirs of General Anders. Read page 299. Right there the General confirms that western command Poles were invited.


At least try to tell the truth.
Poles were not conscripted into the Wehrmacht. Poles could not have been conscripted into the Wehrmacht: Poles were not eligible to join the Wehrmacht. What a Pole could do was sign up on the DVL, which was voluntary, as those who didn't sign make clear, and then as a German he was eligible for conscription, but only after he'd volunteered for the DVL.


The only person talking crap about Polish history here is you.

This is an old myth and a silly one. They were invited, and there is no doubt about this.

It's easy to dismiss something as a "myth" just because you want to disagree. Please back it up because Kaprys was correct with his statement......

This is worth watching, especially the interviews Polish RAF veterans themselves, they mention the victory parade and talk about it from their prospective.

gloria.tv/video/gMXmdvBQa8YT4BTgdtSCQ48Ek