Have Poles blood on their hands? :)

Perfectly correct. But that doesn't mean that Poles could not join the German war effort. Poles could either discover that they had a Germanic grandfather and sign the Deutsche Volksliste or they could pull the same trick with Belarussian or Ukrainian ancestor and join one of the Belarussian or Ukrainian units (in the way which noted Jew killer Sawoniuk joined the SS). Alternatively they could claim that they were Kaszubian or Gorale (that's how Bronislaw Hajda and at least one other man from Jordanow joined the SS).

Ostrowski gives this number of 89,300 Poles who deserted the German forces and were then fighting under the British Command. OK, you interpret that as volunteers for the German forces based on what? They deserted because they didn't like the uniforms or they weren't volunteers in the first place? I gave you links where you can get a better picture of the process of conscription into the German forces. If your Polish is not adequate to read it, have a Pole read it and give you the gist.


My point is that you are selective who is a Polak depending on the situation. You don't argue in good faith. I'm not the only one who says that here. Germans had no problem in forming Waffen SS units of division strenght in most of Europe. In Poland, no, why not?

The fact that they were Polish citizens means that they could not be conscripted into the German army. Therefore they had to be volunteers.


No: to me a Pole is a Polish citizen. Which is why your frankly somewhat pathetic attempt to trap me into something by claiming that not all of the six million Poles who died in the holocaust were Poles.


I really do have no interest at all in your personal comments. Clearly the likes of Bzibzioh and Torq are unable to argue at all and so have nothing other than personal insults to offer but you can and should do better than that.


Because a) they never tried to form a Polish SS unit and b) they probably didn't think it a good idea to arm a nation which they planned to utterly destroy. Despite the willingness of a lot of Jews to collaborate, there was no Jewish SS unit either, would you like to ask why?

They became deserters mostly as they got to decide between shot, POW cage or "desertion to the polish forces".

Am I speaking chinese here????


There was never a plan to build one in the first place!
Research the foreign Waffen-SS recruitments and you will see why.
There was no place for an independent/collaborating Poland after a victory of the Nazis...what should the Poles fight for in such a Waffen-SS unit?

There were four categories of Volksliste. Just a quick read through what it meant should make the 89,300 number of "volunteers" who deserted the German forces and joined the forces under the British command question their voluntarism.


Applying pressure German style of that period, mind you.




You can read more about your "volunteers" here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksliste


You are not reading my posts or you are not familiar with Himmler's attempt to form the Waffen SS unit of Górale which failed miserably. The unit they tried to form was Goralischer Waffen SS Legion.


We went through this yesterday. Gorale are Polish. In 1942 an attempt was made by Himmler to form Goralischer Waffen SS Legion. It failed.

I am reading your posts and I am very familiar with the attempt to build the Gorale unit. You can tell that by looking at this post of mine in this thread. Please remember that to Himmler Gorale were Germanic, not Polish. The Nazis didn't see the Gorale as Poles and that is why they tried to raise a Gorale SS unit.

Shall we start discussing how the lack of any Jewish SS unit shows something or other?

Not with Himmler, that's the point!
He didn't tried to recruit them for the SS as Poles, but as of german stock...

The same with the so called forcefully conscripted Kashubes....many of them were eligible for the Volksliste I and II. Conscription was as forcefully for them as for all other Germans...

Poland at that time was a newborn-multi ethnic society with many different allegiances of it's citizens through the founding of this state after the treaty of Versailles and it's doubtful and stupid border drawing.

Being polish citizen then didn't meant automatically loyalty to this polish state or government...millions weren't even asked or if asked decided to not fight for this Poland.

That was also a reality of Poland '39...

Boys, I know that and we all know that, but he also considered Silesians, Kashubians, Pomerenians as Germanic. So, if we go by this criteria, than the "volunteers" in Werhmaht were not Poles either.

Again:

Volunteers (Germans and Foreigners): Waffen-SS (or Ost-truppen like ROA)

Conscripts (Germans only): Wehrmacht

It's that easy, really! ;)

That is my point. That is why I say Harry is selective in his use Poles. He cherry picks.

So the 89,300 Harry quoted were not volunteers and I rest my case well argued by you. :)

Can you perhaps give some examples of my selectively saying who is and is not a Pole? To me a Pole is a Polish citizen and that is always the approach I have used.


They either decided to sign the DVL and then became eligible to serve and had to or they joined the SS units which would accept them.

If all of those poor souls had been forced to join the German army, why was the rate at which the Polish army grew due to men changing sides so much greater in late 1944 than it was in 1942 and 1943? These men had the opportunity to desert much earlier but did not. If I may quote Dr Ostrowski's excellent book "Certainly Kuropieska [military attache to Polish embassy in London immediately after the war] was in a position to know about the recruits from the German Army. Much to his surprise he discovered that all his staff had been chosen from a Polish Repatriation Camp and that they had all, at one time or another, served in the Wehrmacht. Kuropieska recounts a conversation he had with one of his staff who was not well disposed to the English:

"If the Colonel only knew how we chased them, and now look at them; these layabouts ! these upstarts !"
"But where did you chase them ?"
"In Africa - we were with Rommel." [48]

It transpired that all his staff had been in the Afrika Korps until they were captured in 1942 and then joined the Polish Army."
angelfire.com/ok2/polisharmy/chapter6.html

No, because a some point we would be faced with the image of Himmler standing in front of the best of Jewish men saying: "You are part of the elite unit tasked to destroy Jewish bolshevism," and my imagination is not that vivid.

It is apparently vivid enough to cover the idea that the Nazis thought an SS unit made up of members of a nation which they planned to exterminate was a good idea!

Agreed, but neither were they Poles (at the time of their conscription that is, regardless what they later told at gunpoint as POWs as some of them were offered to survive if they "desert" and join the polish forces next)

Polish soldiers of Wehrmacht were the worst Osttruppen ever they usually surrendered in masses to Angloamericans so my guess is they were recruited in order to get to the West before the others.

If you mean german soldiers of the german Wehrmacht coming from german towns and villages in what became Poland after the Treaty of Versailles you are quite wrong. They fighted as well or bad as all Germans did...

With the Osttruppen or eastern volunteers it was more like it...

Generally it can be said, Germans or western volunteers served with distinction - eastern troops did not.

(I'm right now reading "Blood and Iron", Manstein's campaign of Sevastopol in '42 - he had german troops and romanians...boy were they bad (the Romanians)! )

amazon.com/Blood-Iron-German-Conquest-Sevastopol/dp/1574887963

Yes - Germans, who came from Polish families, spoke perfect Polish
(and very often not a word of German apart from military commands
they were forced to learn) and after the war settled in Poland and
spent their whole life there. Some Germans :-)


How many Kashubians do you know personally, BB? Because I know quite a few,
and I've heard the stories of them and their families - how they were beaten up,
threatened and blackmailed and, eventually, out of the fear for their families' lives
they signed the volkslists and were immediately conscripted into Wehrmacht.
Some feckin volunteers they were!

Well, nobody forced them so subscribe to the Volksliste as Germans....their decision!


Yeah, that's exactly the problem...if the Nazis had won they would had told stories how brave
they fought against the opressing Poles and how they suffered under polish rule.
(Seriously, what do you expect people to say who wanted to survive in Poland as the Germans left? The truth????)

Truth was that nobody was forced or beaten to subscribe...and you had to bring some evidence about your roots.

Be careful with what people told AFTER the war was over....Europe then was suddenly full of victims and resisters - no Nazi or collaborateur in sight anymore!

One famous Kashubian everybody knows is Günther Grass....who ended the war in the Waffen-SS as German...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Grass

That's where you're wrong.


I have no reason to dibelief my neighbours - one of them, Polish Police officer
and close friend of my old man told me the story of his father quite recently -
it's not like he had to worry to tell the truth :-)

Again - I have no reason to disbelieve my friends and neighbours and instead
believe in the official nazi scumbags propaganda which said that Kashubian
man volunteered to serve in Wehrmacht.
Actually they fought Germans as eagerly as other Poles from Warsaw. Kraków
or Poznan.


Grass was a German from Gdańsk - if he had been Kashubian he would have
spoken Kashubian or Polish (very similar languages) not German as he did.

Well, he was a German of Kashubian roots....eligible for the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, as thousands others!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashubians#Notable_Kashubians



Not even that if he had told the truth that this would had meant in afterwar Poland misery/expellation/gulag/death for him and his family?

:-)

I spoke to my neighbour's father last year, that was 2009 if I'm not mistaken,
there was no expellation/gulag/death threat for him and his family (maybe in 2008,
2007 there would be, but not in 2009 for Christ's sake LOL ;-)).

Yeah...why should he change a story he kept alive for more than 50 years now?
Do you think that would endear him to patriotic Poles like you???

Get real man!

All this "the big bad mean Germans made me do it" was an Europe-wide mantra.....after the war was over that is ("Victory has many fathers - Defeat is an orphan"!).

Really astounding that the german forces got one step over the border at all dragging all these unwilling, forced, secretly hostile soldiers with them!

No doubt it was all a Jewish plot....

Hmmm... now that you told me. I remember they visited us couple of years ago,
we sat and talked and there was Wisła Kraków - Schalke 04 game on TV,
and I thought I saw a shadow of a smile on the face of my neighbour's father
when Schalke scored a goal...

...I dismissed it then... I thought that I was just imagining things... but now,
when I think about it...

...that old #$%^$%#$!!!


I guess it's kinda like with your cars - German supervisors, Turkish and Yugo
workers and you manage to manufacture cars that are driveable ;)

Aaah...now you are making fun of me!
Schalke! ;)

You should tape him because it's NOT common knowledge in countries other than Poland. That's the problem. If you want people to know the truth and not the lies, you must put the truth out there. Tape him and post the tape here and everywhere so that we all (not just the people of Poland) know these truths.

Harry's a xenophobe, but that's not his fault. He's part of the Sheeple - the people who believe lies because they're mindlessly following the leader, the people who desperately want believe lies and who want to hate. Do you want Harry to continue to believe lies or do you want to educate him and the rest of the world?

What the Holocaust or any museum has to do with this is (once more) getting the truth out. You know the truth. Harry and most of the world don't know the truth. If you want them to know the truth, if you want Harry to be our friend instead of our enemy, educate him and all people.

I'm quite sure there are sources and books available for those who want to learn
the truth and besides, I'm not quite sure if the man would be comfortable talking
about his traumatic experiences for strangers. However, it is a thought to be considered
and if he's OK with it and when I get some more spare time, I might do it.


To be honest, I couldn't give a flying duck about what Harry and the rest of
the Sheeple think. All I ask from them is to stop pretending to be friends
of Poland. Enemies I can stand and even respect - false friends only annoy me.


Why do you say "our"? Your profile says that you don't speak Polish.

The truth is in the eye of the beholder.

Okay, but you're missing my point. This is a very important point, so I'd like to make it again. I guess I'm just jealous of places like the Holocaust Museum and other places and people who get the truth out. Somehow Poles just 'hope' that people will know the truth. Well, they won't. You have to teach it to them just as the Jews teach the world about what happened to them. I admire what they've done, but I'm also jealous. The Poles could collect lots of information, too, and educate the world, but they don't. You feel your neighbor might not feel comfortable. Well, I understand, but I'm sure Jews didn't feel comfortable talking about how they suffered, yet they did tell their stories to educate the world. Why do the Poles not do this, also?

I'm not crazy about false friends, either. However, I hold hope that some sheeple can have their minds pried open and then they can be true friends. It's not easy getting through to sheeple. They want to hate. They want to believe falsehoods. You can get through to some people, though.

I don't speak Polish, but my grandparents did. Unfortunately, they died before I was born. Dad is in his 80s, but still can understand and converse a little in Polish. We speak English, but we love our Polish culture.

You have a good point there, Kith but even if people heard the man's story,
they would just keep saying...






...but, as I said - I will consider your idea.


Interesting - so you don't speak Polish, but love your Polish culture?
I always thought that language is the main and most important carrier
of national identity - guess I was wrong.
Oh, well - fair play to you anyway. It must be really hard cultivating Polish
culture without knowledge of the language. What Polish customs and
traditions are still cultivated in your family, Kith?