Warsaw Uprising - The Forgotten Soldiers

Kinda like bringing democracy to Iraq?

Were you born yesterday?
Do you seriously think it was all about a lousy railway line in 1939?

But I'm asking you.


Poles made their choice long time ago.


Hitler wasn't reasonable.


I wonder what would happen to non-Germans (including Jews) living in those lands?
Besides, I'm pretty sure Hitler would attack Poland anyway.


And Third Reich was what? A friend? LOL


Only Poland was between Third Reich and the Soviet Union.
And could you name those "more agreeable, smarter and even neutral countries"?


So? If Poland allied with Hitler the Soviets would take revenge not only on Germans but also on Poles.


I think PennBoy lives in the US ;)

Haw did that ar** kinking work out for Germany?


In the end half of your country shared the same fate for the next 50+ and the other half have been occupied as well, not to mention reparations and loss of territory, was it worth it?

If you ask me neither one was someone who could be trusted or for us to make any kind of deal with. In the end it worked out how it did and making a case that somehow Germany fared better fate than Poland? it's a matter of opining and highly questionable, in the end you were not the masters of your own fate, mere pawns in the hands of a higher powers.

No it was over a city ( Danzig) railway line and highway, in the first phase, until the start of the war, in the second phase Germany wanted the whole Polish Corridor and northern Poland down to about where Bydgoszcz is, in return for that half of Ukraine and western Belarus were to be given to Poland. That was enough for Germany's Lebensraum, the eastern half of Ukraine and Russia up to the Ural was to be exploited for its natural resources, Ukraine and Russia were to feed the Thousand Year Reich, nothing more.

At least we vented our frustrations against Poland and France...now that was a revenge! :)
But then...we somehow lost the plot! :(

Not good...not good at all...but hindsight is a luxury people never have beforehand.


The West Germans at least had a very generous and nice Master...they did best out of this situation. Molly-coddled and courted as an important ally at that. *shrugs*

They don't complain!

LOL

You have no idea what you're talking about and yet you continue to talk, you show no proof no evidence to show otherwise, please wow me. i've read more books, articles, saw more documentaries on WW2 than you have hairs on your head, girlie. What seams irrational or hard to believe doesn't mean it is. Hitler didn't think about what would be good for Germans 5 years from know, he though hundreds of years ahead.

I think Poland should had negotiated with Germany and made concessions.


An easy way out for you to say...Do you know the picture of Hitler
at the funeral of your Pilsudski?
Better agreements for Poland had been possible but instead how one
polish general liked to brag instead: "We will have war with Germany if she wants to or not!"
and the famous: "In one week in Berlin!"


See above...easy way out...


Who is talking about "friends"...Nations don't have friends, but shared goals and interests.
Had England or France been friends as they left you dangling???
It was about goals and negotiations and especially REAL POLITIK!
Acknowledging Poland's position between a rock and a hard place...but Polish politicians did choose the most stupid way to behave.
Chest thumping showing the finger to both, Stalin AND Hitler, and naively trusting far away London and Paris!

You may call that bravery, but most others see that as stupidity! And you paid the price...

I think I do :) You see, not far from my city there is a town in which before the war most of the inhabitants were Jews. During the war there was a ghetto there. All the Jews were transported from there to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. So, there are no Jews in this town anymore. I pass this town every time I go to visit my grandma in the countryside. My grandpa and his family almost starved to death. You know that Slavs were sub-humans too? Would you like me to describe to you what my grandpa saw? What a German officer did to a little Gipsy girl?


To show what?


So?


Hundreds of years? Then it's good he was mortal and he killed himself :)

Be real Paulina...at that time NOBODY gave a flying f'uck about Jews.
The Einsatzgruppen found always enthusiastic helpers everywhere.

So stop making the Poland decision a jewish one...
I hope you didn't forget that Poland had in the thirties similiar anti-jewish laws as Germany had!
So spare us your pro-jewish tears. Jews and their fate had so not been in the mind of the Poles at that time.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#Growing_anti-Semitism

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto_benches

But I do.


I'm not. It's my decision.


No, I didn't. But we didn't have concentration camps.


But they are in my mind.

Well, than you are either in the wrong thread or changed the topic on your own behalf without telling anybody.

The discussion was about Poland in the build up to the war NOT about what YOU today think!

hahahaha you helped me in making my point, PLANS is what i was talking about his original pre-war plans, not what later actually happened during the war. You don't need to tell me stories about what happened during the war, my one great grandfather Mikolaj Turczyn was a resistance leader he had 50 men under his command, 5 villages including his in Lublin Voivodeship, Borow, Chwalowice and 3 more where burned down 1,400 everyone men, women, children where murdered, only one family survived they live in Gdansk now.

I think it's better to be "stupid" than evil.


Yes.


This thread is called "Warsaw Uprising - The Forgotten Soldiers" :)


I can't write what I think today about Poland in the build up to the war?


It shows, PennBoy, what was Third Reich.
What about those plans? Why do they matter? I'm not sure what's your point.


So your great grandfather shouldn't had fought?

Well...you allied yourself with a monster that killed many more peoples than Hitler ever could.
You had no such qualms with "evilness" then...

Spare me your moralizing! But if it helps to make all that destruction and loss bearable for you don't let me stop you!


First they are neither forgotten and second it was about "who deserved what" as I posted.


Not if you imply the coming holocaust had ANYTHING to do with the decison of the Poles or the Germans or anybody else.
Hell, even as the concentration camps and the gas chambers were already known about nobody cared much for the Jews...

To use the jewish card is totally modern hindsight argumenting.

If you ask me Poland was in Hitler's mind only important as gathering place for the german army preparing to fight Stalin. He even would had sold the claims for Danzig for Polish neutrality and passive support.

He wanted Poland and he got it, so or so...

He didn't stay in the village he lived in, any man suspected of being in the resistance would have been shot or sent to a concentration camp, it wasn't just him from his village that went and joined the resistance it was many men, so the Germans were very suspicious. They lived in a forest and at the time weren't nearby to know what happened, that act by the Germans was actually a retaliation for what partisans did to the Germans in that whole area, assassinating German soldiers, derailing trains.

Bratwurst Boy, nazi ideology was evil in itself.
There is a difference, I think.
Although Hitler and Stalin were both monsters in my opinion.


I don't think you could call it a choice. Unless you call Katyń massacre and gulags an alliance.
And the Nazis were still worse.


Why?


Yes, I think it does make it more bearable. Because if we were on the wrong side - it would be unbearable.


I'm not implying. You wrote to me: "ask yourself what would had been better." And I did that and wrote about it.


Some did. Those who informed Western countries about what was going on.


Slavs were also sub-humans to the Nazis. So I'm not thinking only about the Jews.


I also think so.


Yes. But Poland didn't ally with Hitler. I think it was the right choice.

Yeah...Stalins victims will be glad to know that they were starved to death, worked to death, shot, clubbed down, frozen etc...by a not so evil "evil".


It's totally irrelevant...


Isn't it pathetic that you need to do that in the first place?


So you really think to rescue some Jews was all the mass destruction and millions of dead non-jewish Poles worth?
Oh...and by the way...they couldn't help the Jews anyhow in the end as Hitler invaded.
They might have had have a better shot for caring for their Jews if Poland and Germany
had some kind of understanding and Germans didn't came as enemies.
But then...Jews were not the foremost important thought on polish politicians minds.


Hitler made it up as he did go along...many Slavs were faithfull allies and even soldiers in the Wehrmacht.
Had Poland been more agreeable Poles had been touted as everything else but "sub-humans".


I think you are jewish!

The guy second from left in the white shirt and beret is my great grandfather Mikolaj ..From left to right: Stanisław Kuraś "Szkot", Mikołaj Turczyn "Szefuńcio" "Tygrys", Zbigniew Kabata "Bobo", Stefan Stawiarz "Junak", Józef Sekuła "Rzeźnik".

• 
  
  

great pic:)

BB, Poles didn't follow the Soviet ideology nor wanted they to ally with Stalin (except for the AL and they were in minority) :) I'm sure you know what the Soviets did to AK? And what was the situation then?


Morality is irrelevant? What is wrong and what is right? It's not important to you? Are you sure?


:)
If you refused to do something wrong and you would have to pay the price for this, would the thought that you did the right thing console you?


Not only. It was about freedom, for example :)


Had been Poland more agreeable there would be no Poland and we would speak German (if we would be alive, that is)...
Had been Poland more agreeable during the partitions we would speak Russian now ;)


Then you're wrong :)

Bratwurst Boy, Russians went through hell during the war as well. The Nazis treated Slavs worse than the people in the West, that's a fact. But I don't think any Russian would say they shouldn't fight with Third Reich.

I think only I wrote about the Jews here. And I think I am aware of pretty much everything that Poles did to Jews, MareGaea. I'm from Kielce, after all.

If you haven't already done so, you should read Uprising '44, by Norman Davies. Its the definitive work on the topic we're "discussing".

It wasn't about ideologies...nobody asked Poles to become Nazis...again, it was about
Real Politik and doing the best with the cards given. That is the DUTY of every voted politician, but the polish ones failed totally. They lost not only their freedom, they left their country open to destruction and to become the killing fields of BOTH evils, being opressed and occupied for the next half century!

NOTHING to be proud of !


Moralizing is always repulsive if it is used with hindsight to judge people.
You never had to walk in their boots a minute so stop pretending. You will never know
what you would have felt or done.


Poland WAS a free country till '39. Acting like a yapping chihuahua against BOTH, Russia AND Germany did not help them to stay that way.
Not to mention that Poland also had no qualms to take part in the dismembering of Czechoslovakia as it was still free.


Look at Czechoslovakia...they don't speak German nor are they dead last time I looked.


Russian life was hell BEFORE Hitler invaded and it stayed hell after the war was over thanks to Stalin.
For me the only difference between both is that Stalin was content to make the life hell for people in his empire and under his whip whereas most Germans could count on a quite good life under Hitler who was more concentrated on making non-aryan people's lifes hell.


It's a jewish line of argumentation...putting their folks in the forefront...preferring Stalinism and the Russians just because more Jews were in the russian ranks and more part of the killing than of the killed...so excuse me!

BB... Western and Stalin's real politik disgust me. The same is with Polish politicians who took a part of Czechoslovakia when they had "the opportunity".


If you say so :)


Whom do I judge?


What am I pretending?


Maybe. But I know what I would like to feel and do.


And it is free now too :)


So in your opinion because the chihuahua was yapping the bigger dogs had the right to tear it in two, put it in a cage, torture it, kill many of it's puppies and so on? You're justifying what Hitler and Stalin did? Because I don't get your point.


Oh I know, and of THIS I'm not proud at all.


Because Third Reich was defeated.

BB, the fact that Hitler was good to Germans was no use to Russians or Poles :)


What can I do? I'm Polish :) I am not aware of any Jewish roots in my family.

Every other way speaks more of pathetic white washing and clouding it as romantic bravery to make the people who suffered so much feel better, sorry.



Oh please...do you want to discuss or playing petty games!


I'm justifying nothing...and it wouldn't change one jota!
Poland did behave as greedy and agressive the moment it could as most other countries did.
Such were the times in Europe...and that was not a new surprise but Europe's way for Millennia. No need to put the "good" against "evil" labels on.

Poland were given bad cards and they did everything wrong with them.


Do you think Poland staying neutral would had changed that outcome? I don't.
But Poland would had suffered alot less losses, that's for sure!


Might be interesting for the judgement about who was "more evil"...

What can I say... It's your opinion :) I disagree.


No petty games, my questions were serious.


It feels like you are...


I have no idea. Probably not. But BB... Third Reich attacked Poland. Not the other way round. Why shouldn't Poles defend themselves when their country was attacked?


Why do you care?


:)
You know, I've seen many discussions between Poles and Russians concerning this issue :) I usually stayed away and observed the discussion.
I'm sure about one thing - nazi ideology was worse than communist ideology. It was inhumane. And 5 years of nazi occupation was far worse than 50 years of Soviet occupation.

Point is Poland could have avoided it!

A bit more common sense and real politik would had gone along way...


Not for Germans! ;)


Again, Poland could have avoided it, become another Czechoslovakia, Baltics or even France.
They all survived the Nazis quite well (and many other countries too).

I don't think so... As you wrote Hitler needed Poland to place his troops and he wanted to destroy the Soviet Union. So sooner or later he would find a reason to attack Poland. He would see that the West won't do anything about it and he would do it.

Now, let's say Poland would ally with Third Reich and let the Nazi army go through Polish land to attack the Soviet Union. Firstly, that would in the long run mean the loss of independence for Poland. And there would be no Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the Soviet Union would have no time to prepare for war. I don't know if it would change anything. Russians claim that it would. And what if Hitler defeated the Soviet Union - the main ally of Great Britain and the US?

It's just speculation, but I really doubt Hitler would be satisfied only with Danzig.


Well... We're not talking about Germans now, are we...


Czechoslovakia was a small country. France? France fought, no? It was occupied, yes?
BB, I doubt anyone could even imagine at that time what a "nazi occupation in Poland" would mean. Really...


They were quite fond of the nazi ideology, as I've heard... You know what happened to a big part of Estonian population after the war? You know why there are so many Russians there?


Because they colaborated and weren't Slavic countries :S

I think the Austrian made it fairly clear early on what his plans were for Poland and Lithuania were...

As I said...Hitler made it up as he did go along. He had no qualms or problems to be allied with Japan (NO ARYANS!!!) either..

An allied Poland would had gotten first class treatment too...


Of course not, the thought that all that drama and suffering could have been avoided with some smart politics is though stuff.
It's easier to believe the history wouldn't had changed one bit...


If you generally label Nazism as the worst evil to ever walk the earth you should acknowledge the German experience too...


Another people who didn't think of the Nazis as the worst evil either??? Can't be...


Full stop!