History / Why is Vatican traditionally on German and not on Polish side? [65]

Ya see that! I promised I wouldn't and I broke my promiseLOL

@AntV,
I am suggesting that Mussolini in particular would have perhaps had closer ties with the Vatikan, that's for sure.
Even a lapsed Catholic theoretically nevertheless remains a nominal Catholic.

History / Why is Vatican traditionally on German and not on Polish side? [65]

Had the Vatikan though never entered into a Konkordat/Concordat, perhaps the former would have had more leeway in negotiating a palpable stance which might have stymied Hitler as well as Mussolini from gravitating towards complete autonomy as they did.

However, this would come under the "Guesswork School" of historiography of which no serious historian aka historiographer whom I know or studied under is a fan:-)

History / Why is Vatican traditionally on German and not on Polish side? [65]

@AntV, as a history professor, I've read copiously over the years on this subject, yes, even the perfervid scribblings of Messrs. Irving and various "Historikerstreitler", namely Nolte and Hillgruber and so don't need your condescending remarks! I also never once labled Pius XII an anti-Semite per se. The Vatican most definitely DID choose to look the other way on numerous former Nazis, not the least of whom was a certain Alois Brunner:-)

@Tacitus,
As a historian yourself, I concur with your comments, yet it is equally true that Pius' conflicted reactions to both the Jewish Question as well as Nazism in general made him the object of severe criticism after the War as well.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

The Japanese mentality has often been compared to the German, pre-WWII German, that is:-)

History / Why is Vatican traditionally on German and not on Polish side? [65]

Thing is, it's not nor will it ever be baloney!

I too stand by my facts, not my own opinions. Don't take it personally. :)

Ck out the history of "passes" (Persilscheine) allowed to Ex-Nazis to escape to Nazi-friendly South American countries towards the end of as well as after WWII.

I ought to have said, "stand by THE facts."
Then again, it does depend on which history you read.

Pius XII was a curious figure though!
On the one hand, he did indeed persevere and speak out against Bolshevism and Nazism in the very beginning, this though changed much later during the War.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Perhaps the reason, Weimarer, that your country is in such deep trouble that Ms. Kramp Karrenbauer had to quit and that there's a rightist surge!

If you don't know or worse, care, about your own history, you oughtn't be allowed the rights of full citizenship, native-born "ethnic" German or not. History is our collective responsibility, whether it's Germans learning about Hitler or Americans, particularly of settler heritage, learning about what was done to our Native Americans;

YOU CAN'T GET AROUND IT!

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Splitting hairs, Dirk!

Fact is, it's easy to want to down play the real stats on the Holocaust because the truth is so ghastly, few are willing to face it, pure and simple!

Talk about "good with numbers", the Poles turned out to be the worst record keepers, often not even keeping track of how many Jews were killed in certain communities. The Germans though kept meticulous records.

History / Why is Vatican traditionally on German and not on Polish side? [65]

The Catholic Church was known to have collaborated, both the Vatican as well as within Germany itself, e.g. Dr. Ludwig Mueller and so forth!

It was the Protestants, with the exception of Bishop Graf Galen of Muenster, such as Niemoeller and Bonhoeffer, who were most outspoken against Hitler.

>Die weisse Rose< was not a specifically religious resistance organization, although it is true that all participants, the Scholls, Prof. Huber, and Father Delp were Catholics, the last one, a prominent Church man.

Law / Moving back to Poland - Healthcare [112]

The Scandinavian languages, with the exception of Finnish, all share with Bulgarian and Romanian the same "Balkan" features of a noun clitic which is attached to any such word as a suffix. "Museu(l)" = THE museum in Romanian, literally "Museum-the" etc....

The grammar of Swedish is of course closer to English syntax by in large than to Bulgarian, even to Dutch and German which both employ hypotaxis, unknown in Swedish or in English:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

The documents themselves from the archives of the Wannsee-Villa show black-and-white hard, documentary facts in the perpetrators' own hands the extent to which the conference plotted and planned the extermination of some 11,000,000 Jews, essentially the entire population of occupied Europe. While the total real numbers stopped at

6,000,000, the rest would surely have followed if the Allies had not been successful.

Only an attention-seeking charlatan, not to mention some other choice names, could think of grandstanding in order to try to make a convincing point!

@Dirk, I'm not talking about those who never got their facts straight either. Naturally the Soviet Russians were responsible for Katyn. Everyone knows that, as every thinking, literate person knows the truth about the Camps. About that there can be no discussion, save for academic posturing by revisionists or deniers.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Holocaust denial is quite simply a hate crime as any other, a filthy insult to those who suffered and continue to suffer from that period. It is indescribably venal and sick to even give the Irvings at al the credence of taking their work seriously.

If not the eye witnesses of Allied soldiers as incontrovertible evidence, on what leg can any Holocaust denier possibly stand??

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Again, Lenka, you must distinguish between "religion" per se, as opposed to "sprituality", as for example in St. Francis' writings or the teachings of Jesus!

The Church corrupted religion, but the concept of G-d remains as sound as ever.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Sovereign airspace, guys, is subject to international law, last time I checked:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Whilst I agree that organized, aka DISorganized, religion has little to do with spirituality, if Man relies solely upon himself, thinking that he has the freedom to do whatever he wants with impunity with no repercussions in the afterlife, has essentially license to commit whatever savagery he wishes and go unpunished.

The law is corruptible too, you know.

@Lenka,
Your comment escapes me, I'm sorry.

Law / Moving back to Poland - Healthcare [112]

I take it you're an EU national, yes? Well then, bureaucracy is part of what makes Europe what it is today.
I'm not a fan particularly, yet in terms of health care, the Nordic countries have the US beat by a country furlong!

Law / Moving back to Poland - Healthcare [112]

An intriguing question!
Having myself spent time in both countries, living for almost a year and a half in Germany some years back, I'd conclude that Sweden is doing economically better than either country. Through daily blogging and chat, I keep abreast of things in the above countries, relying too on local colleagues from each of the three.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

@Weimarer,

"We don't believe in G-d and such rubbish......" ...which is precisely the problem with post-Reformation Germany!
This is what lead to the rise of Hitler and his infatuation with paganism.

If you don't believe in such rubbish, I contend you don't believe in a moral structure then. You can't have things both ways by saying you believe in some abstract concept of "freedom", yet at the same time don't believe in a Higher Power.

G-d is the measure of all things, and who measures otherwise, measures falsely.

Finally, if you actually read Hitler's autobiography which I have (and in the original too, although Rolf Mannheim did an unusually good translation which I read through much later), you'd recall that Hitler rejected Christianity as having a "Jewish conscience", rejecting of course the entire concept of conscience in the first place:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Quite right.
The Munich publishing house which once put the book out, closed down, I believe and the copyright ran out, if I'm not mistaken.

While I think it's a good thing to make students of history aware of their painful past, without the necessary annotations, provisos and editing, as with Hitler's birth place in Braunau am Inn becoming a venue for Neo-Nazis, his autobiography could easily be misused in Germany to justify Right-Wing causes.

Trust you read in yesterday's paper that Kramp Karrenbauer's out and the Right has surged ahead, causing considerable concern among many people.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

The key differences between Hitler and, say, Roosevelt, between a dictator sui generis vs. a (true) democrat whose achievements are still with us today,
show the chasmic, indeed, seismic, differences between the two nations, Germany and the US!

German history went down the "special path" (Sonderweg) of ostracism, xenophobia, authoritarianism and out-of-control demagoguery under Hitler, a complete rejection
of the Judeo-Christian tradition itself in favor of mass paganism, whereas the US under FDR sought to solve the severity of the Depression through compassion for those who needed it most, a sense or feeling of solidarity, one not based upon race-hatred but on inclusion, a desire to ameliorate through empathy, taking military steps ONLY when the most dire necessity rather than of pure brutal conquest and enslavement.

While the above is obviously a capsule summary, it hits the nail right on the head.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Torq may well be right on that score:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Once again, Dirk, I'd have to disagree with your assessment of Hitler and of the National Socialist Movement. Look at the second word of

the party name to clue you in as to what their agenda was!

History / Why is Vatican traditionally on German and not on Polish side? [65]

The only Pope to date who truly built bridges between Christians and Jews in a substantive way, was Wojtyla!
During WWII, Pius sold out to Faschism in order to save face, and the Papacy got a black eye from which she hasn't yet completely recovered.

John Paul II did the most to try to heal those wounds.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Hitler was a radical RIGHT-WING "national" socialist, very definitely out of step with what later would be termed "conservative" Republicanism! He made a play of taking care of his own people, in the guise of eliminating fellow citizens deemed "non-Aryan" and hence less worthy of life. This is never defensible, whether used to justify mercy killing of the feeble-minded by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes or by a Nazi.

@Weimarer,
If you tell an idiot the same information, they'll give you an idiotic answer:-)
The danger was NEVER from the Left per se. The Left was simply responding to the excesses of the Right. Political Correctness is unfortunately a result of failed policies on the Rightist agenda which has backfired.

Liberals hearts were in the correct place, only their execution stank.

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Nevertheless, Weimarer, the lessons of the Hitler period ought to remain a warning against complacency against extremism from the Far Right!

Easy answers never bring good solutions, only quick ones.
Remember, "Act in haste, repent at leisure."

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

Thanks to gumishu and kaprys.

History / Why are Poles/Poland disliked by Germans? [140]

The most luscious German dish though in my humble opinion was the very young Hildegard Knef (later "Neff" when she went to Hollyweird).
Romy Schneider and Senta Berger of course weren't too shabby either:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

@Weimarer,
....and they also collaborated with the Nazis in their use of "slave labor" too. Let's keep the story straight and whole:-)
And don't gimme this, "Oh, everybody did it!", because some actually tried to go against the grain.
Not expecting the average German to have put their life on the line, necessarily, but resistance can be done in small steps as well!

Travel / Why do you visit Poland? [223]

How here's the big question: Was Kopernikus aka Kopernigk, aka Copernicus Polish or German?
After all, his home town is known by two official names, Torun or Thorn:-)

@To All:

Wife and I are planning a long-overdue trip to Europe some time next year. Stop No. 2 will include Poland!
(Famous last words...from our lips to G-d's earLOL)

History / Why are Poles/Poland disliked by Germans? [140]

You forgot Heidi Klumm:-)

News / Why is Poland so hostile against Germany? Do they realize how their reparations rubbish damages relations? [510]

Can't disagree with ya there, Joker!