Language / Why is the Polish language so difficult? [309]

Merged: I am so angry at the Poles

For making their language so difficult, for getting angry at me for forgetting to address them with the formal pan, pani, panstwo, etc..

History / How different would WW2 turned out if Poland accepted Hitler's offer [219]


I mistook the Pact of Steel for the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Poland declined in 1936. The sources for this suggestion, and the reasons Poland declined, not very different from what I previously wrote, come from:

Hitler's Foreign Policy 1933-1939: The Road to World War II by Gerhard Weinberg
Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Synder

History / How different would WW2 turned out if Poland accepted Hitler's offer [219]


In 1936, Ribbentrop offered Poland the chance to join Germany and Italy in the Pact of Steel because Poland, at the time, coveted Těšínské knížectví (The Duchy of Teschen) because of its industry and coal mines. Germany, at the time, wanted to invade Czechoslovakia and annex Sudentenland in order to incorporate it into the Reich. But the primary reason Poland did not join the Pact of Steel was Germany's demands, which, if accepted, would cut across the Polish corridor and move the Western border eastward, which would cut off Polish trade in the Baltic. Ribbentrop wanted to establish a connection to East Prussia for ideological reasons, so he proposed a railroad through the corridor. Knowing that Danzig was Ribbentrop's primary motive, Poland refused the demands and joined France, bound by the 1921 treaty, and England, bound to a hasty 1939 treaty, to resist German expansion.