Russia, Poland clash over World War II remembrances in May
Source: AP
WARSAW (AP) — A new dispute concerning World War II remembrance has broken out between Poland and Russia as relations deteriorate between the two neighbors over Russian actions in Ukraine.
The clash comes as Poland considers hosting foreign leaders in Gdansk on May 8 to mark the 70th anniversary of the war's end. That would give Western leaders an excuse to avoid a big victory parade in Moscow the next day.
Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna said "it's not natural that tributes marking the end of the war should be organized where the war began."
That comment, a reference to the Soviet invasion of Poland at the start of World War II, angered officials in Russia, who prefer to stress the heroic Soviet role in fighting with the Allies to defeat Nazi Germany.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d57f6a24d7264ef1852bfc3e36948375/russia-poland-clash-over-world-war-ii-remembrances-may
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hobbit709
(41,694 posts)Just because the two partners in crime had a falling out later doesn't alter that fact.
And the Poles remember Katyn.
CanonRay
(14,111 posts)and the Finns kicked their asses for them.
Snow Leopard
(348 posts)but there is a reason for the term Finlandization
Lurks Often
(5,455 posts)While the Finns bravely and well, at the end of the Russian-Finnish War and again at the end of WWII, after they had sided with the Germans against Russia, Finland was forced to negotiate terms of surrender and gave up land to the Soviet Union.
another_liberal
(8,821 posts)That does not alter how bravely, self-sacrificingly and successfully the Red Army fought in WWII.
Lets not forget that France surrendered to Germany early on, Great Britain never faced more than a handful of German divisions in North Africa, and by the time American troops actually got into the fight, Germany was drafting sixteen-year-old boys and fifty-year-old men just to make up for some of the millions of casualties they had already suffered at the hands of Soviet troops on the Eastern Front.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)and I say that from experience. Some of my earliest memories are of occupation troops in my home town.
another_liberal
(8,821 posts)Still, that also changes nothing in regard to the sacrifices and accomplishments of the Red Army during its heroic struggle against the scourge of Nazism.
As to what I might sound like to you: I am just offering unbiased history of that era. Some people seem to need their history with a hearty helping of bias. I find bias to be unnecessary baggage. The straight story is far more important to contemplate.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)Somehow the Poles knew that the Russian would intervene, and gave standing orders for their troops NOT to oppose such intervention. For those units under German attack, they had orders to fight to any Russian held polish land and surrender. This all implies that the Poles knew the Russian would intervene AND they wanted they soldiers held by the RUssians NOT the Germans.
Now, this may be the result of the Poles seeing that the French and British had not worked out a deal with Stalin and the Poles assuming Hitler would NOT make a move without first securing neutrality of Stalin. The Poles, French and British had been talking all during the Summer of 1939 with the Russians, for everyone knew by then without Russian Support, Poland would quickly fall to the Germans. The terms could NOT be agreed to, for members of the Polish Government refused to make any deal with the Russians (i.e. they preferred a German Invasion then talks with Communists).
It ended up with Hitler willing to give more to Russia then the Poles, French and British were willing to give. Stalin took the better offer. We may dislike it, but you have to go with the better offer.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)It's worth keeping in mind that NONE of the "Poland" that the USSR invaded is now part of Poland. The land invaded by the USSR is part of Belarus and Ukraine today.
Prior to WWI, virtually all of Belarus was part of the Russian empire, and was populated by the Belarusian people. The Treaties of Versailles and Brest-Litosk created Poland, but didn't precisely define all of its borders. When the new nation of Poland declared that it was claiming Galicia (western Ukraine) and Belarus, despite the fact that Poles were minorities in those areas, war was all but inevitable. The Poles openly stated that they wanted the territories as a buffer against Russia, and didn't care what the people living there wanted. Belarus reponded by declaring their total independence from both Russia and Poland in 1919, which Russia supported.
The result of this was the now mostly-forgotten Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Soviet wars, which raged until 1921. At that point, Russia was so overwhelmed with its own internal fights over the future direction of their new state that they signed the Treaty of Riga just to end the distraction. The treaty split Belarus in two, granting the western half of the nation to Poland, while granting independence to the eastern half (Belarus would become a founding member of the USSR in 1922). The Ukrainians lost the territory that now makes up western Ukraine. The Belarusians and Ukrainians in the ceded areas simply became minorities within the newly formed Polish state and were the focus of Polonisation attempts by the new government to destroy their Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnic identities and erase their ethnic majorities.
Eighteen years later, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet Unions way of "fixing" this problem. The portion of the pact dealing with Poland essentially reclaimed western Belarus for the Belarusian SSR, and Galicia for Ukraine. The areas they took from Poland are still part of Belarus and Ukraine in 2015, and are populated by Ukrainians and Belarusians.
Other parts of the pact were all about grabbing new territory, (Finland, Latvia, Estonia, etc), but while many people today view the Soviet invasion of Poland as an unjustifiable invasion of a peaceful neighbor, the actual history is quite a bit more complicated.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)And equally incompetent. He just had more powerful allies.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)We Americans know about Montgomery, but he was NOT the top British General during WWII, Churchill reserved that stop for General, later Field Marshall Alan Brooke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Brooke,_1st_Viscount_Alanbrooke
Brooke is known for making the observation that of all of the politicians and generals he meet during WWII, the only person who actually understood Grand Military Strategy was Stalin. Stalin knew what could be done by Military might and what could not be done by military might. On battlefield tactics, Stalin was bad, but on strategy no one was better (thus Stalin famous Comment about Greece in the post WWII era "To take Greece, you need a Fleet, and we have not Fleet" when Stalin told the Communists in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia to stop supporting the Communists in Greece.
Stalin was very competent in that area he operated in, and that is why he died in power.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Had he not liquidated the Red Army of most of its best officers in order to preserve his own power, millions of Russians might have been saved.
To say he was "bad on tactics" is quite the understatement.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)Funny they seem to take all the credit, yet very little of the blame. Watch what happens 6 months from now when DU is playing the crimes against humanity card.
another_liberal
(8,821 posts)Lets make up some self-serving excuses and snub the nation which actually defeated Hitler's Germany, doing so on the 70'th anniversary of that epic victory. How appropriate!
(sarcasm)
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)Or maybe 95.
another_liberal
(8,821 posts)And I actually know a few details about what happened during WWII, that does not make me a Russian, or a Russian agent.
Unrevised historical fact shows that the Soviet Union tried repeatedly to form an anti-fascist alliance with France and Great Britain in the late thirties. Unfortunately for many millions of people, the Western powers always refused, fearing such an alliance would provoke Germany. Instead France and Great Britain chose to let Hitler take Austria and Czechoslovakia (with whom they did have an alliance) in hopes those acquisitions would satisfy him. At that point the Soviet Union did sign a non-aggression pact with Germany (not an alliance as some here have suggested) and they did occupy eastern Poland (territory which the new Polish government had invaded the Soviet Union to seize at the end of WWI).
dembotoz
(16,812 posts)continues to be a huge mystery to america.
with friends like russia, poland did not need enemies.
Igel
(35,332 posts)With a dash of conspiracy thrown in, the assumption that the West only really took on Hitler after it was obvious the USSR had suffered a lot and was going to win.
Poland and Russia have had sparring matches over WWII remembrances. In 2005, I guess it was, Putin made a big deal about the German resistance, the French resistance, etc., etc. And completely slighted the Polish resistance, which even had its own fighters working with the RAF. (This was at the same time that Putin's BFF Lukashenko had thugs beating up Poles remaining in Belorus' but who weren't entirely with the program.)
Even things like Lend-lease vanished from the Russian consciousness, novels and stories that referred to it often had references edited out in later editions. Russia got no help of any kind, in retrospect. (And old copies of war stories that retained them were just confusing for later readers, as were the uncaught references to things like American canned meat as rations or in stores. Typically not in war stories, but in "civilian" stories set at the time or shortly thereafter, so the censors didn't know to be on the lookout for Lend-lease references.)
dembotoz
(16,812 posts)history is to be revised by those in power--facts less important--this country can not even agree where obama was born.....
happyslug
(14,779 posts)My father was serving in the US Army in ENGLAND, but even before his unit shipped out, the joke was "Churchill will fight Hitler till the last Russian".
Lurks Often
(5,455 posts)Aside from being invaded, Poland remains angry at the Katyn Forest Massacre
