The Soviet Occupation of Poland 17.09.1939

[Njaco]

Russian people do not consider that they mistreated the poles, because they themselves had endured misery far worse themselves.

Me being killed by a bomb makes it more horrible than you being killed by a knife?

I'm sure V2 was trying to honor a day in POLISH history that was the start of suffering for many Poles and to side track to a debate over who killed who is ridiculus.

Its like me trying to throw into the mix the number of slaves killed in the US from 1700 to 1930 as a comparison.

Since I started the home soil comment - any person who is willing to fight for the piece of dirt he was born on has the right to call that "home soil" regardless of political correctness.

Again I those countrymen of V2 and Wurger.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Russian people do not consider that they mistreated the poles, because they themselves had endured misery far worse themselves. it was the product of living under the control paranoid murderer

And that makes it right?

 

[parsifal]

No, it most certainly does not make it right, and if you have ever followed my opinions on other similar sensitive subjects, you will know my opinions on human rights abuses. In fact I have taken stands that promote human rights which many of you find aborrent because you see it as encroaching on your "inalienable rights"

I dont think we have the slightest idea of the de-humanising effect of the totalitarian system on the individuals sense of right and wrong. It is still wrong if you are a soldier, and you obey an unlawful command. If your commander tells you to shoot an innocent civilian, and you do, you are just as guilty as the officer who told you...but understanding why that soldier might be induced to discount the significance of what he is doing, which goes way beyond the simple act of murdering an individual, is important, if you really want to try and stop such things happening in the future

Before you crucify me, I am not supporting Stasoids position in any way shape or form. I find it totally abhorrent actually.

 

[JugBR]

i think this kind of discussions should not be taken personally. the fact is soviet union invaded poland in 39 and nobody did anything to help the polaks. now, its just too late to do something. and lets remember ussr ran with the germans out of poland.

parsifal, i dont know too much about polak history, but i know poland was very important to contain the barbarian invasions into europe. poland had a great role in defending all europe against barbarians. v2 and wurger could say if im right or wrong and talk more about that.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Before you crucify me, I am not supporting Stasoids position in any way shape or form. I find it totally abhorrent actually.

No crucifying here, just trying to understand your position.

 

[parsifal]

I'll try and put my point in another way. I think it is very easy to apply our standards and values to all situations, without taking into account the circumstances that the event takes place.

In the case of Soviet methods, human life had been reduced to such cheap proportions under Stalin that nobody thought it unjust or unreasoable to take life for reasons we find totally unjustifiable. That doesnt make it right, nor does it justify it, it just explains it.

In the case of Stalinist russia, the value of human life had been reduced to about as low as it could go. There was even less rule of law in Russia than there was in Germany. given a choice between the two regimes, i think I would prefer to live under the Nazi system rather than the Soviet system (provided I wasnt Jewish). Its against that backdrop of poor regard and de-humanised condition that you have to understand why things were done like the Katyn massacre. To the Soviets it wasnt that abnormal, no big deal. To us its a crime that remains unpunished.

The debasement of values we take for granted begins with the first bully in the schoolyard, it ends with whole populations being massacred. this is why I believe in the upholding of the law and justice for everyone. If you let even one crime slip without even allowing that to register in yur consciousness, we all suffer

And dont put me in the basket of hopeless liberal. I am a conservative voter, and a believer in law and order. Ive done my time at the coalface. Its just that I think about why things are, or why things turned out, and try to explain that outcome

 

[v2]

Thank you Njaco!

Parsifal: remember please that Russians started the war together with nazis...

THE SOVIET INVASION OF POLAND DURING WORLD WAR TWO

 

[spit5]

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[parsifal]

QUOTE=v2;405683]

Parsifal: remember please that Russians started the war together with nazis...

THE SOVIET INVASION OF POLAND DURING WORLD WAR TWO[/QUOTE]

Hi V-2

I am respectful and sympathetic to Polsih suffering and the injustices meted out on the Poles by both the Germans and the Russians during the war. I should not have to re-state that position beyond that....just because one person is insenstive to that situation doesnt mean that all of us, who want to seek the truthg, are tainted with the same brush.

Putting the injustices to one side for the time being, I believe its important to understand the history that led to these events.

I confess that my knowledge of Polish history is very poor, but (in 25 words or less) I believe to be roughly this....the Polish state originally emerged about 1028, quickly disintegrated, was re-unified in the 13th century. After a period of warefare and agression against the "heathen eastern tribes" became more an more closely aligned to modern Lithuania. There was a climactic war against the Teutonic Knights, and in the 14th and 15th centuries saw further exapansion that saw "Poland" extended all the way from the baltic to the black sea.

Poland in the later middle ages was remarkable because of it racial and religious tolerance. Many minorities settled there as a result, significnatly a large number of Jews settled in Poland because of that religious freedom. This of course was to have major ramifications in WWII.

In the 17th and 18th centuries i believe the Polish power began to wane, as the powerful neighbours of Prussia and Russia began to influence Polish affairs. Poland allied herdelf closely to Napoleon, and in 1815, when the borders were redrawn, much of eastern Poland was lost to Russia. Poland herself became a Russian vassal state, as i recall. This situation remained until 1918, when the borders were re-drawn again at Versailles, and Polish independance granted. There was a reaction in Russia, leading to the war in 1920-21. Poland won this war, but the dissatisfaction of the Soviets at having lost so much territory was manifestly evident.....In 1939 the Soviets took the opportunity to gain back territory that it had lost in 1918 (plus additional territory), which they retained a substantial part of in 1945.

Is that more or less a thumnail understanding of Polish history for the las t 800 years???

 

[JugBR]

Thank you Njaco!

Parsifal: remember please that Russians started the war together with nazis...

THE SOVIET INVASION OF POLAND DURING WORLD WAR TWO

v2 i agree with you, but this war would start with or without ussr anyway. remember v2, russia suffered the largest military ofensive of history, they lost 20 - 25 milion citzens and germany also lost the war in russia too. that war wasnt easy for anyone in battlefield, "the eternal war of the poor man", isnt true ?

russians sufered with facism and also with stalin, but they choose the guy who speak russian.

 

[Njaco]

So lets not honor individual states and their struggle in WW2 and just give a collective "ahhhh" and carry on, right?

 

[JugBR]

lets never forget the horrors of this war, to this never happen again....

even if it allways happens again...

 

[parsifal]

NJ war brings out the worst, and the best in people, sometimes the same person. However,, I get the impression from what you are saying that we should be accepting of this situation..."what can we do?', "Its all too hard" " We dont want to upset people"!!!

I disagree. Sometimes we cant do anything tangible, or real to reverse an injustice, but that doesnt mean we should allow it to pass. if there is injustice, we strengthen that injustice if we just "let it pass". We should not go quuietly in the night, we should stand and be counted. This is why it is still important to hunt down Nazis even if they are in their eighties, or even nineties, and seek justice for those who perished under their rule.

The Soviets as a people are guilty of some pretty heinous war crimes, including the rape of Poland. Yet, if we are honest, 13 million Soviets died defeating a regime that was even more malevolent than they were. We could not have done it without them. This is why I am torn about the issue of Soviet war guilt

And, i think it was Churchill who summed it up precisely by restating the ancient chinese proverb...."the enemy of my enemy is my friend". This was a policy fully supported by FDR. It was on this basis that the aspiration of the free Polish movement were abandoned by the West. We had no choice. it was accede to the Russians, or risk losing the war. That doesnt make it any easier, nor does it right a wrong....it just puts it into perspective for us westerners

In every instance, the Poles were expected to compromise their interests for the sake of the Alliance. In 1943, for example, Churchill could only tell the Polish government in London that it was "probably true' that the eight thousand Polish officers discovered in a mass grave in Katyn Forest were murdered by the Russians in 1939: "The Bolsheviks can be very cruel.' In 1944, he remonstrated with Stalin for stopping just short of the gates of Warsaw while the Polish Home Army, badly overmatched, rose up against the Nazis. Little was done to aid the Warsaw Poles, who in any event were "liquidated' by Stalin upon the Nazis' departure.

One can take a certain perverse satisfaction from the Poles' recognizing Stalin for what he was before anyone else (except perhaps Churchill), and from General Wladyslaw Anders's confiding to Churchill, "After having beaten the Germans, we shall beat the Muscovites.' On most occasions, Churchill remained the realist; well before free and open Polish elections proved chimerical, Churchill told one of his secretaries: "Make no mistake, all the Balkans, except Greece, are going to be Bolshevized; and there is nothing I can do to prevent it. There is nothing I can do for poor Poland either.' But the Yalta Conference, with its promise of sanity and order in a world of V-1 and V-2 rockets, firebombing, and Russian greed, beckoned mightily. Stalin knew what he wanted, and he ruthlessly pursued it. And the west did not have the will, or the strength, in my opinion, to stop him

 

[v2]

WWII first step- Pact Ribbentrop- Molotow:
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: The Documents

 

[Njaco]

However,, I get the impression from what you are saying that we should be accepting of this situation..."what can we do?', "Its all too hard" " We dont want to upset people"!!!

No thats not it at all. The point I wanted to make - and I don't want to put words in V2's mouth - is that I believe he started this thread to honor and recognize an important date in his country's history and it seemed to take a downturn into "who did who" or who suffered more. I agree the Soviets suffered and at the same time committed crimes just as Germany just as many countries. But this seemed to me to be a thread about Poland's day during WW2 and not a pissing contest.

I agree with a lot of what you posted and I respect your view on things as you seem to have a clearer picture of events but the thread appeared to be losing focus.

 

[stasoid]

Originally Posted by stasoid
By moving his troops to the Curzon Line in 1939, Stalin restored generally accepted, historical border established in 18th century between Russia and Poland.
Although several skirmishes between Soviet and Polish troops, through pure misunderstanding, took place in September 1939, there was no point for polish soldiers to fight and die for something that is not in fact your "home soil" but rather a colony.

Ya know, I just started reading this post and some of your other gems and you're throwing up some major commie bullsh!t here - I'm usually pretty open to people's opinions but you're on the border line of perpetuating some pretty bold statements that won't be tolerated by forum members who actually lost family members by the Soviet's hands. I suggest you tone down your rhetoric or your stay here will be short!!! I'm only going to tell you this ONCE!

It's not a commie BS, FLYBOY. George Curzon, who draw the Line, was not a commie, neither I am.
It just happened to be Stalin who returned Poland's eastern border to where it is supposed to be and where it is now. It could've been anyone else, earlier or late all empires desintegrate and perish in history.
Thanks V2 for posting those maps of Poland from the middle ages. We can post more maps of Golden Horde, Ottoman, British, Austro-Hungarian etc empires and where all those countries are now.

See, the fact is that east of the Curzon Line, Poles were a ruling minority hated by local inhabitants. That's probably why the Red Army was initially greeted with flowers when they took over the lands of western Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania in 1939. Those people, most of them, unaware of Stalin's brutality and political repressions, paid a high price short after, but this is another story.

Have you ever heard of term "Polonization"? Ukrainians of Western Ukraine, for example, under Polish rule were treated as subhumans with no rights of governing or even teaching their language in schools. Ukrainian literature was banned. While being Orthodox Christians they were forcefully converted to Catolicism. Same was happening with Belarussians. Lithuanians feared losing their cultural identity ander Poles as well.

Now, I have a question to Parsifal. Your comment about Soviets prosecuting and killing a million of Jews???
Could you please be more specific of where, when and why?
As far as I know 80% of Stalin's Politburo were Jewish. And Jews were always among bravest and smartes soldiers and officers in the Red Army treated equally as others.

 

[JugBR]

ate least, theres a lot of information in this topic and i thing this is the best way to honor those ho lost their lifes fighting for poland.

v2, great links !

 

[stasoid]

When the territories of Western Belarus, Western Ukraine and the Wilno region were incorporated into Poland after the Treaty of Riga, Poland rejected its international obligations to grant autonomy to eastern Galicia[10], which she had never intended to honor.[49] Linguistic assimilation was considered by National Democrats to be a major factor for "unifying the state." For example, Stanisław Grabski, Polish Minister for Religion and Public Education in 1923 and 1925–1926, wrote that "Poland may be preserved only as a state of Polish people. If it were a state of Poles, Jews, Germans, Rusyns, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Russians, it would lose its independence again"; and that "it is impossible to make a nation out of those who have no 'national self-identification,' who call themselves 'local' (tutejszy)."[citation needed]. Grabski also said that the aim of Polish policy should be "the transformation of the Commonwealth into Polish ethnic territory."[50][51] Some officials denied the existence of the Ukrainian and Belarusian nations altogether

A law issued in 1924 banned usage of any language but Polish in governmental and municipal paperwork. It the area of public education it was postulated that state schools could be only Polish language schools.[41] Local populations could have private local language schools, but only in territories "loyal to the Polish state"[citation needed]. Specifically with respect to the Eastern territories (known as Kresy Wschodnie, or "Eastern Borderlands") it was recognized that "schools can become an instrument of the cultural development in Eastern lands only if Polish teachers will work there"[citation needed]. It turned out to be infeasible for implementation and, in particular cases, bilingual schools ("utraquist schools", szkoły utrakwistyczne) were proposed, while in reality those schools were functionally the Polish language ones

The attitude of Ukrainians of that time is well shown in the statements by the reputable Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, who noted negative influence of Polish policies on the Ukrainian culture: "the four centuries of Polish rule had left particularly destructive effects (...) economic and cultural backwardness in Galicia was the main "legacy of historical Poland, which assiduously skimmed everything that could be considered the cream of the nation, leaving it in a state of oppression and helplessness".

The land reform designed to favour the Poles in mostly Ukrainian populated Volhynia, the agricultural territory where the land question was especially severe, brought the alienation from the Polish state of even the Orthodox Volhynian population who tended to be much less radical than the Greek Catholic Calicians

After the Polish legislative election, 1930, Belarusian representation in the Polish parliament was reduced and since the early 1930s the Polish government started to introduce policies intended to Polonize the minorities. In 1938 about 100 abandoned Orthodox churches were destroyed or converted to Roman Catholic in the eastern parts of Poland.[56] The use of Belarusian language was discouraged. There wasn't a Belarusian school in the spring of 1939, and only 44 schools teaching Belarusian language existed in Poland at the beginning of World War

Situation of Lithuanians also was getting worse. During the interwar period of the 20th century (1920-1939) Lithuanian-Polish relations were characterised by mutual enmity. Starting with the conflict over the city of Vilnius (Wilno), and the Polish-Lithuanian War shortly after the First World War, both governments - in the era nationalism was sweeping through Europe - treated their respective minorities harshly.[57] [58] [59] Beginning 1920, after the staged mutiny of Lucjan Żeligowski Lithuanian cultural activities in Polish controlled territories were limited; closure of newspapers and arrest of editors occurred.[60] One of them - Mykolas Biržiška was accused of state treason and sentenced to a death penalty, only direct intervention by the League of Nations saved him from this fate. He was one of 32 Lithuanian and Belarussian cultural activists formally expelled from Vilnius on September 20, 1922 and turned over to Lithuanian army.[60] In 1927, as tensions between Lithuania and Poland arose furthermore 48 Lithuanian schools were closed and another 11 Lithuanian activist were deported. [57] Following Piłsudski's death in 1935, Lithuanian minority in Poland again became an object of Polonisation policies, more intensive this time. 266 Lithuanian schools were closed since 1936 and almost all organizations were banned. Further Polonisation was ensued as the government encouraged settlement of Polish army veterans in disputed regions. [61] About 400 Lithuanian reading rooms and libraries were closed in Poland in 1936-1938


Polonization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

V2 I am sorry that your thread got derailed by people wanting to take the attention away from the suffering of the Poles.

To the Poles and the suffering they underwent by both the Germans and the Russians. Both Germany and Russia are guilty no matter how you want to look at it.

There is no sugar coating it or churching it up.

 

[parsifal]

No thats not it at all. The point I wanted to make - and I don't want to put words in V2's mouth - is that I believe he started this thread to honor and recognize an important date in his country's history and it seemed to take a downturn into "who did who" or who suffered more. I agree the Soviets suffered and at the same time committed crimes just as Germany just as many countries. But this seemed to me to be a thread about Poland's day during WW2 and not a pissing contest.

I agree with a lot of what you posted and I respect your view on things as you seem to have a clearer picture of events but the thread appeared to be losing focus.

Hi NJ

I apologize for misunderstanding you. i didnt think that you would say or imply what I first thought, so please accept my apologies for the misunderstanding

It seems from the subsequent posts that you are right, the purpose of this post has been derailed. i feel bad about that because i contributed to that derailment. I didnt intend for that to be the case, but it happened. I'm embarrassed actually. So, to V-2 I apologize as well for my part in this. You have to believe that my intentions were good but its just all gone to the dogs by the look of it....

My intent was to highlight Polish suffering, and the benefits we westerners won as a result of that sacrifice. I also wanted to point out my confusions concerning the russians, because even though they mistreated Poles, we westerners have an unpaid debt to the russians as well. Perhaps this was the wrong time and place for that sort of discussion