I've been reading 1939 The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II, and my god EVERYONE knew Poland was happy to work with Hitler. Churchill spoke of it himself
How quickly time would pass: the Polish victim of 1939 was only months following the Polish aggressor. "Groveling in villainy," said churchill, the Polish vulture picked at left-over carrion.
A bit earlier
The war scare prompted the French government to sound out Poland about its support, though the Poles had already offered numerous indications of their intent. On May 22 Bonnet called in the Polish ambassador in Paris, Juliusz Lukasiewicz, to ask what the Polish policy would be. "We'll not move," replied Lukasiewicz. The Franco-Polish defense treaty included no obligation in the event of war over Czechoslovakia, if France attacked Germany to support the Czech government, then France would be the aggressor. Not apparently overreacting to this extraordinary statement, Bonnet then inquired about the Polish attitude toward the Soviet Union, stressing the importance of Soviet support, given Polish "passiveness." Lukasiewicz was equally categorical: "the Poles consider the Russians to be enemies....[we] will oppose by force, if necessary, any Russian entry onto [our] territory including overflights by Russian aircraft." Czechoslovakia, Lukasiewicz added, was unworthy of French support.
If Bonnet had any doubts that the Polish ambassador was not accurately representing his government's views, these were quickly put to rest by Field Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz. He told the French ambassador in Warsaw, Leon Noel, that the Poles considered Russia, no matter who governed it, to be "Enemy No. 1" "If the German remains an adversary, he is not less a European and a man or order. For Poles, the Russian is a barbarian, an Asiatic, a corrupt and poisonous element, with which any contact is perilous and any compromise, lethal." According to the Polish government, aggressive action by France, or movement of Soviet troops, say even across Romania, could prompt the Poles to side with Nazi Germany. This would suit many Poles, reported Noel: they "dream of conquests at the expense of the USSR, exaggerating its difficulties and counting on its collapse." France had better not force Poland to choose between Russian and Germany, because their choice, according to Noel, could easily be guessed. As Daladier put it to the Soviet ambassador, "Not only can we not count on Polish support, but we have no faith that Poland will not strike [us] in the back." Polish loyalty was in doubt even in the event of direct German aggression against France.
Colonel Jozef Beck was the Polish foreign minister and a key subordinate of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, the Polish nationalist leader who had died in 1935.....like Pilsudski, Beck was a Polish nationalist who hoped to reestablish Poland as a great power, as it had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their efforts were unsuccessful, and this failure left Polish nationalists sout and quick to take offence. Yet they tended to carry on the business of state as though Poland _was a great power - dangerous conduct in the 1930s as Nazi Germany grew stronger and more predatory......
....Beck said that Poland would not "tie its hands" regarding Tesche, "it did not have belligerent intentions but it could not agree that German demands being satisfied, Poland should receive nothing." Put another way, Beck said that he did not intend to leave Germany the exclusive benefits of a dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.
Yinz better appreciate the fact that I typed all of that out myself.
@kristina tagging you cause you might be interested in some of these convos between officials leading right up to Munich.
Suffice to say, Poland was a fucking vulture here, actively working to not only invade Czechoslovakia, but threatening to join the Nazis fully if attempts to work with the USSR to save Czechoslovakia or perhaps even France occurred.
Yeah nah I'm already well aware. Poles were rewarded some areas of Czechoslovakia as a result of the Nazi invasion. There was also the Polish-Czechoslovak war in 1919, which is framed as a Czech invasion of Polish territory by Western powers, but it was in fact a breach of some post WW1 peace agreements by the Polish side and the forcible conscription of people in Czech Silesia by the Polish to go fight socialist Ukrainians. Poland was very expansionist and fascistic and invaded almost every power around them at the time. Boohoo, can't believe the Soviets retook their losses in the Polish-Soviet war when the Nazis came in :wojak-nooo:
So anyways, the Polish wanted that land plus some extra bits off of Slovakia plus a lil bit extra off of Czechia when they did an agreement with Hitler.
Oh I didn't mean to imply you didn't know the specifics, I know you've spoken about Polish irredentism before. I should've worded that better.
But yeah Poland is just invading everyone circa 1918-1922 or so. And they love the victim complex, from the whole miracle on that one river when they fended off a Soviet counter offensive following Poland literally invading Ukraine, to the war with the newly formed Czechoslovakia, to the siege of Lwow/Lemberg which kicked off the first Polish-Ukrainian war and is just dripping in hagiography. for real read the wikipedia, the amount of open maturation of Polish nationalism is intense.
Like this line
Because of their heroism and mass participation in the fights, they are commonly referred to as Lwów Eaglets. The Polish defenders also included a significant component of petty criminals, who, nevertheless, were valued for their heroism
Or mentioning the pogroms carried out by Poles in the most passive voice way ever and then unlike the rest of the paragraph, giving no citation for "once the Poles had order they totes punished the people who did this thing". And looking into the pogrom you get a list of Polish "historians" making insane claims that no Ukrainians died in the pogrom, or that more Christians died than Jews so it totally wasn't a pogrom despite said Christians being Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Ukrainians. And a longstanding tradition of Polish claims that it cant be a pogrom if it happens during war.
Poland LOVES its victim complex and the double holocaust shit because they need it in order to avoid the serious questions that arise when one looks even surface level at Polish history in the 20th century. The fact that people use the fact that Poland got blowback after being a vulture on Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Belarus, and Lithuania, as a means of dissing the USSR is gross.
I've been reading 1939 The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II, and my god EVERYONE knew Poland was happy to work with Hitler. Churchill spoke of it himself
A bit earlier
Yinz better appreciate the fact that I typed all of that out myself.
@kristina tagging you cause you might be interested in some of these convos between officials leading right up to Munich.
Suffice to say, Poland was a fucking vulture here, actively working to not only invade Czechoslovakia, but threatening to join the Nazis fully if attempts to work with the USSR to save Czechoslovakia or perhaps even France occurred.
Oh sup.
Yeah nah I'm already well aware. Poles were rewarded some areas of Czechoslovakia as a result of the Nazi invasion. There was also the Polish-Czechoslovak war in 1919, which is framed as a Czech invasion of Polish territory by Western powers, but it was in fact a breach of some post WW1 peace agreements by the Polish side and the forcible conscription of people in Czech Silesia by the Polish to go fight socialist Ukrainians. Poland was very expansionist and fascistic and invaded almost every power around them at the time. Boohoo, can't believe the Soviets retook their losses in the Polish-Soviet war when the Nazis came in :wojak-nooo:
So anyways, the Polish wanted that land plus some extra bits off of Slovakia plus a lil bit extra off of Czechia when they did an agreement with Hitler.
Oh I didn't mean to imply you didn't know the specifics, I know you've spoken about Polish irredentism before. I should've worded that better.
But yeah Poland is just invading everyone circa 1918-1922 or so. And they love the victim complex, from the whole miracle on that one river when they fended off a Soviet counter offensive following Poland literally invading Ukraine, to the war with the newly formed Czechoslovakia, to the siege of Lwow/Lemberg which kicked off the first Polish-Ukrainian war and is just dripping in hagiography. for real read the wikipedia, the amount of open maturation of Polish nationalism is intense.
Like this line
Or mentioning the pogroms carried out by Poles in the most passive voice way ever and then unlike the rest of the paragraph, giving no citation for "once the Poles had order they totes punished the people who did this thing". And looking into the pogrom you get a list of Polish "historians" making insane claims that no Ukrainians died in the pogrom, or that more Christians died than Jews so it totally wasn't a pogrom despite said Christians being Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Ukrainians. And a longstanding tradition of Polish claims that it cant be a pogrom if it happens during war.
Poland LOVES its victim complex and the double holocaust shit because they need it in order to avoid the serious questions that arise when one looks even surface level at Polish history in the 20th century. The fact that people use the fact that Poland got blowback after being a vulture on Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Belarus, and Lithuania, as a means of dissing the USSR is gross.