Russian military historian blames Poland for WWII

[BD1]

Russian military historian blames Poland for WWII

MOSCOW — As the Kremlin presses a campaign to recast Russia's 20th century history in a more favorable light, a research paper published Thursday on the Defense Ministry's Web site blamed Poland for starting World War II.

The unorthodox reading of history appears to be the latest effort by Russian historians to defend the Soviet Union and its leaders, especially their role in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.

Russia has angrily rejected claims that a Stalin-era famine in Ukraine amounted to genocide, and Russia's Supreme Court recently turned down an appeal to re-open an investigation into the massacre by Soviet secret police of Polish military officers and intellectuals in Russia's Katyn forest during World War II.

The generally accepted view is that Poland was a victim rather than the aggressor in the conflict, and that Adolf Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland marked the start of the war.

Many Western historians believe Hitler was encouraged to invade by the treaty of non-aggression signed by Moscow and Berlin, called the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which secretly divided eastern and western Europe into spheres of influence.

Hitler's pact with the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was signed on Aug. 24, 1939. Germany invaded Poland Sept. 1.

Blaming Poland would deny Russia played a role in starting the war by sealing the secret accord.

The research paper posted on Russia's Defense Ministry Web site is not an official government statement. But the author is listed as Col. Sergei Kovalyov, director of the scientific-research department of military history, part of the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense.

A person who answered the phone at the Defense Ministry press office refused to comment, but said a statement would be posted on the Web site soon.

Ministry spokesman Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky told the Interfax news agency that analytical articles posted on the ministry's Web site do not necessarily reflect the ministry's official position.

The paper, titled "Fictions and Falsifications in Evaluating the USSR's Role On the Eve of World War II," recounts how in the run-up to Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Hitler demanded that Poland turn over control of the city of Danzig as well as a land corridor between Germany and the territory now known as Kaliningrad.

"Everyone who has studied the history of World War II without bias knows that the war began because of Poland's refusal to satisfy Germany's claims," he writes.

Kovalyov called the demands "quite reasonable." He observed: "The overwhelming majority of residents of Danzig, cut off from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, were Germans who sincerely wished for reunification with their historical homeland."

Kovalyov, who works in St. Petersburg, could not be immediately located for comment.

Arseny Roginsky, a historian with the rights group Memorial, said Kovalyov was entitled to his opinion "and he shouldn't be thrown in prison for that."

"But if this indeed reflects the position of the government — in as much that it appeared on the Web site of the Ministry of Defense — then this is indeed dangerous and shameful," he said.

Polish government officials had no immediate comment; much of the country on Thursday was marking the 20th anniversary of the collapse of communism in Poland.

Last month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced the creation of 28-member commission to investigate "the falsification of historical facts and events aimed to disparage the international prestige of the Russian Federation."

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party is drafting legislation that would make it a crime to belittle the Soviet contribution to victory in World War II.

Both moves were widely criticized by liberals as efforts to whitewash Soviet era abuses.

Russian military historian blames Poland for WWII | Comcast.net

I don´t know whether to laugh or cry...

[bugs]

The paper, titled "Fictions and Falsifications in Evaluating the USSR's Role On the Eve of World War II," recounts how in the run-up to Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Hitler demanded that Poland turn over control of the city of Danzig as well as a land corridor between Germany and the territory now known as Kaliningrad.

"Everyone who has studied the history of World War II without bias knows that the war began because of Poland's refusal to satisfy Germany's claims," he writes.

Kovalyov called the demands "quite reasonable." He observed: "The overwhelming majority of residents of Danzig, cut off from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, were Germans who sincerely wished for reunification with their historical homeland."
...

Joachim Von Ribbentrop even feared that POLAND might accept the german claims and set a impossible time frame for the polish ambasadors...

[Mihais]

As von Clausewitz wrote:''The war always begins when those attacked refuse to give in.The agressor prefers to take what he desires unharmed and without shedding blood''.Thank the Lord that the Poles are guilty.The Reds are angels in the worldly people paradise(God does not exist)

[dalem]

Yep, Poland had no right to wear that short skirt in that dark alley. Germany and the U.S.S.R. just couldn't help themselves.

Paranoid tyrants will be paranoid tyrants, after all.

-dale

[ANZAC]

Funny, I always thought it was the Gleiwitz incident, part of several actions in Operation Himmler, a Nazi Germany SS project to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany, which was used to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland.

Even if Danzig was handed over, something like the Gleiwitz incident would have cropped up sooner or later, Hitler was moving East & nothing was going to stop him.

PS, perhaps if Stalin didn't sign the M/R pact, it 'may' have given Hitler pause, but I suppose it seemed a good idea from the Russian side at the time.

[diodetriode]

Poland Guilty or innocent?

Isn't it interesting how selective history can be?
Everyone was a victim of those terrible Nazis and Fascists. May 8th 1945, Heroes to the left for tea and medals, 'orrible Nazis to the right for Nuremberg and the gallows.
Of course the French were all in the Free French forces or the Resistance. The Italians really hated Mussolini (honest). The Hungarians, Romanians, Croats, Slovaks, Bulgarians---umm, er, change the subject. The Austrians are the best. They gave the world Hitler, Seyss-Inquart, Kaltenbrunner, Globocnik , Skorzeny, Waldheim, Amon Goth (that's the character in Schindler's list) and Gustav Swartznegger (yes, that man's Daddy). Austrians were the most fanatical Nazis and with only 7% or the Reich's population supplied 14% of all serving SS and 40% of concentration camp staff! Yet in 1945 they were able to say "But look vot zose terrible Nazis did to us!"
The Poles of course were blameless.
From the armistice in 1918 the new Polish nation was involved in outright or low level warfare against the new USSR on one side and the defeated Germany on the other. A bit like the Israelis in 1948 the Poles wanted to grab as much territory as they could before any cease-fire and a peace conference
even when this involved what we would call today ethnic-cleansing.
With the Imperial German army having fallen to pieces in November 1918 much of the fighting was undertaken on the German side by volunteers who later became known as Freikorps--the progenitors of the future SA and their leadership was a political group called the Staalhelm that later merged with the Nazis.
The Versailles Treaty gave the Poles almost everything that they wanted except East Prussia and Danzig (which was detached from Germany as a 'Free City'. German businesses, farms and estates were expropriated and Germans expelled.
In 1926 Pilsudski, engineered a coup and his Sanacja movement took over and ruled without the benefit of political parties or elections. So, from 1926 to 1939 Poland was a de-facto Fascist state. This fascist state was deeply hostile to democratic Weimar Germany and especially to Chancellor Streseman who refused to recognise the loss of Danzig and the German settled part of the Eastern territories.
When Hitler came to power the Poles thought that they had a friend in their violently anti-Soviet attitudes. While France and Czechoslovakia tried to organise some bloc to 'contain' Germany, the Poles refused to countenance any such arrangement that might include the Soviet Union, so much so that they entered into the German-Polish non-aggression pact in 1934 and commenced a five year period of prosperous trade and co-operation with the Nazi regime.
The Poles were dead-keen on the Absorption of Austria into Germany as it killed any Austrian claims on Polish territory and in the carve-up of Czechoslovakia, even helping themselves to a slice of the territory with a nod from Adolf. The Polish and German fascists fell out in 1939 over the German offer to extend the non-aggression pact in return for a deal on Danzig and a road/rail corridor from Danzig to the Reich.
The Nazi aims at the time were to develop a series of client 'buffer' states or puppet states between themselves and the USSR--the Poles knew this and saw the Danzig deal as the thin end of a German wedge. They became extremely hostile and actually threatened the Germans with their Franco-Polish Alliance of 1921 and, as a provocation, signed a new agreement with France--the Kasprzycki-Gamelin Convention in 1939.
Britain (which had no obligations to Poland) especially tried to get a deal that would ally Britain, France, Poland and the USSR to head off German aggression. The Poles would have no dealings with the USSR.
Popular history tells us that the Germans threatened war with Poland over Danzig---but its very quiet that the Poles threatened the same-( a bit like a guy threatening a gunfight but with his bullets still at a friend's house).
Of course the Nazis would have invaded or absorbed Poland sooner or later, but when you contemplate that Hitler anticipated a major war only in 1942 or 1943--the fascist Poles probably forced it three years earlier.

[Pioneer]

Oh what a world we live in.

If its not ethic issues still alive after hundreds or thousands of years past

It country and people like Putin, who can not come to terms that its history is full of villains.

Instead of taking the opportunity to change its terrible history, Putin is sure to repeat it!

Sad
Very sad.

I am afraid that it must be Russia's destiny to live under dictatorship!

More so I hate to say it - but poor Poland (then and in the future)

Regards
Pioneer

[Zampolit]

Dear Pioneer, you'll never become Komsomol

It country and people like Putin, who can not come to terms that its history is full of villains.

What country is not full of villains?
BTW, 1) this article was removed from MOD site 2) Russian officials made respective apologies.

I am afraid that it must be Russia's destiny to live under dictatorship!

yeah if only it were not for evil Russkies we would have democratic paradise on the Earth. Not only evil they are, but stupid as well, as far as they don't understand that they are living under dictatorship, with all these internets, tv, radio, and papermedia.

So what is your solution of "Russian question"?

[rj1]

I blame Tunisia.

Bastards.

[Chogy]

I find it odd that the Western world looks at September 1939 and Poland as the start of WW2, when Japan was running rampant in Asia well before that, and Mussolini was gassing Ethiopians in 1936.

I guess we could call Sep 1939 the day the European allied powers decided to fight back, rather than the actual start of large-scale violence.

[Johnny W]

I find it odd that the Western world looks at September 1939 and Poland as the start of WW2, when Japan was running rampant in Asia well before that, and Mussolini was gassing Ethiopians in 1936.

I guess we could call Sep 1939 the day the European allied powers decided to fight back, rather than the actual start of large-scale violence.

It wasn't just the Europeans. The members of the British commonwealth also declared war on Germany. That made the war much more widespread in scope. The war between China and Japan, and Italy and Ethiopia were mostly local in scale.

Canada declares war on Germany

Australia declares war on Germany

[great one]

What about the Katyn massacre?

[Kansas Bear]

Is this the thread where I can blame the Federal Reserve for starting WWI??


LMAO

[diodetriode]

World War?

I find it odd that the Western world looks at September 1939 and Poland as the start of WW2, when Japan was running rampant in Asia well before that, and Mussolini was gassing Ethiopians in 1936.

I guess we could call Sep 1939 the day the European allied powers decided to fight back, rather than the actual start of large-scale violence.

Between 1918 and 1939, isolated fighting hardly stopped. Germans vs. Poles, Poles vs. Russians, Ukrainians vs. Russians, Greeks vs. Turks not to mention the British and French colonial conflicts (The RAF spent a lot of time bombing Somali pirates, Iraqi insurgents and Afghan irregulars in 1920!)
A lot of the action has been forgotten as have the substantial wars that preceded the First World War.

The best definition of a "World War" is one that involves all or most major powers and involves conflict on a global scale--a definition that would include the Seven Years War (French & Indian), War of the Spanish Succession ( Queen Anne's War) and the Napoleonic Wars.
In September 1939, not only Britain and France were belligerents, but also Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa that ( Americans don't always understand this) were independent countries that made their own decisions. India and the rest of the Empire were automatically at war when Britain was, but some places like the Princely states and protectorates also declared war independently of Britain. These means that there were belligerents from Europe, Asia, Australasia, Africa and the Americas by September 1939. There was also military action too in the South and North Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans in September 1939.
The term World War actually came from the German term Weltkrieg part of a late 19th Century philosophy of a one-day showdown between the British Empire and everyone else.
If you read pre-1939 newspapers or books the preferred term for WW1 in Europe was "The Great War" and in America "The World War".

[Shamus]

Is this the thread where I can blame the Federal Reserve for starting WWI??


LMAO

:))