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Could Poland have fought for Germany in 1939 or was Russia a better option?

Discussion in 'Prelude to War & Poland 1939' started by scipio, Oct 25, 2011.

  1. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    No axe to grind with the Poles by any means...But history is history and needs to be told warts and all..

    Poland suffered..still suffers by history of ww2. Polish concentration camps are often mentioned in British press for instance...Upsets local Poles here...remind us they were German camps not Polish...Its monitored by press complaints commision over here on a fairly regular basis.

    But no collaboration? I'd suggest lower than elsewhere but every occupied country had its collaborators for whatever reasons...I have no reason to believe UK would be any different...Auxilleries had their assisnation lists as much as the Gestapo on any invasion of Britain...Auxilleries would have killed our own known and future collaborators that they knew would spring up. No one is immune. No country can ever say they would not have their share. UK and America included.

    The person in this link has a section on Polish Collaborators in her story..worth a read...It is though memories...and should be treated as such.

    BBC - WW2 People's War - Danuta Juszkiewicz - Growing up in the Warsaw Ghetto, Poland (Part 3)
     
    lwd, Sloniksp, Gebirgsjaeger and 2 others like this.
  2. Skipper

    Skipper Kommodore

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    I couldn't have said it better Urgh. It's just part of human nature and has nothing to do with nationality. No offence to any country meant, there are good and bad fellows in all nations.
     
  3. lost knight

    lost knight Member

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    .... Quote... "As to Ukranians from Galicia and the Lemberg area , this territory was Austo-Hungarian until 1919 and Polish until 1939 so when Galicians joined the German army it wasn't easy to define their exact origin but since both the Rusisan and the German annexions had not been recognized by international treaties , the inhabitants were technically poles until 1945 at least fro man allied point of view. Of course the Germans considered them as Volksdeutsche and their was even a galician SS unit set up .[/QUOTE]

    This group was not considered 'German' by the Germans. The "Galician Division" was created in '43 as a waffan SS division with anti-communist missions (the division was not implicated in war crimes) and used against the Red Army. Many were 'drafted' one way or another. They were not allowed to call themselves "Ukrainian Division" since this would have political meaning if Hitler had won. At war's end, held in Italy, the Polish government in London took up their cause and they were not forced to re-patriate to Stalin.

    The history of this group supports the main point that many Poles (esp from Germanized areas) were 'forced recruited' into the army. Poland and the Czechs are the only groups in can think of without a national unit. I wonder how many (of each) were sent off in the German Army?
     
  4. Tamino

    Tamino Doc - The Deplorable

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    Thanks for great post, again. I am aware of Polish participation in Pogroms against Jews. Terrible things have happened, indeed. (Thanks for mentioning »People's War«, that's my favourite reading too.)

    I was talking about the collaboration as an active particiation in war on the side of the Axis:

     
  5. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    Ok, enough is enough. I'm getting tired of saluting you Urqh. You really have to start "dumbing" your posts up!
     
  6. LJAd

    LJAd Well-Known Member

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    I am surprised by the OP:the survival of Poland as an independant state did not depend oh the Polish military strength,not on a far away "ally",not on a not interested and disarmed island,but on the fact that Poland's 2 hostile neighbours were neutralising each other :a German attack was impossible because of the SU,and vice versa .If Poland was allying with Germany against the SU,it would become a German satellite if the SU was eliminated,or a Soviet satellite if the SU won .And the same if Poland was allying with the SU against Germany .
     
  7. Tamino

    Tamino Doc - The Deplorable

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    Indeed, but neighbors weren't seeking alliance with Poland, just her territories. Again, Soviets were better choice because Nazis wanted to expel Poles: According to "Hem ins Reich" plan they wanted to resettle Ethnic Germans into Poland and to expel Poles from their homes. The map for the planned re-settlement is below and execution of the plan started soon after the occupation of Poland.

    [​IMG][​IMG]
     
  8. LJAd

    LJAd Well-Known Member

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    Yes,but this was something that Poland did not know,thus,it is an argument with hindsight .IMHO,the post war attacks on the préwar Polish governments are unjustified .It was not in the interest of Poland that Germany would be defeted,nor that the SU would be defeated .
    The claims that Poland proposed in1934 to France a common attack on Germany ? An invention from Polish nationalists to put the blame of the defeat on France .
     
  9. Tamino

    Tamino Doc - The Deplorable

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    Polish government was faced with enormously difficult task of providing survival of the state and the entire nation. During years preceding the war there were clear indications of real Führer's intentions. There were numerous interventions and provocations by representatives of German minority, there were numerous diplomatic actions against Poland. They were helpless among two giants. I am glad that that great nation has survived. It is sad that every fifth Pole has died during the war they didn't want to fight.
     
  10. Skipper

    Skipper Kommodore

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  11. Tamino

    Tamino Doc - The Deplorable

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    But, we are talking about Poland before the WWII.
     
  12. tomflorida

    tomflorida Member

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    Yes but Skipper, lets be clear. Of the 250 000 you speak of, how many where of German Polish descent, and of those how many where "forced to volunteer". I would bet that less then 5% where of 100% Polish descent. What is true, is that of all Allies Poland had the least amount of German collaberation.
     
  13. thecanadianfool

    thecanadianfool Member

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    I have pity for the Polish people in the 20th century, caught between two murderous dictators and both wanted to rid the world of the Polish people.
     
  14. JeffinMNUSA

    JeffinMNUSA Member

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    I don't think the Poles of any time would ever accept domination by any foreign power. Much less the totalitarian police states of the 1930s. Despite the horrific tragedies that befell the Polish nation since the 30s there is a reason the Red Empire no longer exists.
    Solidarnosc!
    JeffinMNUSA
     
  15. grunt49

    grunt49 Member

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    Just finishing up Tom Snyder's "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin." According to Snyder Stalin in the '30's feared a German-Polish-Japanese alliance attacking the Soviet Union, which was one of the motivating factors in the purges, the early stages of which were concerned with eliminating a supposed vast network of Polish agents. One can understand Stalin's paranoia, given the Russo-Polish war of 1919-20 and Polish support for Ukrainian anti-Bolsheviks in the '20's. From the Polish point of view, historical Polish connections with Belarus and the Ukraine might have made a Polish-German alliance to push back the Soviets attractive, but I doubt that, given German claims on Polish territory, I doubt that thePoles would ever have trusted the Germans enough to allow German troops to transit their territory, which would have been necessary for a combined attack on the Soviet Union. It's an intereting thought, though, what mighthave happened.
     
  16. urqh

    urqh Tea drinking surrender monkey

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    Jeff you do realise the Polish were a major danger to the west in the cold war period we all do don't we...? 1BR Corps with nl and Be and Ge divisions attached knew exactly who would be coming our way. Our intelligence was first rate...the number of times we practiced the evacuation of family dependents at HQ BAOR in the knowledge that the unit coming to cause disruption in the rear and kill our families if allowed a surprise attack was documented. We knew the units allocated this task from the Polish forces including the airborne unit that was to hit HQBAOR big house hoping to slaughter us in our beds. This info was confirmed by the records found after the fall of the Berlin wall and we got access to their records...Sigint in BAOR in cold war had their major effort directed against Polish forces as we knew what was coming. It never came. But Soradasnic is only one side of the Polish story in the cold war...There werea as many that were ready to carry out their masters bidding. Black white and grey as Belasar would say...
     
  17. Volga Boatman

    Volga Boatman Dishonorably Discharged

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    Do we have any records for the numbers of Polish conscripts into the German Army or the SS? There must have been some opportunists wishing to ape their masters, or hungry conscripts wishing to feed families with a regular paycheque, in the same way that Frenchmen were conscripted for labor, or volunteers?
     
  18. firstnorth

    firstnorth Dishonorably Discharged

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    Yes, Poladn should have yielded Danzig, & the transportation corridor,- in order to gain time to re- arm.If that was all it took.
    However by August 1939, the stakes had been raised once again- now the entire Polish access to the sea was to be handed over, with rights at Glydnia.
    so it probably did not matter.
     
  19. tomflorida

    tomflorida Member

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    I lived in Poland for many years and never met anyone who spoke/thought/or would act on anything ill toward the west. All the people I knew, wanted Poland to be as free as the western nations. I'm sure there were some, but they were a very minor percantage of the population. In fact I to this day never met one.
     
  20. tomflorida

    tomflorida Member

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    I just dont think Poland was a big danger to anyone. The army was made up of "forced" soldiers, who could care less for attacking anyone. It was always Russia that was a threat, to the West and Poland itself. And even then, most Russian didnt want to attack anyone. I would bet you that if WW3 came, without the nukes, that Poland would turn against Russia in a heart beat.
     

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