robinhood_1984:
If the UK had of lived up to even less of its commitments 60 years ago Poland would not even exist. Funny that you say you fought for Britain in he war, I see to think that Britain fought on behalf of you?! You may have lived for 50 years under Soviet rule but the alternative was German rule and I dont think 4 or 5 years of German occupation was going too well for you, never mind 50 years of it.
I know you like to think you saved the world alone, but closer look into history books should show you that despite Britains joined war on paper, the serious fightings never started until it was attacked by Germans. And then you had Poles flying your fighters for you…
Somehow I never heard about British soldiers defending Poland in 1939…
You were a great imperium, you ruled the world. This should not only give you profits but also responsiblities. You turned your back on Czechoslovakia in Munich, when Hitler invided Poland you just vawed your finger saying “bad, bad Hitler”, then when you got in trouble yourself, you kindly accepted help from Eastern European soldiers, you let them sacrifice their lives in Battle of Britain, protecting the convoys on Atlantic, in Africa, pretty much at every front, then in Yalta, when you no longer needed them, you turned your back at them again.
If you know the history, you would know how close you were to see how the German occupation feels on yourself, so you should not underestimate sacrifice of 1000s of Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Yugoslavians etc.
Argument about “we joined war for you and then Hitler attacked us because of that” is not valid - Hitler would not bother if you declared war on him or not. He had a treaty signed with Soviet Union and yet he attacked it. So you would be in trouble anyway.
You had that chance in 1939, but you didn’t wanted to die for GdaÅ„sk. The French invided Germany and despite having more troops than ■■■■, they stopped, then in Abbeville you agreed with them that you would not provide any significant military help to your ally, Poland. It was a huge mistake, as you shoudl crush Hitler when he was busy fighting Poland on the Eastern front. Instead of that you let him do his job, and year later your soldiers arm in arm with ours were dying for London as Hitler attacked you having most of his army available for this task and being able to use Polish resources against French and then you.
I am not seeking revenge here, it is all history. But this history, as we can see, have long time repercusions and we can feel its results even now. I don’t blame you for that off course - most of you weren’t even born at the time.
But it would be nice, if you for a change looked at this from non-British perspective. I guess this is hard to Britons, hence all these situation when someones “forgots” the role of Poland - such as the Enigma code thing. For years and years Britons did not wanted to admit that the code was broken by Polish mathematicians as early as in 1932 and all know-how, algorythms and mechanical computers were given to Britain and France in summer 1939… Obvviously it was making a scratch on the way you liked to look at yourself - as someone who got to war for Poles and saved the world with a little assistance of USA. Do you know that it was not before 1968 when Britain finally admited that Poland had “some involvement” in breaking the code and it was not before 2000 when Britain admitted that job was done solely by Poles. It took few more years for Enciclopedia Britanica to change it there…
In meantime there was the movie “Enigma” when the only Pole was a traitor. Somehow the screenwriters “forgot” that the real traitors were for example Kim Philby and John Amery and none of them, as you can guess, was Polish.
There is many of such examples - you propably are not aware about them, but for obvious reasons Poles are very sensitive and polish foreign ministry always tries to make the things straight. But who cares about some minor notes in The Times or Guardian - most of public opinion is based on what they learned in school and on things like this infamous “Enigma” movie.
And to make it clear: I am not willing to say any bad world about all this British men and woman who gave their lives during the war. I just think that if the allies did not made a mistake of abandoning Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Poland in 1939, there could be less victims in every of our nations.
But off course the politicians of the time did not knew that, and in order to save the peace (at least for their own country) they did everything to actually avoiding going into the open war with Hitler for as long as possible. And I don’t blame them for that.
But the threaty between our countries was broken. First time in Abbeville, when allies after advancing a few kms into Germany decided to withdraw. And second time in Yalta - when Churchill broke the word given to Sikorski about Poland’s future after the war. This are historical facts.
I can fully understand that you don’t like them. But this is how the things were. It is now history, so don’t worry, noone will sue you for damages or hate you for it. It is the past, we have now the common future to build and current problems to worry about. But it is important to remember the history as it was, to be able to uderstand it’s influence on present times, and also to avoid the mistakes. The old saying says “the victourios write their own history”. You can say that for Poland the war ended in 1991 when the last of the soviet troops witdrew from our country. So now we are victourios as well, so let’s just agree on some common verision of the facts.
