Have you heard of a country called BELARUS?! It's your neighbour, by the way...And, yes, at that moment, it was one of the Soviet Socialist Republics...
...but I doubt that that excuses the fact that Germans slaughtered ONE THIRD of its CIVILLIAN population, especially considering the fact that the republic was overrun so fast that the first major combats occuring on its territory were a) during the soviet counteroffensive, and b) mostly NOT envolving Belarussian combatants, since that republic did not have the time to mobilize (although heavy guerrila action occurred throughout German occupation)
One of the unknown reasons for the fact that Belarus has some of the cleanest major cities in the world is that most of them had to be fully re-built from the ground up in the forties and fifties. It is a historical fact that the Belarussian people suffered more from the war than ANY other nation/nationality (INCLUDING the over-rated extermination of the jews - I'm not justifying it, I'm just saying that Hitler's, pardon the pun, hit list contained a lot more nationalities than just the jews, but only the jewish-american diaspora was either amoral or practical enough to capitalize on their nationality's extermination, making it into a BRAND even... most of the world now actually honestly believes that Hitler's concentration camps were for jews only, while, in fact, lots of nationalities, including both my and YOUR countrymen were being exterminated or exploited for hard labour there).
As to your resentment of anything Soviet, I can understand that, BUT:
1) it was the Soviet Union, not Germany, that funded the rebuilding of your country after the war
2) Poland was not the first or the last country to suffer due to the scheming and conflicts between continental or world powers - that is just how the world worked (and still does work, as can be seen on any news channel)
3) Poland's population is about the same as Germany's, which meant that, had your country worked to defend itself properly, it could have; as to the Soviet occupation and use of your country as a buffer between the USSR and Nazi Germany, that would NOT have happened if your country stood a fighting chance against the Germans, as standing by and watching your powerful neighbours annihilate each others armies and potentials is ALWAYS more politically profitable than throwing your own armies into a war
4) GET OVER IT ALREADY... look around you - do you see the French, the British, or the Russians hating the German people for events 60 years past?!
5) LEARN THE RIGHT HISTORICAL LESSON - hate only breeds death and destruction... hating your neighbour for the conflicts of your grandfathers only leads to further strife between your children or granchildren, and I doubt anyone would want to have their children killing and being killed in the name of historical enmity
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couzijn
17 years ago
A-a-d wrote that "it was the Soviet Union, not Germany, that funded the rebuilding of your country after the war". This is a misrepresentation of history. The USSR did not 'rebuild' Poland. It annexed Poland, forced it to become a puppet state, and installed its own puppet regime. Only then did the USSR build some (rather poor) infrastructure and housing, BTW after making sure that eastern Poland was stolen and incorporated into Belarus, and eastern Germany was annexed and added to vazal state Poland. The 'funding' that you claim the USSR did, was little else than forcing the Poles to economiccaly pay for their own 're-building'. Which was no re-building of course, because pre-war Poland was never re-built. At least not by the USSR.
A-a-d- also wrote that 'Poland was not the first or the last country to suffer due to the scheming and conflicts between continental or world powers'. This is true, but utterly nonsensical in this discussion, because no one claimed what you contest. The Polish nation and its people suffered enormously from the war, first and foremost because the killing of one sixth of its population, and then because of the loss of their pre-war autonomy. Poland was no 'socialist republic' as was Belarus, but was 'rewarded' at the end of the war by a forceful occupation of the USSR (with Belarus as its accoomplice).
A-a-d goes on to write that 'Poland's population is about the same as Germany's', which means that A-a-d has not checked an encyclopedia.
Next, A-a-d puts the blame for the occupation of Poland on Poland itself, by writing that 'had [Poland] worked to defend itself properly, it could have'. By the same reasoning, it is my fault if my bike has been stolen or my daughter raped, because I should have protected them better. This is a barbarian's argument.
A-a-d has some good advice: 'GET OVER IT ALREADY... look around you - do you see the French, the British, or the Russians hating the German people for events 60 years past?!' It is always a good idea to get over something. Yet it is quite ridiculous to compare the French and Brits with the Poles. The Brits hardly lost *any* civilian population and were never occupied, the Poles lost 6 million civilians, were brutally occupied during the war and brutally occupied up to 45 years after the war. The French had their own Vichy-regime meaning that its government was on Hitler's side during the war. Meaning that the Brits have less problems in overcoming the war and the French have good reason to overcame the war so they won't be reminded of their dark past. The world still has to make up to Poland - and thankfully the EU has already started to do just that. But what has Belarus done for Poland? No wonder you are keen to 'get over it'.
Michel Couzijn
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