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Primary data is fact
The August 1944 Warsaw uprising was a Polish uprising, the Jewish Ghetto uprising was in April 1943.
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Katyn massacre
- Thread starter London Calling
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The August 1944 Warsaw uprising was a Polish uprising, the Jewish Ghetto uprising was in April 1943.
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nonsense, as you mentioned , the western desert campaign, what about sicily ? the fight through italy ?d-day, the fight through france ? arnhem , the low countries , the ardennes ? crossing the rhine , i think its grossly disrespectful to take that attitude to be honest.
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then i stand corrected.
The reason why the Poles didn't get any support (apart from verbal) from the western allies is Geography. It's all very well sitting here in England and saying support them but how could we (the western allies) when the country is sandwiched between Germany and USSR? You would have to drive an army from the west through the whole of Germany to get there!
You could send plane after plane after plane in theory with troops/guns/supplies, but don't forget at the time we were fighting the luftwaffe. So our planes are going to run the risk of getting shot down by the Luftwaffe to deliver supplies to people that are coming up against an army that is so overwhelmingly better than them that resistance will be measured in weeks. Why don't we just bomb Germany instead to get to the root of the problem, which is what we did!
Also think of the bigger picture, sadly for the poor Poles do you honestly think Churchill and Roosevelt weren't thinking about defeating Hitler and anything and everything they could do to do this. Do you think that severely damaging their relationship with Stalin by taking a stand over Poland (and Katyn) would be a good idea? Sadly the poor Poles were eventually mere pawns in the overall game and could easily be sacrificed by either side to win the end game.
The Poles were also incredibly brave in all aspects concerning fighting in the 2nd World War and their situation is tragic as they changed one tyrant for another and their country and their people got brutalised in the process.
Believe what you want to believe, just read up about troop numbers/divisions allocation of Wermacht resources etc. From 1941-44 ,the Red Army took on virtually the whole of the Wermacht (excluding the North African campaign which eventually led to the landings in Sicily then up through Italy). All the other battles you list were post 6th June 1944 when by this time the Red Army had driven the Wermacht back out of the USSR from the gates of Moscow.
It is obvious you clearly have no grasp of the scale of the German-Soviet war.There are documented facts about the size, numbers of troops/divisions etc at most battles. Go and find them you might be in for a bit of a shock.
I am not interested in whether you think it is disrespectful or not. I had relations that died at Anzio and I am well aware of the sacrifice that they made and the pain that it brought their surviving sibling.
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i have every grasp of the scale of the war on the eastern front , it was obviously on a scale greater than the western front ,but that doesnt make the conflict on the western front insignificant as you state , " the russians fought the wehrmacht on their own " as for the disrespectful part ?im not particularly interested that you're not interested that i think you're being disrespectful , but i too had relatives who were casualties in ww2, but seeing as you had a relative that died at anzio it makes you a bigger prick than i originally thought.
London Calling
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- #67
The problems with us coming to terms with the Eastern front are:
We (the West) literally had no involvement in that field of action.
Whilst I imagine the majority of Russian and German troops plus, others the Germans recruited into their army were model citizens, this arena suffered from wholescale moral bankruptcy. Right through to the Red Army raping off German and other women found in the concentration camps.
All battles and wars are hard to glorify but the Eastern front is particularly hard.
London Calling
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And at this point the thread moved back to the NSC norm?
Why are you being disrespectful to me?
I am just putting back a point of view. I wasn't offensive, I don't think.
I don't think you do understand the sheer scale of the USSR/German war. It literally dwarves nearly every other war in the history of the World. The Soviets lost around 25,000,000 in the 2nd World War. Britain 400,000, the USA 300,000.
Theatre of Trees
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Interesting thread. For all the Polish sentiments being banded about the interwar government of Britain thought the then Polish state was weak in the long term and this stems back to its reformation in the aftermath of World War One when the argument amongst the Poles was whether it should be state based on ethnic lines or one based on historical boundaries. The fact they veered towards the later meant coming into conflict with all their powerful neighbours and Soviet Russia in particular, through force the Poles snatched Vilnius off the newly independent Lithuanian state then took advantage of the power vacuum formed by the collapse of Russia, the collapse of Germany and the failure of anybody to support a fledgling Ukrainian state. The eventual cause of the Russo-Polish War of 1919-20 where a certain Joseph Stalin was in charge of the forces fighting in the area and the resultant Treaty of Riga in 1920 which gave Poland parts of modern day Belarus and Ukraine lands historically associated with the medieval state of Poland but not conforming to the Wilsonian principles of borders being drawn to ethnographic lines. Consequently, the Polish state was made up of just under 70% of Poles, and large Ukrainian/Belarussian and German minorities guarenteed meddling by both Soviet and Nazi regimes. Whilst the French supported an enlarged Poland as a counterweight to Germany, the British thought the Poles were opportunist and distrusted first the Parliamentary regime and from 1926 the army dictatorship that ran the country to 1939.
With that background you get some idea of the ambivalence the British felt towards the Polish state of 1921-39 and the readiness to come to some sort of agreement with Stalin between 1943-45. The Poles had come to some accord with Germany in 1934 and actually connived with them in putting pressure on the Czechoslovak state during the Munich Crisis and actually took a small part in the dismemberment of the rump state in March 1939, something that angered both British and French who retained some distrust towards the Polish state. It was only from April 1939 that the Germans turned on the Poles and the latter sought guarantees from the British, who incidentally also gave one to Romania at the same time. In short the Polish-British alliance was born of necessity not anything drawn out over a long term period as well as an underlying unwillingness to work with the Soviet Union. The fact that the Polish state was unworkable was highlighted by its fall in 1939.
Both Nazis and Soviets wanted the Polish elite removed and set about doing it once the campaign was over, the tendency was for the non-working classes of the new Soviet zone to escape to the German zone where there was a marginally better chance of survival, and to a degree this was also true of the Jews, though in a number of circumstances this could be related back to the Ukrainian and Belarussian peasants dislike of the largely Polish landlords and Jewish urban classes, something the Soviets were happy to encourage. Katyn was the culmination of this and a move by Stalin to reintegrate the lands lost in 1917-18.
By the time talks about the postwar shape of the world were taking place the petty squabbles of interwar Eastern Europe were subsumed to one of global domination, in other words the victors would now decide and impose something they failed to do post WW1 and that imposition would end up being based on military might and who in particular had their armies in a position to dictate this, in the east it was the Soviets and the west it was the Americans with the British as a now predominantly juniour partner.
***Will get to my point when I get back from the dentist!***
With that background you get some idea of the ambivalence the British felt towards the Polish state of 1921-39 and the readiness to come to some sort of agreement with Stalin between 1943-45. The Poles had come to some accord with Germany in 1934 and actually connived with them in putting pressure on the Czechoslovak state during the Munich Crisis and actually took a small part in the dismemberment of the rump state in March 1939, something that angered both British and French who retained some distrust towards the Polish state. It was only from April 1939 that the Germans turned on the Poles and the latter sought guarantees from the British, who incidentally also gave one to Romania at the same time. In short the Polish-British alliance was born of necessity not anything drawn out over a long term period as well as an underlying unwillingness to work with the Soviet Union. The fact that the Polish state was unworkable was highlighted by its fall in 1939.
Both Nazis and Soviets wanted the Polish elite removed and set about doing it once the campaign was over, the tendency was for the non-working classes of the new Soviet zone to escape to the German zone where there was a marginally better chance of survival, and to a degree this was also true of the Jews, though in a number of circumstances this could be related back to the Ukrainian and Belarussian peasants dislike of the largely Polish landlords and Jewish urban classes, something the Soviets were happy to encourage. Katyn was the culmination of this and a move by Stalin to reintegrate the lands lost in 1917-18.
By the time talks about the postwar shape of the world were taking place the petty squabbles of interwar Eastern Europe were subsumed to one of global domination, in other words the victors would now decide and impose something they failed to do post WW1 and that imposition would end up being based on military might and who in particular had their armies in a position to dictate this, in the east it was the Soviets and the west it was the Americans with the British as a now predominantly juniour partner.
***Will get to my point when I get back from the dentist!***
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i know , i shouldnt have bitten , but i didnt like the aggressive " i have no interest in whether you think im being disrespectful" tone.
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i dont think there was any need for the " im not interested" part of your post, im preared to accept you werent being aggressive so i will say sorry for my post.
Well to be quite honest, you started it by saying that I was being disrespectful to our war dead, which I am certainly not and I am well aware of the sacrifices that they and all the poeple that fought and died in the second world war made.
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yet again , i will repeat , i DO understand the scale , but however much it dwarfs the western front , it doesnt mean the russians were fighting the wehrmacht on their own, aqnd they wouldnt have ben fighting them at all if hitler hadnt turned on them.
For various different reasons without either of the other two countries none of Britain, USA or USSR could have defeated Nazi Germany (and Italy and Japan). It was a combined effort by all three that won the war.
However, as a broad brush statement I think it is fair to state that the British and American Navies defeated the German Navy, The RAF and the USAAF defeated the Luftwaffe and the Red Army defeated the Wermacht.
And that is not to denegrate the sacrfice made by British/American army personel, nor Russian airmen whom lost their lives fighting either the Wermacht or the Luftwaffe.
London Calling
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- #76
As Winston Chrchill told Stalin
"We are a sea animal, you are a land animal and the yanks are tossers who fill their guts with burgers"
Nottseagull
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If you're talking about on NSC, then they were mentioned just ten days ago:
Third highest Albion attendance - Page 5 - North Stand Chat
(post #82)
If you're talking more generally, then just about everyone who's ever watched
The Battle of Britain will surely remember this clip:
YouTube - Battle of Britain -
London Calling
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- #78
Just thought this need a bounce..............since it was such a great thread and I have just watch Defiance again.
LC
LC