Churchill's Betrayal of Poland

[4thskorpion]

Of course, below the GDP per capita of Spain and the Soviet block, before the war Spain and the Eastern Europe were equally poor, rural and backward:

However this is not the GDP data of Poland prior to 1939, nor GPD German occupied Poland 1939-1945 , or Polish GDP 1945-1989 under PRL. Perhaps you can find this data to substantiate your claim that economy of German occupied Poland was higher than under the PRL?

The Poles pointed out to the Allies the naivety and contradictions inherent in the concept of self-determination, nothing more.

So why did the Polish government-in-exile protest when "self-determination" was not accorded to them later under the Atlantic Charter?

[fuser]

So it seems not even the Polish government-in-exile were happy with the potential negative affect of the Charter on their own desire for territorial aggrandizement at the expense of post-war Germany.

What role did the USSR play in the drafting of the Atlantic Charter?

I didn't said that they did.

If we are making the case that Poland was "betrayed" then entire non European world was betrayed by western allies but there is seldom any talk of it. Note : I don't think or will use the word "betrayed", it was more like politics as usual.

[4thskorpion]

If we are making the case that Poland was "betrayed" then entire non European world was betrayed by western allies but there is seldom any talk of it. Note : I don't think or will use the word "betrayed", it was more like politics as usual.

I absolutely agree, it was simply realpolitik and for Poland especially so after the USSR entered the war on the Allied side in June 1941.

Did the western allies need Poland? No. But they did need the USSR:

US Department of State: U.S.-Soviet Alliance, 1941–1945
Without the remarkable efforts of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, the United States and Great Britain would have been hard pressed to score a decisive military victory over Nazi Germany.

[wm]

Of course the Allies didn't need Poland and they weren't Poland keepers.
The problem is they betrayed their own political principles and long established international norms by condoning aggression and annexations of peaceful countries. In this case they weren't even good keepers of themselves.

By doing that and making enormous political concessions basically for free they actually violated even the tenants of realpolitik, which don't approve giving away for free of anything.

There is a huge difference between being forced to do something and doing it themselves. And in fact in this case by planning and cooperating they were accomplices to all that what would happen later. The Allies were forced to the alliance with the USSR, nobody forced them to legitimize the Soviet aggression.

However this is not the GDP data of Poland prior to 1939, nor GPD German occupied Poland 1939-1945 , or Polish GDP 1945-1989 under PRL. Perhaps you can find this data to substantiate your claim that economy of German occupied Poland was higher than under the PRL?

The wealth of occupied Poland is not really important for anything. The occupation wasn't much fun anyway.
The point is Poland survived the Nazis relatively well, the communists were much more destructive.
In 1950 the GDP per capita was 115% of that in 1938. So the destruction wasn't as severe as it is frequently claimed.

In 1980 the GDP/c of countries like Spain, Germany, Japan, Korea were from four to seven times higher than in 1950, but Poland's was only 2 times higher. It should be noted that in 1950 all these countries were more or less equally poor (or even much poorer - Korea).
So from the economic point of view during the war Poland lost relatively little. But during the communist era the Poles lost the chance to become a wealthy and prosperous nation.

So why did the Polish government-in-exile protest when "self-determination" was not accorded to them later under the Atlantic Charter?

Poland was a self-determined entity already, protected by numerous international conventions, treaties and laws. By violating well established norms the Allies acted as enablers for all the future wannabe violators.

[fuser]

Of course the Allies didn't need Poland and they weren't Poland keepers.
The problem is they betrayed their own political principles and long established international norms by condoning aggression and annexations of peaceful countries. In this case they weren't even good keepers of themselves.

There was no such "international" norm as western allies were themselves engaged in various aggressions and annexations throughout the world albeit barring Europe.

Principles have always been a matter of convenience in International politics

[wm]

Certainly but that was in in the nineteenth century. Later there were many solemnly signed treaties including the Hague Conventions, the Treaty of Versailles, the Kellogg–Briand Pact, the Covenant of the League of Nations, and numerous non-aggression pacts like those between Poland and Germany or between Poland and the USSR.

Japan, Germany, Italy, the USSR weren't aggressors because their opponents said so, they were aggressors because the laws they accepted themselves as binding branded them as aggressors.
Even realpolitik agrees that the principle of keeping one's word, adhering to signed treaties is important, without it international politics are impossible.

[fuser]

Middle east, parts of Africa were conquered in 20th century, the conquests mostly happened in 19th century because there were no new territories in 20th century left to conquer. Laws are only good if it can be backed up by force and enforced, variety of laws were broken when US led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003 but no they are not going to be punished for it simply because no one can enforce it against this coalition.

Anyway Britain was breaking these laws long before ww2, first hague happened in 1899, concentration camps were open up during Boer Wars after that. Mau Mau uprising, Malayan emergency are other examples post ww2 where all these laws and conventions were conveniently forgotten. I seriously don't find this to be a very compelling argument and as I said if we use the word "Betrayed" in here then we should also say that GB betrayed most of the world when it signed the Atlantic Charter but failed to act upon it.

[wm]

Certainly all the treaties, conventions and laws weren't a panacea, similarly the criminal law isn't a panacea for crime. But at least there was a clear definition of right and wrong when earlier it was rather a meaningless distinction.

But all your examples lie outside international law, it was an internal matter of those countries. And concentration camps weren't/aren't forbidden, but mistreatment of enemy civilians was (your own civilians you could mistreat as much you wanted). Even today we can be "concentration camped" in countries like France (meaning administratively detained by police without any judicial supervision and the right to a defense).

[4thskorpion]

In Poland a cultural genocide was going on till the death of Stalin.

How did that alleged "cultural genocide" in Poland compare to the "cultural genocide" after the annexation of Teschen, Czechsolvakia by Poland in October 1938?

The new Polish authorities appointed people from Poland to various key positions from which locals were fired. The Polish language became the sole official language. Using Czech (or German) by Czechs (or Germans) in public was prohibited and Czechs and Germans were being forced to leave the annexed area or become subject to Polonization.Rapid Polonization policies then followed in all parts of public and private life. Czech organizations were dismantled and their activity was prohibited.[49] The Roman Catholic parishes in the area belonged either to the Archdiocese of Breslau (Archbishop Bertram) or to the Archdiocese of Olomouc (Archbishop Leopold Prečan), respectively, both traditionally comprising cross-border diocesan territories in Czechoslovakia and Germany. When the Polish government demanded after its takeover that the parishes there be disentangled from these two archdioceses, the Holy See complied. Pope Pius XI, former nuncio to Poland, subjected the Catholic parishes in Zaolzie to an apostolic administration under Stanisław Adamski, Bishop of Katowice. Czechoslovak education in the Czech and German language ceased to exist.

Although the the term "cultural genocide" has no meaning or at best remains undefined from the above one could define "cultural genocide" as "Polonization".

The annexation of Teschen by Poland in 1938 had a clear affect on how Churchill and others in Europe viewed the chauvinistic territorial ambition of the Polish government which did not diminish during the course of WWII:

When Poland entered the Western camp in April 1939, General Gamelin reminded General Kasprzycki of the Polish role in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. According to historian Paul N. Hehn, Poland’s annexation of Teschen may have contributed to the British and French reluctance to attack the Germans with greater forces in September 1939.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish–Czechoslovak_War

Daladier, the French Prime Minister, told the US ambassador to France that "he hoped to live long enough to pay Poland for her cormorant attitude in the present crisis by proposing a new partition." The Soviet Union was so hostile to Poland over Munich that there was a real prospect that war between the two states might break out quite separate from the wider conflict over Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Prime Minister, Molotov, denounced the Poles as "Hitler's jackals".

In his postwar memoirs, Winston Churchill compared Germany and Poland to vultures landing on the dying carcass of Czechoslovakia and lamented that "over a question so minor as Teschen, they [the Poles] sundered themselves from all those friends in France, Britain and the United States who had lifted them once again to a national, coherent life, and whom they were soon to need to sorely. ... It is a mystery and tragedy of European history that a people capable of every heroic virtue ... as individuals, should repeatedly show such inveterate faults in almost every aspect of their governmental life."

With regard to the Poles not being at the negotiating table with the big three over Polish borders etc one is reminded of:

The Treaty of Riga signed between sovereign Poland and the Soviet Russia representing the Soviet Ukraine without any participation from Belarusian side assigned almost half of the modern-day Belarus(westernmost part of the Russian Empire until then) to the Polish Second Republic.

The Polish government-in-exile seems to have had a failure of memory when it came to their own chauvinistic deeds and could hardly crow about the unfairness of the allies when the situation was reversed.

[henryk]

Based on population ethnicity, Cieszyn was rightfully part of Poland, certainly not Czech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teschen_D ... te]Teschen political district consisted at the beginning of three legal districts: Teschen, Freistadt (Czech: Fryštát, Polish: Frysztat) and Jablunkau (Czech: Jablunkov, Polish: Jabłonków).
According to the censuses conducted in 1880, 1890, 1900 and 1910 the population Teschen and Jablunkov legal districts were as follows:[5]

....................................1880.......... 1890................1900.............1910
Teschen legal district... 51,099............. 54,663............ 62,044............ 71,809
...Polish-speaking........ 34,551 (69.1%).. 39,258 (73.6%)... 42,380 (70,2%)...47,982 (68,3%)
...Czech-speaking......... 7,536 (15.1%).... 4,912 (9,2%)...... 5,320 (8,8%).... 6,033 (8,6%)
...German-speaking....... 7,869 (15,8%).... 9,150 (17.2%)... 12,583 (20,9%)...16,133 (23%)
Jablunkau legal district.. 24,413............ 26,738............ 28,987............ 30,743
...Polish-speaking......... 24,371 (97,5%).. 25,607 (97.4%)... 27,614 (97%).... 26,165 (96,4%)
...Czech-speaking.............. 93 (0,4%)......... 63 (0.2%).......... 86 (0.3%)....... 171 (0,6%)
...German-speaking.......... 538 (2,1%)........ 622 (2,4%)......... 773 (2,7%)....... 912 (3%)
[/quote]

[wm]

How did that alleged "cultural genocide" in Poland compare to the "cultural genocide" after the annexation of Teschen, Czechsolvakia by Poland in October 1938?

I don't quite understand. Multinational states have existed from the time immemorial and Poland obviously was such a state. There was the Czech minority and the Belarusian minority there.
Poland didn't murder those people, didn't send them to concentration camps or to death camps like the Soviets did. Their culture was respected and their religion.
A multinational state is not a crime, I'm sure Mr Lemkin would agree without hesitation with this statement.

According to historian Paul N. Hehn, Poland’s annexation of Teschen may have contributed to the British and French reluctance to attack the Germans with greater forces in September 1939.

Warning, an idiot detected. But let's not be brutal, that man is a bumbling ignorant.
Because France and Britain knew many months before München about those Polish demands, supported them and promised to hand over the Teschen area to Poland.
And that "contributed" part is nonsense.

The Treaty of Riga signed between sovereign Poland and the Soviet Russia representing the Soviet Ukraine without any participation from Belarusian side assigned almost half of the modern-day Belarus(westernmost part of the Russian Empire until then) to the Polish Second Republic.

It wasn't any part on the Russian Empire it was an occupied by the Russian Empire Polish territory - earlier a part of Poland for half of a millennium.
Poland saved those people from the genocidal Soviet regime, for this they were enormously grateful.

The Belarusians were exceptionally loyal to the Polish Republic and the best soldiers Poland had during the war with the Nazi Germany. Much better than the Ukrainians and the Jews.

The Soviet Russia representing the Soviet Ukraine - a nice one, please tell that to the millions of victims of the Soviet genocide (this time real not cultural) of Ukrainians. Poland was the saviour of Ukrainians and the only one they had.


But anyway what a gallery of moral giants Poland have against her here, let's see:

-Vyacheslav Molotov: a genocidal criminal, who with his own hand sent millions to their deaths. A man personally responsible for the murderous annexations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Finland, Poland and Romania.

- Winston Churchill: who promised to give Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the Soviets as early as 1939. A man who defended the British colonial system with all his considerable skills, personally responsible for the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau Uprising and the Malayan Uprising.
A man who during the WW2 sold entire countries to the Soviets for some illusory benefits.

- Édouard Daladier: the man who forced Czechoslovakia to hand over large territories to Hitler, despite the fact those territories were never a part of Germany. He did that with full knowledge that the Czechs were ready to fight, and that Poland was going to side with France in a conflict with the Nazi Germany. Then he forced Czechoslovakia to hand over parts of its territory to Hungary. What a friend of the peaceful Czechs and Slovaks.

Really, among those people Poland looks like a freshly minted angel.


-

[4thskorpion]

The Belarusians were exceptionally loyal to the Polish Republic and the best soldiers Poland had during the war with the Nazi Germany. Much better than the Ukrainians and the Jews.

Disappointingly, but not unexpectedly, you let your anti-Jewish prejudices get the better of you again :roll:

Poland was the saviour of Ukrainians and the only one they had.

I don't think Stepan Bandera would agree with that nonsense.


BTW Paul N. Hehn was Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York.....and your academic credentials are:

- - - This space is deliberately left blank - - -

[4thskorpion]

Based on population ethnicity, Cieszyn was rightfully part of Poland, certainly not Czech.

However based on internationally recognised national boundaries set in 1918 Teschen was Czech but this did not stop Nazi Germany and an opportunistic Poland becoming willing partners in the dismemberment of independent Czechoslovakia in 1938. Soviet Prime Minister, Molotov, denounced the Poles as being "Hitler's jackals", was he wrong?

It seems perfectly clear how the annexation of Teschen by Poland set the tone for its own failures to regain from the greater powers that which it "lost" in WWII.

Polish threats of military action to impose its will on Lithuania in 1938 in order to settle a border dispute following the annexation of the Vilnius Region by Poland in 1920 was another example of opportunistic Polish chauvinism.

[wm]

That part of the border never was internationally recognized and as I said the tiny area was given to Poland by France and Britain. In the same manner other and much larger areas were given to the Nazi Germany and to Hungary by the same France and Britain.

Your version of history seems to be straight from the leftist British press of the thirties as written by the so called "useful idiots" and sometimes outright agents of the NKVD.

That region was brutally wrenched out from Poland when the Soviets were approaching Warsaw - desperately defended by the Poles and French and American volunteers. By a country which took the side of the Soviets, blocked armaments transports to Poland and didn't allow the Hungarians to send their Army to join the defense of Poland.

Maybe it should be mentioned that in 1926 Poland offered to give up the Teschen area in exchange for a defensive treaty against Germany and the USSR. A treaty which could have saved Czechoslovakia from the Nazi Germany, and its appeasement-prone British and French friends. But that offer was rejected.
I wonder, has Professor Emeritus ever heard about it. Most likely never.

I don't think Stepan Bandera would agree with that nonsense.

Well, well another moral giant. The father of the movement (popularly called Banderities) responsible for the extermination of maybe up to 200,000 Poles, Jews, Russians, Czechs and least but not last Ukrainians with brutality unseen in that war.

Maybe we should ask the Ukrainian lieutenant general Pawło Szandruk, a hero of the 1939 Defensive War, recipient of Poland's highest military decoration Virtuti Militari what he think about it.
In 1945 he and thousands of his Ukrainian soldiers and their families were saved from certain death by the Poles despite dogged determination of the British to hand them over to the Soviets.

[4thskorpion]

Your version of history seems to be straight from the leftist British press of the thirties as written by the so called "useful idiots" and sometimes outright agents of the NKVD.

hehe, one could hardly call Churchill a leftist or an agent of the NKVD:

In his postwar memoirs, Winston Churchill compared Germany and Poland to vultures landing on the dying carcass of Czechoslovakia and lamented that "over a question so minor as Teschen, they [the Poles] sundered themselves from all those friends in France, Britain and the United States who had lifted them once again to a national, coherent life, and whom they were soon to need to sorely. ... It is a mystery and tragedy of European history that a people capable of every heroic virtue ... as individuals, should repeatedly show such inveterate faults in almost every aspect of their governmental life."

wm, with respect I have noticed that you are quick to denigrate various learned professor's without ever posting your own academic credentials or published papers on any of the subjects that you say these various professors' really know nothing about whereas you do.