Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

Discussions on all aspects of Poland during the Second Polish Republic and the Second World War. Hosted by Piotr Kapuscinski.
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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#16

Post by Futurist » 04 Dec 2020, 04:40

wm wrote:
04 Dec 2020, 04:24
There was nothing ambitious in it. They transported millions of Poles in cattle cars or open platforms and dumped them somewhere.
There was nothing more to it.
Having millions of Poles rebuild cities and farms in the Recovered Territories was pretty ambitious, no?

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#17

Post by wm » 04 Dec 2020, 11:52

Not quite. It was relatively easy because the foundations were intact, and the cities infrastructure too.
Germany and Japan rebuilt very fast, and San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, it took just a couple of years there.


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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#18

Post by Futurist » 04 Dec 2020, 21:30

I thought that a lot of the cities' infrastructure was destroyed as a result of WWII? Wroclaw/Breslau, for instance.

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#19

Post by gebhk » 04 Dec 2020, 22:18

With modern equipment and materials cities can be rebuilt very quickly, particularly if corners are cut. One consequence of corner cutting in Warsaw is the many buildings that have their services concreted in. This is infinitely quicker than doing the job properly with accessible ducting. However, needless to say, any repairs have to be started by jack-hammering the offending pipes or cables out of their concrete tomb and the whole lot has to be replaced every 10 years or so which involves smashing open all the walls, columns and floors.
Last edited by gebhk on 05 Dec 2020, 11:45, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#20

Post by Futurist » 05 Dec 2020, 02:55

What kind of building services are you referring to here? Telephones, water, electricity, and the like?

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#21

Post by wm » 05 Dec 2020, 04:06

Everything a house/building needs.
For example, sewage systems are costly and need lots of time to build - but there were mostly intact in the Recovered Territories.

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#22

Post by Futurist » 05 Dec 2020, 04:22

Interesting. I guess that those battles (such as for Breslau) weren't actually deadly enough to destroy sewer systems, which I'm presuming were located underground and thus were mostly safe from receiving any battle damage.

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#23

Post by gebhk » 05 Dec 2020, 11:52

I am sure WM is right. It is the basic grid, underground and overground that is the biggest albeit hidden, challenge. If that is in place, whacking up brick walls and pouring concrete is just a matter of material, manpower, cement mixers and cranes. And most of all, determination. You'd be amazed how much wall a really good bricklayer can put up in day!

My impression from talking to folk who lived through this, is that just after the war most folk didn't give a sheep's withit for the antics of the party worthies, they just wanted to catch up with their own lost years and with singular determination to rebuild their lives and their country. My father has always held that the greatest crime of the communist regime was to kill that spirit.

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#24

Post by Futurist » 06 Dec 2020, 02:28

Did Poles regain that spirit after 1989?

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#25

Post by gebhk » 07 Dec 2020, 16:11

Difficult to say as I don't have a n adequate handle on this. An impression, and very much just an impression, is yes and no. I think there was very much a great deal of energy to improve the quality of life of self and family. However I don't think there was the same commitment to 'the country'. One has to bear in mind that in the immediate aftermath of the war, the people that remained, in the main were the product of the interbellum - a period of time during which 'the good of Poland' was deemed the highest value both officially but also internalised by much of society. This was an immutable for the period, regardless of political views. or as my great-aunt used to say allegorically "The Mariacki church is beautiful, but that Pilsudski guy I can't stand!'. Since then over 80 years have passed and the bulk of the population has been brought up in an entirely different ambiance.

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#26

Post by Futurist » 12 Dec 2020, 05:24

Did the Polish Communists not put the same emphasis on commitment to "the country"? As in, did they prefer the international proletarian struggle over the national Polish struggle?

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#27

Post by gebhk » 12 Dec 2020, 10:56

Well not really - the party had the 'leading role', not Poland. And without getting into the reasons, the rhetoric such as it was, was not internalised by the majority of the population. By that I mean the powers that be failed to achieve the feeling that personal interest was aligned with Poland's. On the contrary, the feeling seemed to prevail that whatever you did, however hard you worked, it would make no difference. It is probably no coincidence that for many, Janusz Glowacki's poem beginning with the words (roughly translated) "Don't criticise, don't make trouble, sit on your ass and keep nodding" is a fitting epitaph for the PRL. In short, the best you could hope for was to stay under the radar and if you do, you may even live long enough to receive an old age pension without getting a kick up the ass along the way.

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Re: Poland's long-term war aims in World War II

#28

Post by Futurist » 13 Dec 2020, 00:12

You know, it's pretty sad that any Pole with memories of the pre-World War II era was already pretty old by the time that Communism fell in Poland. Even someone who was five years old when World War II broke out in 1939 would have already been 55-56 years old when Communism fell in Poland in 1989-1990. Just ten years until retirement age! :(

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