Adolf Hitler’s speech on 30 January 1939 and Lebensraum

[ljadw]

The executions/murders were done secretly because the public execution of 40000 persons would hurt the sensibilities of Western journalists and politicians .

You can do better than this.

The Moscow trials were done publicly and were supported by Western politicians and media. Why ?Because it is easier to defend the execution of 100 people than the execution of 40000 people .It is a question of numbers .

"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." Joe Stalin

That is just the opposite of what Stalin said. Go figure!

And the Poles were not POW's.Why ?
1 There was no war between Poland and the USSR So the Poles just "gave" eastern Poland to the Soviets?

2 A lot of them were civilians . Yes ~8,000 were non-combatants, which now, somehow, makes the killings a little less illegal?

Other point : as a lot of people you are confusing legal and fair .
A judgement/trial has only to be legal , but not to be fair . Ah, I see, the Soviet Union had laws on its books that sanctioned state murder. Good to know. Could you locate them for me. Afterall, you are the one making this assertion.

For Katyn : unless someone can prove that the executions were illegal,and as long as the Russian courts have not nullified the executions,the conclusion must be that they are legal . It is not on a non-Russian court to say that executions in Russia were illegal. If such a court would say this, it would be a proof of imperialism,colonialism and racism . So then why did the Soviet Union for the longest time deny that it had killed 22,000 Poles, hide the killings, tried to blame others for the killings IF THEY WERE LEGAL????

Do Russian courts nullify the decisions of non Russian courts ? NO . Thus,...

Without a Declaration of War,there was legally no war before 1939 . Something that was benefiting a lot of countries (neutrality act ) .
The USSR did not need laws that sanctioned state murder: as long as the USSR had no laws that did forbid state murder,there was no problem .
There were till one generation ago,no laws in most countries against air pollution, thus air pollution was not illegal .
And the SU was denying, hiding and blaming some one else,not because the killings were illegal ( they were as legal/illegal as those of the Purges ) but because it would help the Germans and the anti communists in Britain and the USA.If there was no war, it is very possible that the Soviets would have told the world about Katyn .
Katyn was as legal as T4 Aktion ( the judges of he Doctors Trials refused to condemn T4 ).No one in Britain, in the US and the USSR said that Katyn/T4 were illegal .
Why ? Because it was not their business : in those days ,governments were free to do what they liked in their countries .And also because it was politically not advisable to attack an ally in times of war .
There was nothing special about T 4 and Katyn :people were already killed in Germany for the same reason and much more people were killed in the USSR before Katyn . And no one was frowning. Not even when 300000 Chinese civilians were killed in Nanking .
Katyn was the business of Poland and the Soviets . Not of other people . T 4 was the business of the German people and the Nazi regime ( as long as it was limited to Germans only ) .Not of other people .Nanking was the business of CHina and Japan . Not of other people .
Before WW2 a lot of people in Britain wanted to use the USSR as an ally to stop Hitler ,although they knew what Stalin was doing . Churchill even said that the Soviet invasion of Poland was a good thing .Thus their attacks after the war on Katyn were only hypocrisy .

I'm in agreement with G. L. Gregory; You are trolling and with that, the Iggy list.

Is it trolling to say that FDR and Churchill knew very well in 1943 who was responsible for Katyn,but preferred to hide this and preferred to blame the Germans ?
When they remained silent in 1943,what was than their moral authority when they accused the Soviets after the war ?
US media hided what happened during the Purges, thus they had no authority to talk about Katyn after the war .
Besides :Katyn was not their business .

[ljadw]

To say that the Soviet Union was guilty for Katyn is the same as saying that the US were guilty because of slavery .Both are meaningless blahblah .
It is not because that for us Katyn, T4, slavery are morally reprehensible, that Katyn, T4, slavery were considered as crimes by their contemporaries.
And only the opinion of the contemporaries is important,because we have no right to impose our views on the past .
Women in France had no voting rights til 1945 . Bad for them . But that thus not mean that France is guilty,was guilty and that the present French president should excuse himself and ask pardon in the name of France .
NO ONE of us must ask pardon for what our forefathers have done .Because we did not do Katyn, T 4, we were no slaveholders .

[wm]

Katyń was a massive war crime under the "Convention Respecting the Laws and Custom of War on Land" (1907).
The Soviet Union signed it in 1925.
Because the doctrine of continuity of States Russia is responsible for Katyń too - especially that Russia doesn't deny continuity between the USSR and Russia.

Slavery wasn't a crime. There was no international law that forbade it. It was a crime according to local laws of some countries but not in the US.

For those reasons, Katyń has nothing to do with slavery. As simple as that.

[wm]

Without a Declaration of War,there was legally no war before 1939 .

Not true. A declaration of war was required by the "Convention Relative to the Opening of Hostilities" (1907).
Its main purpose was to notify the neutral Powers about the existence of a state of war.
Additionally:
"Neutral Powers, nevertheless, cannot rely on the absence of notification if it is clearly established that they were in fact aware of the existence of a state of war."

So basically a declaration of war was required but it meant nothing. Certainly lack of it didn't mean there was no war.

[wm]

It's not the declaration of war that's relevant here but the definition of aggression according to the "Convention for the Definition of Aggression" (1933), signed by the USSR in 1934.
The convention defined an act of aggression as (among others):

Invasion by its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State.

[ljadw]

Katyń was a massive war crime under the "Convention Respecting the Laws and Custom of War on Land" (1907).
The Soviet Union signed it in 1925.
Because the doctrine of continuity of States Russia is responsible for Katyń too - especially that Russia doesn't deny continuity between the USSR and Russia.

Slavery wasn't a crime. There was no international law that forbade it. It was a crime according to local laws of some countries but not in the US.

For those reasons, Katyń has nothing to do with slavery. As simple as that.

The Convention of 1907 was not an international law .
Russia did not exist in 1940,thus it can not be responsible for what happened in 1940 .
The BRD did not exist in 1940,thus it was not responsible for what the Third Reich was doing .
Turkey did not exist in 1915,thus it was not responsible for what happened to the Armenians .
In 1940 a state could do at will with the inhabitants of its territory .
No one protested against what happened in the Gulag,thus there is no reason to whine about what happened in Katyn 80 years ago . Those who do it,do it for political reasons and are abusing what happened to the victims .

[ljadw]

Katyń was a massive war crime under the "Convention Respecting the Laws and Custom of War on Land" (1907).

So were the killings of Jews by Poles after WW1 and after WW2 : see what happened in Lomza and Jedwabnne .
More than 100000 Jews were murdered after WW1 by Poles, Ukrainians,White and Red Russians .That's why it is suicidal of the Poles to continue 80 years after the facts to talk about Katyn for political reasons .

Or one continues to bore people with histories about ALL atrocities,from all sides that happened 80 years ago and more,or one stops with picking the atrocities from one side only .

[wm]

The Convention of 1907 was not an international law .

I wrote the USSR signed it in 1925, not that it was an international law.

Russia did not exist in 1940,thus it can not be responsible for what happened in 1940 .

The Russian Federation has right from the beginning of its existence claimed to be the continuing State of the USSR.

Russia was authorized to assume the Soviet Union's UN membership, including its permanent seat on the Security Council.
The Soviet Ambassador to the UN delivered a letter signed by Russian President Yeltsin to the UN Secretary-General dated December 24, 1991, informing him that by virtue of the Alma-Ata Protocol, Russia was the successor state to the USSR. After being circulated among the other UN member states, with no objection raised, the statement was declared accepted on the last day of the year, December 31, 1991.

[wm]

So were the killings of Jews by Poles after WW1 and after WW2 : see what happened in Lomza and Jedwabnne.

No, it wasn't - for the simple reason Poland didn't do it but encouraged by the Germans individuals avenging local Jewish collaboration with the genocidal Soviet occupant.

More than 100000 Jews were murdered after WW1 by Poles, Ukrainians,White and Red Russians .That's why it is suicidal of the Poles to continue 80 years after the facts to talk about Katyn for political reasons .

It happened in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War, Poland had nothing to do with it.
Anyway the lower estimate is 20,000 and the Russian Civil War resulted in 10 million dead civilians. Not only Jews were killed at that time - that's fake history.

[wm]

The background:

It was literally a chaos which released unbridled anarchy across Russia. ...
Anybody who wanted and was able to rob and kill was robbing and killing whoever he wanted. ...
Officers of the Russian Army were massacred in the hundreds and thousands by bands of mutinous rabble. Entire families of landowners were murdered ..., estates ... were burned; valuable pieces of art were pilfered and destroyed ... in some places in manors all living things including livestock were exterminated. Mob rule spread terror ... on the streets of cities. Owners of plants and factories were driven out of their enterprises and dwellings...
Tens of thousands people all over Russia were shot for the glory of the proletarian revolution ...; others ... rotted in stinking and vermin-infested prisons as hostages...
It was not a crime or personal actions that put a man under the axe but his affiliation with a certain social stratum or class. It would be an absolute miracle if, under conditions when whole human groups were designated for extermination, the group named 'Jews' remained exempt. ...
The curse of the time was that ... it was possible to declare an entire class or a tribe 'evil. ... So, condemning an entire social class to destruction ... is called revolution, yet to kill and rob Jews is called a pogrom? ... The Jewish pogrom in the South of Russia was a component of the All-Russian pogrom.
Russia and the Russian Jews by Joseph Bickermann

The "Convention Respecting the Laws and Custom of War on Land" (1907) didn't concern itself with civil wars, the Russians could have slaughtered themselves as much as they liked - it wasn't a war crime.
But Katyń was, as the protection of POWs and the civilian population of occupied territories was the most important part of it.

[ljadw]

So were the killings of Jews by Poles after WW1 and after WW2 : see what happened in Lomza and Jedwabnne.

No, it wasn't - for the simple reason Poland didn't do it but encouraged by the Germans individuals avenging local Jewish collaboration with the genocidal Soviet occupant.

Very feeble excuse :
when the Cheka killed 4000 Poles,it is today Russia and Putin who are responsible .
When Poles killed thousands of Jews after both WWs ,today Poland is not responsible .
The killing of Jews by Poles is the cause of a lot of friction between Poland and Israel .

[ljadw]

So were the killings of Jews by Poles after WW1 and after WW2 : see what happened in Lomza and Jedwabnne.

No, it wasn't - for the simple reason Poland didn't do it but encouraged by the Germans individuals avenging local Jewish collaboration with the genocidal Soviet occupant.

More than 100000 Jews were murdered after WW1 by Poles, Ukrainians,White and Red Russians .That's why it is suicidal of the Poles to continue 80 years after the facts to talk about Katyn for political reasons .

It happened in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War, Poland had nothing to do with it.
Anyway the lower estimate is 20,000 and the Russian Civil War resulted in 10 million dead civilians. Not only Jews were killed at that time - that's fake history.

4 July 1946 : Polish police in Kielce murdered 40 Jews,42 others were wounded .
No one was punished .
If that is not morally wrong, why would Katyn be morally wrong ?
Unless the life of a Jew is less worth than the life of a Pole .

[wm]

4 July 1946 : Polish police in Kielce murdered 40 Jews,42 others were wounded .
No one was punished.

Where do you buy such fake history?
9 people were sentenced to death and about 30 to prison - there were only 3 members of the security forces among them.
it was mostly semi-literate workers from a nearby factory acting on a rumor the Jews were killing kids.

btw the (communist) security forces were run by Jakub Berman - a man as Jewish as Moses himself.
And Jews made up 19% of the formation workforce, and held half of the managerial positions there (“Revisiting Jewish Role in Polish Security Service” by Batya Knebel).
That "Polish police" wasn't that Polish (and the Communist Party, and the Army).

In the few post-war Poland was a destroyed, lawless country where war with the invading Soviets and their local helpers was going on.
Resulting in tens of thousands killed, hundreds of thousands arrested or deported.
In such hellish circumstances, the demand Jews weren't killed is absurd.

"Thousands of Jews" is wrong, and even if perfectly understandable considering the hell unleashed in Poland post-WW1 and post-WW2.

And as I wrote the events weren't covered by the "Convention Respecting the Laws and Custom of War on Land" (1907) anyway.

[ljadw]

1 A Jewish communist does not exist : both are excluding each other: communists are anti
Semites. Thus there were no Jews in the Polish secret police .
2 About the Pogrom : the Polish historian Jan T .Gros has a different opinion than you .
3 If it was all the work of the Communists,why did the Polish minister of education deny that Poles were involved in the pogrom .

[ljadw]

Other point : the farther away the event, the less authority we have to label something as a crime, as morally wrong .
Only a COURT of JUSTICE can label something as a crime, not laymen .And for Katyn :
when the responsibles lived, not one of them was accused, condemned.
Now the responsibles are dead,thus they can not be judged by a court,thus it is impossible to label Katyn as a war crime .
About the ( subjective and anti law ) expression ''morally wrong '' : only the contemporaries could give their opinion that something was morally wrong . Not us .For the simple reason that morals of today are different from morals from the past .Morals change, they do not remain the same .
2 examples :
Sacco di Roma : the catholic king of Spain (also Emperor ) was at war with the Pope and sent a ( mainly protestant ) army of mercenaries to Rome,where the inhabitants were killed and raped and the city plundered .Today,there would be an outcry, a lot of shocked (thus hypocrite ) persons and the UN,the Pope,etc would do a lot of blahblah .But : when it happened ? No indignation,nothing .And the Pope and the Emperor ? They became allies again .
The Conquistadores : when they arrived in Latin America, they plundered, killed, raped and took the aborigines into slavery . No one in Europe protested .
And the Aborigines ?Till Cortes,etc arrived ,they killed and raped each other,plundered and transformed the captives into slaves .And no one in Latin America protested .
Today ? The Conquistadores (and maybe the Aborigines ) would compare before the court of The Hague and their descendants ( til the 26 th generation ) would pay for what their forefathers had done .
People were less hypocrite in the past .
We, the laymen of today, are the last and the least to judge and condemn the past .