Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#46

Post by wm » 18 Nov 2019, 23:56

Poland can't sue Germany for the simple reason there is no international court with accepted jurisdiction in such cases.

Wrocław is a recent development, earlier the communists brought ruin and depressed development to the so-called regained territories.

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#47

Post by Futurist » 22 Nov 2019, 23:37

wm wrote:
18 Nov 2019, 23:56
Poland can't sue Germany for the simple reason there is no international court with accepted jurisdiction in such cases.
So, what court are the Poles thinking of when they're talking about this? :

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pola ... SKCN1S215R
Wrocław is a recent development, earlier the communists brought ruin and depressed development to the so-called regained territories.
Wroclaw's current architecture is mostly from after 1989?


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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#48

Post by wm » 02 Dec 2019, 21:14

Architecture no but the beauty yes. Communist Wroclaw was a dirty, North-Korea-like decaying city. Ruins from the ww2 still were standing just nearby the center of the city.

The Poles think rather about direct negotiations forced by international shaming.

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#49

Post by Sid Guttridge » 03 Dec 2019, 12:58

Hi Guys,

Is post-war Germany to be the gift that keeps on giving?

Where is it meant to stop? How many other countries want to spend an indefinite period hanging hungrily from the teets of the German cow?

If any country accepts EU money, the largest share of that has always come from Germany for over 60 years.

Poland has benefited massively from EU (and therefore German) money since it joined the EU. One wonders which bits of former German territory the Law(!) and Justice(!) Party are prepared to exchange for the money? Or are they after a double bite of the German cherry?

It was largely German money that has underwritten Greece's corrupted economy since the recession. One wonders why the Germans put up with it, when most Greeks own their own homes but most Germans don't. They might well ask why don''t the Greeks sell their own houses and bale themselves out?

I am somewhat overstating the above cases, but one can see the problems arising.

In some cases, Germany appears to have over paid compensation. Yugoslavia claimed it had lost some 1,700,000 dead as a result of the German occupation and was compensated accordingly. It now appears that Yugoslav dead only just topped the 1,000,000 mark. Are they to reimburse Germany? Of course not.

Poland has been the only country in the EU to entirely avoid a recession over the last ten years and seems to be doing quite nicely. Perhaps the Law and Justice Party should display a little more pride and dignity and move on?

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#50

Post by Futurist » 22 Jun 2020, 01:04

Sid Guttridge wrote:
03 Dec 2019, 12:58
Hi Guys,

Is post-war Germany to be the gift that keeps on giving?

Where is it meant to stop? How many other countries want to spend an indefinite period hanging hungrily from the teets of the German cow?

If any country accepts EU money, the largest share of that has always come from Germany for over 60 years.

Poland has benefited massively from EU (and therefore German) money since it joined the EU. One wonders which bits of former German territory the Law(!) and Justice(!) Party are prepared to exchange for the money? Or are they after a double bite of the German cherry?

It was largely German money that has underwritten Greece's corrupted economy since the recession. One wonders why the Germans put up with it, when most Greeks own their own homes but most Germans don't. They might well ask why don''t the Greeks sell their own houses and bale themselves out?
*Bail, not bale.

Anyway, Yeah, I am wondering if Poland might be pushing its luck a bit too far in regards to this. Of course, maybe Poland is simply trying to use this as payback in response to Germany's attempt to get Poland to accept Muslim refugees. IMHO, Poland should have the right to remain Polish and definitely have the right to remain European. I think that Western European countries were insufficiently selective as to which Muslim immigrants they accepted over the last several decades, with predictable and sometimes tragic consequences. :(
I am somewhat overstating the above cases, but one can see the problems arising.

In some cases, Germany appears to have over paid compensation. Yugoslavia claimed it had lost some 1,700,000 dead as a result of the German occupation and was compensated accordingly. It now appears that Yugoslav dead only just topped the 1,000,000 mark. Are they to reimburse Germany? Of course not.

Poland has been the only country in the EU to entirely avoid a recession over the last ten years and seems to be doing quite nicely. Perhaps the Law and Justice Party should display a little more pride and dignity and move on?

Cheers,

Sid.
Agreed.

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#51

Post by Sid Guttridge » 22 Jun 2020, 08:09

Hi Futurist,

Europe and Europeans don't actually exist.

"Europe" is just the name given to the western end of Eurasia by the people living there.

It has no geographical distinctiveness and its cultures and languages form a continuum from the UK to Japan.

Nor is Islam entirely alien. It accepts the Old Testament as scripture but, just as Christians tend to believe the New Testament trumps the Old, so Muslims believe the Koran Trump's both.

And, if we are being purist, Roman Catholicism's roots are outside "Europe", so perhaps this should be rejected as well? Same with the alphabet, farming, metallurgy, money, etc., etc.. Should the Hungarians, Jews and Gypsies be rejected as un-European? Where do we stop?

Strip outside influence away from "Europe" and we'd all be Neanderthals!

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. At least part of the problem lies in "Europe". The first sizeable Muslim immigration to France was of soldiers and their families who had supported France in Algeria. They were then clearly well disposed towards France. However, their grand children are often alienated from it and significant numbers supported Isis.
Last edited by Sid Guttridge on 22 Jun 2020, 08:19, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#52

Post by Futurist » 22 Jun 2020, 08:14

Sid Guttridge wrote:
22 Jun 2020, 08:09
Hi Futurist,

Europe and Europeans don't actually exist.

"Europe" is just the name given to the western end of Eurasia by the people living there.

It has no geographical distinctiveness and its cultures and languages form a continuum from the UK to Japan.

Nor is Islam entirely alien. It accepts the Old Testament as scripture but, just as Christians tend to believe the New Testament trumps the Old, so Muslims believe the Koran Trump's both.

And, if we are being purist, Roman Catholicism's roots are outside "Europe", so perhaps this should be rejected as well? Same with the alphabet, writing, metallurgy, etc., etc..

Strip outside influence away from "Europe" and we'd all be Neanderthals!

Cheers,

Sid.
TBH, I think that when people speak of Europe and European civilization they primarily talk about white people and everything that white people have accomplished throughout history. Obviously white people were subjected to various external influences--for instance, adopting a religion from the Middle East and adopting an alphabet whose proto-origins came from the Middle Eastern Phoenician alphabet as well as from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet#Evolution

Likewise, Europe had some influence from non-European forces at various points in history--for instance, when the Mongols conquered parts of Europe or when the Black Death spread from Asia to Europe. Still, Europeans--or at least some of them--do feel a sense of common heritage and common history. Indeed, this is the type of heritage and history that Pan-European nationalists as well as white nationalists appeal to.

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#53

Post by Sid Guttridge » 22 Jun 2020, 10:25

Hi Futurist,

There are no "white people". There are just brown people of various shades. In the literal sense, there are no races beyond the Human.

In Rhodesia I had a young "White" on call up before he went to university in South Africa. He believed the offspring of Bushmen with "Whites" or "Blacks" were infertile, like mules! To his credit, he wrote to me from university and apologised.

European identity is a state of mind. Culture changes, sometimes very fast. European culture from two centuries ago is massively different from today and much of it is indefensible by current "European" norms.

As they say, "The past is a foreign country".

Cheers,

Sid

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#54

Post by henryk » 22 Jun 2020, 21:40

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/ ... pan-review
The New Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan review – the present and future of the world
Published: 15-11-2018 ISBN: 9781526607423 Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing

Power is shifting eastwards ... travels in central Asia prompt a breezy analysis of how the world will be
Maya Jasanoff Sat 11 May 2019 09.00 BST

At the beginning of the 20th century, when the British empire spanned a sixth of the world, the geographer Halford Mackinder gave a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society laying out a theory of global power. “The pivot region of the world’s politics” was not in Britain or its seaborne empire, but “the vast area of Euro-Asia” that stretched from the Volga to the Yangtze. He called it the “heartland”, and whoever controlled it, he argued, controlled the world. Mackinder’s vision stood at odds with the political map of his times. Britain, notably, did not control the heartland; nor did the next biggest territorial empire, that of the French; nor did the emerging rivals Britons were worried about, Germany and the US. A century later, Mackinder has enjoyed a revival for his apparently prescient insights into today’s power politics.

Peter Frankopan doesn’t mention Mackinder, but this was the terrain he chronicled in his sweeping 2015 history The Silk Roads. In The New Silk Roads, he offers an extended epilogue that argues for the heartland’s continuing centrality to 21st-century trade and security. It cannot be a surprise to many readers that the balance of economic power today is tilting east – or that relative decline is having disruptive, polarising effects on the west. (Though just in case you have missed the news for the last couple of years, Frankopan quotes liberally from Donald Trump to make the point.) What The New Silk Roads contributes is a concise illustration of this shift from a Eurasian vantage point. Breezy and accessible, it seems perfectly pitched for a young student curious about globalisation, or for a passenger flying to China for the first time on business.

Peter Frankopan is professor of global history at Oxford University. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer
After a long preamble on how the world has changed over the past 25 years, Frankopan travels to central Asia to explore its economic salience today. Iran provides a third of India’s oil, Azerbaijan pumps gas to south-eastern Europe, Afghanistan is building a pipeline into Pakistan and India. A “dry port” at Khorgos, on the Chinese border with Kazakhstan, acts as a giant dispatch centre for goods shipped in from coasts well over 1,000 miles away, while a spanking new seaport sits on the Caspian shores of Turkmenistan. It’s the world’s largest port below sea level, and – the kind of unfamiliar detail Frankopan wields at his best – one of a host of Turkmen world records including the “largest handmade woven carpet, the largest indoor Ferris wheel … the largest star-shaped roof on a building and the largest symbol of a horse in the world”.
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In contrast to the secessionist drive of Trumpians and Brexiters, Frankopan shows how nations along the old Silk Road have been busily cultivating cross-border cooperation. A Eurasian Economic Union already reaches from Belarus through Russia to Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and has engaged in trade talks with Iran. Then there’s “the Bright Road initiative of Kazakhstan, the Two Corridors, One Economic Circle initiative of Vietnam, the Middle Corridor initiative of Turkey, the Development Road initiative of Mongolia” – all echoes, of course, of the biggest connective project of all, China’s One Belt, One Road initiative.

Breathtakingly ambitious and “breathtakingly ambiguous”, the belt and road plan embodies China’s ambition to build land and sea connections to its neighbours. Much of The New Silk Roads is about how China’s “road” has come to ring the world. “Over 80 countries are now part of the initiative,” Frankopan points out, encompassing more than 63% of the world’s population and 29% of its global economic output.
Because of the genuinely global sweep of Chinese investment, Frankopan’s “new Silk Road” is often less an account of what’s happening in the heartland itself than it is a chronicle of the latest stage in modern globalisation. The terms of globalisation as most of us know it today have been laid down over the last 40 years or so by western neoliberals. The interesting question is what the rules of a China-led global order will look like. Frankopan cites Xi Jinping on China’s desire to “boost mutual understanding, mutual respect and mutual trust” and promote “peace and development”. As critics will swiftly note, such principles sit alongside Chinese government practices including sabre-rattling in the South China Sea; predatory loan practices in sub-Saharan Africa; pressure placed on commercial airlines to change in-flight maps “to reflect Beijing’s views of the status of Taiwan”; and, most disturbingly, the detention of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs into “re-education camps”. A glance at the history of modern imperialism will showthat the holders of global power live in glass houses, and there are plenty of stones to go around.

The term “empire” scarcely appears in this book, but the concept is pervasive. From the Atlantic-Pacific canal in Nicaragua to the Cape-to-Cairo railway in Africa, Chinese-led infrastructure projects mirror those undertaken by western investors and engineers 150 years ago. These may well be purely economic ventures, at least in their inception,, at least at their inception, rather than bids for territorial or political control: Xi has insisted that China’s investments in sub-Saharan Africa are guided by a policy of “no interference in African countries’ internal affairs; no imposition of our will on African countries; no attachment of political strings to assistance to Africa; and no seeking of selfish political gains”. Yet it was often to secure economic assets – the trading posts of Bengal and Canton, the mines of the Rand, the Suez Canal – that the British empire advanced across Africa and Asia, despite professed intentions to the contrary.
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Frankopan quotes a Chinese commentator who has pointed out that “China had never been a colonial power. ‘If it hasn’t been in the past, why should it be now?’” But as any student of 20th-century America knows, you don’t need to call yourself an empire to act like one. And as the Chinese know best of all, you don’t have to be formally colonised to find yourself at the mercy of outside powers. Frankopan occasionally overreaches rhetorically, as when he describes Eurasia’s surging economic power as “similar to what happened in the decades that followed the crossing of the Atlantic by Columbus … and the near-simultaneous rounding of the southern tip of Africa by Vasco da Gama”. Many Chinese minorities are paying a hideous price for China’s expansion – but even the mass internment of Uighurs doesn’t (yet) match the genocidal, germicidal population replacement that European imperialism unleashed in the Americas and the Pacific. And while China may be a game-changing market for Starbucks (which is planning to open 2,000 coffee shops there by 2021), as Europe once was for Chinese tea, such consumption shifts don’t pack the ecological punch of the Columbian exchange.

Then again, one doesn’t need to find analogies in order to gauge the transformations of the present world. We are at the beginning of an epochal shift, but the forces disrupting the world order now are far bigger than specific nation states. They are the digital revolution and, pre-eminently, climate change. To modify Mackinder, whoever controls water supplies will control the world – and China’s rulers seem to know it.

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#55

Post by Futurist » 24 Jun 2020, 22:11

Sid Guttridge wrote:
22 Jun 2020, 10:25
Hi Futurist,

There are no "white people". There are just brown people of various shades. In the literal sense, there are no races beyond the Human.

In Rhodesia I had a young "White" on call up before he went to university in South Africa. He believed the offspring of Bushmen with "Whites" or "Blacks" were infertile, like mules! To his credit, he wrote to me from university and apologised.
The mules part is actually pretty funny! :D Anyway, though, the different human races aren't THAT different from each other!
European identity is a state of mind. Culture changes, sometimes very fast. European culture from two centuries ago is massively different from today and much of it is indefensible by current "European" norms.

As they say, "The past is a foreign country".

Cheers,

Sid
Interesting approach. However, there's still a common genetic heritage, no?

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#56

Post by Sid Guttridge » 25 Jun 2020, 02:01

Hi Futurist.,

There is a degree of common genetic heritage within Europe, but there is also no genetic cut off between Europe and the rest of humanity. The Hungarians have their origins East of the Urals. The Iranians are Indo-Europeans. Indeed, as so many Indians are Indo-Europeans, it is possible that there is more European DNA in "Asia" than in "Europe".

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#57

Post by Futurist » 25 Jun 2020, 02:22

Sid Guttridge wrote:
25 Jun 2020, 02:01
Hi Futurist.,

There is a degree of common genetic heritage within Europe, but there is also no genetic cut off between Europe and the rest of humanity. The Hungarians have their origins East of the Urals.
But with a lot of subsequent intermarriage with Europeans, no?
The Iranians are Indo-Europeans. Indeed, as so many Indians are Indo-Europeans, it is possible that there is more European DNA in "Asia" than in "Europe".

Cheers,

Sid.
Yeah, some Iranians, Afghans, Tajiks, Middle Easterners, North Africans, and even South Asians (ex. Benazir Bhutto) look white. So, it's possible that there is some or even a lot of common ancestry between them. That said, though, in regards to Indians specifically, AFAIK the Aryans who conquered India several millenniums or so ago subsequently intermarried with India's indigenous dark-skinned population--which is why most but not all Indians nowadays have dark or at least relatively dark skin. Someone such as Rahul Gandhi would, of course, be an exception, but then again, he is half-Italian.

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#58

Post by Steve » 25 Jun 2020, 15:03

Syd wrote on June 22 that “European identity is a state of mind” this seems to be a novel idea perhaps originating in the cult of political correctness.

The word identity as defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary is “who a person is, or the qualities of a person or group that makes them different from others” I wonder what state of mind defines a European identity. Would anyone argue that let us say a Wahhabist from Saudi Arabia has a state of mind that would enable him to be classed as European? If one should think yes then presumably anyone in the world could claim European identity which I would suggest is nonsense. However, if the Wahhabist decided to change his state of mind and adopt a state of mind maybe based on Angela Markel’s will he then be a European? If the answer is yes then presumably if I were to change my state of mind to that of a Wahhabist my state of mind would no longer be European and I would stop being a European.

There are things that define the great majority of Europeans and until very recently they would have been appearance, Christian beliefs, languages divided into three main groups and culture. A European style culture is quite uniform across continental Europe and until recently was clearly very different from say Islamic, Chinese, Hindu, or Zulu. The world is becoming a more homogenised place and old Europe is sinking into the homoginist soup but it is not there yet. The world has been changed more by European civilisation and its technological advances than by any other civilisation and Europeans should be proud of it.

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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#59

Post by gebhk » 25 Jun 2020, 19:14

Hi Sid and Steve
In the literal sense, there are no races beyond the Human.
It seems to me that we are mixing up two quite different things - species and race/breed. If by 'human' you mean the species Homo sapiens, and if you define race in the narrow sense of genetics, ie of breed, then clearly there are different races of humans. Because members of the same species can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, by definition races will have fluid boundaries. This is as true of humans as, say, of dogs, rabbits or horses. However while closely related species of the same genera can interbreed, the offspring such as mules, hinnies, tigons, ligers and such-like are almost invariably infertile. I can only presume your 'friend' believed Bushmen were a different species of hominid?

Regarding 'identity', I would suggest you are both right. Firstly there is the matter of perspective. Are we talking about how the individual identifies himself or how the word identifies the individual? To avoid contentious human examples, I recall a good friend of mine, like me a dedicated animal lover. He lost a rabbit doe just after she gave birth to a litter and one by one the orphaned kits died despite his best efforts. In desperation he gave the last survivor to his ALASATIAN bitch who had just had a litter of her own and, to everyone's surprise, the kit thrived. As an adult, the creature showed no interest in herbage, hay or rabbit pellets but ate a diet Pedigree Chum and meat offcuts (with many violent and frankly disgusting consequences - the lagomorph gut is not designed for a diet of meat!). It came to heel, patrolled the garden and chased cats (and bitches!). It even tried to bark with limited success. The point is that, clearly, it identified itself as a dog. The rest of the world identified it as a rabbit, obviously, albeit a very peculiar one. Things came to a head when a visiting fox identified our protagonist as lunch and the rabbit identified the fox as an intruder to be chased. The fox got very badly mauled! The point is. I guess, that much grief can (and frequently does) come from identification dissonances between the personal and societal.

And the Poles as a whole have a problem with this. Most Poles who care about such things, identify with Western Europe and its culture. Western Europe does not necessarily reciprocate. To some or even many Western Europeans, Poles were often a variety of Russian who lived in a frozen realm where polar bears roamed the streets of the capital (the latter image perhaps propagated by the media storm created by Baska Murmanska (Mumansk Babs), a polar bear adopted by a Polish regiment who took part in a military parade through Warsaw in 1919).

Secondly identity is a very nested concept. Do we mean genetic, apparent, cultural, religious, political, etc identity? Especially as these various factors are often linked in subtle and not so subtle ways. "Is he a catholic or a protestant?" asked Patrick. "He's an atheist" I said. "Yes, but is he a catholic atheist or a protestant atheist?" Patrick insisted...
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Re: Churchill - Katyn - Appeasement

#60

Post by Futurist » 25 Jun 2020, 21:24

Steve wrote:
25 Jun 2020, 15:03
Syd wrote on June 22 that “European identity is a state of mind” this seems to be a novel idea perhaps originating in the cult of political correctness.

The word identity as defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary is “who a person is, or the qualities of a person or group that makes them different from others” I wonder what state of mind defines a European identity. Would anyone argue that let us say a Wahhabist from Saudi Arabia has a state of mind that would enable him to be classed as European? If one should think yes then presumably anyone in the world could claim European identity which I would suggest is nonsense. However, if the Wahhabist decided to change his state of mind and adopt a state of mind maybe based on Angela Markel’s will he then be a European? If the answer is yes then presumably if I were to change my state of mind to that of a Wahhabist my state of mind would no longer be European and I would stop being a European.

There are things that define the great majority of Europeans and until very recently they would have been appearance, Christian beliefs, languages divided into three main groups and culture. A European style culture is quite uniform across continental Europe and until recently was clearly very different from say Islamic, Chinese, Hindu, or Zulu. The world is becoming a more homogenised place and old Europe is sinking into the homoginist soup but it is not there yet. The world has been changed more by European civilisation and its technological advances than by any other civilisation and Europeans should be proud of it.
Great post, Steve! That said, though, for what it's worth, Eastern Europe looks like it will continue to remain European for a very long time to come. After all, countries such as Poland are not exactly friendly when it comes to receiving large numbers of non-European immigrants and especially large numbers of Muslim immigrants.

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