Frosted Flake posted:

Speaking of Poland, has anyone read (or heard of) Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation 1939-1944? It's part of the same project as Snyder and Applebaum, and was published as part of the push to create "Central Europe" for EU and NATO expansion, but it says the quiet part loud and takes things to their logical conclusions in a way that's still jaw dropping:

"Emphasizes that the Polish people, like the Jews, were victims of a German war of annihilation which nearly succeeded. While some Poles helped Jews, others helped the Germans to hunt them down. However, these were condemned by the Polish underground. Ch. 5 (pp. 121-151) argues that Polish failure to save the Jews was due not to antisemitism but rather to preoccupation with their own survival and lack of mutual social contacts. Contends that Polish antisemitism was mainly an expression of resentment against Jewish economic domination, matched by Jewish discrimination against Poles. Poles resented the Jewish welcome of the Soviets in 1939. Up to 1942, they believed that the Jews were relatively safe in the ghettos. Also denies "exaggerated" accusations of antisemitism in the Anders Army. Ch. 6 (pp. 152-181) describes actions of the government-in-exile on behalf of the Jews; denies that the Home Army failed to help the Warsaw ghetto fighters."

Raskolnikov38 posted:

lmao liberals are so goddamn dumb

Frosted Flake posted:

They just printed Nazi talking points in more neutral language

thechosenone posted:

Well yes but my question was if they're gonna get to take a spin on the wheel of pain or if once their turn comes up they draw straws and make the low men on the totem pole a sacrifice for the rest, or do they just lose cohesion once their turn on the chopping block comes and they scatter like suicidal/homicidal/genocidal flies?

text editor posted:

Chamale posted:

Timothy Snyder uncritically cited a ton of Nazis in his book. I'm not familiar with the author of this book, but since he's associated with Snyder, I'm sure he sucks too.

fizzy posted:

Good news for India's relations with Russia - India has proposed that a G20 statement condemning the suffering caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, also accommodate the views of Russia and China that the forum is not the place for geopolitics

fizzy posted:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-is-gaining-ground-its-counter-offensive-natos-stoltenberg-2023-09-07/

Praising the Ukrainian forces for their achievements on the battlefield, he added: "The starting point is that the Russian army used to be the second strongest in the world. And now the Russian army is the second strongest in Ukraine. That's quite impressive by Ukrainians."

tatankatonk posted:

lmao what a hall of fame european liberal career. get Finland to join NATO and then resign to work for tony blair

Former PM Sanna Marin quits Finnish politics to join Tony Blair Institute
Marin, who stepped down as leader of the Social Democrats after finishing third in April’s election, to resign as MP

Sanna Marin, the former Finnish prime minister, has announced she will work as an adviser for the Tony Blair Institute after stepping down as head of her party.

Marin, who became one of Europe’s youngest leaders when she took office as prime minister in 2019 and oversaw Finland’s successful application to join Nato, formally stepped down as head of the Social Democrats earlier this month. She plans to resign as an MP.

“Time to move on,” she told the Finnish broadcaster Yle as she announced her departure from Finnish politics. “I am eager to step into a new role. I also believe that it can benefit the whole of Finland. I believe that I can serve those voters [in Finland] well and maybe even better in the new assignment.”

The job will include advising countries, governments and leaders on policy issues such as good governance, technology, climate and gender equality, she said.

VoicesCanBe posted:

jesus christ

Józef Piłsudski Did Nothing Wrong posted:

The Jews in interwar Poland had to contend more with economic and bureaucratic discrimination than with physical attacks. American and British observers discredited western reports of widespread pogroms in the early years of the Polish Republic. For instance, an alleged pogrom in Lwow in 1918 was a military massacre in which more Christians than Jews perished. Another reported pogrom in Pinsk in 1919 was in reality the execution of thirty-five Bolshevik infiltrators, a judgment an American investigator considered justified in the circumstances. The brief internment of Jews in Jablonna in 1920 did not result either in mistreatment or deaths. Moreover, in some places, as in Vilna in 1919 and 1920, the Jews put themselves in a vulnerable position by collaborating with Poland's enemies-Lithuanians and Bolsheviks. There was a revival of incidents against Jews immediately prior to World War 2. From 1935 to 1937, there were, according to a Jewish source, sixteen pogroms in which 118 Jews lost their lives. Admittedly, these were quite regrettable, but they do not compare with the death of 2,000 Jews who lost their lives in a single pogrom in the city of Strasbourg in the Middle Ages or the millions who lost their lives during the German occupation.

During Pilsudski's political leadership in Poland, which dominated virtually half of the years of independence the Poles enjoyed between the wars, the government was not anti-Semitic. From the Jewish point of view, Pilsudski was more desirable than Admiral Horthy of Hungary and King Carol of Romania. Upon Pilsudski's death, Jews joined Poles in mourning the death of a man many Jews called "Father" (Ojciec). Attempts by the post-Pilsudski regime, the Sanacja, to broaden its power base by appeals to anti-Semitism did not meet a responsive audience among most Poles. Poland's leading parties, the Socialists and the Peasant Party, rejected the Sanacja's anti-Semitic program. The fact that the Peasant Party saw emigration for the Jews as a solution to the socioeconomic problem confronting Poland did not mean the party was anti-Semitic; after all, many Jews at the time endorsed the idea. Only one major party in Poland was hostile to Jews-namely, the National Democrats; and according to one English historian, "they were no more rabid in their views on Jewry than on Germans, Ukrainians, socialists, or gypsies." Even the anti-Semitism of the National Democrats had its limits compared to the right-wing fascist group, Oboz Narodowo Radykalny-Falanga, headed by Boleslaw Piasecki, which had little popular support among the Poles.

Unlike other Central European countries, Poland did not enact Nuremberg-type laws against the Jews in the 1930s. Nor did it plan the destruction of the Jews as the Germans did. What happened to the Jews in Poland between the wars had nothing in common with what occurred to them under the Nazis during the Second World War. In fact, Poland was the exception among East Central European countries in the 1930s; Poland could boast major political opposition to the currents of extreme antiSemitism that swirled around it

...

Several factors had a negative impact on Polish attitudes toward Jews. Until at least the latter part of 1941, when the Germans began to exterminate the Jews, Poles felt that their situation was far worse than the Jews who lived in ghettos. They saw a big difference in Nazi aims toward the two groups; the Germans wanted to destroy the Poles politically, while they seemed to want only to cripple the Jews economically. After all, Jews as a group were not deported or executed as the Poles were in these early years. On the other hand, Jews in the ghettos tended to see only advantages that the Poles enjoyed on the Aryan side of the walls, while they alone experienced difficulties. Before the resistance efforts of the Jews developed later in the occupation, Poles perceived the Jews as being craven in their behavior toward the Germans, accepting without defiance the restrictions and persecutions imposed on them, collaborating with the Germans, and even denouncing Poles who hid them when the Germans discovered their hiding places outside the ghettos. By contrast, the Poles saw themselves as bearing their ordeal with pride and defiance. Poles were outraged by the active business the Jews conducted with the Germans, accused them of buying food which kept prices high, and saw many Jews preferring to have the Germans confiscate their goods rather than share them with Poles. On the other hand, those Poles who had economically benefitted from the move of the Jews to the ghettos by acquiring Jewish homes and businesses opposed the Polish government-in-exile's decree declaring all such actions under German occupation as illegal. "We will not return the shops and factories" was an all- too-familiar Polish cry.

"We shall never forget their [Jewish] behavior toward the Bolsheviks" was a familiar statement heard in Poland during the war, underscoring the negative behavior of many Jews during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland beginning in September 1939. Some of these Jews were influenced by Soviet propaganda which promised them improvement in their social and economic status. Others were known to be sympathizers with the Soviet system and welcomed the opportunity that presented itself. No doubt there were also Jews who, unhappy with some of the discrimination that had existed in prewar Poland, believed their condition would improve under new landlords, a hope that soon proved illusory. Jews in cities and towns displayed Red flags to welcome Soviet troops, helped to disarm Polish soldiers, and filled administrative positions in Soviet-occupied Poland. One report estimated that 75 percent of all the top administrative posts in the cities of Lwow, Bialystok, and Luck were in Jewish hands during the Soviet occupation. The Soviets with Jewish help shipped off the Polish intelligentsia to the depths of the Soviet Union. Some monasteries and convents were turned over to Jews.

Jewish collaboration with the Soviets, more than any other factor, was responsible for increasing anti-Semitism in Poland during the war. In these circumstances, many Poles did not understand and were even critical of the pro-Jewish declarations during these early years of the Polish government- in-exile. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Polish government was understandably alarmed that once the Germans reoccupied eastern Poland, the Poles there would try to revenge themselves on the Jews.

In the midst of the mutual antagonisms shared by Poles and Jews during the German occupation, the Germans launched a massive program of anti- Semitic propaganda through the media. They installed loudspeakers on street corners and in public places and published newspapers in Polish and German which continually spewed forth anti-Semitic themes. Wall posters, leaflets, illustrated brochures, and cinema programs, especially newsreels, were replete with anti-Semitic scenes. One Sturmer-type picture, which Nazis displayed, was a Jew with a louse crawling on his beard; the caption read, "Jews are crawling with the typhus." The Germans were responsible for burning a synogogue in Lodz and then blaming the Poles for doing it; the Germans explained that this was an angry Polish response to the alleged Jewish desecration earlier of a statue of Kosciuszko. The Germans, of course, were really responsible for the destruction of the Kosciuszko statue. The entire incident was given wide publicity in the press. Michal Borwicz described the technique the Germans used to sow discord between Poles and Jews:

"Anti-Semitism made use of a peculiar kind of "obligingness" in expectation of ignorance or lack of criticism on the part of the reader. At every opportunity ingenious quotations, historical examples, "facts", statistics, and so on were presented. The uncritical reader would grow hot under the collar at the Jews on the basis of examples dating back a few thousand years, although he would think it ridiculous to get excited against the English, the French, the Spanish, or the Swedes because of the behavior of their forebears.
The uncritical reader would grow incensed while reading quotations, mostly falsified anyway, from Jewish books thousands of years old, although no one experiences similar feelings toward other nations through the use of quotations from their medieval rubbish, tales, superstitions, and perversions."

The violence of German propaganda against the Jews increased after Hitler's armies attacked the Soviet Union. The Germans continually sought to connect the fight against the Bolsheviks and the Jews, thus underscoring in Polish minds the link between the Jew and Bolshevik. The destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 was justified to the Varsovians at least partially because of the mass graves found in Katyri, implying Jewish-Bolshevik guilt. The Germans also tried to divide the Polish people from its government-in-exile by emphasizing, falsely, Jewish influence in it.

It would be difficult to determine to what extent German propaganda influenced Polish attitudes toward the Jews. There appears to have been a general repudiation by Poles of German anti-Semitic propaganda. This may have been due to the fact that Polish anti-Semitism was not racial in character; instead, as already seen, it grew out of economic circumstances and the competition of people in an overpopulated country. Sometimes it took on a sectarian character or even an anticapitalist reaction, but-except for the National Radical Camp (Ob6z Narodowo Radykalny)-it did not take on racial attributes.

In addition to the incidents of informing and blackmailing of Jews, discussed previously, the most overt examples of anti-Semitism came during the early months of the occupation when the Germans encouraged gangs of young Polish hoodlums to attack Jews. Sometimes these criminals even attacked Poles. The pogroms against the Jews were not spontaneous; they usually were well-orchestrated by the Germans, who even conducted a course for members of anti-Semitic groups. The youngsters, often intoxicated, were paid by the Germans for their activity. One Jewish eyewitness described the scene in Warsaw during the Passover pogrom in 1940:

"The Passover pogrom continued about eight days. It began suddenly and stopped as suddenly. The pogrom was carried out by a crowd of youths, about 1,000 of them, who arrived suddenly in the Warsaw streets. Such types have never before been seen in the Warsaw streets. Clearly these were young ruffians specially brought from the suburbs. From the characteristic scenes of the pogrom I mention here a few: On the second day of Passover, at the corner of Wspolna and Marszalkowska Streets about 30 or 40 broke into and looted Jewish hat shops. German soldiers stood in the streets and filmed the scenes... ."

The Polish youngsters acted alone, but there have been instances when such bands attacked the Jews with the assistance of German military. The attitude of the Polish intellectuals toward the Jews was clearly a friendly one. and against the pogrom. It is a known fact that at the corner of Nowogrodzka Street and Marszalkowska a Catholic priest attacked the youngsters participating in the pogrom, beat them and disappeared. These youngsters received two zlotys daily from the Germans.

Of course, anti-Semitic groups rejoiced at these attacks, but moderate and socialist opinion in Poland condemned them. The Socialists joined the government press in decrying the criminal behavior of some Poles. The Socialists went so far as to label any Pole a collaborator who was involved in the least anti-Semitic incident and thus an "enemy who should be exterminated with complete ruthlessness . Even Emmanuel Ringelblum, who was often a severe critic of Polish behavior toward the Jews, admitted that the pogroms in Warsaw were limited to a small number of Poles: "No one will accuse the Polish nation of committing these constant pogroms and excesses against the Jewish population. The significant majority of the nation, its enlightened working-class, and the working intelligentsia, undoubtedly condemned these excesses, seeing in them a German instrument for weakening the unity of the Polish community and a lever to bring about collaboration with the Germans"

fizzy posted:

Good news for Ukraine - Ukraine is making progress with a counter offensive started in June to reclaim territory seized by Russia. The starting point is that the Russian army used to be the second strongest in the world. And now the Russian army is the second strongest in Ukraine. That's quite impressive by Ukrainians.


https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-is-gaining-ground-its-counter-offensive-natos-stoltenberg-2023-09-07/

Ukraine is gaining ground in its counter offensive, NATO chief says
Reuters
September 7, 20235:34 PM GMT+8Updated 13 hours ago

BRUSSELS, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Ukraine is making progress with a counter offensive started in June to reclaim territory seized by Russia, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday, even though it was slow going due to Russian fortifications and minefields.

"The Ukrainians are gradually gaining ground...They have been able to breach the defensive lines of the Russian forces, and they are moving forward," Stoltenberg told lawmakers in remarks at the European Parliament.

Since launching its offensive, Kyiv has struggled to break through entrenched Russian lines and has faced growing criticism in Western media of concentrating forces in the wrong places.

With Moscow's stretched military resources and dissent in the ranks, however, both sides have measured recent successes by taking control of tiny villages or small pockets of land.
Stoltenberg said it had to be expected that the offensive would be advancing only slowly.

"No one ever said that this was going to be easy," he noted. "Hardly any time in history we have seen more mines on the battlefield than we are seeing in Ukraine today. So it was obvious that this was going to be extremely difficult."

Ukrainian officials have said in the past week that their forces have managed to push past Russia's first line of defences but now confronted further lines in areas where Moscow has had time to build up fortifications and minefields.

"They are making progress. Not perhaps as much as we hoped for but they are gaining ground gradually," said the NATO chief. "Some hundred meters per day, meaning that when the Ukrainians are gaining ground, the Russians are losing ground."

Praising the Ukrainian forces for their achievements on the battlefield, he added: "The starting point is that the Russian army used to be the second strongest in the world. And now the Russian army is the second strongest in Ukraine. That's quite impressive by Ukrainians."

Frosted Flake posted:

How are you going to write a polemic about Judeo-Bolshevism and then say actually it was Nazi propaganda that no Poles participated in?

Frosted Flake posted:

Well, I hope expanding the EU to exploit cheap Polish labour was worth it

Frosted Flake posted:

I'm at a loss

"The Germans continually sought to connect the fight against the Bolsheviks and the Jews, thus underscoring in Polish minds the link between the Jew and Bolshevik."

"Jewish collaboration with the Soviets, more than any other factor, was responsible for increasing anti-Semitism in Poland during the war."



How are you going to write a polemic about Judeo-Bolshevism and then say actually it was Nazi propaganda that no Poles participated in?

VoicesCanBe posted:

jesus christ

bedpan posted:

Lech Walesa said in 1990 that "a gang of Jews had gotten hold of the trough and is bent on destroying us"

Don't know if this was a real belief or just said for show since the guy was also a paid spy for the Polish communist secret police

sum posted:

Those who volunteered in the first wave become refuseniks. It is better to go to court for not fulfilling an order than to die. An acquaintance of Vitaly voluntarily enlisted in the territorial defense. After being seriously wounded and rehabilitated, he was forcibly conscripted, but the desire to fight was gone. Now he is hiding with relatives.

bedpan posted:

iirc in the interwar years wasn't there a habsburg floating around in poland that had a good chance of becoming king?

Frosted Flake posted:

Archduke Wilhelm Franz of Austria, the Political Hapsburg who was involved with the OUN and Bandera?

Frosted Flake posted:

I'm at a loss

"The Germans continually sought to connect the fight against the Bolsheviks and the Jews, thus underscoring in Polish minds the link between the Jew and Bolshevik."

"Jewish collaboration with the Soviets, more than any other factor, was responsible for increasing anti-Semitism in Poland during the war."



How are you going to write a polemic about Judeo-Bolshevism and then say actually it was Nazi propaganda that no Poles participated in?

Frosted Flake posted:

Contends that Polish antisemitism was mainly an expression of resentment against Jewish economic domination, matched by Jewish discrimination against Poles

crepeface posted:

nazism with polish characteristics

Frosted Flake posted:

They just printed Nazi talking points in more neutral language

gradenko_2000 posted:

brb citing an academic monograph for Jew-on-Jew crime statistics