Poland Invasion Anniversary

POOR POLAND: THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE GERMAN INVASION

By Stephen Wilson

 

            

School days were not the best days of my life. Constant teasing, torment and exam pressure make the present paradise. I wager that the Scottish Polish pupil Alec Cowsar never relished or fondly sought to rekindle old memories.

            

Alec never harmed or teased anyone. On the contrary, he came across as a helpful, harmless and good humored person. When I visited a local youth club he warmly greeted me and informed me of all the facilities available.

            

Despite his good nature, he was not academically talented. The other pupils teased him for being 'slow' and 'untalented'. Even teachers who should have known better would join in the chorus of mockery. I recall one incident when a music teacher was giving some self righteous lecture on the Second world war that Alec for once struck back correcting the teacher by saying; "The Second World war began 29 years ago not thirty. "The teacher, infuriated, retorted, "I meant about thirty years, so don't try to be a smart Alec". Yet, Alec's father was a Pole who fought the Germans and was forced to remain in Scotland after the war. If any grasped the human legacy of the war it must have been him. The memory had returned because I came across a recently published survey by the University of Strathclyde where they interviewed more than a 1000 students aged between 12 and 18 from Poland, Romania, Lithuania who had lived in Scotland and England for at least 3 years and found 77% had been subjected to racism and bullying. The survey discovered that some teachers had even colluded in this bullying. I thought after 40 years, some things do not change. The Poles living in Britain have been bullied and in the worst cases, murdered for speaking Polish in the streets. But don't the British owe the Poles an enormous debt for the folly of 1st September 1939?

 

            THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER

 

            

Eighty years ago, on 1st September 50 German Divisions invaded Poland. The invasion set off a chain of events called 'The Second World War' being described by other authors as 'Armageddon ' 'the Apocalypse ' and 'the Inferno'. As many as 50 million died and Poland lost one out of five of her population or six and half million.

            

How and why the events unfolded remains deeply contentious. It evokes all kinds of passions. Many myths still surround how the Poles fought in the war. Firstly, it has been suggested that the Poles were wholly unprepared for war. However, in terms of military experience and grasping the importance of tank warfare they were way ahead of the British. They had learnt a lot from the past Soviet Polish war. What let the Poles down was the complete absence of promised British and French help as well as being overwhelmed by two invasions from the Soviets and the Germans. No help from Britain was forthcoming.

 

            

One of the common myths is that the Polish cavalry charged German tanks head on. This lie was invented by Goebbels to bolster his claim of the 'stupid and backwards Slavs' in contrast to the advanced Germans. This lie was even believed for over thirty years by Journalists who kept repeating it in documentaries.

            

In reality, the Poles used their cavalry quite successfully. On the 9th of September the Poles even successfully counterattacked startled Germans and cavalry attacked their rear and flanks. Even earlier, on the 1st September Colonel Mastalerz's 18th Uhlan Regiment surprise attacked German troops in a wood throwing them back. The notion that Hitler's Blitzkrieg was one of uninterrupted success against the Poles fails to acknowledge the small battles the Poles actually won. And what about the heroic stand at the Modlin Fortress? Of course, the Poles were finally outnumbered by superior numbers, tanks and air control, but they were more than a match for the Germans in terms of prowess.

 

            WHO IS TO BLAME?

            

Another emotive issue is who was to blame for the war? The most common answer was Hitler alone. This was certainly the explanation of the then bitter British Prime Minister Chamberlain who thundered, "Responsibility for this terrible catastrophe lies on the shoulders of one man, the German chancellor who has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery in order to serve his own senseless ambitions". This is an evasive explanation of the origins of Second World War. The reality is more complex. One reason was the fragility of the post war settlement brought about due to the Versailles treaty. The unfair treaty of reparations not only fueled a revenge psychology among the Germans but led to a 'guilt complex ' among many allied statesmen who strongly felt obliged to appease the Germans. The weak reaction of the appeasers where the allies did nothing to stop the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the handing over of Czechoslovakia without a fight through the Munich agreement convinced Hitler he could obtain what he wanted without any resistance. There is a view that if the Allies had fought Hitler over Czechoslovakia they would have beaten Hitler. Some German generals even claimed that they were ready to launch a coup against Hitler should there be a war. It never happened. Robert Boothby, a Conservative M.P. at the time stated in an interview that, "There is absolutely no doubt that the Germans gained enormously from the years delay in the outbreak of war as a result of Munich and we have it on irrefutable authority from all the German generals and from various historical sources. The Czechs had the strongest fortified line in Europe on their northern frontier and they had thirty well-trained, well armed divisions. Against which Germany could only put 33 or 34. Two of the senior German generals said that the line was impregnable.'

 

            THE  RIBBENTROP MOLOTOV PACT           

            

The feeble attempts by the British to negotiate a military agreement with Russia played a role in the formation of the Ribbentrop -Molotov pact. There is no doubt that this pact was a flawed attempt to bolster the security of Russia's eastern border.

            

The current notion by the Ministry of Culture that this pact represented 'a triumph of Soviet diplomacy' astounds many professional historians not only abroad but in Russia. It represents an abrupt departure from a statement made by Putin ten years ago that it was a grave error. This pact represented a betrayal of of all the socialist principles that the Soviet Union had professed. Apologists claim it was a cunning attempt to buy time by the Soviets to build up their defense. According to a recent Counter Punch article, 150 members of the German Communist party were sent back from Russia to Germany to be persecuted. The Russians even sent the Germans badly needed fuel, food and bases for their German U Boats operating against Britain. According to Laurence Rees: 'The Soviets did all they could to prove to the Germans that they were more valuable as friends than enemies. They continued to deliver huge amounts of raw materials to the Germans [including 232,000 tons of petroleum, and 632,000 tons of grain in the first four months of 1941 alone}, even though the Soviet economy was creaking under the strain'. {See World War 2, Behind Closed Doors, Stalin, Hitler and the Nazis and the West, Laurence Rees , BBC Books, London 2009}.

            

Of course, in hindsight, people are always wiser after the events. Maitland a historian warned, 'It is very hard to remember that events now long in the past were once in the future'. Would we be better diplomats in their shoes? It is worth recalling that attempts to appease Hitler arose from a desire to avoid war at all costs. War weariness afflicted the people of Europe and traumatic memories were still fresh in the people of Europe. The allies also thought they had a great chance of defeating Hitler in a small defensive war. After all, the combined forces of the French and British far outnumbered the Germans. If the allies had not arrogantly rejected the suggestion of a military alliance with Belgium they would have had the assistance of another 800,000 enlisted men. Disunity among the opposing sides to Hitler led to the early victories. The tragedy is that the Second World War was one of the most unwanted wars in history. It was not just caused by the evil intentions of the Nazis, but the blunders of so many statesmen.{ see The origins of the Second World war, penguin, 1961, London, for a provocative revisionist view of the causes of the war}.