antonina

Actually, I raised the same issue just a while ago on this thread: http://www.historum.com/american-his...lins-dupe.html

You are right that by the time of Warsaw Rising the Allies were already under Stalin's thumb, but I strongly disagree this scenario had been inevitable. It was the result of Churchill and Roosevelt's disastrous policy towards Stalin from the very start. True, Roosevelt was more to blame, because instead of presenting a united front together with Churchill, he entered into what he naively considered "special relations" with Stalin (his sentimental remarks about the latter handed down to posterity are really too ridiculous for words) When Stalin ignored and humiliated Churchill at every turn with characteristic crude brutality, Roosevelt interpreted this as delightful jocundity and was childlishly pleased that Stalin "likes " him more.
It was mainly FDR's gullibility and fecklessness which allowed Stalin to divide the Allies, according to the old Kremlin tactics "divida et imperia".

irishcrusader95

thank you, we do share similarities in that both are nations history's are tragic ones of being screwed over by our neighbours yet at least we had the advantage of being on the edge of europe and on an island while your stuck between the bigger nations of europe and thus winding you up in there disagreements, i do hope that the third polish republic has a long and prosperus future

antonina

Thank you, ca ira (touch wood).

By the way, I wonder how the armed Irish Risings are viewed at the moment by your historians?

Kevinmeath

Now that could very easily de-rail a thread!

Linschoten

I'm sorry, I don't see how the allies could have prevented Stalin from doing what he wanted in countries in which he had troops on the ground, beyond engaging in marginal horse-trading; whether or not a country had any kind of free politics after the war depended on whether the allies or the Russians were occupying it at the end.

antonina

What you say sounds very sensible and hard to refute, Linschoten.

However, I'll venture to disagree. You judge from the 1945 perspective, when Soviet occupation of half of Europe was fait accompli. Yet at the time of the Teheran conference in 1943 the Allies' relative position towards the Soviets was still strong enough to stand firm or to bargain. The Kremlin has always backed out whenever the West put its foot down forcibly enough. Why should the Allies have stood by the Polish government in exile, you might ask - if the Poles had an issue it was their problem, what counted for Britain and the US was to defeat the Third Reich as fast as possible with Russian help (or rather Russian blood).

The point is that the nations of the West weren't aware exactly what a deadly threat the Soviet government posed to their own safety. I don't think they know to this day. You might think you were and are perfectly aware of it. I think not. From the very beginnings the bolsheviks were bent on world conquest and the destruction of European nations (the very concept of a nation was abhorrent to them). Churchill and Roosevelt knew this theoretically, of course, but coming from the British and American background they simply weren't capable of grasping the true nature of communism. If they had been, they would never have so shortsightedly backed the threatened Stalinist regime, in order to defeat the Nazi regime.
Or (later in Yalta) trusted that the beast, satisfied with the offering, would leave them alone.

An excerpt from: Col Ryszard Kuklinski

"Col. Ryszard Kuklinski was the Polish army officer who supplied the CIA of over 40,000 pages of Soviet secret military documents from 1972 until his defection in 1981. Over nine years of secret cooperation, Col. Kuklinski made 63 clandestine exchanges with the CIA inside Poland. The documents detailed Soviet operational plans for surprise attacks on Western Europe, scenarios for a nuclear launch, specifications for more than 200 advanced Soviet weapons systems"

Well, the West got away with it. Not the least thanks to colonel Kukliński who paid for warning you with the life of his two sons.

Reading and hearing Western Europeans ranting about "American imperialism" and "good sides of communism" I feel inclined to wish them joy of the latter.

antonina

A few more photos:










The man leading the patrol in the bottom photo is the architect Stanislaw Jankowski codename "Agaton". He joined the Polish forces in the West, became a comando and was parchuted to occupied Poland, where he was responsible for an expert forgery unit. It was this unit which supplied the AK men who found out about the V-rockets with forged documents.

srb7677

I cannot speak for younger Britons. A recent survey revealed that a significant number of British schoolkids thought Adolf Hitler was the manager of the German football team!!!. Though in fairness my 15 year old nephew plays a World War 2 wargame with my brother and I, and is quite knowledgeable about such things.

But certainly most more historically minded Britons, certainly of my generation and older (I am 46), have heard about the heroism, tragedy and betrayal that was the Warsaw rising. I first learned of the Warsaw rising as a young teenager when I started buying second hand magazines about World War 2, one of which featured the rising.

Amongst my many historical books, I have one by Norman Davies entitled "Rising `44, The Battle for Warsaw" about the Warsaw rising. So I know a little bit about it. For example, I am a Briton who has heard of Tadeusz Komorowski, codenamed "Bor". Not all of us are as ignorant of it as you seem to suspect we are, though it is true that I was never taught about it in school.

antonina

Thanks for the post, I'm pleased to hear it.

I'm afraid the historical knowledge of our schoolkids wouldn't stand the test either. In the occasional surveys they tend to come up with most astounding anwers

antonina

Such memorial plaques can be found all over Warsaw.

They commemorate execution-sites, where civilians and resistance soldiers were shot in mass executions during the occupation and the Warsaw Rising.

This one marks the site of one of the hospitals in the Old Town, where the Germans killed all the patients and medical personnel.

When the AK soldiers left the Old Town through the sewers, after a furious battle in which no house in the historical centre of Warsaw was left standing or undamaged, they had to leave their wounded friends and brothers in arms alone, to the mercy of the enemy.

The behaviour of the first German troops which entered the Old Town was initially quite decent, some officers even promised some food and medicaments. The situation changed radically after a couple of hours, the decision to murder all patients was probably made by SS Grupenfuhrer Reinfarth, perhaps on the orders of SS Obergruppenfuhrer von dem Bach-Zelewski. The massacres were carried out by the Reinefarth and Dirlevanger batallions. Alltogether, about 7000 people were killed in the hospitals of the Old Town. Some patients were shot in hospital beds, some burned alive, the nurses fell victim to mass rape before being shot. In one hospital the wounded German soldiers who had received medical care there interceded on behalf of the doctors and patients.