Political scientist Nikolai Malishevsky presents to the attention of readers a historical essay on the post-war historical drama, the responsibility for which in Poland they are trying to lay on Russia.
The expulsion of 5 million Germans is associated with the name of Polish Prime Minister Bolesław Bierut.
In modern Poland, they are trying to find a compromise with the Germans expelled in postwar period from the former East Germany. Moreover, they are trying to lay responsibility for the historical drama on the USSR and its successor, Russia, which is assigned the role of a payer for other people's accounts. In fact, they are offering to pay the Polish debt to the Germans at the price of the Kaliningrad region. Therefore, it is simply necessary to know how it happened, says political scientist Nikolai Malishevsky, who presents a historical essay to the attention of NewsBalt readers.
In accordance with the decree of the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Poland, Bolesław Bierut, dated February 5, 1945, German lands east of the Oder-Neisse line passed under Polish control. This act was an explicit claim to the reorganization of the post-war borders of Europe and served as the starting point for the expulsion of approximately 5 million Germans from Poland itself and the lands inherited from East Germany.
The local German population, expecting an imminent arrival Soviet troops, moved west in the winter of 1945, and the Polish, meanwhile, began mass violence against refugees. By spring, entire Polish villages specialized in robbing fleeing Germans - men were killed, women were raped (Sumlenny S. Exiled and killed // Expert, 2008, N N 30, special issue - pp. 52-55).
Under the conditions of the collapse of Germany, the Germans actually turned into stateless persons, defenseless against the arbitrariness of the local Polish authorities, reminiscent of what happened under the Nazis against the Jews. The “Memorandum on the Legal Status of Germans on the Territory of the Republic of Poland” drawn up by the leadership of the Polish Ministry of Public Administration provided for the introduction of special distinguishing marks (armbands) for Germans, restriction of their freedom of movement, a ban on unauthorized change of residence and work, the introduction of special identity cards and work books. All these requirements, restrictions and prohibitions were accompanied by severe sanctions, including imprisonment (Eviction of Germans from the territory of Poland in the documents of the Soviet military administration in Germany // Bulletin of the Russian State University named after I. Kant. Issue 3, series Humanitarian sciences. - Kaliningrad, 2005. - pp.63-70).
In a short time, in the regions on the other side of the Oder and the Neisse, the Poles put the Germans in a state of complete lack of rights: forced labor, hunger, bullying from which they died by the thousands. Often the Poles who appeared on these lands had nothing but paper from their authorities. But with its help, they quickly appropriated everything that belonged to the German population. Very quickly, the Germans found themselves in the role of "lodger lodgers" in their own farms, moving from their homes to pigsties, stables, or, at best, to haylofts and attics. They were treated accordingly. Regardless of merit. For example, when the most famous resident of Silesia - the laureate Nobel Prize in Literature, Gerhart Hauptmann was informed of the eviction, for him it was a blow from which he never recovered. Before death Nobel Laureate all he could do was ask: “Am I still in my house?” The house belonged to him, but it was already on Polish soil (Yu. Buyda, “The Germans have a negative impact on the development of the Soviet region” // Kommersant, No. 31 (484), 08/13/2002).
The scientific commission of the Federal Government on the history of exile, which studied the problem in the 1950s, wrote: “The widespread expropriation of property from the Germans and the settlement of Poles soon led to the complete impoverishment and degradation of the German population in areas east of the Oder-Neisse line. German peasants became agricultural workers under the new Polish masters, and craftsmen became apprentices under Polish artisans. All auxiliary services and hard work in the field and in the city were to be performed by the Germans, while not only the right of ownership, but also legal protection was provided only to the Poles who moved to these territories ... In relation to the Germans, the Poles had a pronounced hatred and real sadism, manifested in the invention of atrocities and various humiliations. In the countryside, the Poles forced German old men and women to do the hard work that animals usually do in the civilized world, such as pulling plows, harrows or carts.
On May 2, 1945, Polish Prime Minister Bierut issued a decree according to which all property "abandoned" by the Germans automatically passed into the hands of the Polish state. Warsaw, meanwhile, was preparing the army for a gigantic operation against the German civilian population. In the second half of June, units of the Polish Army began to move. The goal is the settlements of the territory lying east of the Oder and Neisse for hundreds of kilometers from the Baltic Sea in the north to Silesia in the south.
The commander of the 2nd Army of the Polish Army, in his order, demanded from his soldiers that they “treat the Germans in the same way as they do with us. Many have forgotten what their treatment of our children, women and old people was like. The Czechs managed to make the Germans themselves escape from their territory. Fulfill your task firmly and so firmly and resolutely that the German evil spirits do not hide at home, but run away from us, so that, once on their own land, they thank God for having blown away. Remember: Germans are always Germans. When you complete a task, give orders, don't ask." (Eviction of Germans from the territory of Poland in the documents of the Soviet military administration in Germany // Bulletin of the Russian State University named after I. Kant. Issue 3, Humanities series. - Kaliningrad, 2005. - p.63-70).
From the end of June 1945, about 20,000 Germans were expelled daily from Breslau, Glogau, Sorau and other cities, going to Cottbus, Görlitz and other border cities. The situation of the settlers was extremely difficult. Overnight, they lost their property and property, which had been accruing over the years. In addition, the Polish soldiers who drove the columns of exiles did not give them anything. People ate, at best, found in the fields or plucked furtively from the trees that grew along the roadsides. Among those expelled, famine began, epidemics of typhus and dysentery, which claimed, first of all, children's lives. Patients were dying right on the roadsides.
Unlike other Western Slavs - the Czechs, who tried to quickly push the Germans out, the Poles showed themselves to be more zealous owners. It would seem that they got territories where the German population was counted in the millions, so they should get rid of it as soon as possible. An no. The Poles tried to keep the Germans here almost until 1950. The reason is that on the ground the German population has become the object of ruthless exploitation and violence. The rationale for this is this. The victorious countries resolutely dissociated themselves from "reparations by labor", which meant not only sending German prisoners of war to these countries, but also forcing them to work for free at the enterprises of their country on the instructions of the victorious countries. At the same time, out of 16 UN member countries that submitted something like requests for reparations, only Poland claimed the German labor force for the reconstruction of the economy.
Already by the summer of 1945, the Polish authorities began to drive the remaining German population to concentration camps, usually designed for 3-5 thousand people (for example, Sikava, Potulice - for the Polish "Volksdeutsch"). It was believed that there the persons to be evicted were subjected to verification. Only adults were sent to the camps, while children were taken away from their parents and transferred either to shelters or to Polish families - in any case, their further education was carried out in the spirit of absolute Polonization. Adults, on the other hand, paid "reparations by labor", that is, they were used in forced labor.
Unlike the USSR, where the restoration and construction was carried out mainly by German male prisoners of war, Poland was restored by civilian Germans. Mostly old men and women. It is understandable. Where could the Poles get their own prisoners of war? In any case, in large quantities? The Polish army under the command of General Vladislav Anders chose to leave the USSR in 1942, for some reason just on the eve of the unfolding battle of Stalingrad. Unsafe for life and health. The two Polish armies formed later by Stalin therefore consisted largely of Soviet military personnel. That, after the evacuation of Anders' army, was quite understandable (More: Chunikhin V.M. Forgotten deportation // Journal "Samizdat", 05.12.2008).
Unlike Czechoslovakia, as already mentioned, in Poland, ethnic Germans and Germans were kept mainly in concentration camps. In the winter of 1945-1946, their mortality rate reached 50%. For comparison: even the death rate in the American camps for German prisoners of war in the Rhineland, according to the preserved testimony of the medical service, was "only" about 30% in 1945. In the prisoner of war camps, the victorious allies behaved very cruelly towards the Germans - military men, SS men, etc. The Poles mocked civilians. This cruelty horrified even the Soviet soldiers, who saw hundreds of Belarusian villages burned together with the inhabitants, and they stood up for the Germans. Paradoxically, the Soviet military and civil administration both in Germany itself and in other territories under their control turned out to be much more humane than the Poles.
From the report of the scientific commission of the Federal Government on the history of exile: “The cruel treatment and killing of many Germans in camps and prisons under the pretext of retribution and punishment was a gross violation of the law, even if one or another prisoner really lay responsible for crimes against the Poles or Polish Jews. Most of the victims were, beyond any doubt, innocent ... Due to the hatred of the Germans, fueled by the National Socialist domination and even more intensified by the vulnerable Polish temperament, the Poles more than the Western powers, and even more than the Russians, were inclined to retaliate for past iniquity with the same iniquity.”
The concentration camps in which the Germans were imprisoned can be divided into two categories:
1) Under the control of the NKVD - they arose immediately after the occupation of the territory by the Red Amiya. They contained mainly prisoners of war.
2) Deportation and labor camps - with various names (camps for evicted Germans, isolation and concentration camps) - managed by the Polish security apparatus and created for the needs of the so-called. verification. In these camps, there were also a significant number of prisoners who were verified as Poles (for example, in Gliwice they accounted for 70%, in the Opole district - 90%).
It was in the numerous concentration camps of the second category and prisons of the former East Germany (on the territory of Poland itself, most of which was occupied by the Red Army already in 1944, many Germans were forced to live in prisons and camps even before the end of the war) that many thousands of people died after 1945 Mostly women and old people. So it was in Lamsdorf, Stadt Grottkau, Kaltwasser, Langenau, Potulice near Bromberg, Gronowo near Lisa, Sikawa near Lodz ...
From a report to the British Foreign Office (Raport R.W.F. Bashford do Brytyjskiego Foreign Office z 1945): “The concentration camps were not liquidated, but came under the control of new owners. Most often, they were led by the Polish police. In Swietochlowicach (Upper Silesia) those prisoners who have not yet starved or been beaten to death are forced to stand up to their necks in water night after night until they die. From the memoirs of a prisoner of the Zgoda concentration camp: “There was absolutely no difference between what the prisoners who got captivity and torture experienced under the sign of the “dead head” of the SS or under the sign of the Polish eagle. Sleepless nights with their unforgettable horrors were etched into the memory of everyone who survived ... ”(Gruschka Gerhard. Zgoda - miejsce grozy. Gliwice. 1998, p. 72, 75).
A few examples.
Camp in Lambinowicach (Lamsdorf). bore the official name concentration camp for the Germans" ("obozu koncentracyjnego dla Niemcow"). It began to function from the end of July 1945 on the basis of the instructions of the Silesian-Dabrowski voivode (instrukcje Wojewody Slasko-Dabrowskiego Nr 88 Ldz. Nr. W-P-r-10-2/45 dated 18-6-45). The first commandant is C. Geborsky, who, according to the surviving prisoners, turned it into a "repression camp".
The concentration camp consisted of 6-8 barracks, each of which was designed for about 1000 people. Around - rows of barbed wire and several towers with machine guns. The prisoners were residents of nearby villages. The fact that they would be deported, these people learned only a few hours before the conclusion to the concentration camp. An eyewitness Jan Staisz, headman (soltys) of the village Kuznica Ligotska, recalls: “Then we were gathered in the school yard, from where we moved to Lamsdorf, located 12 km. On the way, soldiers and civilians from the Poles beat those people who could not walk or left the column. On the way to the camp, we sang the church hymn “Under your protection” in Polish. Upon arrival in Lambinowic, we were severely beaten by the guards of this camp, after which we were placed in barracks ”(Nowak Edmunt. Cien Lambinowic. Opole. 1991, pp. 82-83).
As a Polish concentration camp in Lambinowicach-Lamsdorf existed until the autumn of 1946. According to the estimates of the German side, "from the violence of the Poles" in just 14 months, 6488 Germans died there. The high death rate among the prisoners was the result not only of poor nutrition and typhoid epidemics, but also of frequent (especially in the initial period) severe bullying, beatings and torture. There were also murders. Women and girls were raped. One of the tragic incidents was a fire in early October 1945, in the process of extinguishing which the guards opened fire on the prisoners with machine guns.
Zgoda concentration camp in Swietochlowicach. It was one of the most terrible and deadly for German prisoners. Began to function in February 1945. Commandant S.Morel.
Eyewitness Eric von Calsteren recalls: “That every day we had the dead was a completely ordinary thing ... They died everywhere, in the washbasin, in the toilet, and also near the bunks ... and when they wanted to go to the toilet, they crept between the corpses, as if it were was the most natural thing." From the memoirs of Gerhard Gruschka, then a 14-year-old teenage prisoner: “... also often Morel and his assistants from the police or the Security Service found reasons to “diversify” their lives through the prisoners of Block No. 7. For example, on the day of the capitulation of Germany, at night, a group of policemen with sticks and whips drove the prisoners along the camp street to the washroom. There we were doused with hoses, and then wet and freezing we were driven to the parade ground. One of the policemen growled “Lie down!”, and all the rest ran in a crowd over our bodies. Those of us who could not press down into the ground were pushed with boots on our heads, necks, and backs. Then “Get up!” was heard, blows rained down and we were again driven to the barrack-washroom ... In the warm days of summer, indescribable torment caused the eggs of worms in the open wounds of the tortured prisoners. After some time, small white worms pecked out of them, which caused terrible torment in the prisoners ... A total, unprecedented atmosphere of hopelessness and [y]thunderstorms expanded over the camp. When we passed through the barracks during the day, there was not a single free bunk on which patients with typhus would not lie. There were also emaciated prisoners on the floor. Their moans and groans were unbearable, as was the strong stench of urine and feces. No one could escape from the hordes of lice, which were rapidly multiplying ... ”(Gruschka Gerhard. Zgoda - miejsce grozy. Gliwice. 1998, p. 45, 50, 51, 73-74).
From the memories of the concentration camp in Swietochlowicach-Zgodzie: “... The number of bodies was huge ... The guards began to beat everyone: if they didn’t salute, if they didn’t say in Polish:“ So, please, sir, ”if they didn’t pick up all their hair at the place of the haircut, unless they licked their own blood. They drove the Germans into dog kennels and beat them if they did not want to bark. They forced the prisoners to beat each other: to jump with their feet on the back of the lying person, to hit in the nose with a swing; if any prisoner tried to weaken the blow, the guards said: - I'll show you how it's done - and they beat so hard that once a glass eye flew out of one of the beaten. German women were raped - one 13-year-old became pregnant - and they trained their dogs, so that when they responded to the command “Sic!”, they grabbed the prisoners in the genitals ... ”(Sack John. Oko za oko. Gliwice. 1995, p. 178).
The exploitation of the German population interned in concentration camps was actively carried out until the autumn of 1946, when the Polish government decided to start deporting the surviving Germans. On September 13, 1946, Bierut signed a decree on the "separation of persons of German nationality from the Polish people." According to this decree, ethnic Germans were to be interned in Germany. However, the economic Poles were in no hurry to fulfill their decree, making full use of the gratuitous labor of the Germans. Deportation, despite the decree, was constantly postponed. Meanwhile, violence against the Germans continued in the camps. So, in the Potulice concentration camp between 1947 and 1949, half of the prisoners died from hunger, cold, illness and bullying by the guards (Sumlenny S. Expelled and killed // Expert, 2008, N N 30, special issue - p. 52-55).
Slowly begun in February 1946, the eviction of the Germans took place without the necessary transport support. When moving through the territory of Poland, the settlers were often deprived of medical care, food, were ill-treated by the Polish police, soldiers and settlers. It got to the point that the protests of the Soviet occupation authorities on the facts of Poland's violation of the Potsdam agreements and inter-allied agreements played a role in improving the treatment of the Polish authorities with German settlers, thereby saving many thousands of lives (Eviction of Germans from Poland in the documents of the Soviet military administration in Germany / / Bulletin of the Russian State University named after Immanuel Kant, issue 3, Humanities series, Kaliningrad, 2005, pp.63-70).
The final deportation of Germans from the territory that had ceded to Poland began only in 1949, and this time it ended rather quickly, by 1950. This was due, among other things, to foreign policy factors. According to the historian Ingo Haar, who deals with the problems of the expelled Germans, only the beginning of the Korean War and the aggravation of relations with the USSR forced Western politicians to "recognize the suffering of the German people and legalize references to the expulsion of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and other countries" (Kretinin S. The problem of refugees in post-war Germany // Motherland, No. 3. 2009).
In general, estimates of the victims who died after 1945 vary from 400-600 thousand to more than 2.2 million. The Union of Exiles, a non-governmental organization with about 15 million members, keeps an account of the dead Germans in the millions. The chairman of the "Union" Erica Steinbach calls the figure of 3 million dead. However, in this case, it should be taken into account that we are talking about dead Germans expelled from their homes not only in Poland, but also in the Czech Republic and other countries of Eastern Europe (like Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania, from which not everyone was evicted; in addition, the Sudeten Germans were evicted to Austria). Total number expelled - about 14 million people - about a third of the total population of the then Germany. Interestingly, in contrast to Poland, in the process of deportation of Germans, for example, from Hungary, Romania or Yugoslavia, there was no open violence against them.
In order to better understand the reasons for the outbreak of war in 1939 between Poland and Germany, and therefore the Second World War, it is not enough to adhere to the widely held opinion that peace-loving and weak little Poland was attacked by vicious, dominion-hungry Nazi Germany.
This conflict, which cost many millions of lives, began not only with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, as many historians still claim today, greatly simplifying the causes of the conflict. The beginning of the conflict was also caused by the general Polish mobilization on August 30, 1939, although mobilization, according to international law, is equated with a declaration of war.
German-Polish relations even today are poisoned by the age-old, deeply rooted hatred of the Polish side. For centuries the Poles
taught from childhood that the Germans are evil and thirsty for war. Hatred on the same scale is still promoted today in Poland against its western neighbor, which ultimately leads to chauvinism. In Poland, as in all countries, the elites use means to shape public sentiment. Traditionally these elites have been the Polish Catholic Church, writers, intellectuals, politicians and the press. For a more objective understanding of the actions of these strata, which moved Poland closer and closer to the war against Germany, it is extremely important to study the role of these estates that they played in the past. It is quite easy to find a sufficient amount of evidence for the above theses.
"Póki swiat swiatem, Polak Niemcowi nie bedzie bratem." This Polish proverb can be translated as: "As long as peace exists, a Pole will never be a brother to a German." Although the age of this proverb is difficult to trace accurately, a similar position finds understanding in 1989. A survey conducted among students from three educational institutions in Warsaw revealed that only 4 out of 135 fourth-graders [ten-year-olds!] stated that they had friendly feelings towards the German people. Half of the respondents believe that the Germans are cruel, vicious and bloodthirsty. One of the students wrote: "The Germans are just like wild animals. Such people do not even deserve to exist. And now they want to unite!" A year later, in 1990, the then Polish Prime Minister Lech Walesa expressed his position towards his German neighbors, which became widely known: "I will not even correct my statement which may make me unpopular in Germany: if the Germans again destabilize Europe in any way, then partition is not the measure to be resorted to, rather the country should be wiped off the map, simply and effectively. East and West have at their disposal the advanced technology needed to implement this measure."
Such statements by public figure, Nobel Peace Prize winner and President of Poland Lech Walesa reflect the emotions that are common in his country. For example, the Polish slogan in Litzmannstadt, in January 1945: "Reich Germans are packing their bags, ethnic Germans are buying coffins!"
Years ago, differences between Germany and Poland escalated to the point of no return, and despite numerous diplomatic efforts by the German government to defuse an increasingly dangerous situation, these efforts were rebuffed by Poland. On January 6, 1939, German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop met with Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Beck in Munich to discuss differences between the two countries. Von Ribbentrop suggested next solution:
"Danzig joins Germany. In return, Poland will be given economic privileges, and all its economic interests in this region will be preserved. Germany will be given access to East Prussia through an extraterritorial highway and railway line." Beck replied: "For the first time I am pessimistic ..." In particular, on the question of Danzig, I do not see any possibility of cooperation."
The leading role in shaping public opinion in Poland was played by the Catholic Church. In 1922, the Polish canon of Poznań, prelate Kos, read out an excerpt from Lucian Rydel's drama "Jency": "Where the German steps, the earth bleeds for 100 years. Where it draws water, there the wells are polluted for 100 years. Where the German breathes, there the plague rages for 100 years. Where the German shakes hands, there the world stops. He deceives the strong, he robs and subjugates the weak, and if there is a path leading straight to heaven, he would not hesitate to overthrow God himself. And we would see the Germans steal the sun from the sky."
These are not isolated statements. And another Polish proverb: "Zdechly Niemiec, zdechly pies, mala to roznica jest" - "the German died, the dog died, it's a small difference".
Here is the text of a Polish Catholic song that was sung in 1848 at the Pan-Slavic Congress in Prague:
"Brothers, take your scythes! Let's hurry to war!
The oppression of the Poles is over, we must no longer delay.
Let's gather our hordes. Our enemy, the German, will fall!
Every sin will be forgiven, even murder,
If it promotes Polish freedom everywhere.
But damnation and evil to him who dares to speak well of Germany.
Poland must survive. Papa and God promise it.
Russia and Prussia must fall. Higher the Polish flag!
So rejoice, all of you, Poles, big and small!
Not only did these "Christian" priests succeed in propaganda aimed at cultivating hatred against the Germans, in 1939 some of them also prayed in their churches, "O wielk wojn ludow prosimy Cie, Panie"(We pray to you for a great war of nations, Lord!)"
Later, when their wish came true, they participated in attacks on German soldiers. "... Cardinal Vyshinsky confirmed the fact that during the war there was not a single Polish priest who would not fight against the Germans with weapons in their hands. The war lasted only three weeks, the German occupation lasted several years. This explains the high number of priests - partisans, to whom even the bishops joined".
A study of older history reveals such cases "The Archbishop of Gniezno at the turn of the 13th century had a habit of calling the Germans dog heads. He criticized the Bishop of Brixen that he would have been an excellent preacher if he were not a German dog head."
To fully understand the meaning of these and other expressions, one must know that "dog" is one of the worst offensive expressions for Poles. Similar expressions about the Germans were common in Polish literature and the press. Dr. Kurt Lack, who was born in Posen, gives many examples of such expressions in his work "Mythos vom Deutschen in der polnischen Volksüberlieferung und Literatur". In the poem Grażyna, which is studied in Polish schools, Mickiewicz uses terms such as "psiarnia Krzyzakow" - the dog pack of the Teutonic Knights. In the story "Nefzowie" by Kazimierz Pzherwa-Tetmeier, a German industrialist, Polish workers call "rudy pies" - a red dog", etc.
It is not difficult to imagine that in the end such propaganda in literature should lead to the creation of a certain attitude towards the Germans, which was also present in the Polish media. They were not shy when it came time to go to war against Germany. They were an ideal tool for instilling the public opinion that Poland was stronger than Germany many times over, was capable of defeating Germany, defeating it in a few days. This was typical, for example, for oil painting, which showed Marshal Rydz-Smigly, a Polish Supreme Commander riding a horse into the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. This painting was found by German troops in the presidential palace in Warsaw and did not even have time to dry completely. When the Second World War began, the Germans experienced the hatred of the Poles to the fullest. About 35,000 of them (German authorities claimed 58,000 killed) were killed, often in the most brutal ways. Kurt Lak writes on page 271: "Poles threw dead dogs into the graves of murdered ethnic Germans. Near Neustadt in West Prussia, the Poles cut open the stomach of a captured German officer, tore out his insides and stuffed a dead dog inside. This crime is well documented.. A German mother grieving for her sons writes on October 12, 1939: "Our beloved boys had to die such a terrible death. Twelve people were lying in a pit, and they were all severely beaten to death. Eyes gouged out, skulls broken, teeth knocked out ... Little Karl had a hole in his head, probably from a knife. Little Paul's arms were torn off, and all this time they were still alive. Now they rest in a mass grave for 40 people, finally freed from pain and horror ... " Between 1919 and 1921, 400,000 ethnic Germans left their homes and fled to Germany for their lives.
In the April 20, 1929 issue of the largest Polish newspaper Ilustrowany Kurjer Codzienny, the following slogans appeared: "Let's throw the Germans back beyond their natural borders! Let's get rid of them beyond the Oder!" "... all of Silesia and all of Pomerania were Polish before the German offensive!"
"Swallowing the whole of East Prussia and extending our western borders to the Oder and the Neisse are our aims. We can achieve this, and this is the great mission of the Polish people. Our war against Germany will make the world freeze in amazement."
"There will be no peace in Europe until all Polish lands are returned to Poland, until the name "Prussia" is long forgotten, erased from the map of Europe, and until the Germans move their capital Berlin further west".
In October 1923, Stanislav Grabsky, who later became Minister of Education and Religion, announced:
"(Germans in Poland) are smart enough to understand that in case of war, not a single enemy on Polish soil will leave alive. The Fuhrer is far away, and Polish soldiers are close .."
"We are ready to make a pact with the devil if he helps us in the battle against Germany. Hear - against Germany, and not just against Hitler. In the coming war, German blood will be shed in rivers like all world history never seen before".
"The decision of Poland on August 30, 1939 on general mobilization was a turning point in the history of Europe. Hitler was forced to wage war at a time when he hoped to continue to win bloodless victories".
Heinz Splittgerber in his book "Unkenntnis oder Infamie?" cites Polish sources that reflect the atmosphere in Poland immediately before hostilities began. On August 7, 1939, Ilustrowany Kurjer described how Polish troops crossed German territory in order to destroy military installations and steal weapons and equipment from the German Wehrmacht. Most Polish diplomats and politicians understood that Poland's actions would sooner or later lead to war. Foreign Minister Beck... "persistently pursued a bloodthirsty plan to plunge Europe into a new great war, since it is likely that Poland will annex territories as a result of the war. "Splitgerber describes 14 more cases in which Polish soldiers crossed the border, destroying houses, shooting and killing German farmers and customs officials. One of these attacks: "August 29: "Police departments in Elbing, Keslin and Breslau, General Customs Office in Beiten and Gleiwitz: Polish soldiers invaded the territory of the German Reich, attacked German customs officers, placed machine guns on German territory."
Not only Poland, but also its ally Great Britain (and France) are involved in the beginning of the war. Although it is still widely believed that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain honestly tried to keep the peace on September 29, 1938 in Munich, it must be borne in mind that his real goals were somewhat different. Just five months later, on February 22, 1939, he let the cat out of the bag, saying in Blackburn: "... Over the past two days, we have discussed the procedure for building up weapons. The numbers really look stunning, perhaps even to the point that people are no longer able to even understand them .... Ships, guns, aircraft and ammunition are now being issued from of our shipyards and factories in an ever-growing stream..."
Max Kluver writes: "a considerable amount of evidence gives reason to doubt that Chamberlain really wanted peace. For example, the conversation [after Hitler's speech in the Reichstag on April 28, 1939] between Chamberlain's chief adviser Wilson and Wohlthath ... when Wohlthath left again emphasized his conviction that that Hitler did not want war, Wilson's response showed the British position on the matter: - "I said that I was not surprised to hear him say, because I think that Hitler will not be able to ignore the huge increase in military production and the preparations that we have made in the defensive and offensive spheres, including, for example, the very large growth of our Air Force"
On April 27, 1939, England mobilized its armed forces. Heinz Splittgerber quotes Dirk Bavendamm's Roosevelts Weg zum Krieg (Ullstein-Verlag, Berlin 1989, p. 593): "Since England has never yet declared universal conscription in peacetime, this is practically tantamount to a declaration of war on Germany. From 1935 to 1939 (before the war began), England's annual military spending increased by more than five times."
In 1992 and 1993, Max Klüver, another German historian, spent five weeks at the National Archives in London looking for documents that had been hidden from the public for fifty years. He writes in his book "Es war nicht Hitlers Krieg": "How little did the English care about Danzig and the alleged threat Polish independence shown by the following message prepared for Beck's visit on April 3, 1939. The report says: "Danzig is an artificial entity, the very existence of which is a bad casus belli. But it is unlikely that the Germans would settle for less than complete solution Danzig question, with the exception of the essential Quid pro quo (quid pro quo), which could hardly be a guarantee of Poland's neutrality. But such a development of events would be unfavorable for England. "It would shake the morale of Poland, increasing their vulnerability to Germany ... Therefore, it should not be suggested that the Poles give up their rights in Danzig on the grounds that they are not justified." Kluver concludes: “So, we see a clearly formulated position: it is in the British interests that the Danzig issue should not be resolved and the state of the world should not be maintained either. British guarantees to Poland strengthened their stubbornness when it came to any solution to the Danzig issue”.
The American professor and economist, Dr. Barton Klein, wrote in his book "Germany's Economic Preparations for War": "Germany produced 'butter' as well as 'guns', much more butter and far fewer guns than was commonly believed. Klein continues: "The general state of the German war economy ... was not directed towards a large-scale war, but rather a national economy, mobilized only for small, locally limited wars, and which only then underwent further militarization after the war became an indisputable fact. For example, in the autumn of 1939 years, German preparations for the provision of steel, oil and other important raw materials were completely insufficient for an intense war with the great powers.
Winston Churchill in a speech before the House of Commons on October 5, 1938: "... there can be no friendship between British democracy and Nazi power, a power that rejects Christian morality which is heading for barbarian paganism, which revels in the spirit of aggression and conquest, which draws its strength from the perverse pleasure of persecution, and uses, as we have seen, the ruthless cruelty of murderous force.
Hitler, of course, understood all this very well. In Saarbrücken, on October 9, 1938, he said: "... if Mr. Duff Cooper or Mr. Eden or Mr. Churchill come to power in England instead of Chamberlain, we know very well that their goal would be to immediately begin a new world war. They don't even try to disguise their intentions, in fact, they state it openly..."
As we know, the British Chamberlain Government gave Poland guarantees that England would come to the rescue if Poland was attacked. Everything happened as planned: England declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, but the Soviet Union, which also attacked Poland, did not. This is proof that England's (and Chamberlain's) intentions were primarily to start a war with Germany. The Poles were only puppets. Some of them also realized this. For example - Julius Lukasiewicz, the Polish ambassador in Paris on March 29, 1939, told his foreign minister in Warsaw:
"It is childishly naive and unfair to propose to Poland, in such a position, to spoil relations with such a strong neighbor as Germany and push the world into the catastrophe of war, in order to pander to Chamberlain's wishes at the expense of our policy. It would be even more naive to consider that the Polish government did not understand the true purpose of this policy and its consequences."
European Propaganda Uses False Documents and False Evidence Against Russia
The other day, the European Court of Human Rights, after long deliberations, delivered a verdict: execution Polish officers in the forest near Katyn is a war crime.
To object to this is stupid and inhuman. The question is completely different. Who shot them? The Soviet organs of the NKVD in the spring of 1940, as Hitler's propaganda and the US Congress claimed at the time " cold war”, and after them the modern Polish authorities? Or in 1943, the Nazis, as established by the Soviet commission led by the famous doctor Nikolai Burdenko, which investigated mass graves near Smolensk after the region was liberated from Nazi invaders in 1944? This is exactly what needs to be sorted out.
The arguments of the Poles and the Western community boil down to just a few arguments. Unless, of course, one can call an argument the statement that the bloody Stalin could not help but shoot the Polish officers simply because of his bloodiness. And two documents submitted by the Yeltsin Foreign Ministry to the world community. Allegedly notes Lavrenty Beria in the Politburo of March 1940, proposing to shoot the Poles, and Stalin's signature on it. And the notes of the then chairman of the KGB Alexandra Shelepina transferred Nikita Khrushchev in March 1959, which told about the execution. All.
There is no more real evidence in favor of this version. You can’t take seriously the PR action of the Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany Joseph Goebbels, who made a circus of the corpses of Polish officers, passing them off as the atrocities of the Soviets. Goebbels invented, by the way, the execution in 1940. Despite the undoubted talent in his dirty work, Goebbels still made a lot of mistakes. It was military time, they were in a hurry. So, everything, I emphasize, all Polish officers were killed from German weapons. From "Walters", large-caliber machine guns, German rifles. This is evidenced by the mass of shells. This is recognized by everyone. Including the Polish side. But you know what they give a counterargument. Very simple.
And the second puncture, very, very important. In German reports, insignia, cockades, shoulder straps on Polish corpses constantly appear. But according to the Soviet “Regulations on Prisoners of War” of 1931 and the secret regulation on the same in 1939, prisoners had no right to wear cockades and insignia! This is what distinguished our "Regulations" from the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. They were allowed to wear emblems and cockades only on July 1, 1941, when, according to the fascist-Polish version, their officers had already been in the grave for a year and a half. This means that they were either killed after this date, or were captured by a country that complied with this rule of the Geneva Convention. And besides Germany, no other countries could be there at that time.
Yeltsin's forgery
There are many more indirect documents that clearly indicate that the Polish officers were alive at the beginning of the war. Something like: the archives of German intelligence for 1941, which sent agents in order to find out the mood among the captured Polish officers and whether they would fight against the Germans in the event of an attack on the USSR. The Germans will not send valuable scouts to the corpses. And the intelligence of Nazi Germany worked perfectly. And she would use the argument about the execution of Polish officers immediately, without waiting for 1943.
There is also an open document dated June 15, 1941 on the use of 16,731 Polish prisoners of war, including officers, in the construction of airfields in the Western Military District. If they were shot a year ago, who felled the forest and poured rubble at the airfields?!
There are many more documents of this kind. But in the West they dismiss it: all this is good, but Beria's note, but Stalin's signature ...
Two years ago, a deputy of the State Duma Victor Ilyukhin addressed a letter to the leadership of the State Duma, where he said that on May 25, 2010 he was approached by a person who told him that he was ready to provide information about the forgery of the most important historical documents in Russian archives. He was going to tell who, when, how, where and on whose instructions the documents were forged, including Katyn case. And also the so-called letter of Beria No. 794/B. Ilyukhin further writes:
“It follows from his statements that in the early 90s of the last century a group of high-ranking specialists was created to forge archival documents relating to important events Soviet period. This group worked in the structure of the security service Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Geographically, it was located in the premises of the former dachas of workers of the Central Committee of the CPSU in the village of Nagorny. The work of the members of the group was well paid, they received food packages.
“He, in particular, said that they had prepared a note by Lavrenty Beria to the Politburo of the CPSU (b) dated March 1940, which proposed to shoot more than 20 thousand Polish prisoners of war. At the same time, he demonstrated the mechanism for forging the signatures of Lavrenty Beria and Joseph Stalin (copies of the sheets are attached). I do not rule out that the Polish government was also handed fake documents on the so-called Katyn case. He said that his group had made a fake note by Shelepin addressed to Khrushchev dated March 3, 1959. Directly involved in writing the text was Colonel Klimov».Viktor Ilyukhin, an experienced lawyer, former Deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR, who understands the price of such statements and is accustomed to being responsible for his words, asked for an investigation into this statement. At first they ridiculed him, but they nevertheless promised to sort out the request, and a few months later Viktor Ivanovich died suddenly. And things went quiet.
The Losers Argument
Everyone can draw their own conclusions from the information. The question remains. Why are the Poles so furiously seeking recognition of Russia's guilt? It's an old thing, as I wrote Alexander Pushkin, "the dispute of the Slavs among themselves." A very violent argument. Poland suffers from a longstanding inferiority complex. What is Poland in world or even European politics? In essence, nothing. Germany, partly France and Great Britain play the first violin there. This country ceased to play any significance in world history hundreds of years ago. In the 17th century. Then the Polish state thundered in Eastern Europe. They even managed to seize the Russian throne for a couple of years of the Time of Troubles, to plunder and devastate the Russian lands to their fullest. Then the Time of Troubles ended, and Russia threw the Poles back. At that moment, theoretically, Poland, represented by the united Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and then the Commonwealth, could become the center of the unification of Slavic lands and peoples. But she didn't. History took a different path. Moscow and Russia became the center of Slavic life and world history. But Poland remained a province. The bargaining chip of the great powers. And this is where the Polish glory ended. But the famous ambition remained. Only during unrest do they come to life, chauvinism and nationalism smoldering inside wake up, and the Poles begin to chop off pieces of land from their neighbors.
Where, for example, did these Polish prisoners of war come from?! In 1939 Soviet Union regained the lands of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which Poland, once again taking advantage of another turmoil - civil war in Russia, captured in 1921.
By the way, the unprecedented activity of the Poles in denigrating the President of Belarus Alexandra Lukashenko and the support of the opposition is not connected with any “democracy and freedom”, but with the fact that Poland considers these lands to be its own. As she previously calculated and seized the lands of Czechoslovakia under an agreement with Hitler in 1938. In the 30s, the Poles seriously demanded even a colony in Africa! In particular, they wanted to have the former German Togo and Cameroon, which remained "ownerless" after the defeat of Germany in the First World War.
The attempt of the Poles to solve the Jewish question in the country is also amusing. By the way, this idea was warmly supported by Hitler. Namely, to deport all Jews to Madagascar. They have already sent a commission for arrangements there, but for well-known reasons, the Polish nationalists failed to accomplish this.
But this is a separate big topic: about the destruction and eviction from Poland of millions of Germans after the war, about Jewish pogroms in the "democratic" Commonwealth and other nuances of life. And this position of "Greater Poland - the arbiter of the destinies of the world", destined by God to command, but pushed aside thanks to the intrigues of vile Russia, is driven into the consciousness of its citizens from the cradle.
But what really happened to the Polish prisoners of war? Historian Elena Prudnikova thinks so. The Germans approached the Katyn region three weeks after the start of the war, our army in the confusion of evacuation was not up to the Polish officers. The evacuation wagons were worth their weight in gold. Moreover, many prisoners treated the Germans with more sympathy than the Russians. Some of the prisoners went to the East on their own, while most remained, hoping for cooperation with the Germans. Five kilometers from Katyn in August 1941, the Germans began the construction of a huge complex of army headquarters "Center". At their disposal were ready-made Polish construction teams, we remember, they built airfields. They used them, and then, as they usually did in cases of the construction of secret facilities, they shot them. Very simple, scary and logical.
And what about the European Court? Why do we need unrelenting anti-Russian hysteria now? It's also understandable. Our country is alive. Yeltsin's admiration for the West, when we foolishly agreed to take responsibility for the "execution" of the Poles and were ready to admit anything, is no more. There is sound reasoning about our role in world history. Russia has remained a great country, no matter how it was cut and crumbled. And this is not included in the plans of the Western elite. Billions spent on collapse. And what?! And here Polish chauvinism and Russophobia came in very handy. By the way, we must now wait for a new wave of frenzied Russophobia around Katyn. After all, the damned Russians, wanting to harm the Poles, built their own oil loading port in the Baltic. And now the Polish port of Gdansk (Danzig, captured from Germany. - VC.) and the refineries surrounding it, which lived only due to the transit of our oil, will be covered with a copper basin. The Poles will hit this basin in order to again draw attention to Katyn as the last political argument against Russia.
How many Germans are in a Pole? The economic crisis brought an unexpected result. The Germans today are closer to the Poles than to the Greeks. Many influential Germans say that Poland has become a Nordic country, and Poles are becoming like Germans.
It was the 20th goal of Robert Lewandowski this season. On April 11, the Polish striker scored the decisive goal in Borussia Dortmund's match with Bayern Munich - making Borussia one step away from the title of master of the Bundesliga. Moreover, three days later, Borussia defeated Schalke 2-1 in another important match, and another Pole, Lukasz Piszczek, scored a goal.
German newspapers write about the Polish "Kings of Dortmund". Polish football fans were also delighted, and then saddened that "we need a German coach and the Bundesliga to make Polish footballers achieve such success." More than one fan returned from Dortmund to nearby Bochum much more seriously concerned.
The German economy is booming, but the Ruhr, the heart of German industry, is bleeding. The American owners of Opel have just announced that the factory in Bochum, the second after the parent plant in Rüsselsheim, will be closed, and production will be transferred, presumably, to Poland in the city of Gliwice. Billigstandort is a cheap place of production, so the workers from Poland are called the workers of the Ruhr area. Standort in Germany is a shrine, but Poland has long been not so cheap that only the cost of production predetermined the transfer of the factory. Today, the most important thing is rather that Poland is known as a country with a high work culture.
Economic ties with Germany are visible in Poland at every turn. We make purchases in the Lidl and Real retail chains, we buy consumer electronics in Media Markt, we buy cosmetics from Rossman. The German newspaper concerns Axel Springer and Bauer, the chemical concerns BASF and Linde, the food concerns Oetker and Belsen, the telecommunications concern Deta Mobil, the production of aircraft engines MTU, not to mention about hundreds of small and medium-sized firms.
6 thousand Polish companies have German shareholders, and the accumulated value of German investments in Poland exceeded 20 billion euros. In 2010, another 1.6 billion euros of German investments were received - only Luxembourg invested more in Poland, through which capital from all over the world flows.
The politics of the last 20 years have not kept pace with the economy. But now this is changing. German President Joachim Gauck arrived in Poland on his first visit since coming to power. Donald Tusk is attentive to close contacts with the German chancellor, and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski made an important announcement in Berlin. A delegation of German officials and parliamentarians visits Warsaw almost weekly, and the German political elites have turned to Poland.
Poland has always demanded more attention and respect, but Germany had more important partners in Europe and in the world. However, even now they are, but Poland has suddenly become close, interesting and familiar. “The Germans have noticed us,” says Tsezary Stypulkovsky, chairman of BRE Bank, a subsidiary of Germany's Commerce Bank. Long live the debt brake!
Five years ago we were mentally with the Germans on the opposite edges of Europe. Yaroslav Kachinsky effectively destroyed bilateral relations, further worsened by Erika Steinbach and the specter of Nord Stream, and even the German Christian Democracy in 2007 did not believe that Tusk would be able to win elections. And then the first surprise happened - not only did Tusk win, but he also slowly extended his hand to Chancellor Merkel. Slowly, because Tusk remembered losing the presidential election because of his grandfather in the Wehrmacht. In addition, Lech Kaczynski willingly resorted to the anti-German card in order to block the European policy of the Polish government.
The Germans noticed that Tusk looked like Chancellor Merkel. “He is not very far-sighted, but he solves specific problems,” says Olaf Behnke, European Council bureau chief International Relations in Berlin.
In 2008, the financial crisis began, and immediately after it, the global regression. So there was a second surprise for the Germans. Poland did not fall into this crisis. And no one in Germany paid special attention to the fact that Poland has been developing continuously for 20 years. “But the fact that the Polish economy also grew in 2009, when the economies of Hungary and the Czech Republic were shrinking, impressed the Germans: invitations poured in to talk about the Polish economy,” says Marek Pravda, Polish ambassador to Germany.
In the second half of 2009, Germany was firmly back on the path of economic growth, but the rest of Europe was left far behind. In the Eurozone, the recovery was rickety, and in the new EU member states even slower than before the crisis. With one exception - Poland. “We have become an object of interest, but rather of surprise, at the fact that the Polish economy is functioning correctly,” Stypulkowski says.
The third surprise was presented by Greece. In 2010, the crisis in the Eurozone began, and along with it, demands for Germany to lend money in order to bail out the bankrupt. While Chancellor Merkel refused to sign a blanket check, she was suddenly left alone: there were reproaches that, they say, in the previous Good times Germany flooded southern Europe with its exports, and now it is refusing to help it. And it was Poland, which might have been expected to join the chorus of pretensions, that took Germany's side.
“Tusk, however, did not influence decisions in the Eurozone, but at EU summits he demanded more budget cuts and reforms than pity for Greece. The Germans could be reproached for being stingy and instructing, but if the appeals for help to bankrupts sounded from the Poles, even the French would lose their reason. The Germans suddenly discovered that Poland had the same well-established budgetary policy as Germany. When the time came to write the fiscal pact, they recommended to the rest of the EU countries the same thing that they introduced in Germany in 2009, that is, a ban on increasing excessive budget deficits - then we competed on the fact that we had introduced the budget brake earlier than theirs. The Germans could not be surprised that Poland is a country whose achievements have a debt brake, written in the Constitution since 1997,” says Marek Pravda.
The Polish Presidency of the EU fell into the most acute phase of the Eurozone crisis and Tusk became at that time a true ally of Chancellor Merkel in blocking the reckless initiatives of the European southerners, supported by French President Sarkozy.
Polish support for Germany in the EU structures was not so important, because in the EU and in the Eurozone Germany increasingly had support - but Poland's support from Germany made it possible to carry out its own initiatives. “Poland has changed, it has become an increasingly influential member of the EU from a beggar,” wrote the German newspaper Zerkalo quite recently. “In terms of professionalism, Poles have always wanted to be Germans,” says Andrzej Olechowski, a former head of the Polish Foreign Ministry. “We are reluctant to admit it, but we admire the German order, and we would love to see it in our country.” “We always have more improvisation than organization, while the Germans have exactly the opposite,” Stypulkovsky says.
The Germans respect us for diligence, but they discovered in the Poles what they themselves lack. “When the Germans discover a problem, they sit all night and in the morning they have a plan to solve the problem. The Poles work all night and in the morning the problem is gone,” says Maria Montowska, director of the membership service of the Polish and German Chambers of Industry and Commerce.
The Germans see in the Poles an entrepreneurial spirit, which, unfortunately, is lacking in the Germans from the former GDR, despite hundreds of billions of euros pumped into it. “The Germans are surprised by the level of Polish workers. The Polish worker is well educated, resilient and enthusiastic,” Stypulkowski says.
Gone are the days when Poles were not allowed to lead positions. Poles now manage branches of German banks and firms. The Poles manage the branches of Deutsche Bank and Kommerz Bank. A Polka manages a branch of Robert Bosch, another Polka introduced the Tshibo company to Poland, sits on the board of directors of this company in Hamburg and is responsible for Central Europe.
Economic miracle in Polish. 20 years ago Germany would not have staked on Poland. After the fall of communism, her favorites in Central Europe were Hungary and the Czech Republic - Germany was betting on gradual reforms, and she considered shock therapy a failed plan that would sooner or later drive Poland into trouble. In addition, there was a stereotype of the so-called "Polish economy" (polnische Wirtschaft) - a backward and farcical economy without a "way and warehouse", but in the best possible form of a local variety of primitive trade (Bazarwirtschaft).
For cautious and wealthy Germans, this kind of business with the Poles would be below their dignity. In the German mind, a Pole could only be entrusted with planting asparagus, and even then under supervision. Prejudices on both sides, however, prevented neither German firms from investing in Poland nor Polish workers from working in Germany.
Those who in the early 90s had their head in the right place saw a unique chance: the most developed country, with a lot of capital, right next to a backward country with cheap labor. Each country had what the other badly needed, and both edges were separated only by the border along the Oder.
Poland connected economically with Germany long before its accession to the EU. Germany in this alliance is the most forte, but here it is difficult to talk about dominance. “Germany built us most of the industry, we took from her production technologies and management methods. No one has forced us to do this before, and if this transfer was successful, this is for one reason: we have an economic mentality similar to the German one. The Germans are building factories for us. For my company, Poland is the second most important country after Germany,” says Jörg Mommertz, Chairman of MAN Trucks and Buses Poland, a leading manufacturer of trucks and buses.
“We have three factories here and one of the best financial and accounting centers serving our European companies. In Starachowice, Poznań and Niepolomice, the MAN concern from Munich employs a total of 4,000 workers, and the quality of production is not inferior to that in Bavaria. All city buses of the MAN brand, driving along the streets of German cities, are made in Poland,” says the chairman.
If the European economy today revolves around Germany, then Poland has done much better than other European countries. In the new division of work, we did not remain carefree consumers, only producers.
The specifics of the investment was of key importance. French capital has invested in trade, British capital has invested in services, German capital has invested in production, which has exports and real economic growth. And it mainly strongly connects the investor with the place of investment. “It is always more difficult to part with a factory than with a bureau, shop or bank,” says Montovskaya. “During the crisis, no one left here, because the Polish branches, in contrast to the branches from other countries, simply earned money.”
“With Germany, today we really do form one economic zone,” Olehovsky says. Polish firms deliver parts and sub-assemblies to more advanced production in Germany, but more and more often complete component factories come across in Poland. Unlike the smaller countries of Central Europe, which settled on car assembly shops, Poland attracts German investments from various industries.
One of the arguments for locating production in Poland is that Poland itself constitutes a relatively large sales market: 30 million consumers supported economic growth during the crisis years, and Poles willingly buy German goods. Germans don't show a similar fascination with Polish products, so our food is repackaged before it hits German supermarket shelves. But that too is slowly changing. The rival of the MAN concern in bidding for buses for German cities was the Polish bus manufacturer, Solaris; Polish stores "Reserved" and "Apart" appear in German shopping centers; in perfumery cosmetics of the firm "Loren".
There is also Polish investment in German industry and services. The Polish concern PKN "Orlen" has a network of gas stations in Germany, the Polish company "Ciech" bought a soda factory, and the company "Nitrogen from Taranov" bought a polymer factory. Polish investments in Germany are estimated at 1 billion euros. Where are these guest workers?
Various statistical absurdities follow from this economic union of Poland and Germany: for example, the fact that we export more cars to Germany than Germany exports to Poland, moreover, the Volkswagen concern is the second largest Polish exporter. Germany has been Poland's first trading partner for 20 years, but dependence on a large neighbor is gradually decreasing, and the economic union is no longer as one-sided as it was in the 90s.
Trade turnover between Poland and Germany has grown 14 times over 20 years, but Germany's participation in Polish exports is decreasing as we enter other markets - 10 years ago our mutual trade turnover was 34%, and today it is 26%. Three years ago, we entered the top ten trading partners of Germany, taking the place of Russia. The FRG has greater trade turnover with Poland than with Japan or Spain.
German entrepreneurs who come to Poland notice structural similarities. Germany, like Poland, exports and relies on small and medium-sized firms, the equivalent of the famous (Mittelstand) middle class, the industrial backbone of the German economy.
At the same time, the greatest fear of the Germans, that after the opening of the German labor market last year, they would survive the onslaught of Polish guest workers, did not come true. Nothing like this happened - whoever was supposed to come for work had already done it before, and the new offers from Germany are not competitive enough.
And what is most interesting is that Poland is becoming attractive for Germans emigrating in search of work - in the ranking of countries where they would like to work, Poland jumped to third place after the USA and Switzerland, and ahead of Austria. “Much of this positive surprise for the Germans stems from low expectations and an earlier lack of interest in Poland,” Stypulkowski says. “The crisis was a destiny for us, because it not only produced a single success for Poland, but confronted it with the collapse of Hungary and the stupidity of Greece. However, we must remember that enthusiasm is still limited to a group of entrepreneurs, and interested among politicians is hardly a breakthrough.
There is, however, a great qualitative change, because earlier only neglect dominated, but still, broad social groups of Germans still know almost nothing about Poland. Fans of Borussia Dortmund do not know where the footballer Lewandowski came from, and 60% of Germans have never been to Poland. Not exactly German.
The Polish right is terrifying about the German-Russian alliance and Berlin's domination of Warsaw, but it is worth stepping out of the business world to see that Germanization is rather not a threat to us. “If we compare the standards of action of the public administration, we have a catastrophe. We can also learn a lot in the field of drawing up and observing the law,” says Mostovskaya. In general, with the success of the Polish transformation, we are left behind Germany when it comes to economic reforms.
When we were harvesting the fruits of economic growth, the Germans managed to lengthen the retirement age, reduce welfare state, change the labor code. “Without the reforms of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Germany would be behind us today,” says Stypulkowski. Tusk shows neither a similar reformist discipline nor a willingness to sacrifice his own political quotes for the sake of the future of his country. “Germany will benefit for the next quarter of a century,” says Stypulkowski. The rising economies of the world are waiting for a significant increase in consumption, and at the same time an increase in demand for all kinds of machines and technical devices that are produced in Germany.
“Germany has not gotten rid of industry on such a scale as France or Great Britain, and thus orders are sent to German firms, and from there to their Polish subsidiaries and Polish subcontractors. German technologies will develop because they are practical and have universal application,” Stypulkovsky adds. So Poland has a guaranteed time for further economic development, but she must be prepared to use this chance.
Poland will have to prove itself not only as a place of production, but also as a place of development and research. It's easy to get frustrated when there are high expectations.
The nearest criterion for us is Euro 2012. Polish stadiums do not excite the Germans, although three of the four were designed by German architectural firms. Like football fans, the Germans are watching the preparations - they will scoff at every sign of disorder, but they will appreciate the order all the more if the event is successful.
In a sporting sense, we can shine at least with the Polish footballers playing in the Bundesliga, three for Borussia Dortmund and born in Poland, who play in the football team representing Germany Lukasz Podolski and Miroslav Klose. Football players are the best example of combining the Polish soul and German technology.
Wawrzyniec Smochinskiy
Both in Russia and in the countries of the European Union, since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, there has been an impression that in Poland they are much more critical of the actions of the Kremlin than in Germany. As it turned out, such a widely held opinion is largely untrue.
This is evidenced by the results of a representative poll conducted in mid-February this year in parallel in Poland and Germany - shortly after the negotiations in Minsk, but even before the assassination in Moscow of Boris Nemtsov.
The study was the result joint work the Warsaw Institute for Public Policy (ISP) and the Berlin Bertelsmann Foundation (Bertelsmann Stiftung).
Relations with Russia
Germans and Poles are practically unanimous in assessing the current state of relations between their countries and Russia. 78 percent of the inhabitants of Poland and Germany consider them bad or very bad. Only one percent of Germans calls such relations very good. In Poland, there are none at all.
“But just recently, in 2013,” Agnieszka Lada from ISP stressed, presenting the results of the survey in Berlin, “there were more people in Germany who positively assessed German-Russian relations.” Such a radical change, she said, was the result of Russia's actions in Ukraine.
Who is guilty?
The question of who is primarily responsible for the emergence and escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is answered somewhat differently in Poland and in Russia.
Thus, Russia is blamed by 61 percent of Poles and 39 percent of Germans, while Ukraine is blamed by 6 percent of respondents in Poland and 10 percent in Germany. Both parties are equally responsible – 20 percent of Poles think so, but 43 percent of Germans.
Even if the answers to this question differ significantly, Lada believes, the general trend is obvious: the majority of residents of both countries do not consider Russia to be an uninvolved party to the conflict in Ukraine. And only a clear minority of those surveyed believed the Russian propaganda and put all the blame on the new government in Kyiv.
76 percent of Poles believe that Russia is a military threat to their country. In Germany, less than half of them - 41 percent. Poles speak geographical proximity and historical memory a nation that has repeatedly been subjected to aggression from the east, says Agnieszka Lada. But she also calls the proportion of Germans who see Russia as a military threat “big enough to think about it.”
Germans and Poles about EU sanctions
The Russian and European press often write about the differences between individual EU countries on the issue of sanctions imposed in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea and Moscow's actions in eastern Ukraine.
It is believed that such measures are especially actively advocated in the Baltic countries and Eastern Europe, in particular, in Poland, but the Germans are skeptical about them. The data presented in Berlin refute such a myth. In both Poland (6 percent) and Germany (23 percent), the smallest group is those who are in favor of easing the sanctions regime. 76 percent of those surveyed in Poland and 67 percent in Germany believe that the sanctions should be kept in place or even tightened.
Nemtsov assassination factor
The Poles are more radical in this regard, among them there are noticeably more supporters of the introduction of new sanctions.
However, says Agnieszka Lada, the survey was conducted before the murder of Nemtsov, which did not come as a surprise to the people of Poland. They, in her opinion, “well understand the nature of the Putin regime.” As for the Germans, the expert says, this murder opened the eyes of many of them, and if the survey had been conducted after it, then there would have been more hardliners against Moscow in Germany.
The answers in Poland and Germany are similar to questions about options for providing assistance to Ukraine. More than half of respondents in both countries (56 and 55 percent, respectively) have a positive view of economic aid and a negative view of military aid. True, in Germany, 82 percent are against the supply of weapons or equipment for the Ukrainian army, and in Poland - 56 percent.
What do they think in Russia?
In Russia, Polish and German sociologists, with the help of the Levada Center, also conducted a study in February, but they asked slightly different questions. As for the assessment of relations with Poland and Germany, they are, in the opinion of the majority of Russians, bad or very bad. With Poland it is even worse than with Germany.
CONTEXT
Poll: Majority of Germans blame Putin for conflict in Ukraine
“For” or “against”: anti-Russian sanctions – a bone of contention in the EU?
Germans are more sympathetic to Poles than Russians
How Russians treat Germans and Poles
Such responses, Agnieszka Lada pointed out, were expected. What surprised her was the attitude of Russians towards separatists in eastern Ukraine. Only 41 percent of the respondents gave a positive answer to the question of whether they should be supported, 46 percent believe that they should not be helped.
Those who responded positively were asked additional questions about the nature of such support. It turned out that in terms of the entire population of the country, 28 percent support the supply of weapons to the separatists, and Russian soldiers– only 7 percent.
“Such data should be kept in mind when talking about the exorbitant rating of the Russian president,” Lada noted. “While the vast majority of Russians like Putin, they oppose aid to separatists in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s military intervention in the Donbass, they support Putin, but not his aggressive policies.”
Perhaps that is why, during the “straight line” on April 16, Vladimir Putin so stubbornly denied the participation of Russian troops or military personnel in the events in eastern Ukraine, Christoph von Marschall, a diplomatic correspondent for the main editorial office of the Tagesspiegel newspaper, suggested, commenting on the results of a sociological study. “To admit such a fact,” he said, “would be politically dangerous for Putin.”
