From 1926 to 1935, Poland had been ruled by Marshal Pilsudski, the man who had allied with the Ukrainians in an attempt to recreate a Polish-Ukrainian alliance that would take Soviet territory while the USSR was weak. Somewhat repeating the Polish tactics during the Russian
Sixty years ago as a (Labour Party) Young Socialist I had the privilege of listening to a presentation by the Director of the York Art Gallery, the veteran Marxist and refugee from Hitler, Hans Hess. He described the day he received the news of the Molotov Pact as one of the happiest in his political life.
Hess the son of a shoe manufacturer and connoisseur in Erfurt who had accumulated one of the finest collections of modern art in the country co-founded the magazine "Inside Nazi Germany" and helped launch the Free German League of Culture in London which he reached in 1935, after two years in Paris.
Hans knew all the Parisian communists from Willi Munzenberg to Picasso and Charlie Chaplin. All of which made no difference when war broke out-he was interned on the Isle of Man and later deported to Canada until 1942.
On his return he was appointed, thanks to Trevor Thomas (the last man to see Sylvia Plath alive! and a famous victim of the draconian laws against homosexuality) deputy director of the Leicester Art Gallery, which perhaps not coincidentally is famous for its modern Art collection.
Thereafter Hess became the director of the York Art Gallery where, inter alia, he played an important part in the re-discovery and regular staging of the Mystery Plays. After a clash with philistine councillors Hess moved to Sussex where he taught Art History at the University.
His daughter Anita succeeded in winning reparations from the German government for the Hess collection stolen in 1933. Whether her mother Lilli and father were still alive then I do not know but they would have approved of her donation of the proceeds to the working class movement.
So Poland tried to play both sides and was ultimately the biggest loser of WWII. It's always interesting that some lesser powers manage to play both sides and benefit like Belarus today (until 2022). I think there is a lack of analysis on how non hegemonic actors should conduct their geopolitics.
Let's remember that the Belarus' leader attempted to play both sides but ended up having to run to Putin when the West tried to overthrow him! The West doesn't like non-aligned nations, only those that follow orders. Same with Kazakhstan etc. China and Russia seem to be able to deal with such occasions in a much more balanced way.
Poland was given huge tracts of German land at the end of WW2, which they brutally ethnically cleansed of the millions of ethnic Germans who lived there. The vast majority of the population also escaped a regime that kept them uneducated and poor. Not something that the current Polish elites want to have remembered, 1945-1975 was a time of greatly enhanced opportunities for the Polish majority.
Yea, that's why I said "until 2022", but I got the year wrong. They tried to overthrow Luka in 2020. Until then Luka was playing both sides to get cheaper gas prices and trade deals. I've heard Russians call Belarus (or Belorussia) "Better Russia" since they've managed to come out ahead of even Russia as a result of being non-aligned for a period of time. From what I hear Vietnam currently is doing something similar taking advantage of the China/US power struggle https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3248209/vietnams-political-waltz-china-and-us.
When I say "Poland was the biggest loser" I mean they had the largest percentage of their population die in the war than any other country (although some regions of other countries got it even worse).
Three million ethnic Poles and 3 million Jews. Given the extremely high levels of anti-semitism in pre-war Poland, perhaps the 3 million Jews should not be counted as Polish losses. Poland has a law in place banning any discussion of Polish culpability in the Holocaust, of which there seems to have been quite a bit, especially in the final stages. Two million of the "Polish" losses were also in the lands that Poland took in 1921 and were returned to the Soviets in 1939.
The Poles took their revenge on the ethnic Germans in the lands taken from Germany after WW2, with up to a million dying in the brutal ethnic cleansing.
The Soviet Union lost 1/5th of its population, much higher than the losses sustained in present-day Poland.
Sixty years ago as a (Labour Party) Young Socialist I had the privilege of listening to a presentation by the Director of the York Art Gallery, the veteran Marxist and refugee from Hitler, Hans Hess. He described the day he received the news of the Molotov Pact as one of the happiest in his political life.
Hess the son of a shoe manufacturer and connoisseur in Erfurt who had accumulated one of the finest collections of modern art in the country co-founded the magazine "Inside Nazi Germany" and helped launch the Free German League of Culture in London which he reached in 1935, after two years in Paris.
Hans knew all the Parisian communists from Willi Munzenberg to Picasso and Charlie Chaplin. All of which made no difference when war broke out-he was interned on the Isle of Man and later deported to Canada until 1942.
On his return he was appointed, thanks to Trevor Thomas (the last man to see Sylvia Plath alive! and a famous victim of the draconian laws against homosexuality) deputy director of the Leicester Art Gallery, which perhaps not coincidentally is famous for its modern Art collection.
Thereafter Hess became the director of the York Art Gallery where, inter alia, he played an important part in the re-discovery and regular staging of the Mystery Plays. After a clash with philistine councillors Hess moved to Sussex where he taught Art History at the University.
His daughter Anita succeeded in winning reparations from the German government for the Hess collection stolen in 1933. Whether her mother Lilli and father were still alive then I do not know but they would have approved of her donation of the proceeds to the working class movement.
So Poland tried to play both sides and was ultimately the biggest loser of WWII. It's always interesting that some lesser powers manage to play both sides and benefit like Belarus today (until 2022). I think there is a lack of analysis on how non hegemonic actors should conduct their geopolitics.
Let's remember that the Belarus' leader attempted to play both sides but ended up having to run to Putin when the West tried to overthrow him! The West doesn't like non-aligned nations, only those that follow orders. Same with Kazakhstan etc. China and Russia seem to be able to deal with such occasions in a much more balanced way.
Poland was given huge tracts of German land at the end of WW2, which they brutally ethnically cleansed of the millions of ethnic Germans who lived there. The vast majority of the population also escaped a regime that kept them uneducated and poor. Not something that the current Polish elites want to have remembered, 1945-1975 was a time of greatly enhanced opportunities for the Polish majority.
Yea, that's why I said "until 2022", but I got the year wrong. They tried to overthrow Luka in 2020. Until then Luka was playing both sides to get cheaper gas prices and trade deals. I've heard Russians call Belarus (or Belorussia) "Better Russia" since they've managed to come out ahead of even Russia as a result of being non-aligned for a period of time. From what I hear Vietnam currently is doing something similar taking advantage of the China/US power struggle https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3248209/vietnams-political-waltz-china-and-us.
When I say "Poland was the biggest loser" I mean they had the largest percentage of their population die in the war than any other country (although some regions of other countries got it even worse).
Three million ethnic Poles and 3 million Jews. Given the extremely high levels of anti-semitism in pre-war Poland, perhaps the 3 million Jews should not be counted as Polish losses. Poland has a law in place banning any discussion of Polish culpability in the Holocaust, of which there seems to have been quite a bit, especially in the final stages. Two million of the "Polish" losses were also in the lands that Poland took in 1921 and were returned to the Soviets in 1939.
The Poles took their revenge on the ethnic Germans in the lands taken from Germany after WW2, with up to a million dying in the brutal ethnic cleansing.
The Soviet Union lost 1/5th of its population, much higher than the losses sustained in present-day Poland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Polish_death_camp%22_controversy
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-historians-under-attack-for-exploring-polands-role-in-the-holocaust
https://open.substack.com/pub/stolzuntermenschen/p/falstificators-of-history-part-2?