the Czech Republic?
Seventy years ago, in the morning hours of September 17, 1939, the Red Army troops crossed the Polish border and over the following weeks, in accordance with the secret protocols of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, occupied and annexed large swathes of what was then eastern Poland and is now western Ukraine and Belarus and southern Lithuania. The outgunned and outmaneuvered Polish army was already by that stage collapsing under the onslaught of the first German blitzkrieg, so from a military point of view the Soviet invasion did not materially affect the outcome of the struggle. It did, however, provide a dastardly coup de grace for the first chapter of the Second World War.
But don’t expect much news and commentary about September 17; not in the West, and certainly not in Russia.
I wonder, how many of the major media weenies mentioned this fact in their 'news' broadcasts today?
The anniversary is an uncomfortable reminder that for around one third of the duration of the war, the Soviet Union was one of the aggressors — first against Poland, then against Finland, and finally against the Baltic states and Romania — and that during that time it provided invaluable material aid to further the Nazi aggression against the West, while at the same time committing mass war crimes within the newly occupied territories, of which the so called “Katyn massacre” of some twenty thousand Polish army officers taken prisoner of war is only the most widely known.
Very few others have been investigated, none have been prosecuted (if one excludes the farcical attempt by the Soviets to pin the blame for Katyn on the Germans during the Nuremberg trials), and not one person responsible has ever been held to account. To add insult to injury, the very memory of the Soviet atrocities committed east of the Ribbentrop-Molotov line had been banished and criminalized after the war, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall. For years, September 1, not the 17th, was the only date to remember, and for many it remains the only date that matters and the only date they know.
I'm curious; did Obama & Co. not know this date, did nobody around them know? Or did they like the date for telling two eastern European allies that they were screwed?
3 comments:
Of course they knew, they just don't give a sh*t.
I work with several Poles and Romanians, I have a half Romanian Nephew, and both Finnish and Lithuanian friends.
The information may have been officially supressed in eastern Europe and glossed over by the west in support of our "brave ally" ("if Hitler invaded hell, I'd put a good word or two for the Devil into a speech in the house of commons" Churchill).
No, the east Europeans knew full well of the evil, the father of one of my Polish colleagues had worked in Moscow during communism, and returning to Poland via Slovakia, a border guard had detained him hours, examining a portrait of Lennin which he had with him. The guard could not believe that a Pole would actually want such a thing, he thought it must be cover for something else!
Fortunately Poland and Czechia in particular are freedom orientated, The Soviets were unable to break their spirit, and they may well be a better refuge for ideas of freedom than the US and UK will be for the next few decades.
"Fortunately Poland and Czechia in particular are freedom orientated, The Soviets were unable to break their spirit, and they may well be a better refuge for ideas of freedom than the US and UK will be for the next few decades."
Amen on that!
Post a Comment