Topic: 63 years since the uprising of 63 days

[Florestan]

Saying the Soviets were better than the NSDAP forces is like saying death by asphyxiation is better than death by starvation: either way, you're dead.

Word.

There is a Romanian bittersweet joke right to the point. In the autumn of 1944 right in the middle of the night someone knocks brutally at the door of an old woman in a village.
 - Who is it? asks she with a failing voice
 - Death! answers a harsh voice outside.
 - Thank God! You scared me like hell, I thought it was the Red Army!

[PSmith08]

Patrick, thanks for that post. I can't even begin to explain the sort of reassuring solace it gives me to see Katyn mentioned by someone not writing directly from Poland. With Putin constantly denying anything ever happened it's easy to become paranoid.

Frankly, I keep waiting for Putin to say, "Guess what? We're back!" It's perhaps inappropriate, but he constantly reminds me of that Simpsons episode ("Simpson Tide") where the "Russian" representative to the UN says, "The Soviet Union would be happy to grant amnesty to your wayward vessel." The US representative, shocked, says, "The Soviet Union'? I thought you guys broke up?" The Soviet ambassador says, "Yes, that is what we WANTED YOU TO THINK!" A series of great visual gags ensues, culminating with Lenin bursting out of his case in the Mausoleum saying, "Must...crush...capitalism!"

It's funny, to a point. Putin's weird Soviet nostalgia is leading him to attempt to cover up some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. As for me, I might be naïve, but I always assumed things like Katyn were facts. They happened, and you can blame them on Stalin - especially after 1954 (but only to the rise of Brezhnev and Suslov), but they still happened and Russia's unforgivable behavior after the fact (i.e., preventing prosecution of the perpetrators and the rehabilitation of the victims) only makes it worse.

If that's possible.

[bwv 1080]

What do you mean, "the NKVD would." The NKVD did. The Soviets invaded in September 1939, and by April 1940, they had already begun the systematic murder of Polish officers - culminating in the Katyn forest murders. In a bizarre turn of fate, the Wehrmacht discovered the NKVD's mass graves as they progressed into the Soviet Union, and the Reich propagandists had the rare job of announcing genocide.

To my point that the leaders of the home army knew exactly what was in store for them from the Russians

Saying the Soviets were better than the NSDAP forces is like saying death by asphyxiation is better than death by starvation: either way, you're dead.

Approximately 3 million non-Jewish Poles died under Nazi occupation, add another 3 million Jewish Poles and you have about 20% of the pre-war population dead.  The population did not get back to 1939 levels until the 1970's.  Poland was under Stalin longer than it was under Hitler, and nowhere near that number of people were killed by the regime.  The Nazi's goals for Poland was a complete "Germanization" where the Poles would essentially cease to exist.  So yes, the Soviets were the lesser evil.

[Florestan]

the Soviets were the lesser evil.

Actually, shouldn't this be decided by the Polish people themselves?

[Maciek]

Word.

There is a Romanian bittersweet joke right to the point. In the autumn of 1944 right in the middle of the night someone knocks brutally at the door of an old woman in a village.
 - Who is it? asks she with a failing voice
 - Death! answers a harsh voice outside.
 - Thank God! You scared me like hell, I thought it was the Red Army!

Excellent! Though very bitter.

Putin's weird Soviet nostalgia is leading him to attempt to cover up some of the worst crimes of the 20th century.

Actually (and sadly), it all runs deeper - Soviet nostalgia is something permeating Russia as a whole. How else could they have a former KGB agent as president? Even worse than that - I think it's something present in the entire "Eastern block". I don't need to search far for an example: former Polish president Kwasniewski was a Minister in one of the last communist governments.

As for Katyn: my wife worked for a year in Smolensk. The Katyn forest graves are about 10 km (6 miles) out of town. Hardly anyone over there knows about Katyn. And of those who have heard of it, hardly anyone believes it actually happened! They either think the Germans did it or that it's all a hoax!! And I'm talking even about people who were present at the exhumations. Who have perhaps seen the main executioner (a bit of ghastly trivia: they were hoping they could do it all in one go but as they only had one pistol this was impossible - the gun quickly became too hot to handle so they had to make intermissions to wait for it to cool down).

But that's the sort of thing that works in every direction. Having a national identity means feeling responsible for things done by your nation. There's the same thing in Poland with people claiming no Pole could ever denounce a hiding Jew, let alone kill one...

Oh, and I definitely have to seek out that Simpsons episode!


Completely off topic: Bwv 1080, how did you add that cell-phone icon to your first post??

[bwv 1080]

Completely off topic: Bwv 1080, how did you add that cell-phone icon to your first post??

Not sure what you mean, if there is one there it must be a quirk of your computer perhaps?  I did not intentionally add any images

[Maciek]

 

Strange.

It wasn't the first one but this one:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,2446.msg63716.html#msg63716

On my computer there's a tiny cell-phone "message icon" - between your screen name and the thread topic (closer to the thread topic). Is no one else seeing this?

[bwv 1080]

Strange.

It wasn't the first one but this one:

On my computer there's a tiny cell-phone "message icon" - between your screen name and the thread topic (closer to the thread topic). Is no one else seeing this?

OK I see it, but still do not know how it got there

[PSmith08]

Approximately 3 million non-Jewish Poles died under Nazi occupation, add another 3 million Jewish Poles and you have about 20% of the pre-war population dead.  The population did not get back to 1939 levels until the 1970's.  Poland was under Stalin longer than it was under Hitler, and nowhere near that number of people were killed by the regime.  The Nazi's goals for Poland was a complete "Germanization" where the Poles would essentially cease to exist.  So yes, the Soviets were the lesser evil.

I don't think, knowing some Poles, that most Poles would agree with your assessment. Both the Nazis and the Soviets were bad, and - unless there is some underlying ideological reason to attempt to say that the NKVD was less evil than the Waffen-SS - it is folly to try to decide which monsters were less evil. Within six months of invading, the Soviets decided to eliminate any Poles who wouldn't go along with Moscow. Within nine months, half the Polish officer corps was dead. Shot. In the head. By NKVD butchers. That's certainly the lesser of two evils. Oh, yeah. Stalin and Hitler did the exact same thing, and - if the Allies hadn't been so deferential to Stalin after sacrificing millions of men in a war that was mismanaged from before the beginning (Stalin's pronunciation that war would not come in 1941 and his gun-dogs ensuring that was the line) to defeat Hitler - the West would have soured on Stalin long before it finally did. Katyn Forest was one of many genocidal incidents - e.g., the Ukraine and the Holodomor.

Absolute evil is absolute evil. Don't kid yourself, if Stalin had lived longer, you would have seen killing on an even bigger scale. The Doctors' Plot was just getting warmed up, and the thought is that Beria himself called off Pravda's anti-Semitic campaign once Stalin died.

[bwv 1080]

I don't think, knowing some Poles, that most Poles would agree with your assessment. Both the Nazis and the Soviets were bad, and - unless there is some underlying ideological reason to attempt to say that the NKVD was less evil than the Waffen-SS - it is folly to try to decide which monsters were less evil. Within six months of invading, the Soviets decided to eliminate any Poles who wouldn't go along with Moscow. Within nine months, half the Polish officer corps was dead. Shot. In the head. By NKVD butchers. That's certainly the lesser of two evils. Oh, yeah. Stalin and Hitler did the exact same thing, and - if the Allies hadn't been so deferential to Stalin after sacrificing millions of men in a war that was mismanaged from before the beginning (Stalin's pronunciation that war would not come in 1941 and his gun-dogs ensuring that was the line) to defeat Hitler - the West would have soured on Stalin long before it finally did. Katyn Forest was one of many genocidal incidents - e.g., the Ukraine and the Holodomor.

Absolute evil is absolute evil. Don't kid yourself, if Stalin had lived longer, you would have seen killing on an even bigger scale. The Doctors' Plot was just getting warmed up, and the thought is that Beria himself called off Pravda's anti-Semitic campaign once Stalin died.

Can you come up with 6 million Poles murdered by the Soviets?  When one option is total planned genocide, anything short of that is a lesser evil - its that simple.

[Xantus' Murrelet]

Oh, and I definitely have to seek out that Simpsons episode!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFemUdYl88s



Anyway thanks to all for this excellent discussion so far! I'm just reading.

[PSmith08]

Can you come up with 6 million Poles murdered by the Soviets?  When one option is total planned genocide, anything short of that is a lesser evil - its that simple.

Since you seem bent on covering for the Soviets, a word of advice: just don't cover for the NKVD in a room full of Poles (or Ukrainians, or Belorussians, or Georgians, or Volga Germans, or Armenians, or Finns, or any of a whole host of nationalities oppressed by the USSR).

They wouldn't agree with amoral body-count calculus.

[bwv 1080]

Since you seem bent on covering for the Soviets, a word of advice: just don't cover for the NKVD in a room full of Poles (or Ukrainians, or Belorussians, or Georgians, or Volga Germans, or Armenians, or Finns, or any of a whole host of nationalities oppressed by the USSR).

They wouldn't agree with amoral body-count calculus.

Why are you defending the Nazis?

[PSmith08]

Why are you defending the Nazis?

I am not defending the Nazis. I'm saying that the Soviets were just as evil.

I didn't think that there was any contention on that point.

[bwv 1080]

I am not defending the Nazis. I'm saying that the Soviets were just as evil.

I didn't think that there was any contention on that point.

Then don't accuse me of defending the NKVD, because I am not.

[PSmith08]

Then don't accuse me of defending the NKVD, because I am not.

Here, to keep this from becoming a pointless flaming contest, I'll give you a little history lesson. Stalin died in 1954. After World War II, he traded Bolshevik internationalism for a weird Russian nationalism. He, and his circle of high officials, became increasingly anti-Semitic. There were always anti-Semites, some of them vicious, and they began to infuse their rhetoric with a suspicion of Jews - for undermining Soviet unity though "cosmopolitanism" and Zionism. The president of Czechoslovakia, Clement Gottwald, a loyal vassal of Stalin, launched anti-Semitic rhetoric in his ravaged country. He arrested and later "car-crashed" Solomon Mikhoels, the actor in charge of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC), and many other leading Jewish professionals and intellectuals. His Doctors' Plot had strong anti-Semitic undertones, as many of the leading Soviet doctors were Jewish. He was gearing up his Terror machinery to destroy the Soviet Jewish community, and it was only because he died before he could begin in earnest, that the Soviet Jews were spared annihilation. Stalin's terrible vascular health was the only thing that prevented the extermination of Soviet Jews on a massive scale.

Why do I bring this up? Stalin didn't kill as many Poles as Hitler, though he killed plenty of Poles. He didn't initiate a Holocaust-type systematic destruction of Jews, while he certainly did so against the Ukrainians and the kulaks, but he would have had he lived a few more years. It is impossible to assert that the Soviets were better than the Nazis. Why? Because they were both pure evil. Once you have entered the inky darkness of this nature, there is no such thing as degrees. The human mind, especially one not twisted with ideology and malevolence, can't comprehend this sort of evil. Differentiation is impossible.

[Maciek]

OK I see it, but still do not know how it got there

Ah, never mind. It looks good, BTW.

Back on topic:

Approximately 3 million non-Jewish poles died under Nazi occupation, add another 3 million Jewish poles and you have about 20% of the pre-war population dead.  The population did not get back to 1939 levels until the 1970's.  Poland was under Stalin longer than it was under Hitler, and nowhere near that number of people were killed by the regime.

I'm not sure how these things are calculated. For one thing, IIRC 6 million was the total loss according to some estimates (others go even up to 8 million) - meaning simply the number of people who did not survive the war on both sides of the Russo-German "border". But I might be wrong (I can't check my books now, my daughter is sleeping).

According to the book I have at hand, during the first two years of Soviet rule on Polish soil, more than 1 million people were "repressed" - shot, imprisoned, sent to labor camps etc. At least 30 thousand were shot to death, and around 100 thousand died in the camps. We should also take into account the great number that never returned simply because they had no means or weren't allowed to travel (it's a long way from Kamchatka).

There's also the problem of "fluid" borders: how do you calculate the change in population of a country which has been "moved" on the map? And what was the actual percentage of the population killed (in each of the parts)?

Last but certainly not least is Stalin's sly strategy evident in his handling of the Warsaw Uprising: Russian troops did not kill those Poles. But it can be argued that those people were killed on Stalin's order. But then, of course, you could similarly say the massacres in Volhynia were indirectly led by the Germans (well, more than that: there are reports of the Germans supplying both sides with weapons...).

Also worth remembering is that the NKVD was killing Poles well before WWII. These were Poles living within the Soviet Union, of course - even after the repatriations which were a consequence of the Riga Peace Treaty there were roughly 1.1-1.2 million Poles living there. Of these several hundred were killed in the "spy hunts" of the 1920s. There were also many Polish victims of the Great Purge. But that's all probably beside the point.

Finally, I'm a bit concerned about this method of comparing body counts. Isn't it a bit insensitive? (There's that poem by Szymborska about counting deaths by the million.) Both the Russians and Germans killed civilians and prisoners of war. They did this on a massive scale. Yes, perhaps Stalin left less casualties in Poland than Hitler did. But just think of Holodomor - this happened in a land that was once a part of Poland. It did not happen to the Polish nation but to one closely connected with it historically. That's 3 to 5 million dead within two years!!! I'm not sure that could be called a lesser evil. Could the same thing have happened in Poland (in later years)? Who knows?

But you're generally right: Hitler's plan was to exterminate the entire nation (Poles happened to be the only one of the occupied nations that could not enlist in the German army), while Stalin's was... I'm not sure what exactly. Probably to conquer all of Europe, and then the world. But for the time being it might have been "only" to get rid of the "cream" of Polish society.

But you're generally right: in Poland, Hitler seems to have gotten much farther down the extermination path. I'm not sure if he actually wanted to kill all the Poles to the last one but whatever he had in store for them certainly couldn't have been pleasant (BTW, Poles happened to be the only of the occupied nations that could not enlist in the German army). Stalin's plan, OTOH, was... I'm not sure what exactly. Probably to conquer all of Europe, and then the world. But for the time being it might have been "only" to get rid of the "cream" of Polish society. Though, IIRC, Stalin and Hitler were both Poland-haters, and considering Stalin's success in exterminating some other nations.......

Still, re Florestan's suggestion, I'm sure most Poles would much rather remain in the British "domain". However, during the Tehran conference Stalin managed to secure that prerogative, and apparently without much difficulty.

[EDIT: major changes in penultimate paragraph - I've left the previous version (crossed out) for those who want to check]

[Maciek]

Stalin died in 1954.

1953.

It is impossible to assert that the Soviets were better than the Nazis. Why? Because they were both pure evil. Once you have entered the inky darkness of this nature, there is no such thing as degrees. The human mind, especially one not twisted with ideology and malevolence, can't comprehend this sort of evil. Differentiation is impossible.

That's very much up to the point! I agree.

[bwv 1080]

Here, to keep this from becoming a pointless flaming contest, I'll give you a little history lesson. Stalin died in 1954. After World War II, he traded Bolshevik internationalism for a weird Russian nationalism. He, and his circle of high officials, became increasingly anti-Semitic. There were always anti-Semites, some of them vicious, and they began to infuse their rhetoric with a suspicion of Jews - for undermining Soviet unity though "cosmopolitanism" and Zionism. The president of Czechoslovakia, Clement Gottwald, a loyal vassal of Stalin, launched anti-Semitic rhetoric in his ravaged country. He arrested and later "car-crashed" Solomon Mikhoels, the actor in charge of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC), and many other leading Jewish professionals and intellectuals. His Doctors' Plot had strong anti-Semitic undertones, as many of the leading Soviet doctors were Jewish. He was gearing up his Terror machinery to destroy the Soviet Jewish community, and it was only because he died before he could begin in earnest, that the Soviet Jews were spared annihilation. Stalin's terrible vascular health was the only thing that prevented the extermination of Soviet Jews on a massive scale.

Why do I bring this up? Stalin didn't kill as many Poles as Hitler, though he killed plenty of Poles. He didn't initiate a Holocaust-type systematic destruction of Jews, while he certainly did so against the Ukrainians and the kulaks, but he would have had he lived a few more years. It is impossible to assert that the Soviets were better than the Nazis. Why? Because they were both pure evil. Once you have entered the inky darkness of this nature, there is no such thing as degrees. The human mind, especially one not twisted with ideology and malevolence, can't comprehend this sort of evil. Differentiation is impossible.

I know all this so do not need the lesson, thank you.  I am not even talking about morality - just simply odds of survival - which were better for the average Pole under the Soviets

[PSmith08]

1953.

That's right. Apologies.

I know all this so do not need the lesson, thank you.  I am not even talking about morality - just simply odds of survival - which were better for the average Pole under the Soviets

If you know all this, then why are we engaging in the game of "Who was less likely to kill you"? Both regimes were likely to kill you, as Stalin proved by killing various groups at various times, no proof is necessary for Hitler's murder, albeit for different reasons.