With the recent passing of the seventieth anniversary of the German invasion of Poland , reflection on the causes and effects of the second world war is worthwhile. One dynamic if this discussion certainly should be whether the war should be said to have on the first of September, 1939, or whether a more appropriate date would be in July of 1937 when the last war waged between the Japanese and Nationalist China began. However, the topic of this writing pertains to the conflict in Europe, and with respect to Poland and its place in the war.
Russia, not surprisingly, takes a slightly different on aspects of the war than do most. Many seem all-to-willing to excuse the position of the Soviet Union with respect to Germany prior to Operation Barbarossa. There is no comparison, however, between the treatment of Soviet POWs in 1919 and 1920 by Poland and the Katyn massacre of 1940 beyond the fact that both resulted from efforts at unprovoked Soviet expansionism. The inclusion of the Soviet Union among the allied powers following July 1941 was sensible in retrospect, even if details of what that relationship meant in practice were not. Polish complaints with respect to the of the Russian government pertaining to is commemmorative events marking the seventieth anniversary of the invasion of Poland were without a doubt justified.
What is suprising, however, was how another remarked on the start of the war; political commentator Patrick J. Buchanan. Indeed, the lifelong anticommunist has on the conflict which one might expect from a Stalinist, but certainly not from the American right. In a commentary available on his own website and earlier on that of MSNBC, the cable news operation which continues to employ him, Pat Buchanan absurdly claims that the refusal of Poland to give up a single port city was the singular cause of the entire Second World War.
Buchanan early on notes that the British declaration of war against Germany occurred a mere two days after the invasion of Poland began. In so doing, he suggests that the British were unnecessarily provoking war. But such an implication ignores the course of events leading up to September, 1939. The sequence of relevant happenings emphasized by Buchanan to justify his point of view demonstrate either ignorance or a deliberate attempt to mislead.
The next paragraph to Buchanan’s commentary on that war so long ago is also worthy of criticism in part. He is absolutle right to suggests that millions perished, and that civilians rather than soldiers suffered the most in the nearly six years of fighting in Europe. Where he makes the attempt to state honest and impartial facts, he does a good job. That said, his focus on Christians in that and other paragraphs overlooks the fate of others. Albania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria all had significant Muslim populations and were all behind the iron curtain by the end of the war. Secularists of various stripes no doubt perished in the fighting, but Buchanan’s approach seems to conflate the Christian dead with the antisemitism of the German, and to a lesser extent, Soviet and Polish regimes. Buchanan may not be engaging in Holocaust denial, but in his commentary on the Second World War, he seems to come eerily close.
Later on, Buchanan defends the Fourteen Points made by Woodrow Wilson in a 1918 speech regarding his vision for the organization of Europe following the first of the world wars. While true that the port the Germans called Danzig and the Poles call Gdansk was placed nominally under Polish control following World War I, it was administered separately from Poland, and had internal autonomy. There is no mention of how Buchanan felt about the League of Nations mandates governed rather less autonomously across Asia and Africa by victorious outside powers during the same period. Buchanan further ignores the effort which went into otherwise delineating the German-Polish border between the wars.
The claim is made by Mr. Buchanan that Hitler’s government had proposed a land swap with Poland over the Free State of Danzig, as it was then known. Of course, the land the Germans were swapping was in then-occupied former Czechoslovakia. No source is given for this particular claim, and he overlooks the fact that Poland was already partaking in the forced dismemberment of prewar Czechoslovakia.
In brushing over inconvenient facts, Mr. Buchanan fails to directly mention that a German protectorate over the Czech interior was in contravention to the Munich Pact. Though, in a sense, he makes the same mistake as many who analyze this aspect of European history; working with an incomplete timeline. Events prior to the infamous Munich Pact are as important as those subsequent to it. The annexation of Austria by Hitler’s Germany in 1937 was patently illegal, and prior to the 1938 Munich Pact, Hitler weighed declaring war on Czechoslovakia to achieve his supposedly limited aims.
By blaming the Poles for the Second World War, Pat Buchanan wrongly portrays Hitler as a man whose grand ambitions could be controlled. This point of view has been proven to be demonstrably inaccurate not only on the basis of earlier statements made by the German dictator, but also by his invasion of his early partner in crime, the Soviet Union, in 1941. World War II was not about a Baltic Sea port. Rather, the war in Europe was a more complicated fight of ideology and national vendettas. Hitler’s violation of the Munich Pact revealed his government to be untrustworthy, and Poland correct to not give in to German coercion. Winston Churchill was also correct to recognize the wickedness of grandiose German visions of vast eastward expansion, and that Franz von Papen’s gamble on giving Hitler the chancery in 1933 was perhaps one of the worst mistakes in the history of Europe. Poland was not at fault for the European War, the Axis Powers and their cobelligerents were.
Getting facts right is important when it comes to issues facing the United States and the world today. However, so too is representing accurately events in history which continue to shape our world. This should matter to Republicans who wisely pushed for the of an Obama administration official this week over his previous support for a theory.
Last 5 posts by James Kane
- A November to Remember - November 8th, 2010
- On hope and fear - October 18th, 2010
- Expecting Different Results - September 12th, 2010
- A glaring omission on Iraq - August 31st, 2010
- Employing a losing strategy - August 7th, 2010