A top party leader and associate of German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under fire this week for arguing that Poland may have been as responsible as Hitler for the outbreak of World War II. Erika Steinbach said Poland had mobilized its troops months before the Nazis invaded in September 1939.
Steinbach, 67, announced that she would leave the leadership of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party
Steinbach is the daughter of a German army officer who served in Nazi-occupied Poland and at a meeting of the Christian Democratic (CDU) party pointed out that Poland mobilized its troops in March 1939 — six months before any attack by Hitler.
Of course, the Poles stayed within their borders as opposed to the Germans who invaded the country and ultimately killed over 6 million Poles — over 15 percent of its population.
Then of course there is the rest of Europe that was invaded . . . but that might have been due to the threat of mobilization.
Source: BBC
Illiterate Degenerate,
I have no standing to stand in your way with your posts. Have at Me, Mr. Kook, et al.
There is always something to learn here’bouts from almost everyone.
Does it matter/ We would have NUKED Germany anyway.
nessus
Whoa, whoa, whoa….I am playing wordfued and have been playing for several hours….Do not confuse me with any other poster at this time….I did it twice and then screwed up and posted directly to a comment made to me under the sudo non de plume and vowed to not do it again….
I think tail tale is my “…..” rather than commas.
C.Everett Kook,
Hey … I understand everything AY writes … it’s a gift.
Blouise: ah thank you, in hindsight I was a lot less clear than I could have been.
C.Everett Kook,
I read you carefully and took your point … yep, history repeats itself over and over again. Different terms, same tired old thought process.
Illiterate Degenerate: well…the illiterate part is certainly fitting, I don’t care to know about the rest
I guess I know enough about the war to know it had nothing to do with Hitler, the Holy Roman empire and that there was only 1(one) battle at Gettyburg.
your move Sparky
Illiterate Degenerate,
Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda … in the end, faileda
Former Federal LEO,
Thus far, other than your Homophobic views, I have not disagreed with anything you have had to post. This Kook feller may have light feet. Then you would not like him either. To espouse the idiotic illogical summation of what happened to the South and calling slave owners liberals is absurd, do you not think?
ID,
Are you sure your handle is not IUD–you are such a real blast (Not in the good sense of the term)
Kook,
You need to reread the History of the Civil War. Did not Hitler want to recreate the Roman Empire? That is another part of the world, if you did not know that. By the way, Jefferson Davis, was a West Point Graduate and was capable of winning the war. He was countermanded by his own Generals that found it difficult to fire upon their Friends and Comrades.
Most people assumed that after the first battle at Gettysburg that the issue would be settled. It was not and the Northern Aggression was threatening Southern Commerce. The British were bank rolling a portion of the Southern Defense with weaponry and ships. Learn your history son and then come back and speak with some wit about you.
They were all West Point Graduates. The Republicans did win the national election. The Democrats lost in both the North and South, they were very, very conservative, the Republicans’ were culture reform. Kook, your name is very becoming and aptly declares your degenerative state of mind. Speak of what you know and leave the rest to the big people, you are excused. You may take your seat as you are not smarter than a Fifth Grader. You may have drank it before you posted, that I am sure of, for you to have come up with such absurdities.
Byron: I guess the Germans learned a thing or 2 from Jeff Davis.
no doubt Davis learned this from Polk and Taylor in 1846, not sure where they learned it, but I’ll bet it goes way, way, way, way, back
Blouise: although I have yet to read the speeches, I’m willing to bet the words of the Fire Eaters(Wigfall, Yancey et al) would sound quite similar in tone to some of the speeches we heard in the run up to war in Iraq.
Just replace Yankees with Democrats and Liberals and slaves with terrorists and there you go. It’s so easy I guess.
AY,
There are very real reasons we call those American men and women of the 40’s “The Greatest Generation”.
Blouise,
What really gets me is the USSR never declared war with Japan until about thirty days before the war officially ended. The reason, oh to gather the spoils of the War….MONEY…….
Pete,
(short and sweet0
The Germans invaded Poland on Sept 1 1939 and in August of that year had signed a pack with the Soviet Union (German-Soviet Pact of August 1939) so the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland on September 17, 1939. England and France declared war on Germany on or about Sept. 3rd. Once the Red Army entered Poland on Sept 17th, there was no more Poland for the English and French to align with and they wanted the Soviets as allies, not as enemies. A large number of Poles were deported by the Soviets to prisons and labour and death camps, especially to Siberia. This practice continued through 1957.
The west has always tried to ignore Stalin’s role in the Poland’s plight in 1939. Obviously your teacher was continuing the trend.
Well Pete,
Would you care to re-pete it here? I would like to know. Wasn’t it about splitting and dividing the country because of……
i was told in world history that England and France declared war on Germany after Germany invaded Poland from the west. my instructor never did explain why England and France didn’t also declare war on the soviet union when they invaded from the east.
i was given extra work for asking the question though.
Vince Treacy,
I had never heard of this woman before today and thank you for the information which puts her remarks in their proper context.
It seems that Steinbach was not writing on a blank slate. Born in Poland 67 years ago to Nazi occupiers, she fled with her family after the war. For 20 years she has been prominent in German circles of people expelled from eastern lands at the end of World War II. She appears to be a hated figure in Poland. Although she later recanted, in 1991 she challenged the validity of the Oder-Neisse line that set the German-Poland border in 1945.
She seems to be a German version of the Lost Cause ideologues in America. It is similar to the crash and burn of Trent Lott when he praised Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist race for President.
It would be very helpful if the text of her actual remarks could be posted from the web.
Here are the views of a German observer, Julien Frisch, from long before the latest outburst:
QUOTE
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Erika Steinbach, leave us alone!
Erika Steinbach is the head of the German Federation for Expellees, and for years she is ruining German relations to our Polish neighbours.
Her confrontative course regarding the representation of interests of Germans (and their children) who were expelled from what would become Poland at the end and after World War II is a disgrace for us Germans who are working for a united Europe with where nobody needs to be afraid of neighbouring countries.
Steinbach has now repeated her claim that she wants to sit in the Board of the new Polish-German Foundation for Expellees that will try to retrace the fate of expellees at the end of World War II, in a way that doesn’t put the emphasis on blaming each other or bringing up the idea of restitution but that focuses on the tragic stories in order to allow a proper culture of remembrance.
Yet, somebody like Steinbach who is not interested in good relations but in confrontation is embarrassing, and I can only hope that our new government will manage to keep her out of the new foundation in order to show to our Polish neighbours that in the European Union of the 21st century we Germans don’t support those who live in the past but that we look ahead and look forward in expanding good relation to Poland – something foreign minister Westerwelle has made clear when he spent his first visit in office to Poland.
I am glad that although Erika Steinbach is often presented in Poland as the voice of Germans, she doesn’t have much room in our own media – and I hope that our government will make clear that she would be the wrong choice for the new foundation and against the whole idea of the creating such an organisation!
UNQUOTE
http://julienfrisch.blogspot.com/2009/11/erika-steinbach-leave-us-alone.html