Seventy Years Ago

1 September 2009

It was seventy years ago today when the Panzer units of the Third Reich thundered across the border separating German from Polish territory. It was on the 17th of September that Stalin unleashed the Red Army across the border between the Soviet Union and Poland.
The courageous but ill prepared and equipped Polish Army was hit from the front and the rear, victim of the secret Non-Aggression Pact between Stalin and Hitler and a lame, spineless posture on the part of France and Great Britain that had allowed the German dictator to expand his territory with impunity. The price for Neville Chamberlain peace-at-any-cost approach to Hitler will be felt across the globe for the following six years directly and consequentially for decades to come. When it was all said and done, over 25 million people had perished of which 6.5 millions had died because they were Jews.

In just over a month, a country just plainly disappeared, devoured by the Nazi wolf and the Soviet bear. The Polish Army defeated in battle and exterminated in surrender by both the Nazi and the Soviet occupiers. The Polish Jews some of the first to test Heinrich Himmler new theoretical approach to achieve Hitler’s obsession for a pure race, called “the Final Solution”.
Of the remaining Polish Army, 100,000 escaped to England to join the Allies in the fight to resist first and eventually defeat the Nazi regime.

Poland is the country that probably suffered the most by the hands of Hitler and Stalin. At the end of the war in 1945, Stalin halted the Red Army advance into Warsaw purposely to allow the retreating German Army and SS forces the time to annihilate the so called Polish Home Army which was openly pro-West. Once that military force was all but destroyed, the Soviet dictator, who had his plans already set for the post war repartition of Eastern Europe, unleashed his army for the final push against the Third Reich.

Following the end of WWII, Poland hard days were not over, as they exchanged one tyrant for another. Forced to accept the booth of the Soviet regime on their necks, the Polish people never lost hope for one day to achieve freedom. It was in 1980 that the Solidarity movement started in the shipyards of Gdansk. This independent labor union will become instrumental in mobilizing the Polish people against the corrupted, pro-Soviet government, evolving from a labor union into a full blown freedom movement. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Solidarity played a huge role in the eventual fall of the entire Soviet Empire.

Today Poland is a free country, basking in the tribulations of self-determination, even if their neighbors to the East, Russia, still remains a source of concern and motivation for vigilance.
They have progressed into a democracy close to the rest of Europe and the United States, even deploying their Military to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. They have suffered casualties, bled and sacrifice for the same ideals our Military has, and they have endured the opposition of their Russian neighbors when President Bush announced that Poland would accept and deploy short range anti-ballistic missile batteries within their borders as a protective posture for the whole Europe against the possibility of a rouge nation like Iran launching their ICBMs.

Today, September 1st is a very important date for the Polish nation, as it marks the seventieth anniversary of that faithful day when their struggle for survival as a nation begun. A struggle that would last over four decades before freedom would finally triumph.
And on such a solemn anniversary, heads of states including Germany, will be present for the commemorative celebrations.
The Polish struggle for liberty should make Poland an unchallenged friend of the United States, but the attitude of the Obama administration toward the Baltic country has been everything but friendly.
Poland, as every other country that had been under the Steel Curtain control of the Soviet Union, always looked at America as the beacon of hope for freedom and self-determination. But really what do they see today?
They see a country where the leadership is clearly eroding the freedoms its citizens enjoyed and fought for.
They see a country that was once the symbol of individualism, where people had the ability to be and achieve everything they wanted if they were willing to work for, becoming increasingly dependent of a government that will agreeably do everything possible to take the reins of the people lives. Basically they see an America that is clearly moving toward the same ugly place the Polish people bled to get away from.
And they see a country that was an outward friend of the Polish people and of all those people struggling for liberty, but today does not even have the courtesy to send a representative of the current administration to the memorial celebrations of the beginning of World War Two.

Surely the Polish leadership is somewhat disappointed by what appears to be a snubbing on the part of the White House for such a solemn date in the history of not only Poland but the whole world.
The disappointment is shared by American of common sense, who incredulously witnesses a President who is more inclined to apologize to our sworn enemies than to show gratitude toward our allies.


And these are my thoughts!
Frank “Semperpapa”