[lbo-talk] Question for Woj or anybody else on Poland

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Wed Jan 31 12:14:39 PST 2007


I know -- the WWII history of Poland and Czechoslovakia are very different from those of actually fascist EE countries (Romania) or areas with some or a lot of support for Nazi occupying forces at the time (the Baltic States, Western Ukraine (Gallatia)).

I wonder what the Romanians think about fascists. Joanna?

--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> [WS:] Of course, Poland has a very different WW2
> story. Unlike, say, France
> that formed a nominally French Vichy government
> collaborating with the
> Nazis, Poland did not form a collaboration
> government - it was ruled
> directly by a German governor (who btw was hanged
> after the war.) There was
> very little collaboration with the Nazis - the
> underground was divided into
> the pro-London and pro-Moscow camps in a kind of
> dog-and-hedgehog
> relationship: hostile but keeping a respectable
> distance.
>
> As the red Army approached Warsaw, the pro-London
> camp launched a desperate
> attempt to pre-empt the Russians and liberate
> Warsaw, but of course it
> failed. As a result, much of the pro-London
> underground was either wiped
> out in the fighting on went to exile. Therefore,
> the post WW2 Polish
> diaspora was predominantly the pro-London faction
> that after 1956 lost any
> political significance to the communist era
> emigration (especially 1956 and
> 1968).
>
> As a result, Polish diaspora tends be anti-communist
> as well as anti-Nazi -
> unlike, say, the Lithuanians or Ukrainian
> nationalists who were Nazi
> collaborators during WW2, and then formed the bulk
> of their respective
> diasporas - as the post WW2 emigration from those
> countries was very low
> until the 1990s.
>
> So the assessment of your guest that much of the
> "velvet revolution" in
> x-USSR republics might have the ex-Nazi collaborator
> support is not true
> about Poland or Czech Republic. AFAICT, there is
> very little support for
> the Nazis in Poland - it is mostly the skinheads who
> are really common
> criminals rather than a political faction. Of
> course, Poland is pretty
> right-wing and nationalist - but generally
> anti-Nazi.
>
> Wojtek
>
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