Anyone from Poland?

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Well, no one likened your governemental twins to some bloodthirsty dictator.

No one had to make that up, and it happened twice in the last two years to Angela Merkel. There has to be some undercurrent of resentment in the polish people towards us. Else, the magazines wouldn't try to sell their issues with crude stuff like that.

 

Maybe not exactly to Hitler, but in our own yard, the professor Geremek (former minister of foreign affairs and a very renowned person) compares them to Poutin, conveniently forgetting about the political assassinations, Chechnya, silencing the press and the business, subjugating the great business sharks and what else. It's a hysteria. Abroad, they've been insulted as well. Maciej Giertych is not to be taken seriously. He says stuff like humans and dinosaurs coexisted and whatnot. You know, a nutcase. Then he comes up with Hitler. It's a bit like that newspaper (Tageszeitung or something) calling one of the twins (probably the president but I'm not sure) a potato. It wasn't anything too serious, but it just shows condescension, disdain, that kind of stuff.

By the way, what exactly was said? I haven't been paying attention much, so I only know he drew the comparison. Did he make an overall comparison or did he mention something specific?

I must say the same about Polenwitze. The way Poles keep being insulted and ridiculed, you must feel some sense of superiority towards us. I'm not saying the typical German person has a concept of Untermenschen, but some remnants of it still rub off on people.

Besides, I wonder how many German people know that the lost lands were Polish before they were German, that they were taken by force and were inhabited by Poles at the time of being taken. Wonder how many know about Kulturkampf conducted there, to make those lands German, or even about the history of Prussia as a treacherous Polish vassal. Sometimes it looks like we're the culprit of WW2 and have been an agressor throghough history... don't even want to delve into those things. Come on.

Agreed.

Well then, I thought for a moment you might have been suggesting we should have accepted our lands as not being Polish anymore and somehow deal with German minority land claims. Well, if we're using the status quo argument, then we have to stick with the current status quo or otherwise it makes no sense (a past status quo is still a rights-based sort-of-legalistic claim). But it looks like there isn't such a problem. Actually, some of those minorities think that way. I.e. they say it doesn't matter the lands were historically Polish, it matters that they got them in the 18th century, for example. So Poland has to accept losing the land in 18th century, but Germany doesn't have to accept losing it in 20th. Strange, isn't it? What I don't like is how German people lost their homes, at least those who didn't support the Nazi or oppose Poland. Still, not only did Polish people lose houses, possessions, lives, freedom, virginity, sanity, health so plentifully, but we got our capital smashed down as well as practically our whole industry destroyed. It wasn't like the occupation of the West. Things were much harsher here. And we didn't start the war. If we are to pay damages for what happened after the war, according to the Allies' decisions, the Allies should pay damages for making such decisions and we should get damages for all we lost in the war as well - and after. Including what we lost on the East - land, property, people. It's by no means fair that we should be the only ones to pay, especially if we owe less than those who want damages from us. And not to mention we didn't start the war.

And no, this is not to spite anyone or anything like that. I'd rather this discussion had been avoided. This is to debunk the unbased claims and deal with the unjust stereotypes.

[ July 28, 2007, 13:14: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Yeah, I was never trying to imply that Poland should concede land to Germany or anything like that. Just pointed out that it really should not matter who took what from whom and when. Best for everyone is to try to keep the current borders.

 

Yes, that was the TAZ (Tageszeitung). And it was an ironical comment, and was not to be taken seriously at all.

Giertych said that Merkel has the same plan as Hitler - to build an empire - but is more insidious.

There were two magazines that had condescending pictures of Angela Merkel on their covers. One, a few years back, showed her in an SS uniform riding on some polish politician's back. The second one came out after the G8-meeting this year and showed her breast feeding the Kacinskys (sp?).

Maybe, though I haven't heard one these jokes in over ten years.

And no mainstream politicians and magazines/newspapers try to build on this resentment.

Not many people know this. But only the extremist right tries to exploit this now, which has a low chance of claiming any power.

 

He's probably taken the German foreign policies a bit too seriously. This is not exactly a Polish speciality, since the German-French alliance ruling the Union is not exactly a cherished concept, but as I said, he's a nutcase. He claims dinosaurs and humans co-existed.

Not aware of the first one, though I remember one with Erika Steinbach. As for the second one, they definitely crossed the boundaries of good taste. A bit like the kartoffel thing.

That would be correct, for all I know, though those who do seem to get quite a lot of publicity. We're even being threatened with court cases.

 

No, that's the "Preussische Treuhand" (Prussian Trust) who wants to appeal to the European Court to get the former private grounds back for it's members. Most of these are very old people now, and as far as I know, they didn't act upon these threats yet.

But even the "Bund Deutscher Vertriebener" doesn't want anything to do with these wackos.


And yes, maybe I confuse Erika Steinbach with Angela Merkel in the case of this cover...

 

Well, I won't be defending vulgar newspaper covers, for sure. In case of Steinbach, I can understand where hostility would have come from... Merkel less so, although I get the point. I'd rather there were no lame jokes going between the nations, personally.

As for the Prussian Trust, I can certainly sympathise with the sentiment of people who have lost homes, although I don't like the post-Nazi post-Prussian legacy and I think if they should get any money, that should come from the German government, not Polish (Poland or Polish people can't really go around suing invidual former Nazis or their families).

 

I don't think there will be any compensations, since the Federal Republic of Germany is not the legal heir of the German Reich.

Which, btw, de facto still exists, only without land and a people. Ironically, it has a government. If you can call a bunch of revisionist, self-important idiots a government.

 

Well, you could claim the HRE actually exists without an emperor, you know.

BTW, your Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that the Federal Republic was not merely a successor, but identical with the German Reich. How they conceived that is beyond me, though.

[ July 30, 2007, 03:55: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

That would be kind of weird, although technically as the Reich was the German state, and the state was not abolished, I guess it could hold. I'm not sure of everything that happened in the entire Stunde Null period, but I suppose that from a mechanical point of view, they simply changed the constitution and some laws. We did that in 1989, although on a more limited basis.

Anyway, I would not take seriously most Germans who want to be restored the territories they lost after WWII. If they so insist, they can probably settle there anyway, they just have to pay taxes to the Polish government rather than the German one. In fact, they can probably save some money that way .

 

Seems like I misunderstood this decision by our Supreme Court.

The reason, I think, was to prevent what these revisionists try to do: to say that the Reich still exists, and that the FRG is an illegal construct.