Once again, I am grateful for all the kind words. It’s very nice for me as a Pole that you two gents know something about our history. I believe that history for Poles is a very touchy subject since it has treated us very unfair. Our efforts are rarely noted, and if people mention polish war efforts they usually talk about Polish cavalry attacks against tanks, which are outright propaganda.
People rarely talk about how the Poles saved Europe from a ottoman invasion at Vienna, or how we stopped the Bolshevik expansion in the 1920’s. I think that Americans and the French should at least know something about this since you participated in this war, and made a Polish victory possible. Poles and Americans actually share a lot of common history, the American cavalry was originally created by a polish general and Poland aided the States countless times, as did the States do in return.
An other very touchy subject for us is WW2, we often meet with stereotypes such as the earlier mentioned cavalry attacks or how we got blitzed by the Germans.
The facts are that Poland had a very big army before the war, and our technology was far superior to the Soviet one, and at some areas it was even far superior to German technology, once again no one knows about this. No one knows about the Polish medium bomber £o¶, which was the most modern medium bomber at the time, instead everyone talk about how the polish air force got destroyed on the ground.
Polish antitank weapons are also never mentioned, they too where state of the art equipment when the war broke out. The Germans actually used technology from captured polish weapons in their machineguns, the technology is still used today in the famous H&K MP5. Poles also brought a lot of technology to England during the war, we had some great solutions for bombing-bay doors and we had the revolutionary bombsights that where then adapted by all allied air fleets.
Polish efforts in breaking the Enigma code are always overseen, people think that the English broke the enigma code, but it was actually the Poles. The polish intelligence service already hade the code for the tree-rotor enigma before the war.
“When the polish general staff was working for a plan against a possible German attack or a possible Soviet attack the polish generals asked field marshal Józef Pi³sudski, why they are not working on a plan against a joint German-Soviet attack.
Pi³sudski replied that it would be a waste of his soldiers, and that he would expect only the general staff to fight with their sabers at the Saxon palace(General HQ) against the attackers.”
Field marshal Józef Pi³sudski was more than right in his statement, it would be a tremendous waste of his soldiers. Fortunately for him, he did not live long enough to see WW2. Poland did not have a chance against both the Germans and the Soviets, a two front war, alone against those two countries was impossible.
I am sorry if you find me to be bragging about my country, but most Poles are tiered off when they and their efforts are being ignored.
The Germans are better of than we today, and they lost the war… A polish delegation was not even invited to the victory days in Moscow two years back.
Finally what I am aiming at, is that when we hear people like you say something positive about our efforts, we get really moved. I am sure that you would be welcomed in every home in Poland for such statements. You are most certainly welcomed in my house at anytime, wodka and food is all on me.
/Polak
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