Sunday, July 20, 2025

Who Are the Haters?


by Dr. William Pierce

 

My organization, the National Alliance, concerns itself with all things relevant to the welfare and progress of the European peoples, the White people of this earth. We are advocates for all things which could be beneficial to our people, and we are opponents of all the influences and tendencies and groups who are harmful or to our people. As a consequence of this we receive a certain amount of hate mail, and I find it interesting to read these hate letters and try to understand the psychology, the motivations, of the people who write them. I won’t read any of these hate letters to you today, because they’re all pretty nasty and tend to lean pretty heavily on the use of four-letter words. They also tend to be blindly and irrationally hateful and to be based less on what I actually have said or done than on some misrepresentation about me or the National Alliance which has appeared recently in the controlled media.

 

In fact, there’s a strong correlation between some sensational story appearing on television or in the New York Times or the Village Voice about the National Alliance being a so-called „hate group“ and my novel The Turner Diaries being a „blueprint“ for various acts of domestic terrorism on the one hand, and on the other hand the arrival of these hate letters at our office a few days thereafter. It is clear to me that these sensational stories in the controlled media, which all purport to be against hate – in fact, they claim to deplore the growth of hate in our society, to be alarmed about it, and to be seeking ways to ameliorate it – these stories denouncing hate have the effect of causing the arrival of hate letters at our office. There is a cause-and-effect relationship. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve become convinced that it was planned that way.

 

Which is to say, all of these media protests about the growth of hate in America are intended for the specific purpose of provoking hate, of inciting hate. If you collect these stories from the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, or other Jewish publications and study them, you’ll see a certain pattern. For example, they always use the word „hate“ in writing about me or the National Alliance. Even a short story may use the word „hate“ or „hater“ or the phrase „hate group“ a dozen or more times. It’s clear that this isn’t just a fluke, because it occurs so consistently. What they’re deliberately trying to do is create an association in the mind of the average reader or television viewer between any mention of me or my organization and the emotion of hatred. In fact, they not only want the listeners or viewers to reflexively think „hate“ when they hear my name or the name of the National Alliance, they want them to feel hate. And it seems to work to a certain extent, judging from this correlation I mentioned between the appearance of these stories and the arrival of hate mail at our office.

 

It’s an irrational, Pavlovian sort of thing, because as I mentioned a minute ago, the National Alliance is not a hate group of any sort but instead is a group dedicated to the welfare and progress of our people. But clearly there are folks out there who feel threatened by any such effort: folks who regard any activity aimed at building a sense of racial solidarity and racial consciousness among Europeans as a threat to themselves. And foremost among these folks are those who control the mass media: those who own the New York Times, the Village Voice, Time, Newsweek, and the rest. They are a deceitful bunch. They don’t come right out and say that they are opposed to White people regaining an understanding of our roots and an appreciation for our own unique qualities in a rapidly darkening world and a sense of responsibility for the future of our people. They don’t say this. Instead they attempt to generate negative associations in the minds of their mass audience. They attempt to use psychological trickery to keep our people confused and disorganized. They don’t want us thinking clearly about what is in our own interest and what is not. They deliberately attempt to incite hatred against me and others who are concerned about the future of our people.

 

They’ve had a lot of experience at inciting hatred. If you’re a person of German ancestry, you’ll certainly understand this. For the past 60 years, ever since the late 1930s, the media bosses have been cranking out films – hundreds of them – designed to incite hatred against Germans: crude, heavy-handed films, full of distortions and outright lies, but still effective enough to profoundly affect public opinion and national policy.

 

You may be better able to understand this media bias if you compare the films they have made about Germans with the films they have made about Japanese. You know, it was Japan who attacked the United States in the Second World War, not Germany. The Germans wanted to avoid a conflict with America and even ignored the deliberate provocations of the Roosevelt government, such as American attacks on German ships. After we were in the war, the Germans treated American prisoners correctly, in contrast to the Japanese, who often behaved brutally toward American prisoners, starving and torturing them. But the films coming out of Hollywood don’t reflect this reality. For every anti-Japanese film there are a hundred anti-German films. In fact, Hollywood’s tendency has been to generate sympathy toward the Japanese by reminding Americans at every opportunity about our internment of Japanese civilians in concentration camps in this country during the war. By way of contrast, the Germans are portrayed as sadistic automatons, clicking their heels and shouting „Sieg Heil“ as they massacre prisoners.

 

Think about this difference between the Hollywood portrayal of Japanese and Germans. You won’t have to think very long to understand that the reason the media bosses want to incite hatred against the Germans but not against the Japanese is based on the fact that the Germans were in the business of freeing their own country of Jewish influence and of fighting against Jewish Communism everywhere in Europe, while the Japanese were blessed by not having a Jewish problem to deal with. The media bosses, in other words, couldn’t care less about the fact that the Germans treated American prisoners of war correctly and the Japanese didn’t; all they care about is the way their fellow Jews were treated. That ethnic self-centeredness of theirs shows up in almost all of their propaganda.

 

For the last few years their hate propaganda has been directed not just at Germans, but also at everyone who is not Politically Correct – especially those groups like the National Alliance whose stand on the Jewish issue or the race issue differs from their own. And they have added a new twist: using a pretended campaign against hate to incite hate.

 

You know, I didn’t think much about hate myself until becoming the target of this Jewish hate campaign. And then I had to ask myself, am I really a hater? Certainly not in the way the people who send those hate letters are. But, yes, I suppose I do hate some people.

 

Whenever I look at what has happened to our cities and our schools during the past 30 or 40 years, I cannot suppress my feeling of hostility toward the Blacks, mestizos, and Asians who have made so much of our country an enemy-occupied wasteland. I feel a surge of anger every time I see a non-White face on television or in an advertisement. Thirty or 40 years ago, before all of the new civil-rights laws gave them a privileged status and when there were 25 or 30 million fewer of them in the country, I didn’t feel this hostility. I figured that we could each stay in our own communities and we wouldn’t get in each other’s way. But now I want them out of our country, out of our living space. But even so, my hostility toward these non-Whites who are overrunning my world is not the nasty sort of hatred embellished with obscenity that I see expressed in the hate letters I receive.

 

When I see a hate letter I often feel a flash of anger at the hater who wrote it, but I cannot say that I really hate even these hate-letter writers. They are simply the people, most of them White, who are incited by the real hatemongers, the media bosses. My feeling toward these Jewish media bosses – and all of the clever, little Jewish propagandists who write news stories about so-called „hate groups“ in an attempt to make ordinary people hate me – is much closer to real hatred. Over the years they have done enormous damage to our people with their poisonous propaganda, and they aspire to do even more. One way or another we must stop them and make sure that they can never harm our people again.

 

But I reserve my most heartfelt hatred for the collaborators among my own people who make it possible for the Jews to do their damage: collaborators who consciously and deliberately betray their own people, lie to their own people, in order to gain advantage for themselves – the politicians, generals, public officials, clergymen, professors, writers, businessmen, and publicists who are not incited to hatred by the psychological tricks of the Jews, as are the suggestible fools who write hate letters, but who consciously and deliberately choose race treason, believing that they will gain a personal advantage from it. There is no fire in hell hot enough to punish these traitors, and there will be no place for them to hide when the day of retribution comes.

 

Yes, I hate traitors, I hate liars and deceivers, and I cannot say that I feel at all apologetic about the fact that I hate them. Hate may be an unpleasant sort of emotion, but it can serve a good purpose, and that is why Mother Nature gave us the capability to hate. It is one of the faculties which protects us from traitors and deceivers by ensuring that we will punish them, that we will weed them from our midst when we catch them, instead of forgiving them and giving them a chance to betray us again.

 

Nevertheless, I reject the label of „hater,“ with which the real hatemongers have tried to brand me. I spend very little of my time hating and a great deal of my time spreading understanding with the hope that it will benefit my people. One of the things I believe that we must understand, that we must always be aware of, is the motivation of the professional hatemongers, as well as the trickery with which they ply their trade.

 

Their trick of using the pretense of altruistically fighting hate in order to incite hate against their enemies is relatively new. They invented the terms „hate crime“ and „hate speech“ only a little over a decade ago – unless one wants to give the credit for that to George Orwell, who popularized the essentially identical concept of „thought crime“ in 1948, with his futuristic novel 1984. In any case, they used their political influence to force the government and the various police agencies around the country to give official recognition to their invention, or Orwell’s invention if you prefer, with the passage of the so-called „Hate Crimes Statistics Reporting Act“ of 1990. Then almost overnight all of the mass media began using the terms. Now they’ve got the President of the United States running around the country giving speeches about stamping out „hate crime“ and „hate speech.“ It’s their way of demonizing their enemies, of making their enemies seem like irrational, dangerous, and hateful people: the sort of people that it’s all right for decent folks to hate.

 

So the trick is new, but the hate they bear against humanity certainly isn’t new. Two thousand years ago the great Roman historian Tacitus noted as the principal distinguishing characteristic of the Jews their hatred for every nation but their own. This hatred they bear against other peoples may serve a useful purpose for the Jews by helping them to remain apart and to retain their own identity while existing as a small but influential minority among much larger host populations, but it certainly isn’t helpful to our people. They almost instinctively are hostile to every institution of ours which holds us together and gives us our strength and solidarity. Back during the Vietnam war they were at the forefront of the flag-burners, and they persuaded a whole generation of university students and other young Americans to despise patriotism. Today their deceptive hate campaign is still directed against patriots, whom they portray as terrorists or potential terrorists.

 

Consider the whole set of ideas and attitudes associated with Political Correctness. Political Correctness really has not been codified in any formal way, so that one can refer to some official proclamation in order to determine what is Politically Correct and what is not. Nevertheless, we all know. We absorb this knowledge from the mass media.

 

We know, for example, that the United Negro College Fund and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People are Politically Correct. No one flinches or protests at the mention of those very real organizations. But at the same time we all know that if anyone dared to attempt to organize a college fund reserved for White students, he would be met with howls of outrage from the guardians of Political Correctness. We know that any association for the advancement of White interests will be branded immediately a „hate group“ by the Jewish media and all of the politicians who dance to their tune, as the National Alliance is. In fact, any club or other organization with an all-White membership is bound to be under suspicion of being a „hate group,“ although the same suspicion is never directed against an all-Jewish organization, an all-Chinese organization, or an organization all of whose members are American Indians.

 

We all know that to express revulsion for the practices of homosexuals is the height of Political Incorrectness and will get us branded as „haters“ in an instant. Even if we want to give our own children positive examples of heterosexual masculinity or heterosexual femininity in order to guide the development of their own attitudes toward sex, we had better do it quietly if we don’t want to be accused of „hate.“ Likewise, any expression of support for the maintenance of traditional sex roles – any suggestion that armed combat is not a proper role for women, for example – is sure to bring one under suspicion as a „hater.“

 

We all know that whenever White people, European people, are in conflict with non-Whites, whether in South Africa or America or anywhere else on this increasingly overcrowded planet, it is Politically Correct to be on the non-White side. To be on the White side is to be a „hater.“ If one expresses agreement with the French people who believe that the French government should cut off the immigration of Africans from the former French colonies in Africa, for example, one is a „hater.“ If one agrees with the Germans who believe that there are too many Turkish „guest workers“ in Germany, one is a „hater.“ If one agrees with Englishmen that the Pakistanis in England should be sent back to Pakistan, one is a „hater.“ And if we suggest that the American government should not let wetbacks continue to pour into the United States across the Rio Grande, we are „haters.“ Indeed, only a „hater“ would dare use the term „wetback“ these days.

 

If we are sufficiently sensitive to the message of the controlled media, we understand that any expression of concern for our people, any effort to safeguard the future of our people, any public support for our traditions and our culture and our folkways is hateful. The unspoken message is that we will be hated if we are not Politically Correct. The message is that the sort of trendy fools who send me viciously obscene hate letters will be incited to hate anyone who does not toe the political line of the Jewish media.

 

It’s a shame that it still has to be that way for a while yet. It’s a shame that any of our people are incited to hate others of our people. But we have a big mess to clean up in America and elsewhere throughout the White world, and until the mess has been cleaned up there will be hatred.

 

At least, we can understand who is responsible for this hatred. We can understand who the real haters are.

Thursday, July 17, 2025

The Einsatzgruppen in the Occupied Eastern Territories – Genesis, Missions and Actions

 

2nd, revised edition

by Carlo Mattogno

 

Source: http://holocausthandbooks.com/index.php?page_id=39

 

DOWNLOAD THE BOOK IN PDF AND EPUB FORMAT.

 

On 22 June 1941, National-Socialist Germany set out to destroy what it saw as a menace to the world: Judeo-Bolshevism in its most threatening manifestation, the Soviet Union. As the German Army marched east, certain special units called Einsatzgruppen (task forces) were deployed behind the front. Mainstream historians maintain that their primary task was to exterminate as many Jews as possible. At war’s end, the Einsatzgruppen’s death toll and that of associated units is said to have amounted to some 1.5 to 3 million Jewish civilians, depending on which historian you happen to hear.

 

The present study takes a critical look at the Einsatzgruppen’s activities and missions. While many authentic documents exist attesting to mass executions of Jews in the temporarily German-occupied Soviet territories, the accuracy of the data contained in them is questionable, as even mainstream scholars admit.

 

The present book tries to uncover what really happened to the Jews who lived in, or were deported into, the temporarily German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union. It first shows that the Einsatzgruppen were not simple killing units but had a broad variety of responsibilities. It then establishes that there is not a shred of evidence indicating that these units ever received orders to commit wholesale slaughter of Jews. In fact, there is abundant evidence refuting such a claim. The extant documentation instead points to the Jews having been targeted by the Germans as the fertile breeding ground of Bolshevism, hence as a convenient scapegoat for the atrocious way the Soviets waged this war.

 

Next, and unlike all other works published so far on this topic, the author analyzes with a critical mind and a common-sense approach the information we have about the Einsatzgruppen’s killings as well as the claimed attempts of German units to erase the traces of these crimes in what has been dubbed “Aktion 1005”: the exhumation and incineration of the murdered victims in 1943/1944. Almost everything known about “Aktion 1005” stems from Soviet investigations conducted after the Germans’ retreat. Their witness testimonies and forensic expert reports, however, reek of atrocity propaganda marked by absurdly impossible and often contradictory claims.

 

The only way of determining any more about what really happened would be the forensic examination, by independent researchers, of the physical traces left behind. Unfortunately, such research has been prevented by the powers that be.

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Does Poland Deserve War Reparations from Germany?

Source: https://codoh.com/library/document/does-poland-deserve-war-reparations-from-germany/

 

The November/December 2022 issue of The Barnes Review mentions that the Polish government has formally demanded $1.2 trillion from Germany “for the damages from the Nazi invasion and occupation during World War II.” [1] This article examines whether Poland deserves to receive such reparations from Germany.

 

Polish Report

 

Poland released a report on September 1, 2022, titled “The Report on the Losses Sustained by Poland as a Result of German Aggression and Occupation During the Second World War, 1939–1945.” [2] The Foreword to this report states that it “is Poland’s first and indispensable step on the road to obtain the reparations and due compensation which the Polish State has the right to claim for the devastation and injuries it suffered during the Second World War.”

 

The introduction to this report states that: [3]

 

[It] is the outcome of a project carried out by the Parliamentary Group for the Estimation of the Amount of Compensation due to Poland from Germany for Damage Caused during the Second World War. The Group was established by the Polish Sejm in its 8th term, on 29 September 2017, and consists of members of parliament and a team of experts.”

 

The introduction further states: [4]

 

“During the Second World War, Poland sustained the largest human and material losses of all European countries in relation to its total population and national assets. These losses were caused not only by German military operations, but above all, by a German policy of occupation motivated by the conviction of racial inferiority of the Polish population. The Germans exterminated people in the occupied territories in a deliberate and organized manner, and intensively exploited Polish society, both through forced labor and the willful devastation of property, including the complete destruction of Warsaw, Poland’s capital city, along with thousands of Polish cities, towns, and villages.”

 

Of course, the authors state that “the present report is undoubtedly an underestimate in all the areas it addresses, with its underlying principles rooted in the most conservative estimates possible.” [5] The authors make it clear that Poland deserves far more compensation from Germany than they are requesting in this report.

 

The report also clearly states that German aggression was the sole cause of the war: [6]

 

“Poland was the first country to resist the territorial and political demands of the Third Reich, refusing to grant concessions to Germany which would have resulted in the loss of independence on the international arena and subordination to Berlin. Hitler decided to resolve the conflict which he himself had caused, by military means, and on 1 September 1939 the Wehrmacht invaded Poland without declaring war.”

 

Thus, German military aggression is the primary reason why Poles in this report state that Germany owes reparations to Poland. We will examine why Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939.

 

Poland’s Provocations

 

Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck accepted an offer from Great Britain on March 30, 1939, that gave an unconditional unilateral guarantee of Poland’s independence. The British Empire agreed to go to war as an ally of Poland if the Poles decided that war was necessary. In words drafted by British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke in the House of Commons on March 31, 1939: [7]

 

“I now have to inform the House […] that, in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish government all support in their power. They have given the Polish government an assurance to that effect.”

 

Great Britain’s unprecedented “blank check” to Poland led to increasing violence and atrocities against the German minority in Poland. The book Polish Acts of Atrocity against the German Minority in Poland answers the question why the Polish government allowed such atrocities to happen: [8]

 

“The guarantee of assistance given Poland by the British government was the agent which lent impetus to Britain’s policy of encirclement. It was designed to exploit the problem of Danzig and the Corridor to begin a war, desired and long-prepared by England, for the annihilation of Greater Germany. In Warsaw, moderation was no longer considered necessary, and the opinion held was that matters could be safely brought to a head. England was backing this diabolical game, having guaranteed the ‘integrity’ of the Polish state. The British assurance of assistance meant that Poland was to be the battering ram of Germany’s enemies. Henceforth, Poland neglected no form of provocation of Germany and, in its blindness, dreamt of ‘victorious battle at Berlin’s gates.’ Had it not been for the encouragement of the English war clique, which was stiffening Poland’s attitude toward the Reich and whose promises led Warsaw to feel safe, the Polish government would hardly have let matters develop to the point where Polish soldiers and civilians would eventually interpret the slogan to extirpate all German influence as an incitement to the murder and bestial mutilation of human beings.”

 

American historian David Hoggan wrote that German-Polish relationships became strained by the increasing harshness with which the Polish authorities handled its German minority. More than 1 million ethnic Germans resided in Poland, and these Germans were the principal victims of the German-Polish crisis in the coming weeks. The Germans in Poland were subjected to increasing doses of violence from the dominant Poles. Ultimately, many thousands of Germans in Poland paid for this crisis with their lives. They were among the first victims of Britain’s war policy against Germany. [9]

 

On August 14, 1939, the Polish authorities in East Upper Silesia launched a campaign of mass arrests against the German minority. The Poles then proceeded to close and confiscate the remaining German businesses, clubs, and welfare installations. The arrested Germans were forced to march toward the interior of Poland in prisoner columns. The various German groups in Poland were frantic by this time, and they feared that the Poles would attempt the total extermination of the German minority in the event of war. Thousands of Germans were seeking to escape arrest by crossing the border into Germany. Some of the worst recent Polish atrocities included the mutilation of several Germans. The Poles were warned not to regard their German minority as helpless hostages who could be butchered with impunity. [10]

 

William Lindsay White, an American journalist, recalled that there was no doubt among well-informed people that, by August 1939, horrible atrocities were being inflicted every day on the ethnic German minority of Poland. White said that a letter from the Polish government claiming that no persecution of the Germans in Poland was taking place had about as much validity as the civil liberties guaranteed by the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union. [11]

 

Donald Day, a well-known Chicago Tribune correspondent, reported on the atrocious treatment the Poles had meted out to the ethnic Germans in Poland: [12]

 

“I traveled up to the Polish Corridor where the German authorities permitted me to interview the German refugees from many Polish cities and towns. The story was the same. Mass arrests and long marches along roads toward the interior of Poland. The railroads were crowded with troop movements. Those who fell by the wayside were shot. The Polish authorities seemed to have gone mad. I have been questioning people all my life, and I think I know how to make deductions from the exaggerated stories told by people who have passed through harrowing personal experiences. But even with generous allowance, the situation was plenty bad. To me the war seemed only a question of hours.”

 

David Hoggan wrote that the leaders of the German minority in Poland repeatedly appealed to the Polish government for mercy during this period, but to no avail. More than 80,000 German refugees had been forced to leave Poland by August 20, 1939, and virtually all other ethnic Germans in Poland were clamoring to leave to escape Polish atrocities. [13]

 

British Ambassador Nevile Henderson in Berlin was concentrating on obtaining recognition from Halifax of the cruel fate of the German minority in Poland. Henderson emphatically warned Halifax on August 24, 1939, that German complaints about the treatment of the German minority in Poland were fully supported by the facts. Henderson knew that the Germans were prepared to negotiate, and he stated to Halifax that war between Poland and Germany was inevitable unless negotiations were resumed between the two countries. Henderson pleaded with Halifax that it would be contrary to Polish interests to attempt a full military occupation of Danzig, and he added a scathingly effective denunciation of Polish policy. What Henderson failed to realize is that Halifax was pursuing war for its own sake as an instrument of policy. Halifax desired the complete destruction of Germany. [14]

 

On August 25, 1939, Ambassador Henderson reported to Halifax the latest Polish atrocity at Bielitz, Upper Silesia. Henderson never relied on official German statements concerning these incidents, but instead based his reports on information he had received from neutral sources. The Poles continued to forcibly deport the Germans of that area, and compelled them to march into the interior of Poland. Eight Germans were murdered and many more were injured during one of these actions. Henderson deplored the failure of the British government to exercise restraint over the Polish authorities. [15]

 

Hoggan wrote that Hitler was faced with a terrible dilemma. If Hitler did nothing, the Germans of Poland and Danzig would be abandoned to the cruelty and violence of a hostile Poland. If Hitler took effective action against the Poles, the British and French might declare war against Germany. Henderson feared that the Bielitz atrocity would be the final straw to prompt Hitler to invade Poland. Henderson, who strongly desired peace with Germany, deplored the failure of the British government to exercise restraint over the Polish authorities. [16]

 

Dutch historian Louis de Jong wrote that, by mid-August 1939, the Poles proceeded to arrest hundreds of ethnic Germans. German printing shops and trade union offices were closed, and numerous house-to-house searches took place. Eight ethnic Germans who had been arrested in Upper Silesia were shot to death on August 24 during their transport to an internment camp. [17]

 

Hitler invaded Poland to end these atrocities against the German minority in Poland. American historian Harry Elmer Barnes agreed with Hoggan’s analysis. Barnes wrote: [18]

 

“The primary responsibility for the outbreak of the German-Polish War was that of Poland and Britain, while for the transformation of the German-Polish conflict into a European War, Britain, guided by Halifax, was almost exclusively responsible.”

 

The Germans in Poland continued to experience an atmosphere of terror in the early part of September 1939. Throughout the country, the Germans had been told: [19]

 

“If war comes to Poland, you will all be hanged.”

 

This prophecy was later fulfilled in many cases.

 

Hitler had planned to offer to restore sovereignty to the Czech state and to western Poland as part of a peace proposal with Great Britain and France. German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop informed Soviet leaders Josef Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov of Hitler’s intention in a note on September 15, 1939. Stalin and Molotov, however, sought to stifle any action that might bring Germany and the Allies to the conference table. The Soviet leaders told Ribbentrop that they did not approve of the resurrection of the Polish state. Aware of Germany’s dependency on Soviet trade, Hitler abandoned his plan to reestablish Polish statehood. [20]

 

Hitler’s invasion of Poland was forced by the Polish government’s intolerable treatment of its German population. Germany did not invade Poland for Lebensraum or any other malicious reason. Thus, the Polish government’s report claiming that “Hitler decided to resolve the conflict which he himself had caused” ignores the numerous provocations and violence against the German minority in Poland that led to Germany’s invasion of Poland.

 

Polish Expulsions of Germans

 

The Polish report states that Poland has not received fair compensation from Germany: [21]

 

“Following the Potsdam Conference, it was decided that Germany will ‘be compelled to compensate to the greatest possible extent for the loss and suffering that she has caused to the United Nations and for which the German people cannot escape responsibility.’ This provision has not been implemented to this day in respect of Poland. After the Potsdam Conference, the Paris Peace Treaties were signed in 1946. It concerned reparations for the countries of Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, but it did not include the Polish state.”

 

The Polish report fails to mention that, at the conclusion of the Potsdam Conference on August 2, 1945, the Western allies agreed to “the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland”. Since the Allied victors had defined “Germany” in their various agreements as territories belonging to this country as of December 31, 1937, this “transfer agreement” should have concerned exclusively Germans living within the 1937 boundaries of Poland. Hence, it should not have included the Germans who had lived for centuries in southern East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. The potential transfer of these territories to Poland was supposed to be done during a peace treaty, which never came to pass. In the meantime, those territories were merely put under temporary Polish administration (and Soviet administration for northern East Prussia).

 

Yet still, the Poles simply pretended that this “transfer agreement” also included Germany’s eastern provinces. In fact, they didn’t even wait for a decision by the victorious powers to be made in this regard. For more than three months prior to the Potsdam Agreement, the Polish government was already expelling German citizens from what it then called the “Recovered Territories.” That term itself is highly misleading. In fact, Poland had no historical claim whatsoever to two of the three Prussian provinces it took over after World War II: (southern) East Prussia and Silesia.

 

While Polish noblemen ruled Silesia since the late 900s, they slowly lost control of it due to peaceful and very successful German settlement activities on both sides of the Oder River since the 12th century. As a result, in the Treaty of Trentschin of 1335, the Polish king relinquished Silesia “for all eternity” to the Bohemian King. Silesia thus became part of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation. It became a Prussian Province in 1763, after Fredrick the Great’s successful war of conquest against the Habsburg monarchy, which had ruled the Holy Roman Empire since 1438.

 

Prussia and the Baltic territories north of it, hence today’s Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, were conquered starting in the early 13th Century by the Teutonic Knights as a result of a request to the Pope by a Polish nobleman, Konrad of Masovia, who had unsuccessfully tried to conquer, subjugate and Christianize the Prussian heathens for decades. The State of the Teutonic Order deteriorated in the 15th Century, and became a secularized, yet Lutheran dutchy in 1525. It was inherited in 1618 by the Hohenzollern of Brandenburg, who renamed their country the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701 (because the other German kings wouldn’t allow Brandenburg to become a Kingdom).

 

The history of Pomerania is a mix of various conquests by the Teutonic Order, Poland, Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, which had little effect on the ethnic composition, which was always mixed German and Slavic/Polish.

 

But whatever the deep history of these provinces may have been, population transfers, a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, which is genocide in today’s understanding of the term, requires the affected population’s consent to be legal. It goes without saying that such a consent was never requested in this case, nor could it have happened. If every country in the world conquered territories of adjacent countries and transferred populations because they can claim that they, in some more or less distant past, controlled certain parts of a neighboring country, then all hell would break loose all over the planet. History can make us understand the world we live in, but it cannot be a justification for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

 

While the expulsions of the Germans from their ancestral homes in East Germany and Poland were crude and disorganized, they were neither spontaneous nor accidental. Instead, the expulsions were carried out according to a premeditated strategy devised by the Polish government well before the end of the war. [22] The extreme suffering, death and confiscation of property inflicted on ethnic Germans expelled from Poland and East Germany and the east German provinces after World War II is not mentioned in the Polish report. These German expellees have never been compensated for their suffering and loss of property.

 

Poland relied almost exclusively on the use of terror to transport the indigenous German population from their homelands westward across the Oder-Neisse line, which was to become Germany’s new eastern border. Except in a very few instances, deportations as a result of mob actions did not cause the German expulsions. Rather, the so-called “wild expulsions” were carried out primarily by troops, police and militia acting under orders and policies originating at the highest levels of the Polish government. So chaotic was the process of expelling the German majority from their homeland in East Germany that many foreign observers, and even many people from the expelling countries themselves, mistook the violent events of the late spring and summer of 1945 as a spontaneous process from below. The expelling Polish government was more than happy to allow the myth of the “wild expulsions” to grow, since this myth enabled it to disclaim responsibility for the atrocities that were essential components of the expulsions. [23]

 

The worst of the violence in East Germany occurred between mid-June and mid-July 1945, particularly in the districts bordering the Oder-Neisse demarcation line, which were designated by the Polish Army Command as a military settlement area. The commander of the Polish Second Army expressed on June 24, 1945, the Polish position on the rapid transfer of the Germans: [24]

 

“We are transferring the Germans out of Polish territory [meaning East Germany] and we are acting thereby in accordance with directives from Moscow. We are behaving with the Germans as they behaved with us. Many already have forgotten how they treated our children, women, and old people. The Czechs knew how to act so that the Germans fled from their territory of their own volition.

 

One must perform one’s tasks in such a harsh and decisive manner that the Germanic vermin do not hide in their houses but rather will flee from us of their own volition and then [once] in their own land will thank God that they were lucky enough to save their heads. We do not forget Germans always will be Germans.”

 

The Germans who were forced to resettle were usually allowed to take only 20 kilograms of baggage with them, and were escorted to the demarcation line by squads of Polish soldiers. In late June 1945, at least 40,000 Germans were expelled within a few days. One commentator describes what this meant to the Germans living near the Oder-Neisse line: [25]

 

“The evacuation of individual localities usually began in the early morning hours. The population, torn from their sleep, had scarcely 15 to 20 minutes to snatch the most necessary belongings, or else they were driven directly onto the street without any ceremony. Smaller localities and villages were evacuated at gunpoint by small numbers of soldiers, frequently only a squad or a platoon. Due to the proximity of the border, for the sake of simplicity the Germans were marched on foot to the nearest bridge over the river, driven over to the Soviet side [i.e., into the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany] and there left to their own fate.”

 

The German expellees were frequently robbed by members of the Polish militia and military units that carried out the expulsions. Food supply became an acute problem, and the uprooted Germans were often destitute and exhausted when they arrived in the Soviet Occupation Zone. The German expellees became easy prey for Soviet occupation troops, who often stole the few belongings the Germans had brought with them. Some Germans were beaten and raped, forced to perform humiliating acts, and some were randomly killed. [26]

 

The traffic of Germans across the Oder-Neisse line was not all in a single direction. At the end of the war, many hundreds of thousands of Germans from East Germany who had fled the Red Army’s advance to the west now returned to their homes. The returning Germans did not understand that there was not going to be a return home. The alarming spectacle of the terrorized and uprooted population in East Germany increased in the weeks after V-E Day, and was one of the factors spurring newly installed local Polish authorities to quickly proceed with “wild expulsions” of the German natives. Polish soldiers and government officials used aggressive and often violent measures to prevent the unwanted Germans from returning to their homes. [27]

 

However great the hazards and miseries of life on the road were for the German expellees, they were usually preferable to the expulsion trains the Polish authorities began to operate. Taking up to two weeks to reach Berlin, the trains were typically not provisioned, and lacked the most basic amenities. As a result, the death rate on the trains soared. One passenger wrote: [28]

 

“In our freight wagon there were about 98 people, and it is no exaggeration to say that we were squeezed against each other like sardines in a can. When we reached Allenstein, people started to die, and had to be deposited along the side of the rails. One or more dead bodies greeted us every morning of our journey after that; they just had to be abandoned on the embankments. There must have been many, many bodies left lying along the track. […]

 

The train spent more time stopping than moving. It took us more than 14 days to reach the Russian occupation zone. We rarely traveled at night. […] After a few days, we had no more to eat. Sometimes, by begging the Polish driver, we were able to get a little warm water drawn from the engine. […] The nights were unbearable because of the overcrowding. We could neither keep upright nor sit down, much less lie down. We were so tightly squeezed together that it was impossible not to jostle each other occasionally. Recriminations and quarrels erupted, even attempts to exchange blows in the middle of this human scrum. The very sick suffered the worst. Typhus was widespread throughout the entire transport, and the number of deaths grew with each passing day. You can well imagine the state of hygiene that prevailed in the wagon.”

 

A German priest who witnessed the arrival of German expellees at the border described what he saw: [29]

 

“The people – men, women, and children all mixed together – were tightly packed in the railway cars, these cattle wagons themselves being locked from the outside. For days on end, the people were transported like this, and in Görlitz, the wagons were opened for the first time. I have seen with my own eyes that out of one wagon alone 10 corpses were taken and thrown into coffins which had been kept on hand. I noted further that several persons had become deranged. […] The people were covered in excrement, which led me to believe that they were squeezed together so tightly that there was no longer any possibility for them to relieve themselves at a designated place.”

 

Several observers compared the fate of the German expellees to the victims of the German concentration camps. Major Stephen Terrell of the Parachute Regiment stated: [30]

 

“Even a cursory visit to the hospitals in Berlin, where some of these people have dragged themselves, is an experience which would make the sights in the Concentration Camps appear normal.”

 

Adrian Kanaar, a British military doctor working in a Berlin medical facility, reported on an expellee train from Poland in which 75 had died on the journey due to overcrowding. Although Kanaar had just completed a stint as a medical officer at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, what he witnessed of the expellees’ plight so distressed him that he declared his willingness to face a court martial if necessary for making the facts known to the press. Kanaar declared that he had not “spent six years in the army to see a tyranny established which is as bad as the Nazis.” [31]

 

However, while the conditions reigning at Bergen-Belsen and other camps at war’s end were a result of force majeure, of the inevitable collapse of Germany at war’s end, the scenes unfolding in East Germany were created deliberately.

 

Gerald Gardiner, later to become Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, had been a member of a volunteer ambulance unit working with concentration camp survivors. Gardiner stated regarding the expellee trains arriving in the late summer and autumn of 1945 from East Germany: [32]

 

“The removal of the dead in carts from the railway stations was a grim reminder of what I saw in early days in Belsen.”

 

An eyewitness report of the arrival in Berlin of a train which had left East Germany with 1,000 German expellees aboard reads: [33]

 

“Nine hundred and nine men, women, and children dragged themselves and their luggage from a Russian railway train at Leherte station today, after 11 days traveling in boxcars from Poland.

 

Red Army soldiers lifted 91 corpses from the train, while relatives shrieked and sobbed as their bodies were piled in American lend-lease trucks and driven off for internment in a pit near a concentration camp.

 

The refugee train was like a macabre Noah’s ark. Every car was jammed with Germans. […] the families carry all their earthly belongings in sacks, bags and tin trucks. […] Nursing infants suffer the most, as their mothers are unable to feed them, and frequently go insane as they watch their offspring slowly die before their eyes. Today four screaming, violently insane mothers were bound with rope to prevent them from clawing other passengers.

 

‘Many women try to carry off their dead babies with them,’ a Russian railway official said. ‘We search the bundles whenever we discover a weeping woman, to make sure she is not carrying an infant corpse with her.’”

 

Conditions for Germans after the war were so bad in East Germany and Poland that many Germans saw no other option than to leave these areas. Food ration cards were progressively withdrawn from the entire German population in East Germany after the war. Like their parents, German children found that they were entitled to no rations at all. The head of the Commissariat of Stettin-Stolzenhagen, then renamed to Szczecin-Stołczyn by the new Polish authorities. proudly reported that, since the end of November 1945, even German children under the age of two had their milk allocation withdrawn from them.

 

Polish laws designed to protect German children were typically never enforced. For example, a directive issued in April 1945 by the Polish Ministry of Public Security specifying that nobody under the age of 13 was to be detained was never followed. More than two years later, the Polish Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare was complaining that the regulations against imprisoning children in camps continued to be “completely ignored.” German children were illegally detained in Polish internment camps as late as August 1949. [34]

 

Polish-Run Camps

 

Many of the Germans in East Germany and Poland were also sent to the former German concentration camps. In March 1945, the Polish military command declared that the entire German people shared the blame for starting World War II. Over 105,000 Germans were sent to labor camps before their expulsion from East Germany. The Polish authorities soon converted concentration camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Lamsdorf (then renamed to Łambinowice by the Poles) and others into internment and labor camps. In fact, the liberation of the last surviving Jewish inmates of the Auschwitz Main Camp and the arrival of the first ethnic Germans were separated by less than two weeks.

 

When the camps in Poland were finally closed, it is estimated that as many as 50% of the inmates, mostly women and children, had died from ill-treatment, malnutrition and diseases. [35]

 

Many Germans were also tortured prior to entering the Polish-run camps. For example, Tuviah Friedman was a Polish Jew who survived the German concentration camps. Friedman by his own admission beat up to 20 German prisoners a day to obtain confessions and weed out SS officers. Friedman stated: [36]

 

“It gave me satisfaction. I wanted to see if they would cry or beg for mercy.”

 

In a confidential report concerning the Polish concentration camps filed with the Foreign Office, R.W. F. Bashford wrote: [37]

 

[T]he concentration camps were not dismantled, but rather taken over by new owners. Mostly they are run by Polish militia. In Świętochłowice, prisoners who are not starved or whipped to death are made to stand, night after night, in cold water up to their necks, until they perish. In Breslau there are cellars from which, day and night, the screams of victims can be heard.”

 

Lamsdorf in Upper Silesia was initially built by Germany to house Allied prisoners of war. This camp’s postwar population of 8,064 Germans was decimated through starvation, disease, hard labor and physical mistreatment. A surviving German doctor at Lamsdorf recorded the deaths of 6,488 German inmates in the camp after the war, including 628 children. [38]

 

A report submitted to the U.S. Senate dated August 28, 1945, reads: [39]

 

“In ‘Y’ [code for a camp, from the original document], Upper Silesia, an evacuation camp has been prepared which holds at present 1,000 people. […] A great part of the people are suffering from symptoms of starvation; there are cases of tuberculosis and always new cases of typhoid. […] Two people seriously ill with syphilis have been dealt with in a very simple way: They were shot. […] Yesterday a woman from ‘K’ [another camp] was shot and a child wounded.”

 

Zgoda, which had been a satellite camp of Auschwitz during the war, was reopened by the Polish Security Service as a punishment and labor camp. Thousands of Germans in Poland were arrested and sent to Zgoda for labor duties. The prisoners were denied adequate food and medical care, the overcrowded barrack buildings were crawling with lice, and beatings were a common occurrence. The camp director, Salomon Morel, told the prisoners at the gate that he would show them what Auschwitz had meant. A man named Günther Wollny, who had the misfortune of being an inmate in both Auschwitz and Zgoda, later stated: [40]

 

“I’d rather be 10 years in a German camp than one day in a Polish one.”

 

A notable element of the postwar Polish camp system was the prevalence of sexual assault as well as ritualized sexual humiliation and punishment suffered by the female inmates. The practice at Jaworzno, as reported by Antoni Białecki of the local Office of Public Security, was to “take ethnically German women at gunpoint home at night and rape them.” The camp functioned as a sexual supermarket for its 170-strong militia guard contingent.

 

The sexual humiliation of female prisoners in the Polish camp at Potulice had become an institutional practice by the end of 1945. Many of the women were sexually abused and beaten, and some of the punishments resulted in horrific injuries. The sexual exploitation of women in Polish-run camps contrasts to the experience of women in German-run concentration camps. Rape or other forms of sexual mistreatment was an extremely rare occurrence at German concentration camps and severely punished by the authorities if detected. [41]

 

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) attempted to send a delegation to investigate the atrocities reported in the Polish camps. It was not until July 17, 1947, when most Germans had either died or had been expelled from the camps, that ICRC officials were finally allowed to inspect a Polish camp. Yet even at this late date there were still a few camps the ICRC was not allowed to investigate. [42]

 

Jewish journalist John Sack confirmed the torture and murder of German prisoners in postwar Polish camps operated by the Office of State Security. Most of the camps were staffed and run by Jews, with help from Poles, Czechs, Russians and concentration camp survivors. Virtually the entire personnel at these camps were eager to take revenge on the defeated Germans. In three years after the war, Sack estimates that from 60,000 to 80,000 Germans died in the Office’s camps. [43]

 

Efforts to bring perpetrators in Polish camps to justice were largely unsuccessful. Czesław Gęborski, director of the camp at Lamsdorf, was indicted by Polish authorities in 1956 for wanton brutality against the German prisoners. Gęborski admitted at his trial that his only goal in taking the job was “to exact revenge” on the Germans. On October 4, 1945, Gęborski ordered his guards to shoot down anyone trying to escape a fire that engulfed one of the barracks buildings; a minimum of 48 prisoners were killed that day. The guards at Lamsdorf also routinely beat the German prisoners and stole from them. German prisoners in Lamsdorf died of hunger and diseases in droves; guards recalled scenes of children begging for scraps of food and crusts of bread. Gęborski was found not guilty despite strong evidence of his criminal acts. [44]

 

Poland’s Stunted Development

 

The Polish report on losses sustained due to German aggression during World War II states: [45]

 

“Poland and its people are still suffering from the negative effects of the Second World War on the country’s population, economy, infrastructure, and the progress it has been able to make in scholarship, education, and culture. […] Today, Poland’s status in terms of civilizational growth in Europe and worldwide would have been completely different, had it not been for the Second World War and its aftereffects. For several generations following their wartime decimation, the people of Poland have been forced to undertake a huge effort to raise their country from ruins and restore it in the aftermath of the war.”

 

The Polish report is correct that Poland has faced stunted economic growth and development after World War II. However, most of this has been caused by the Soviet Union’s control of Poland after World War II. Had Poland decided after World War One to live in peaceful cooperation with Germany rather than on a war footing trying to conquer as much German territory as possible, that cooperation would have led to a very prosperous and happy Poland. This failed policy of genocidal enmity toward Germany is the root cause of Poland’s stunted development.

 

World War II was supposedly fought to stop fascist aggression and to create democratic institutions in the liberated nations of Europe. However, within a remarkably short period after the end of the war, the Soviet Union ruthlessly subjected Poland and other Eastern European nations to its totalitarian control. The Red Army brought Moscow-trained secret policemen into every Soviet occupied country, put local communists in control of the national media, and dismantled youth groups and other civic organizations. The Soviets also brutally arrested, murdered and deported people whom they believed to be anti-Soviet, and enforced a policy of ethnic cleansing. [46]

 

On March 5, 1946, less than 10 months after the defeat of Germany, Winston Churchill made his dramatic Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri. Churchill stated in this speech:46

 

“A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. […] The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern states of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control.”

 

Churchill thus acknowledged that the Soviet Union was obtaining control of Poland and other Eastern European nations. A war allegedly fought for democracy and freedom for Poland had turned into a nightmare for the people of the Eastern European nations.

 

Like other Eastern European countries, Poland faced major economic hardships and arrested development after the Second World War. This was caused primarily by the Soviet Union’s control of Poland after the war rather than by the destruction of Poland during the war.

 

Poland furthermore claims that Germany’s wartime policy led to the death of some five to six million Poles. That is an outrageous lie based on a statistical trick that tallies the population losses on the territories today controlled by Poland. However, the massive loss of population in that territory was the result of Poland’s ethnic cleansing of the indigenous GERMAN population from East Germany, which now forms the western part of Poland. [47]

 

Germany’s Stunted Development

 

If German politicians had some gumption, they could turn the Polish argument of “stunted development” against Poland. Fact is that Poland controls some 25% of what used to be indisputably German territories. They could and did exploit all its natural riches, and took control of the highly developed and industrialized province of Silesia, which was moreover Germany’s breadbasket.

 

Germany, on the other hand, has been deprived since 1946 of 25% of its GPD, which used to be contributed to the total German economy by East Germany. If we were to tally the losses which Germany suffered due to Poland taking control of 25% of Germany’s territories and GDP-producing lands and industries, then the situation would look as follows:

 

·  Let us assume that Germany was deprived of 25% of its annual GDP due to the loss of 25% of its territories that Poland took.

 

·  This means that the German GDP could and should have been a third higher than what it actually is. In fact, prior to the reunification of West and Central Germany, West-German GDP data were produced on only 50% of Germany’s original territory. Hence, the GDP figures of that era could have been 50% higher, had Germany controlled its former eastern territories. Hence, Germany had the following losses of GDP due to Poland’s occupation and exclusive usage of Germany’s Eastern Territories: [48]

 

German Economic Losses Due to Inability of Using 25% of Its Territories (Settlement, Forestry, Raw Materials, Agriculture, Industry)

 

Year

(West) Germany GDP
 [Trillion USD]

fraction owed

Owed
 [Trillion USD]

2024

4.660

1/3

1.553

2023

4.526

1/3

1.509

2022

4.164

1/3

1.388

2021

4.348

1/3

1.449

2020

3.940

1/3

1.313

2019

3.957

1/3

1.319

2018

4.052

1/3

1.351

2017

3.763

1/3

1.254

2016

3.538

1/3

1.179

2015

3.424

1/3

1.141

2014

3.966

1/3

1.322

2013

3.808

1/3

1.269

2012

3.598

1/3

1.199

2011

3.825

1/3

1.275

2010

3.468

1/3

1.156

2009

3.480

1/3

1.160

2008

3.809

1/3

1.270

2007

3.484

1/3

1.161

2006

3.046

1/3

1.015

2005

2.893

1/3

0.964

2004

2.852

1/3

0.951

2003

2.535

1/3

0.845

2002

2.102

1/3

0.701

2001

1.966

1/3

0.655

2000

1.967

1/3

0.656

1999

2.214

1/3

0.738

1998

2.248

1/3

0.749

1997

2.219

1/3

0.740

1996

2.507

1/3

0.836

1995

2.593

1/3

0.864

1994

2.215

1/3

0.738

1993

2.079

1/3

0.693

1992

2.141

1/3

0.714

1991

1.876

1/3

0.625

1990

1.778

1/3

0.593

1989

1.404

1/2

0.702

1988

1.406

1/2

0.703

1987

1.303

1/2

0.652

1986

1.050

1/2

0.525

1985

0.735

1/2

0.368

1984

0.728

1/2

0.364

1983

0.774

1/2

0.387

1982

0.779

1/2

0.390

1981

0.803

1/2

0.402

1980

0.954

1/2

0.477

1979

0.885

1/2

0.442

1978

0.743

1/2

0.372

1977

0.603

1/2

0.301

1976

0.522

1/2

0.261

1975

0.492

1/2

0.246

1974

0.447

1/2

0.223

1973

0.400

1/2

0.200

1972

0.301

1/2

0.150

1971

0.251

1/2

0.125

1970

0.217

1/2

0.108

1969

0.178

1/2

0.089

1968

0.157

1/2

0.078

1967

0.145

1/2

0.073

1966

0.143

1/2

0.072

1965

0.135

1/2

0.067

1964

0.123

1/2

0.062

1963

0.112

1/2

0.056

1962

0.106

1/2

0.053

1961

0.097

1/2

0.048

1960

0.085

1/2

0.042

1959

0.078

1/2

0.039

1958

0.073

1/2

0.036

1957

0.067

1/2

0.034

1956

0.062

1/2

0.031

1955

0.058

1/2

0.029

1954

0.053

1/2

0.027

1953

0.049

1/2

0.025

1952

0.046

1/2

0.023

1951

0.042

1/2

0.021

1950

0.039

1/2

0.020

Total

125.685


 

44.669

 

Hence, the argument could be made that Poland owes Germany some 44 trillion US dollars for their continued use and exploitation of German territory, and that clock keeps on ticking. Of course, it can be argued that additional territories do not automatically equate additional GDP, as much depends on the human capital available. In that case, one should consider the 2.1 million victims of the expulsion of Germans from their ancestral homelands, most of them from East Germany. Hence, most of them died as a result of Polish postwar policies.

 

Either way, we don’t think that Poland would come out winning in case of a total and honest accounting of who owes whom how much.

 

And this does not even take into account the unfathomable economic and psychological damage done to Germany and the German people due to postwar Holocaust propaganda, much of which was created and spread in its current form by Polish authorities in the immediate postwar years. [49]

 

Conclusion

 

Poland does not have a legitimate claim for reparations from Germany. The Polish report published in 2022 states that Germany was solely responsible for starting World War II. In reality, Poland in 1939 committed numerous acts of violence against its ethnic German minority, causing Germany to invade Poland to end these atrocities.

 

If Poland has a legitimate claim to reparations for the death and destruction that occurred in Poland during World War II, then Germans who were expelled from Poland and East Germany also have legitimate claims for the deaths of their family members after the war. German expellees from Poland and East Germany also had their real estate and most of their personal property either stolen or destroyed by the Allies. German expellees have never been compensated for these losses. Instead, they were forced to live in abject poverty in the rest of Germany, while paying reparations to Jewish survivors of the so-called Holocaust. Moreover, the entire German nation was deprived of some of its potential economic prosperity due to the loss of a quarter of its territories. Most of these German losses were Poland’s gain.

 

For the sake of peace and understanding, Germans and Poles should let these matters rest for eternity and try to live together from now on peacefully, respectfully and cooperatively as good neighbors.


Notes

 

A version of this article was originally published in the March/April 2024 issue of The Barnes Review

 

 [1] The Barnes Review, Vol. XXVIII, No. 6., Nov./Dec. 2022, p. 44.

 

 [2] www.instytutstratwojennych.pl.

 

 [3] Ibid., p. 17.

 

 [4] Ibid., pp. 17f.

 

 [5] Ibid., p. 25.

 

 [6] Ibid., p. 63.

 

 [7] Barnett, Correlli, The Collapse of British Power, New York: William Morrow, 1972, p. 560; see also Taylor, A.J.P., The Origins of the Second World War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961, p. 211.

 

 [8] Shadewaldt, Hans, Polish Acts of Atrocity Against the German Minority in Poland, Berlin, and New York: German Library of Information, 2nd edition, 1940, pp. 75f.

 

 [9] Hoggan, David L., The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed, Costa Mesa, Cal.: Institute for Historical Review, 1989, pp. 260-262, 387.

 

 [10] Ibid., pp. 452f.

 

 [11] Ibid., p. 554.

 

 [12] Day, Donald, Onward Christian Soldiers, Newport Beach, Cal.: The Noontide Press, 2002, p. 56.

 

 [13] Hoggan, David L., op. cit., pp. 358, 382, 388, 391f., 479.

 

 [14] Ibid., pp. 500f., 550.

 

 [15] Ibid., pp. 509f.

 

 [16] Ibid., p. 509

 

 [17] De Jong, Louis, The German Fifth Column in the Second World War, New York: Howard Fertig, 1973, p. 37.

 

 [18] Barnes, Harry Elmer, Barnes against the Blackout, Costa Mesa, Cal.: The Institute for Historical Review, 1991, p. 222.

 

 [19] Hoggan, David L., op. cit., p. 390.

 

 [20] Tedor, Richard, Hitler’s Revolution, Chicago: 2013, pp. 160-161.

 

 [21] www.instytutstratwojennych.pl., p. 503.

 

 [22] Douglas, R. M., Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2012, p. 93.

 

 [23] Ibid., pp. 94-95.

 

 [24] Bessel, Richard, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London: Harper Perennial, 2010, pp. 214-215.

 

 [25] Ibid., p. 215.

 

 [26] Ibid., pp. 216-217.

 

 [27] Douglas, R. M., op. cit., p. 103.

 

 [28] Ibid., pp. 109-110.

 

 [29] Davies, Norman and Moorhouse, Roger, Microcosm, London: Pimlico, 2003, p. 422.

 

 [30] Douglas, R. M., op. cit., p. 117.

 

 [31] Ibid., pp. 117f.

 

 [32] Ibid., p. 118.

 

 [33] Wales, Henry, Chicago Tribune Press Service, Nov. 18, 1945.

 

 [34] Douglas, R. M., op. cit., pp. 233f., 236.

 

 [35] Merten, Ulrich, Forgotten Voices: The Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2012, pp. 9, 65.

 

 [36] Stover, Eric, Peskin, Victor, and Koenig, Alexa, Hiding in Plain Sight: The Pursuit of War Criminals from Nuremberg to the War on Terror, Oakland, Cal.: University of California Press, 2016, pp. 70-71.

 

 [37] Public Record Office, FO 371/46990.

 

 [38] De Zayas, Alfred-Maurice, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977, pp. 125-126.

 

 [39] “Evacuation and Concentration Camps in Silesia” in Congressional Record, Senate, Aug. 2, 1945, Annex A-4778/79.

 

 [40] Lowe, Keith, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012, pp. 135-137.

 

 [41] Douglas, R. M., op. cit., pp. 141f.

 

 [42] International Committee of the Red Cross, Report of its Activities During the Second World War, Geneva: 1948, Vol. 1, pp. 334 et seq.

 

 [43] Sack, John, An Eye for an Eye, 4th edition, New York: Basic Books, 2000, p. 114.

 

 [44] Naimark, Norman M., Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001, p. 130.

 

 [45] www.instytutstratwojennych.pl, p. 19.

 

 [46] Applebaum, Anne, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, New York: Doubleday, 2012, pp. 192-193.

 

 [47] Müller, Otward, “Polish Population Losses during World War Two,” The Revisionist, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2003, pp. 151-156; https://codoh.com/library/document/polish-population-losses-during-world-war-two/.

 

 [48] German GDP Data 1960-2023: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/deu/germany/gdp-gross-domestic-product; German GDP Data 2024 from Google AI; West German GDP data for the 1950s: calculated backward with 8% annual growth during this decade acc. to Google AI.

 

 [49] On this, see Rudolf, Germar, Nazi Gas Chambers: The Roots of the Story, 2nd ed., Armreg, London, 2025.