Putin blames Poland... for the invasion of Poland
Updated: Feb 9
Putin blames Poland for being responsible for starting WW2 and the fact that it was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1939. Russia's president wrote an “article” which was published yesterday by US media which is not just guilty of rewriting WW2 history, but turning it on it's head. Putin's goal in the article is to completely whitewash the USSR's crimes in 1939, absolve it from any responsibility for starting WW2, and portray Poland as Hitler's ally and the country responsible for starting WW2, instead of Soviet Russia.
This "article", which is just rehashed Soviet and Stalinist old propaganda, is based on a series of speeches & "lectures" Putin has been giving for months now. The article starts with stating that the USSR was in fact acting in "Self defence" and trying to "buy time" the strengthen its defenses when it signed the Molotov Ribbertrop aggression pact with Nazi Germany. This is of course a lie seeing how the Molotov Ribbertrop pact practically made Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia military and strategic allies, carved Poland, the Baltic states, parts of Finland and Romania between Stalin and Hitler, and subsequently launched WW2. The pact also extended to the economic sphere, with Germany providing military equipment in exchange for Russian raw materials such as oil, grain, iron and phosphates. The Molotov - Ribbentrop pact also cleared the last obstacle in Hitler's path to invade Poland, the event that caused WW2. Hitler's main worry regarding the invasion of Poland, which refused any sort of alliances with Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, was how would Stalin react. After the pact was signed, Hitler knew that he could count on his new ally Stalin not only not to interfere, but to actively help him and support him in his invasion of Poland.
Stalin with Molotov (on the right) and Ribbentrop (on the left) after signing the aggression pact.
Putin goes on to paint Poland, not Soviet Russia, as being the country that was really Hitler's de-facto ally because it helped him “partition” Czechoslovakia in 1938 with the signing of the Munich agreements. The problem is that Poland was played no part in the Munich agreements, which dismembered Czechoslovakia and awarded large parts of it to Nazi Germany and to Hungary in 1938. After the agreement was signed by France, Italy, the UK, Czechoslovakia and Germany, Poland did annex a tiny part of Czechoslovakia known as Zaolzie. However In the case of Poland, Zaolzie was part of Poland in 1920 when Czechoslovakia used the fact that the Polish state was fighting for its life against the Red Army to invade Poland and occupy the Polish region. To claim that Poland was an "ally of Nazi Germany" because of the Munich agreements, which it wasn't even a member of, is just a blatant a-histroical lie.
But Putin goes even further than this, Putin actually blamed Poland for... the invasion of Poland. In the article published yeterday he states that: “The blame for the tragedy that Poland then suffered lies entirely with the Polish leadership..., throwing its own people under the steamroller of Hitler's machine of destruction.”
Any kid who knows anything about WW2 knows that Poland was the first country that refused to bow down to Hitler threats and bullying, that it was the first ally in the war against Nazism, and the country that subsequently paid the heaviest price of any other country in WW2, seeing almost one sixth of its population murdered (around 6 million Poles) and its entire country destroyed by the German occupation. To claim that Poland somehow was responsible for the outbreak of WW2, and the subsequent invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, is like claiming a person who was murdered in cold blood by criminals bears the same responsibility for being murdered as the criminals who murdered him in cold blood.
Putin casually forgets to mention the fact that the USSR invaded Poland in 1939, stating that that the Red Army “crossed over to the eastern borderlines of Poland” not mentioning the battles it fought with the Polish army, nor the millions of Poles who were murdered and sent to gulags following this invasion and Soviet occupation of half of Poland. He even went as far as to suggest before that the USSR's invasion of Poland “saved lives”. Just to put the historical record straight here are some key facts Putin never mentions regarding the Soviet occupation of Poland during WW2; Soviet Russia invaded Poland along with their Nazi allies, imprisoned 500k and deported 1,700,000 million Poles to Russia. Soviet Russia also murdered 22K Poles including 8K POWs in the notorious Katyn massacre. This is all much more than just "“crossed over to the eastern borderlines of Poland” as Putin writes.
But when it comes to removing Soviet crimes, he doesn't stop at Poland.
He even goes on to state that the Red Army invasion and occupation of the Baltic states, Lithuania, Estonia and Lavia in 1940 was done "with the consent of the elected authorities."
He goes on to sat that the Balts "preserved their government bodies, language, and had representation in the higher state structures of the Soviet Union".
Never mind that tens of thousands were deported to Siberia like cattle and many more were murdered and tortured by the NKVD.
This is nothing new, in the last several months and years there has been a concentrated effort from Putin and the Kremlin to fabricate, if not completely rewrite Russian/Soviet history when it concerns the outbreak of WW2, and to erase the USSR's role in invading Poland in 1939 along with the Nazi Germany, and helping Hitler start WW2.
