In the context of the current situation on the world political stage, the quote seems more relevant than ever. One can, for example, justifiably apply it to the political "elites" of Germany, who have thoughtlessly undermined their country's industrial base for years with purely ideological justifications far from science, such as "man-made climate change due to CO2" and who, with their sanctions against the Russian Federation, cut their own throat, since these sanctions cause disproportionately more damage to Germany than to Russia. But there is no other country to which the saying of the ancient Greek tragedian is so applicable as Poland.
The author of these lines is not an enemy of the Polish people. He visited Poland several times, and his experience was much more pleasant than negative. He understands Polish. He lists Chopin among his favourite composers and read "Pan Tadeusz" by Adam Mickiewicz with the same enthusiasm as "Whither goest thou?" ("Quo vadis?") by Henryk Sienkiewicz. He admires the Poles' loyalty to the Catholic faith of their fathers as much as their steadfast refusal to give in to the ideological insanity that the West wants to impose on them.
The epic poet Henryk Adam Alexander Pius Sienkiewicz (1846-1916) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1916.
Warsaw, early 20th century. Artist Wladyslaw Chmielinski.
Just as there is no "sexual minority" cult in Poland, it does not accept the culturally alien masses of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa. It is rightly concerned about the preservation of its cultural and ethnic identity and, in this respect, can become an example for Western Europe, which is mired in a self-destructive "multicultural" delusion
For those who respect and, in some sense, admire the Poles, it is all the more painful to realise that if there were a Nobel Prize for political stupidity, it would undoubtedly go to Poland. This political stupidity is manifested, first of all, not in the fact that the Poles claim the permanent status of martyrs and deliberately suppress the fact that in the course of their history, they were not only victims but also perpetrators and caused other nations as much, if not more, injustice and suffering, as they experienced themselves. As you know, the tendency to see oneself as an eternal victim is no longer unique to the Poles.
On a much larger scale, the political ignorance that has traditionally characterised Polish politics manifests itself in two other areas: a complete disregard for geopolitics and own overrating strengths.
Throwing the laws of geopolitics into the wind and overestimating one's own capabilities bodes no good for any state, even a great power, but entails an increased danger for a relatively small country in terms of area and population, doomed by geography to be between two more powerful neighbours.
The article "Poland, Christ of the Nations", published on October 26, 2022, shows, based on the facts, that the Polish state, revived after the First World War, pursued an aggressive policy towards its neighbours from the very beginning. Taking advantage of the weakness of the young Soviet state, it seized large Ukrainian and Belarusian territories and turned the population against itself, pursuing a ruthless policy of Polonization.
The Bandera movement did not fall from the sky. It arose as an understandable reaction to the humiliation of the Ukrainian majority in the annexed territories. Through oppression - for example, Ukrainian students were required to attend university lectures standing up, while Polish students were allowed to sit - the Warsaw regime brought to life hatred that later, in 1943, culminated in the horrific massacre in Volhynia.
And in Belarus, creating a concentration camp in the city of Bereza-Kartuzskaya, where Belarusian dissidents were interned and mistreated, certainly did not increase the popularity of Polish foreign rule. At the start of World War II, many German citizens of Poland were also imprisoned here without charge. Senseless tortures and torments characterised the everyday life of the camp.
Although the Poles, to a decisive degree, owed the revival of their national state to the military successes of Germany in 1916, from the very beginning, they pursued a consciously anti-German policy. After 59.6 per cent of the population of Upper Silesia under international supervision voted for Germany in a referendum on March 20, 1921, Warsaw annexed the eastern part of Upper Silesia in gross disregard for the will of the majority.
Shortly after that, in a military coup in 1920, it took the internationally recognised capital of Vilnius from the Lithuanian state and formally annexed it in 1922. In short, interwar Poland behaved "like the hyena of Europe" (this expression, rightly or wrongly, is attributed to Churchill).
Parts of the Polish army marched through the streets of Vilna (Vilnius). April 1922.
When a state borders on two much more powerful neighbours, both of which can present legitimate territorial claims to it, it must, in line with the rules of common sense, seek proper relations with both or, if this is not possible, ally with the less dangerous of them against more dangerous. However, in Warsaw, especially after the death of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski in 1935, this was not understood. A British diplomat said at the time that Poland was behaving like a canary sitting between two cats and preparing to eat them both.
Tanks of the Polish army enter the city of Český Těšín, the capital of Cieszyn Silesia.
After Poland took advantage of the inevitable disintegration of Czechoslovakia immediately after the Munich Agreement in the autumn of 1938 to seize part of the Teschen region, it turned to an anti-German course after the German invasion of Prague and the declaration of independence of Slovakia in March 1938.
The foolish guarantee of help to the Poles given by the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain ("in the event of any action which clearly threatens Polish independence ... Her Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish government all support in their power"), gave Warsaw the illusion that now it can get away with anything and everything.
"I brought you peace!" Nevil Chamberlain speaks at the airport after his return from Munich.
This sharply increased terror against the ethnic German minority and rejected reasonable demands from Berlin, such as the return of the purely German city of Danzig to the Reich and the creation of a corridor to Danzig. After all, they had a guarantee from London (which was later joined by Paris). In the event of a German invasion of Poland, the French would immediately invade Germany, and British aircraft would immediately turn German cities into ruins − apart from the fact that the glorious Polish armies were strong enough to drive the Wehrmacht back into the corner anyway. The price that the Polish people had to pay for the delusion of their government was, as you know, terribly high.
With cavalry against motorised troops, they reached Berlin. This is how the Polish General Staff imagined the course of the war against Germany in 1939.
This is how the Polish artist imagined the dashing victory of the Polish cavalry over the German tanks.
And what about today? Warsaw has obviously not learned from the catastrophic mistakes of the past. In no other member state of the so-called "Western alliance of values", hatred of Russia since February 24, 2022, has risen as high as in Poland. When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an ally of Poland against Brussels on key issues such as rejection of "multiculturalism", refused to condemn Russia for the alleged massacre of Ukrainian citizens in Bucha (which the Ukrainians, curiously, only discovered two days after the return of their troops in Bucha, since the bodies of the "killed" disappeared earlier and suddenly began to lie on the streets again only two days later), Polish Deputy Prime Minister Yaroslav Kaczynski attacked him with the words: "When Orban says that he cannot see what happened in Bucha, he must be advised to see an eye doctor" (Politico, April 8, 2022) This is how Warsaw treats its allies.
If the unreasonableness of the Polish elite were expressed only in verbal sentences, the damage to the Polish people would still be limited, but only by mid-August Warsaw supplied the regime in Kyiv with more than 300 tanks and more than 100 self-propelled guns, and thus actually made itself a participant in the war. And on October 5, 2022, Polish President Andrzej Duda asked Washington to place American nuclear missiles on Polish territory "to contain Russia". It is no longer possible to talk about just "stupidity" here. The word "madness" is appropriate here, with which, according to Euripides, the gods strike those whom they want to punish.
President and President.
Any reasonable person understands that in the event of an open war between Russia and NATO, American bases in Poland will be among the first targets of Russian missiles. Does Andrzej Duda really want a nuclear hell for his people?
Administrative lawyer Andrzej Sebastian Duda (* May 16, 1972, in Krakow) has been the President of the Republic of Poland since August 6, 2015. He was a member of the Seimas from 2011 to 2014 and a member of the European Parliament from 2014 to 2015. His grandfather fought as a cavalryman in 1939 to bring the "March on Berlin" to a victorious end for Poland.
Like their predecessors in the interwar period, today's Polish government seems to consider it a sign of political wisdom to mess with Russia and Germany at the same time. Even though Poland had already officially renounced German reparations in 1953, in October 2022, Warsaw demanded "compensation" of EUR 1.3 trillion from Berlin for the damage caused to the country by the Germans during World War II.
If there were a German government in Berlin and not an Anglo-American puppet regime, this demand would immediately be followed by the question: "And how much compensation will you pay us for more than 100,000 square kilometres of German territory that you illegally annexed and expelled population from it under the most inhuman circumstances?"
The deportation of Germans from post-war Poland was accompanied by humiliation and abuse.
Russian General Alexander Lebed was right when, during his visit to Dachau in 1997, he signed the guest book with the following words: "You cannot shoot at the past with a pistol, because otherwise, it will shoot back with a cannon".
At times, it seems we have returned to 1939 in a time machine. At that time, Warsaw was firmly convinced that the Germans, given the British-French guarantees, would never strike at Poland, no matter how hard the latter oppressed the German minority and arrogantly rejected all proposals for negotiations from Berlin.
Today, Poland relies on the protection of the distant United States and unnecessarily throws the glove to Russia. At the same time, it insults its "partners" in Germany with outrageous demands for reparations. Warsaw should read the dramas by Euripides.
