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The territory that today is western poland was part of Germany pre-1939. It wasn't an occupation, it was just that territory of that country. Afaik, most of wha
by TremendousJudge 4y ago
The territory that today is western poland was part of Germany pre-1939. It wasn't an occupation, it was just that territory of that country. Afaik, most of what was eastern Poland pre-1939 and was occupied by the Russians, nowadays is no longer Polish territory. The boundaries migrated west.
- adrian_b 4y agoYes indeed. The Poland of after WWII has a similar area with the Poland of before WWII, but it has moved a lot towards West. So the winners have been the Russians and the losers have been the Germans. Poland was lucky because its large territorial losses to the Russian invaders have been somewhat compensated with territories taken from Germany. The other Western neighbors of Russia have been much less lucky. The larger neighbors (Finland, Czechoslovakia, Romania) have lost large territories stolen by Russia without any compensation, while the smaller neighbors (the 3 lesser Baltic countries) have been incorporated completely in the Soviet Union. I have written "the 3 lesser Baltic countries" because prior to WWII Finland was counted as the 4th Baltic country, since all 4 countries occupy the Eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, and they all form an enclave between Germanic-speaking people to the West and Slavic-speaking people to the East (the main languages in Finland and Estonia are Uralic, while the main languages in Lithuania and Latvia belong to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European languages). For example, in the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact from 1939, the Russians have written explicitly their intentions to occupy all the 4 Baltic countries (Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) and also Romania, and the Germans agreed with this, while the Russians agreed that the countries of Western Europe should belong to Germany.
- thriftwy 4y agoThe german territories were given to Poland by USSR, not taken by Poland. With regards to eastern territories, Poland may reclaim some of those right now if it is insistent :)
- agapon 4y agoRussian troll detected.
- thriftwy 4y agoSeriously though, all of these russophobic eastern european countries are like: "Russia took our lands". First of all, it was not Russia but USSR who took your lands; second, USSR did not give these lands to Russia (even in the form of RSFSR) but to other russophobic eastern european countries. You are grown-ups now. Sort it out between yourselves.
- klausjensen 4y agoThe Russian delusions around WW2 are astonishing. They (USSR was Russian-lead) were literally allied with Nazi-Germany and agreed to split Europe with them. They executed 20000+ Polish people in Katyn alone.
- thriftwy 4y agoYes, USSR had a pact with Nazi Germany. Until it hadn't. So?
- sgjohnson 4y agoSo USSR was exactly as guilty in WW2 happening as Nazi Germany. USSR was not one bit better.
- thriftwy 4y agoAnd why are we discussing this different topic out of sudden?
- krzyk 4y agoUSSR was actually much worse than Nazi Germany. They had much more time to do bad things. And even if we only account WWII timeline, people in territories between Germany and USSR preferred to be conquered by Germans, purely because their soldiers were more disciplined than the ones from USSR (which were just peasants, frequently even without boots, equipped with weapons).
- mkotowski 4y agoPart of it was, yes. But going by the image from the tweet, there are many regions recovered, that belonged to the Second Polish Republic and still contained quite sizeable Polish-speaking population. [0] [0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GUS_languages1931_Poland.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GUS_languages1931_Po...
- em-bee 4y agowell, it depends on how far back you look in history. poland was split up between prussia, austria and russia in the 18th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland#/media/File:Rzeczpospolita_Rozbiory_3.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland#/media/File:Rzeczpospol...