4 ms·

It's not like all this has happened in vacuum though. Some context is missing from your observation.

michael9423 2y ago
nothing in history happens in a vacuum. But as a matter of fact, when the Soviets invaded Germany from the east, what got lost was mostly german knowledge in the destruction and burnings.
- keiferski 2y ago
  When they invaded Germany proper, sure. But that was after the Germans had already destroyed countless Polish cultural treasures over the previous five years. And of course that’s not even mentioning the Russification and Germanization programs that aimed to destroy Polish culture and knowledge during the Partitions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_culture_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_culture_during_World_Wa... https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/3855-75-years-ago-the-germans-set-fire-to-the-national-library-in-warsaw.html https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/3855-75-years-ago-the-germans-...
  - michael9423 2y ago
    Yes indeed. When governments lead wars against each other, it is the populations that suffer, and knowledge and culture get destroyed on all sides.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      Characterizing the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union as “governments leading wars against each other” is sloppy revisionism at best. Poland was invaded by occupying powers.
      - mistrial9 2y ago
        Polish heavy cavalry was entirely innocent for a thousand years?
        keiferski 2y ago
        That has what to do with WW2, exactly?
        mistrial9 2y ago
        start here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Poland
      - michael9423 2y ago
        All war is state terror. As the great Sebastian Haffner wrote: "European history knows two forms of terror. The first is the uncontrollable explosion of bloodlust in a victorious mass uprising. The other is cold, calculated cruelty committed by a victorious state as a demonstration of power and intimidation. The two forms of terror normally correspond to revolution and repression. The first is revolutionary. It justifies itself by the rage and fever of the moment, a temporary madness. The second is repressive. It justifies itself by the preceding revolutionary atrocities."
        keiferski 2y ago
        Nice quote, but I'm not sure how it relates to my comment.
Amezarak 2y ago
You're quite right about that, but it is true that the post-WW borders of Germany viz. Poland were a little ridiculous, and the Allies after WWII undertook a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing after the war against territories that had had major German populations for centuries in an effort to create ethnically homogeneous states.
- alkyon 2y ago
  It's worth remebering though that this was Stalin's plan to enlarge the Soviet Union (incidently also approved by the Western powers in the Yalta Agreement) at the cost of German territory. The expulsion of some millions of Poles from the territories of some newly created Soviet republics that now belong to Western Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania is just as well a striking example of campaign of ethnic cleansing against the territories that had major Polish population for centuries. Morover, the Western Poland was subject to Prussian ethnic cleansing policies for more than a century, not to mention the war itself.
- hnbad 2y ago
  The national myth of Germany actually obscures one of the biggest successful efforts in "restructuring" the Allies engaged in: the complete elimination of Prussia. Not only were parts of Eastern Prussia reassigned to other countries but also Prussian provinces within Germany were dissolved and remodeled into the German Bundesländer. Today "Prussia" as a cohesive identity largely only exists as something for Bavarians to differentiate themselves from. Well into WW1 German national identity was defined more by Prussia than anything else but the Allies completely eliminated it. Denazification was largely a farce and appeals by influential people were mostly rubberstamped but Deprussification is the secret success story.
zqna 2y ago
It didn't help that in Poland was an aggresive country in 1930s too, and was waging aggressive wars against its neighbours (read, "Lithuania"), and occupying and bruttaly polonizing what was never its ever. Not too say that Lithuania was not run by own nationalists, who also managed to get into military conflicts with Latvian "brothers". The moral is that the whole Europe was boiling in every own nationalism that culminated with WW2. Thinking that it can never repeat is as delusional as 100 years ago
- hnbad 2y ago
  Nationalism truly was the mindkiller that enabled WW1 and WW2. It's important to remember that although WW2 is rightfully remembered for the Holocaust, it was in essence an attempt at a European colonialism by Germany coupled with a Germanic ethno-nationalism (or more accurately: völkisch nationalism, which is still deeply entrenched today). The racist pseudoscience of the Germanic übermensch served the same purpose as the skull measuring scientific racism used to justify the enslavement and extermination of the native population in African colonies. "Lebensraum" was just a Germanized version of Manifest Destiny. The colonization of Africa, India and the Americas involved massive displacement of natives and mass killings that at least colloquially can best be described as genocides. Much the same way as forests were cleared to create farmland, native populations were cleared to create "living space" for settlers. Much like natural resources were exploited and brought back home, natives were used for manual labor until they were used up. Nationalism allowed leaders to use a national identity to rally their subjects against their neighbors. In an act of massive hubris and severe underestimation of technological advancements this nationalist fervor led to the mass death event that was WW1. WW2 in turn built on this but also brought colonialism home with the explicit goal of not only redrawing borders but also repurposing the land and eliminating any natives standing in the way. I.e. Poland may have engaged in nationalist assimilation in the form of Polonizing Lithuania but Germany explicitly wanted to remove anyone not part of the "volk", at the barrel of a gun if necessary.

nothing in history happens in a vacuum. But as a matter of fact, when the Soviets invaded Germany from the east, what got lost was mostly german knowledge in the destruction and burnings.

keiferski 2y ago
When they invaded Germany proper, sure. But that was after the Germans had already destroyed countless Polish cultural treasures over the previous five years. And of course that’s not even mentioning the Russification and Germanization programs that aimed to destroy Polish culture and knowledge during the Partitions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_culture_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_culture_during_World_Wa... https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/3855-75-years-ago-the-germans-set-fire-to-the-national-library-in-warsaw.html https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/3855-75-years-ago-the-germans-...
- michael9423 2y ago
  Yes indeed. When governments lead wars against each other, it is the populations that suffer, and knowledge and culture get destroyed on all sides.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    Characterizing the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union as “governments leading wars against each other” is sloppy revisionism at best. Poland was invaded by occupying powers.
    - mistrial9 2y ago
      Polish heavy cavalry was entirely innocent for a thousand years?
      - keiferski 2y ago
        That has what to do with WW2, exactly?
        mistrial9 2y ago
        start here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Poland
    - michael9423 2y ago
      All war is state terror. As the great Sebastian Haffner wrote: "European history knows two forms of terror. The first is the uncontrollable explosion of bloodlust in a victorious mass uprising. The other is cold, calculated cruelty committed by a victorious state as a demonstration of power and intimidation. The two forms of terror normally correspond to revolution and repression. The first is revolutionary. It justifies itself by the rage and fever of the moment, a temporary madness. The second is repressive. It justifies itself by the preceding revolutionary atrocities."
      - keiferski 2y ago
        Nice quote, but I'm not sure how it relates to my comment.

Amezarak 2y ago

You're quite right about that, but it is true that the post-WW borders of Germany viz. Poland were a little ridiculous, and the Allies after WWII undertook a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing after the war against territories that had had major German populations for centuries in an effort to create ethnically homogeneous states.

alkyon 2y ago
It's worth remebering though that this was Stalin's plan to enlarge the Soviet Union (incidently also approved by the Western powers in the Yalta Agreement) at the cost of German territory. The expulsion of some millions of Poles from the territories of some newly created Soviet republics that now belong to Western Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania is just as well a striking example of campaign of ethnic cleansing against the territories that had major Polish population for centuries. Morover, the Western Poland was subject to Prussian ethnic cleansing policies for more than a century, not to mention the war itself.
hnbad 2y ago
The national myth of Germany actually obscures one of the biggest successful efforts in "restructuring" the Allies engaged in: the complete elimination of Prussia. Not only were parts of Eastern Prussia reassigned to other countries but also Prussian provinces within Germany were dissolved and remodeled into the German Bundesländer. Today "Prussia" as a cohesive identity largely only exists as something for Bavarians to differentiate themselves from. Well into WW1 German national identity was defined more by Prussia than anything else but the Allies completely eliminated it. Denazification was largely a farce and appeals by influential people were mostly rubberstamped but Deprussification is the secret success story.

zqna 2y ago

It didn't help that in Poland was an aggresive country in 1930s too, and was waging aggressive wars against its neighbours (read, "Lithuania"), and occupying and bruttaly polonizing what was never its ever. Not too say that Lithuania was not run by own nationalists, who also managed to get into military conflicts with Latvian "brothers". The moral is that the whole Europe was boiling in every own nationalism that culminated with WW2. Thinking that it can never repeat is as delusional as 100 years ago

hnbad 2y ago
Nationalism truly was the mindkiller that enabled WW1 and WW2. It's important to remember that although WW2 is rightfully remembered for the Holocaust, it was in essence an attempt at a European colonialism by Germany coupled with a Germanic ethno-nationalism (or more accurately: völkisch nationalism, which is still deeply entrenched today). The racist pseudoscience of the Germanic übermensch served the same purpose as the skull measuring scientific racism used to justify the enslavement and extermination of the native population in African colonies. "Lebensraum" was just a Germanized version of Manifest Destiny. The colonization of Africa, India and the Americas involved massive displacement of natives and mass killings that at least colloquially can best be described as genocides. Much the same way as forests were cleared to create farmland, native populations were cleared to create "living space" for settlers. Much like natural resources were exploited and brought back home, natives were used for manual labor until they were used up. Nationalism allowed leaders to use a national identity to rally their subjects against their neighbors. In an act of massive hubris and severe underestimation of technological advancements this nationalist fervor led to the mass death event that was WW1. WW2 in turn built on this but also brought colonialism home with the explicit goal of not only redrawing borders but also repurposing the land and eliminating any natives standing in the way. I.e. Poland may have engaged in nationalist assimilation in the form of Polonizing Lithuania but Germany explicitly wanted to remove anyone not part of the "volk", at the barrel of a gun if necessary.