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Not that I want to be Debbie downer but as always in case of Polish (which I am also are) overexaggerated and having that strange believe that if not the commun

Not that I want to be Debbie downer but as always in case of Polish (which I am also are) overexaggerated and having that strange believe that if not the communists Poland would be a global superpower. Its enough to go the wiki (both about the computer and the inventor) to see that the situation was not that clear. The performance was greatly overstated, it depended on the import of the component from the west etc. Moreover the guy was cooperating with the Polish version of the FBI so it's not like it was a story of lonely genius vs the governament....

legitster 2y ago
> strange believe that if not the communists Poland would be a global superpower I think it's fair to consider Poland the birthplace of the modern computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography) Maybe not a global superpower, but it is very easy to me to imagine a Poland not destroyed by Nazi then communist rule being an innovation center of the world.
- BalinKing 2y ago
  According to that link, The Martians were Hungarian :-P
  - legitster 2y ago
    Oops. Updated to be less wrong.
- HayBale 2y ago
  Prewar Poland was a military dictatorship(mild but was) in the permanent state of crisis, on a brink of a civil war with all of its minorities. And it is a wild take to blame communists for the nazi atrocities. But communist solved most of the problems that prewar Poland would have problem of solving. Yeah Polish tech was amazing especially if you consider the resources
  - ein0p 2y ago
    Communists also happen to be the sole reason why Polish people still exist, because a certain Austrian painter was going to eradicate them all after he was done with the Jews.
    - 6d6b73 2y ago
      Communists partitioned Poland in 1939 together with Germans. War would take a different direction if they didn't join Nazis. They were not really the good guys.
      - ein0p 2y ago
        Actually no, the war would take the exact same direction because Hitler did not consider Slavs to be human. It would have just got to the USSR a couple of years before it was even remotely ready for the war, and, ironically, would probably cause it to lose the war, which, let me remind you, would lead to full eradication of Poles and Poland. To accuse the USSR of “joining Nazis” would require you to be completely unaware of the historical context, and forget that Poland itself “joined Nazis” in a non-aggression pact in 1934 (5 years before Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), and occupied parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938. By that logic a lot of other countries in Europe (including Britain) “joined Nazis” by signing agreements with them and partitioning other states such as Czechoslovakia.
        6d6b73 2y ago
        The war would take a different direction because it would take slightly longer for Germans to conquer the rest of Poland. That few weeks could help France and Germany to decide to actually join the war and attack Germany instead of just sitting there for months waiting for Germans to attack. The non-agression pact between Poland and Nazi Germany was signed to normalize relations between the country, and not to partition another country. Ribbentrop-Molotov act on the other hand had a secret protocol where they decided to divide Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into their spheres of influence. Yes, Poland did take part of Czechoslovakia after 1938, but it was a tiny sliver of land with polish ethnic majority. It was a bad move but nothing that can be compared to Soviet invasion in 1939.
- linearrust 2y ago
  > I think it's fair to consider Poland the birthplace of the modern computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography) "The first machine was built by the Poles and was a hand operated multiple enigma machine." There were polish contributors to the general idea of computation. But computation is not the same thing as modern computer. No serious person can view the bomba as a 'modern computer'. It took the discovery of the transistor to give birth to the modern computer. > but it is very easy to me to imagine a Poland not destroyed by Nazi then communist rule being an innovation center of the world. Poland doesn't that the population, resources, etc for that. Whatever great innovators poland would have possibly had in your alternate universe would have been siphoned off by germany, russia, britain, france, US, etc. There is a reason why so many renowned poles pre-ww2 made their contributions outside of poland.
piombisallow 2y ago
Communism certainly didn't help.
pinewurst 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-202 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-202
mzs 2y ago
Think more CIA than FBI. He reported back to SB what he learned about foreign technology, and that was in the '60s before the events around the K-202.
elzbardico 2y ago
Yes. I love my Polish friends, but some of them have this strange mania of exageration and rewriting history as if Poland would be glorious empire if not from the subhuman soviets(russians actually), or because the envy of the evil germans.
- chrisco255 2y ago
  I can believe it. Communism destroyed multiple countries. Look at the difference between North Korea and South Korea. Only capitalist reforms to communist countries improved things for places like China, which was every bit as worse off as Poland before they opened up trade and market based reforms in the 70s.
- 6d6b73 2y ago
  I believe there is a simple reason for that - if you're sandwiched between two genocidal maniacs and every decade of not being subjugated by at least one of them is a success, you take pride in every small accomplishment. If you add to that the fact that even these small accomplishments are often not only not recognized but often usurped by others as their own - it can make you little too protective of your history.
chrisco255 2y ago
I mean, every modern computer and phone depends on foreign components from other countries. We still attribute the invention and success of a product to the top level designer (like Apple), even though most of the components come from Asia.
keiferski 2y ago
I don’t think anyone believes Poland would be a global superpower. But a half millennium ago it was the largest state in Europe by area. Since then, the country has been attacked and dismembered more than pretty much any other European state, including Germany, Russia, and France. It’s not a stretch to think that Poland would be on equal terms with Spain or Italy had these things not occurred. But of course then you have to dig into the history of colonialism, of which Poland was a colonized state and not a colonizing one, and places like the UK, France, or Germany don’t like considering the fact that abundant resources from colonies might have played a role in their industrialization.
- qwytw 2y ago
  > But a half millennium ago it was the largest state in Europe by area. Since then, the country has been attacked and dismembered more than pretty much To be fair the country become entirely dysfunctional (mainly due to internal reasons) long before it was dismembered. By the 1700s while technically retaining most of its territory it basically became just a "playground" for Russia, Swedish and German armies to fight each other in... and the country's elite had very little interest or desire to prevent that (or rather it was a very low priority for them and their weren't willing to sacrifice their economic and political status for it). > Italy I'm not sure Italy had many advantages in that regard. It was already dismembered to begin with and for several hundreds of years it was just a prize for major European powers to fight over (in many ways it was in even worse position than Poland). On the other hand even at its peak Poland was extremely economically and socially underdeveloped compared to most of Italy which seems like a much bigger reason. > Germany > resources from colonies might have played a role in their industrialization. I'm not sure that's true in this case. Yes Germans were doing a lot of "colonizing" in Eastern Europe but I'm not sure German states in Germany "proper" necessarily benefited that much from it. And to be fair historically Poland only has itself to "blame" for being outmatched by a minor state like Prussia which began as a Polish vassal but somehow managed to turn itself into a global(ish) superpower over a few centuries.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    I’m not super interested in arguing about the finer details. The point remains that Poland was colonized, destroyed, and occupied from roughly the late 19th century until the 1990s, and so anyone blaming the lack of development there on occupying forces is in a large sense correct. The fact that Poland today, unoccupied, is rapidly approaching the development level of leading EU countries further emphasizes the point.

legitster 2y ago

> strange believe that if not the communists Poland would be a global superpower I think it's fair to consider Poland the birthplace of the modern computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography) Maybe not a global superpower, but it is very easy to me to imagine a Poland not destroyed by Nazi then communist rule being an innovation center of the world.

BalinKing 2y ago
According to that link, The Martians were Hungarian :-P
- legitster 2y ago
  Oops. Updated to be less wrong.
HayBale 2y ago
Prewar Poland was a military dictatorship(mild but was) in the permanent state of crisis, on a brink of a civil war with all of its minorities. And it is a wild take to blame communists for the nazi atrocities. But communist solved most of the problems that prewar Poland would have problem of solving. Yeah Polish tech was amazing especially if you consider the resources
- ein0p 2y ago
  Communists also happen to be the sole reason why Polish people still exist, because a certain Austrian painter was going to eradicate them all after he was done with the Jews.
  - 6d6b73 2y ago
    Communists partitioned Poland in 1939 together with Germans. War would take a different direction if they didn't join Nazis. They were not really the good guys.
    - ein0p 2y ago
      Actually no, the war would take the exact same direction because Hitler did not consider Slavs to be human. It would have just got to the USSR a couple of years before it was even remotely ready for the war, and, ironically, would probably cause it to lose the war, which, let me remind you, would lead to full eradication of Poles and Poland. To accuse the USSR of “joining Nazis” would require you to be completely unaware of the historical context, and forget that Poland itself “joined Nazis” in a non-aggression pact in 1934 (5 years before Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), and occupied parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938. By that logic a lot of other countries in Europe (including Britain) “joined Nazis” by signing agreements with them and partitioning other states such as Czechoslovakia.
      - 6d6b73 2y ago
        The war would take a different direction because it would take slightly longer for Germans to conquer the rest of Poland. That few weeks could help France and Germany to decide to actually join the war and attack Germany instead of just sitting there for months waiting for Germans to attack. The non-agression pact between Poland and Nazi Germany was signed to normalize relations between the country, and not to partition another country. Ribbentrop-Molotov act on the other hand had a secret protocol where they decided to divide Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into their spheres of influence. Yes, Poland did take part of Czechoslovakia after 1938, but it was a tiny sliver of land with polish ethnic majority. It was a bad move but nothing that can be compared to Soviet invasion in 1939.
linearrust 2y ago
> I think it's fair to consider Poland the birthplace of the modern computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography) "The first machine was built by the Poles and was a hand operated multiple enigma machine." There were polish contributors to the general idea of computation. But computation is not the same thing as modern computer. No serious person can view the bomba as a 'modern computer'. It took the discovery of the transistor to give birth to the modern computer. > but it is very easy to me to imagine a Poland not destroyed by Nazi then communist rule being an innovation center of the world. Poland doesn't that the population, resources, etc for that. Whatever great innovators poland would have possibly had in your alternate universe would have been siphoned off by germany, russia, britain, france, US, etc. There is a reason why so many renowned poles pre-ww2 made their contributions outside of poland.

piombisallow 2y ago

Communism certainly didn't help.

pinewurst 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-202 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-202

mzs 2y ago

Think more CIA than FBI. He reported back to SB what he learned about foreign technology, and that was in the '60s before the events around the K-202.

elzbardico 2y ago

Yes. I love my Polish friends, but some of them have this strange mania of exageration and rewriting history as if Poland would be glorious empire if not from the subhuman soviets(russians actually), or because the envy of the evil germans.

chrisco255 2y ago
I can believe it. Communism destroyed multiple countries. Look at the difference between North Korea and South Korea. Only capitalist reforms to communist countries improved things for places like China, which was every bit as worse off as Poland before they opened up trade and market based reforms in the 70s.
6d6b73 2y ago
I believe there is a simple reason for that - if you're sandwiched between two genocidal maniacs and every decade of not being subjugated by at least one of them is a success, you take pride in every small accomplishment. If you add to that the fact that even these small accomplishments are often not only not recognized but often usurped by others as their own - it can make you little too protective of your history.

chrisco255 2y ago

I mean, every modern computer and phone depends on foreign components from other countries. We still attribute the invention and success of a product to the top level designer (like Apple), even though most of the components come from Asia.

keiferski 2y ago

I don’t think anyone believes Poland would be a global superpower. But a half millennium ago it was the largest state in Europe by area. Since then, the country has been attacked and dismembered more than pretty much any other European state, including Germany, Russia, and France. It’s not a stretch to think that Poland would be on equal terms with Spain or Italy had these things not occurred. But of course then you have to dig into the history of colonialism, of which Poland was a colonized state and not a colonizing one, and places like the UK, France, or Germany don’t like considering the fact that abundant resources from colonies might have played a role in their industrialization.

qwytw 2y ago
> But a half millennium ago it was the largest state in Europe by area. Since then, the country has been attacked and dismembered more than pretty much To be fair the country become entirely dysfunctional (mainly due to internal reasons) long before it was dismembered. By the 1700s while technically retaining most of its territory it basically became just a "playground" for Russia, Swedish and German armies to fight each other in... and the country's elite had very little interest or desire to prevent that (or rather it was a very low priority for them and their weren't willing to sacrifice their economic and political status for it). > Italy I'm not sure Italy had many advantages in that regard. It was already dismembered to begin with and for several hundreds of years it was just a prize for major European powers to fight over (in many ways it was in even worse position than Poland). On the other hand even at its peak Poland was extremely economically and socially underdeveloped compared to most of Italy which seems like a much bigger reason. > Germany > resources from colonies might have played a role in their industrialization. I'm not sure that's true in this case. Yes Germans were doing a lot of "colonizing" in Eastern Europe but I'm not sure German states in Germany "proper" necessarily benefited that much from it. And to be fair historically Poland only has itself to "blame" for being outmatched by a minor state like Prussia which began as a Polish vassal but somehow managed to turn itself into a global(ish) superpower over a few centuries.
- keiferski 2y ago
  I’m not super interested in arguing about the finer details. The point remains that Poland was colonized, destroyed, and occupied from roughly the late 19th century until the 1990s, and so anyone blaming the lack of development there on occupying forces is in a large sense correct. The fact that Poland today, unoccupied, is rapidly approaching the development level of leading EU countries further emphasizes the point.