In public Hitler told the world: "I will not war against women and children. I have ordered my air force to restrict itself to attacks on military objectives." But in a secret message his commanders he authorised killing "without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need." To the men he said: "Close your hearts to pity! Act brutally! ... This is to be a war of annihilation!"
The above photo was taken in the opening days of the attack on Poland by the Germans at the start of WW2. Two girls working in potato fields outside of Warsaw were deliberately targeted by low-flying German fighter planes. The girl in the photo is turning over her dead sister's body. This is not an isolated incident. Many such deliberate attacks were made on civilians.
I mention all this, because we have gained a commenter who has been taken in by Pat Buchanan's view of history. One that is mostly correct, but with the most incredible errors where it matters most.
Buchanan asserts that Winston Churchill is to blame for WW2. That "without Churchill, Britain might have accepted an armistice or sued for peace in 1940. The war in the west would have been over. Hitler, victorious, would have turned on Russia and crushed her, and the world would have been at his feet."
Then there's this doozy of a quote from his book:
Alan Clark, defense aide to Margaret Thatcher, believes that only Churchill’s “single-minded determination to keep the war going,” his “obsession” with Hitler, prevented his accepting Germany’s offer to end the war in 1940. “There were several occasions when a rational leader could have got, first reasonable, then excellent terms from Germany.”The assumption is that Churchill was unreasonably obsessed with Hitler at a time where there was no evidence that he nor the Nazi regime were so dangerous that they needed to be destroyed at all costs. The Holocaust of the Jews had not yet occurred, therefore any reasonable man would have mad peace with him.
There is only one problem with this theory. A large number of Poles made their way to first France and then Britain after the fall of Poland. There was a great deal of intelligence that made it's way out of Poland as to the fate of the populace under the Nazi regime. This information was made available to the British, so they were well aware of what was going on in Poland under the Germans.
In a broadcast on March 1st, 1941, eighteen months from the moment of the German invasion of Poland, Mr. Rackiewicz, the President of the Polish Republic, declared:It seems to me that Winston Churchill might have been more than a tad bit worried that the same fate would await Britain were he to accept Hitler's peace proposals. So, to say that Churchill was unreasonably obsessed with destroying Hitler, and by that obsession created WW2 is to completely ignore the reality of the occupation in Poland by the Germans.
"The Germans have murdered thousands of scholars, professors, artists, social workers, writers, and even priests. The flower of the Polish intellectual class and the finest sons of the nation, as well as young women and girls, are being deported to German concentration camps and prisons, and condemned to a lingering death of martyrdom.
"The Germans are systematically starving the population of Poland.
"With barbaric ruthlessness they are evicting hundreds of thousands of industrious people from their ancestral homes, robbing them of their lands, their houses, their property, throwing them down anywhere, without shelter and without means of sustenance, either to perish, or deporting them as slaves for forced labour in Germany.
"No one knows how many men, women and helpless children have perished of hunger, cold and torture in consequence of these monstrous practices.
"Walled-up ghettoes are being established in Polish cities, as during the darkest periods of the Middle Ages, and people are being persecuted for their nationality and creed.
"Simultaneously with the extermination of the nation Polish culture is being destroyed. Ancient monuments, temples of learning, museums, national memorials and theatres which escaped destruction by bombs and bombardments are being closed down, pillaged, broken up. The religion of the devout Polish people is being persecuted and their churches destroyed. All higher and secondary schools have been closed, the printing and sale of books are prohibited, the newspapers suppressed."
A report received from Poland in April, 1941, tells the same tragic story. We quote some parts of this report:
"Mass executions are a regular feature; in Palmiry, near Warsaw, there are the graves of several thousand Poles, including many prominent representatives of Polish political and cultural circles.
"Manhunts are organized in the streets of Warsaw and other towns, sometimes as many as 10,000 or more people being held under arrest. These people are afterwards sent to concentration camps or compulsory labour.
"The monstrous principle of so-called collective responsibility still reigns; a German policeman has only to be killed in a fight with a common bandit in some place or other for a Gestapo 'punitive expedition' to arrive and wreak vengeance by murdering hundreds of completely innocent people. Entire villages are sent up in smoke; frequently the peasants are locked up in sheds to which the Germans then set fire.
"Over 800,000 Polish workers from the 'Government General' alone are being transported to the interior of the Reich including young girls aged sixteen, as to whose ultimate destination terrible reports are in circulation.
"All the Polish universities and secondary schools have been closed down; special commissioners have been appointed to liquidate them. In the 'incorporated' areas all the Polish elementary schools have also been liquidated. Throughout the occupied area Polish cultural property is being pillaged on a great scale: the most valuable articles in museums, art collections, libraries, and scientific laboratories have been carried off to Germany, and stolen by German officials for their private use.
"It is forbidden to publish any Polish books, or periodicals; in the 'Government General' there are only a few official German publications in Polish; in the 'incorporated' areas the Polish language has been completely eliminated from public life. The Poles are humiliated and shamed by the occupants at every turn.
"Simultaneously a mass expulsion of Poles is going on from Poznania, Pomerania, Silesia and those parts of central and southern Poland which have also been 'incorporated' with the Reich. Polish towns such as Poznan, Gdynia, Bydgoszcz, Lodz, Kalisz, Plock, Wloclawek, are given an appearance of being German towns by means of incredible violence. The Germans are talking of deporting a further three to four million souls."
Related Articles by Pat Buchanan:
Was WWII Really 'The Good War'?
Was WWII Worth It?
Man of the Century
Related Link: The German New Order in Poland ~ published for the Polish Ministry of Information by Hutchinson & Co., London, in late 1941.