What about Poland?

[adler]

What about Poland when is liberated? All other contries can be liberated after they are conquered and Poland isn't! Will it be changed in SC2?

[Night]

Well it is more historicaly correct this way since it was the soviets that "liberated" Poland. Basicly they really didn't Liberate poland they just changed who was occupying it.

[Bill101]

Shouldn't it depend on who liberates it?

A liberation by non-Soviet forces is very unlikely but the possibility cannot be ruled out.

Also, as the Poles had a very large and active resistance movement we cannot rule out the possibility of them liberating themselves in the right circumstances.

[JerseyJohn]

Excellent points all around.

Poland was really conquered twice, once by the Germans and again by the Soviets. And persecuted twice. Many of those who hid and fought against the Germans wound up either executed by the Soviets, or in gulags after the war.

Of course, there's little chance of either the UK or USA liberating the place. Historically, Britain had a Free Polish Government throughout the war and Churchill always attempted to get Stalin to allow Poland to resume being a democracy after the war.

It was for that reason that Stalin had his troops advance more slowly than necessary through that country, deliberately allowing the Germans to build up in front of his troops so the SS would be able to kill more of those who would, after the war, have formed such a government.

Of course, Soviet troops were also moving through the Balkans at the time and there's some debate as to whether, logistically, the Soviets could have moved forward to take Warsaw before it's Polish uprising was crushed by the SS and the city levelled.

To me there's no question about it, however. Stalin, after Kursk, was doing a lot of planning on setting up a multi-state buffer zone between the Soviet Union and the west. What would later become the Warsaw Block nations were carefully created while the war was still waging deep inside Russia itself. The question wasn't whether it would include Poland, but whether or not it would have Greece and Austria.

[Kuniworth]

Jersey;

Poland was heavily debated as Roosevelt wanted it desperately to be democratic. The west gave Stalin more or less free hands there because they kept Greece and Italy from russian influence during the negotiations. Stalin then used the same principle in Poland and hence got it.

[Kuniworth]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

Of course, Soviet troops were also moving through the Balkans at the time and there's some debate as to whether, logistically, the Soviets could have moved forward to take Warsaw before it's Polish uprising was crushed by the SS and the city levelled.

Very true. Germany never could have stopped the offensive. The soviets never really tried hard to make a push on Warsaw.

[ October 01, 2004, 12:57 PM: Message edited by: Kuniworth ]

[JerseyJohn]

Kuni,

Exactly and great points. I have to admit that in 1944 and 45 Italy -- as in the Balkans -- the most active partisans were decidedly communist!

There was indeed tremendous anxiety in the United States and Britain that the country would, in the post war, be ruled by a communist government.

I agree, if Stalin had wanted to end the war quickly after Kursk he could have moved around both Army Groups North and South and pushed Army Group Center, what remained of it, through Poland and taken Berlin.

Hitler turned AGNorth into Army Group Kourland and withdrew it toward the Baltic States where it's 44 divisions were effectively out of the war. AGSouth withdrew west in a doomed attempt to hold Rumania and Hungary. AGCenter was decimated and also had to fight against very large Partisan formations that became very active as the bloodied armies withdrew in the general direction of Poland.

The Soviet advance during the months prior to D-Day was so fast and took so much territory compared to what Britain and France were doing in Italy, that SHAEF concluded the Soviets might, hypothically, be through Germany and on the east banks of The Rhine while US and British troops were struggling to get past the French coast.

That was one of the reasons FDR made so many concessions to Stalin. In truth, he had no other choice unless he wanted to fight a war against the USSR for Eastern Europe. Some German generals actually thought that might happen and Hitler himself latched onto the delusion when he learned of FDR's death -- drawing a parellel with his alter ego Frederick the Great and the break up of the Alliance fighting Prussia in the eighteenth century.

Churchill had an odd doublt standard. He supported Tito in Yugoslavia and was indifferent to his non-Soviet brand of socialism, but was unrealistically persistant in trying to secure post war democracy in Poland.

Another factor is that Stalin considered himself much more a successor to the Czars than the follower of Lenin. In his view, Poland was rightfully an extension of Russia and Warsaw a Russian city.

[adler]

Jersey and Kuni, you are both right. And applying those things to game I would like to see vety intesive partisan activity (especially when Allied forces are close to liberate Poland - no matter Russian or Western Allies) as well as some Polish Forces - remember that together with Russian there was First Polish Army fighting against Germans. On the western front there were 2 infantry divisions, one armored division and one parachute brigade (I think enough forces to create a corps).

[Roosevelt45(the 2nd)]

Some of the darkest pages of Russian history were written in Poland.

And I'm not only talking about the order to stop the advance towards Warsaw and the refusal to cooperate with supply from the western allies to the Polish army but also about the attrocities at Katyn and the installment(?) of the post-war regime in Poland.

just wanted to add that to the conversation .

[JerseyJohn]

True, anything Stalin touched turned into a dark episode! Even those immediately surrounding him were often oppressed, their wives wives were almost routinely sent to gulags on flimsy charges of being subversives. Stalin's second wife, like Hitler's mistress niece, was found dead in her bedroom from a bullet wound with a handgun nearby; he'd been publicly abusing her the entire night.

Huge numbers of East Germans and Poles were deported to Russia in 1945, most never to be heard from again.

There was little to distinguish Stalin's regime from Hitler's in terms of random and often senseless cruelty and absolute contempt for humanity.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

Excellent points all around.

Poland was really conquered twice, once by the Germans and again by the Soviets. And persecuted twice.

Except the eastern parts ('West Ukraine'), which were first occupied by Soviets in 1939, then by Germans in 1941, and again by Soviets in 1944.

[JerseyJohn]

Sergei

Yes, like Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania they got to be persecuted three times!

In the eighties I knew a few elderly people who'd lived in some of those regions during that time. They said by 1946 having someone vanish was a routine occurrence and nobody asked for details.

I think Poland lost about 33% of it's population during the Second World War.

[Kuniworth]

Ok talkin about numbers here is a question;

what famous russian city changed hands 4 times between russians and germans?

[Roosevelt45(the 2nd)]

Smolensk?

[JerseyJohn]

Whoa that's a tough one!

-- Three seconds left, can we have your answer please?

Kuni, we're going to say, uh, Rostov?

[Curry]

Kuni, is it Kharkov, that city went back and forth several times but not sure that many.

[Kuniworth]

Curry; you got the right answer!

[Kuniworth]

Jersey;

You are right as well!

[JerseyJohn]

Thank you Kuni, I love happy endings!