Listen now (108 min) | Sean McMeekin is a professor of history at Bard University and the author of Stalin's War: A New History of World War II. He joins Richard for a wide ranging discussion about the myths of World War II. They touch on the morality of the conflict, moral differences between Nazis and the USSR, the role of Soviet agents in determining US and British policy, and whether the western allies could have prevented communist takeovers in China, Poland and Yugoslavia.
Jul 26, 2023·edited Jul 26, 2023Liked by Richard Hanania
Frankly speaking I'm shocked at the comments at around 18:00 when Richard says that up until 1941 the Soviet occupation in Poland was worse than the German occupation. This could not be further from the truth. As Richard promptly notes, both were bad but regardless of what one feels about communism, there is no doubt that the German occupation was worse.
For example, Richard uses the metric "number of prisoners" and concludes that Soviets taking more of them means they were worse than the Germans. But this obscures the fact that Germans just didn't take prisoners - they've executed most Polish intellectuals, military leaders and a large part of the clergy on the spot.
I think this could be in part because most Western research about Nazi occupation focuses on the Holocaust. But gentile Poles had it only slightly better than Jews - they were also deemed Untermensch, scheduled for mass extermination right after the "final solution of the Jewish issue", with the remaining 10-15% of non-exterminated Poles reduced to the role of Slaves for German settlers. On the Soviet side, Poles faced political persecution but there were no racial laws reducing them to the subhuman status.
Examples are just countless.
In the German-occupied part, all Polish schools except the first four grades were closed and the German governor famously said that it will be enough if Poles can count to 100. In the Soviet part, while Soviets promoted Russian and Ukrainian language, the Lviv University still had seminars in Polish up until fall 1941, and the situation was similar in Vilnius.
In the German-occupied part, "łapanka" (i.e. closing the street, and either straight up executing or deporting to slave labor in Germany everyone who randomly happened to be there at the time) was a common occurrence meant to invoke the atmosphere of terror among the Polish population. It was completely random and the family of the poor individual had no idea what happened to them. In the Soviet part, no such thing existed.
Both sides practiced mass deportation, though they were more severe and strictly ethnic-based in the German part. Germans also engaged in the vicious practice of taking away "racially valuable" (i.e. blond hair and blue eyes) children from Polish parents and sending them to childless couples in Germany for germanization; around 100,000 Polish children were kidnapped that way and the vast majority have never returned.
Germans also engaged in actively destroying artifacts of the Polish culture. During the September campaign, they've bombarded multiple towns, many of them with no strategic value, and many of them were bombed for fun (the case of Frampol) - no similar story on the Soviet side. In Katowice for example, they've demolished the newly build Silesian Museum to crush the Polish spirit; in Warsaw they've demolished the Royal Castle etc. Soviets generally didn't participate in such practices (beyond turning churches into warehouses etc. for ideological reasons but Germans also did that, though to lesser extend). Poland lost thousands of pieces of art from the German-occupied part, while in the Soviet part you can go to Vilnius or Lviv and still see some of the most-important artifacts of Polish history intact.
Of course, this is all about gentile Poles - it was even worse for Polish Jews, who suffered many additional persecutions starting from the very first days of the German administration.
I think the fact that the Polish Wikipedia articles about German and Soviet atrocities in occupied Poland are named "German CRIMES in Poland (1939-45)" vs. "Soviet REPRESSIONS against Poles and Polish citizens (1939-46)" speaks a lot.
Frankly speaking I'm shocked at the comments at around 18:00 when Richard says that up until 1941 the Soviet occupation in Poland was worse than the German occupation. This could not be further from the truth. As Richard promptly notes, both were bad but regardless of what one feels about communism, there is no doubt that the German occupation was worse.
For example, Richard uses the metric "number of prisoners" and concludes that Soviets taking more of them means they were worse than the Germans. But this obscures the fact that Germans just didn't take prisoners - they've executed most Polish intellectuals, military leaders and a large part of the clergy on the spot.
I think this could be in part because most Western research about Nazi occupation focuses on the Holocaust. But gentile Poles had it only slightly better than Jews - they were also deemed Untermensch, scheduled for mass extermination right after the "final solution of the Jewish issue", with the remaining 10-15% of non-exterminated Poles reduced to the role of Slaves for German settlers. On the Soviet side, Poles faced political persecution but there were no racial laws reducing them to the subhuman status.
Examples are just countless.
In the German-occupied part, all Polish schools except the first four grades were closed and the German governor famously said that it will be enough if Poles can count to 100. In the Soviet part, while Soviets promoted Russian and Ukrainian language, the Lviv University still had seminars in Polish up until fall 1941, and the situation was similar in Vilnius.
In the German-occupied part, "łapanka" (i.e. closing the street, and either straight up executing or deporting to slave labor in Germany everyone who randomly happened to be there at the time) was a common occurrence meant to invoke the atmosphere of terror among the Polish population. It was completely random and the family of the poor individual had no idea what happened to them. In the Soviet part, no such thing existed.
Both sides practiced mass deportation, though they were more severe and strictly ethnic-based in the German part. Germans also engaged in the vicious practice of taking away "racially valuable" (i.e. blond hair and blue eyes) children from Polish parents and sending them to childless couples in Germany for germanization; around 100,000 Polish children were kidnapped that way and the vast majority have never returned.
Germans also engaged in actively destroying artifacts of the Polish culture. During the September campaign, they've bombarded multiple towns, many of them with no strategic value, and many of them were bombed for fun (the case of Frampol) - no similar story on the Soviet side. In Katowice for example, they've demolished the newly build Silesian Museum to crush the Polish spirit; in Warsaw they've demolished the Royal Castle etc. Soviets generally didn't participate in such practices (beyond turning churches into warehouses etc. for ideological reasons but Germans also did that, though to lesser extend). Poland lost thousands of pieces of art from the German-occupied part, while in the Soviet part you can go to Vilnius or Lviv and still see some of the most-important artifacts of Polish history intact.
Of course, this is all about gentile Poles - it was even worse for Polish Jews, who suffered many additional persecutions starting from the very first days of the German administration.
I think the fact that the Polish Wikipedia articles about German and Soviet atrocities in occupied Poland are named "German CRIMES in Poland (1939-45)" vs. "Soviet REPRESSIONS against Poles and Polish citizens (1939-46)" speaks a lot.
Interesting discussion.