On 05/09/2018 08:42 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 5/9/2018 12:03 AM, rbowman wrote:


Poland has a checkered history. It sucks being a big, flat place
between the Germans and the Russians. Armies love flat places. Then
after WWI being between Germany and East Prussia wasn't good either
particularly when the Poles believed the British guarantee was worth a
bucket of warm spit and refused the Germans passage through the Corridor.

They just never learn. When a major power says 'we've got your six'
you'd damn well better have Plan B oiled up and ready to go.


Just started reading "The Eagle Unbowed"

Just look at a map of Europe at different points in the last century and
it explains a lot.

It says a lot about 'diversity'. Austria-Hungary was very diverse with
most of the ethnic groups hating each other. Poland was off the map
until after WWI. Czechoslovakia was another wonderful creation. Germany
gets bad reviews for invading Sudetenland which was heavily ethnic
German but Hungary grabbing the southern part which was mostly Magyar
and Poland annexing Zaolzie with its ethnic Poles gets downplayed.

Wilson's naive babbling about self-determination didn't stand a chance
when Britain was redrawing the map of Europe and the Middle East with
little regard of who lived there.

Had there never been a Hitler I believe there still would have been war.
For that matter, it's still being sorted out.