Petition to add Poland

[Vertico]

Coming back to topic.
Problem of firaxis is that this is an American company.
Common Americans unfortunetly usually don't know anything about Europe except some common "wisdom" for example:
France = fashion, German = Nazi, Italians = pizza.
I heard many jokes about geography lessons in sort: in which US state is Berlin?

The same is with games. If the company is American, we have many craziness, especiall conected with history, look on: Micrososoft's "Age of Empires II". If we will look on "Cossacks" of Ukrainian GSC, we will find great and very detailed background informations. GSC btw was not affraid to add Poland.
The same with Swedish Paradox. Their Europa Universalis II also had Poland in one of long scenarios and history of every single country was well described

So in general, when Europeans are creating a game - it is very well based on reality, when Americans are creating a game - it's just a game.
BTW it is like on hollywood movies - Russians always talks english
At least Germans started to talk German

 

[Vertico]

I guess we'll just have to differ over what constitutes a "great place" or a "minor problem".

Jedwabne pogrom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I agree with that. That was a black history of Poland.
But I wanted to say, that despite murderers who are everywhere, everytime.
Jedwabne and other such incidents are nothing to pogroms of Jews in Western Europe and Russia through all cethuries. Just compare the numbers of death. Of every murder is a murder but murder of thousands is something else that murder of few.

Only Stalin said: "Death of one is a tragedy, deaths of millions is just a statistics" with whom I hope you do not agree.

BTW I think that every country has it's own Jedwabne. What Americans did to Indians? huh? This is just one case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

Even not talking about black slavery...

 

[a4phantom]

Coming back to topic.
Problem of firaxis is that this is an American company.
Common Americans unfortunetly usually don't know anything about Europe except some common "wisdom" for example:
France = fashion, German = Nazi, Italians = pizza.
I heard many jokes about geography lessons in sort: in which US state is Berlin?

The same is with games. If the company is American, we have many craziness, especiall conected with history, look on: Micrososoft's "Age of Empires II". If we will look on "Cossacks" of Ukrainian GSC, we will find great and very detailed background informations. GSC btw was not affraid to add Poland.
The same with Swedish Paradox. Their Europa Universalis II also had Poland in one of long scenarios and history of every single country was well described

So in general, when Europeans are creating a game - it is very well based on reality, when Americans are creating a game - it's just a game.
BTW it is like on hollywood movies - Russians always talks english
At least Germans started to talk German

So basically all you know is from jokes and stereotypes that tell you Americans only know about jokes and stereotypes. You also seem to assume that anyone who adds Poland to a game is educated and anyone who does not is afraid. That's amazingly conceited of you, but did it ever occur to you that Cossacks specializes in Eastern Europe and Europa Universalis focuses on Europe, while Civilization picks groups from all over the world?

 

[a4phantom]

I agree with that. That was a black history of Poland.
But I wanted to say, that despite murderers who are everywhere, everytime.
Jedwabne and other such incidents are nothing to pogroms of Jews in Western Europe and Russia through all cethuries. Just compare the numbers of death. Of every murder is a murder but murder of thousands is something else that murder of few.

Only Stalin said: "Death of one is a tragedy, deaths of millions is just a statistics" with whom I hope you do not agree.

Stalin was correct in that that's the way history looks at such things, which I assume is what he meant since he was very fond of killing individuals as well as slaughtering millions.

BTW I think that every country has it's own Jedwabne. What Americans did to Indians? huh? This is just one case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

A truly vicious and willful crime against humanity. The truly horrific thing is that, as you say, it's just one case of a larger pogrom that decimated the native population of America (and Canada, Mexico, Central and South America). Truly awful and inexcusable. You'll never catch me saying America has treated the Indians well, or saying that it boils down to a 'few minor problems' or anything like that.

Even not talking about black slavery...

Which I mentioned, along with the fact that after Americans slaughtered eachother in a war that ended slavery blacks were still not even legally equal for another century.

 

[Vertico]

So basically all you know is from jokes and stereotypes that tell you Americans only know about jokes and stereotypes. You also seem to assume that anyone who adds Poland to a game is educated and anyone who does not is afraid. That's amazingly conceited of you, but did it ever occur to you that Cossacks specializes in Eastern Europe and Europa Universalis focuses on Europe, while Civilization picks groups from all over the world?

1)
True. As I never lived in USA. I just can learn about American from Moore's films or wathing Jerry Springer show or even CNN. The picture of Americans is not good based on that.
Last times "Borat" is a great picture of american political correctness

2)
Have you ever played Cossacs or EU?
Cossacs - focused on ALMOST EVERY european country existing in XVII century
Europ Uniwersalis - focused on history of the world. You can play EVERY COUNTRY, either european or Asian, African, American, which existed in time of chosen scenario.

 

[a4phantom]

1)
True. As I never lived in USA. I just can learn about American from Moore's films or wathing Jerry Springer show or even CNN. The picture of Americans is not good based on that.
Last times "Borat" is a great picture of american political correctness

So you learn about America from a political hack, a show designed to flaunt the most messed up people they can find in a country of 300 million, and CNN, which was once a news network and is now just Fox-lite. And Borat. Wow, I hope you never need to know anything about the world, or that you're joking.

By the way, do you feel that Borat gave an accurate depiction of Eastern Europe? The opening scenes were filmed in Romania, is that really how Eastern Europeans are? Obviously I know better, but if I didn't I'd be no worse than you.

2)
Have you ever played Cossacs or EU?
Cossacs - focused on ALMOST EVERY european country existing in XVII century
Europ Uniwersalis - focused on history of the world. You can play EVERY COUNTRY, either european or Asian, African, American, which existed in time of chosen scenario.

No, I haven't played either. I depended on the names and the information that came up with Google. So both Cossaks and the scenarios of Europa that included Poland focused on Europe, correct? While Civ includes players from all over the world? Is that correct?

 

[Eskel]

To MuXa:
Russia surely deserves its place in Civ4. In my personal ranking of who should be included in Civ, it is at 6th-8th place (among well established great civilizations like Rome, Persia, Egypt, China, India, Greece, Britain). Even if I dont like that idea, I have to admit that Poland is culturally, military and economicaly inferior to Russia. Maybe common people's life is better in Poland, but we are 2nd league, and you are in top 3 of the 1st.

To a4phantom:
If you read carefully all the sources you posted here, then you should know why we feel offended if anybody says we collaborated with Nazis during WWII. Moreover, we think it is especially unfair as almost all other countries under German influence or occupation (France, Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Croatia) had their institutonalized collaborators, while Poland - not.
Such things happened, but were quite rare and punished by death by AK. There were 22 pogroms similar to Jedwabne during WWII in the whole area of former 2nd Republic, with total of about 800 victims. That might be not much compared to German atrocities or active collaboration, but ...it is still 800 victims. For me, every single live is priceless, and we are, or at least I am personnally ashamed for those 800 people.
About indifference...it is not so simply. Any act of compassion was severely punished by Germans, so people were afraid to act. Even Jews in ghetto didnt do anything until they realized they are all doomed.
About Polish-Jews relations: anti-semitism is quite new and transient episode in Polish history. It appeared in 2nd half of XIX cnt. when polish nationalism (created and fueled in need to restore indenpendence) clashed with lot of yiddish and russian speaking Jews Russians has deported into polish territory. This conflict was based on economical competition as well as "who is not with us is against us" rule and Russian's "divide et impera" doctrine. In effect there were some acts of violence towards Jews and Jewish property during first half of XXcnt. Even if there were less such events in Poland than in other countries, most Jewish experienced them in Poland. Moreover, the common people, not only Jews were poor, VERY poor that time. I understand then why you dont have warm feelings towards place you left. I can only apologize once again and ask you to understand the circumstances, and not call all Polish "eternal all-time anti-semites", as we hadnt suck this with mother's milk and such epithetes wont help in anything.
Please note as well that today anti-semite nationalists in Poland got less then 3% of votes during elections.

If you will find some time, I suggest you read "God's Playground" by Norman Davies if you hadn't.

 

[a4phantom]

Eskel,
Thank you for your calmness and facts. I agree that the Poles resisted heroically against the German occupation. While the French split between brave resisters and grovelling Vichy, and the Norwegians had their Quislings*, the Poles almost unanimously fought back. When the war was over, they continued resisting as the Goliath from the East replaced the one from the West. It is the heroic resistance to German occupation that makes the seeming indifference or support for the Holocaust so very cruel. If you say anti-semitism is unnatural to Poland, and truly your nation did have many centuries as a land of tolerance, then I will take your point and am glad to hear it. I will also try to get ahold of that book right away.


* I have no doubt that if America had been overrun an enormous number of us would have collaborated. We had our fascists, and we always have opportunists.

 

[LDeska]

As a thread starter I'm quite astonished how active it become
I must say that I'm also quite disappointed with the level of knowledge about Poland abroad... Please read the petitionm so maybe you'll get better view. URL is in my sig. Maybe tomorrow I'll find some more time to reply to few of you, but Eskelm ny long time friend is doing quite well

 

[Charles 22]

a4phantom:

3. So because you've decided for us that Rome = Italy, I am "wrong". I understand now. But why is Rome the same as Italy? There's no continuity of language, culture, politics, geographical borders, or anything much else, despite a wierd attempt at revival under Mussolini. I don't think Italians consider themselves Romans, they're pretty new to even considering themselves Italians rather than say Florentines or Venicians. You might as well say that France and Spain are represented by the Roman Empire, since their languages have the same Latin roots as Italian, they're Catholic, and geographically they were parts of the Roman Empire. You could say that the Cherokee are represented by the United States, since we are where they were and we use some of their words and names. So why am I wrong to not conflate Rome and Italy?

I don't know how this has slipped by you. It's quite simple. Who was the most dominant civ in the Italian region? Romans, and of course the capitol is even called Rome and I'm sure many of the descendants came from that line. Apply the same principles to the USA. Surely Cherokee doesn't fit the most dominant civ that occupied the USA. Now the USA is a little more complicated than some other nations as to the dominant heritage, simply because so many races ended up here, but I wouldn't consider the native races, as many different ones as there were, in any way dominant, because we aren't representing the ancient mass of land we now call USA by the many tribes, but by the former founding of the country later.

In any case, had the Cherokee really been some dominant race but got moved out by a bunch of euros, which later didn't adopt a name and government (although it did) called the USA, then there would be many in the USA who would consider the Cherokee representive of the land, without forgetting that many more minor civs ended up being there. A dominant civ at one time, a mish-mash later. Same for Italy, as the Romans were VERY dominant in the region and HQ'ed in Rome. France and any other Roman satellites you might want to mention would tend not to indentify with Romans, even if the French were a mish-mash civ, simply because it wasn't home of the Roman dynasty. Does that make any sense to you?

Mussolini as I see it, was in trying to revive Roman spirit, to rally them behind what a lot of them identified their ancestors with to some degree. I mean, since the Romans were regional to Italy, why would Mussolini try to rally to Prussia kings for example? You go with what was there, and Benito was big into conquering and the fact that the Romans were conquerors for so long just played to his little desires all the more. As well, I wouldn't think an american Italian would half as inclined to believe themselves to be represented in some way by the Roman civ, simply because there is and has never been any Roman dominance in the USA; no HQ, nothing.

 

[a4phantom]

a4phantom:

I don't know how this has slipped by you. It's quite simple. Who was the most dominant civ in the Italian region? Romans, and of course the capitol is even called Rome and I'm sure many of the descendants came from that line. Apply the same principles to the USA. Surely Cherokee doesn't fit the most dominant civ that occupied the USA. Now the USA is a little more complicated than some other nations as to the dominant heritage, simply because so many races ended up here, but I wouldn't consider the native races, as many different ones as there were, in any way dominant, because we aren't representing the ancient mass of land we now call USA by the many tribes, but by the former founding of the country later.

In any case, had the Cherokee really been some dominant race but got moved out by a bunch of euros, which later didn't adopt a name and government (although it did) called the USA, then there would be many in the USA who would consider the Cherokee representive of the land, without forgetting that many more minor civs ended up being there. A dominant civ at one time, a mish-mash later. Same for Italy, as the Romans were VERY dominant in the region and HQ'ed in Rome. France and any other Roman satellites you might want to mention would tend not to indentify with Romans, even if the French were a mish-mash civ, simply because it wasn't home of the Roman dynasty. Does that make any sense to you?

Mussolini as I see it, was in trying to revive Roman spirit, to rally them behind what a lot of them identified their ancestors with to some degree. I mean, since the Romans were regional to Italy, why would Mussolini try to rally to Prussia kings for example? You go with what was there, and Benito was big into conquering and the fact that the Romans were conquerors for so long just played to his little desires all the more. As well, I wouldn't think an american Italian would half as inclined to believe themselves to be represented in some way by the Roman civ, simply because there is and has never been any Roman dominance in the USA; no HQ, nothing.

Sure. How could that have slipped by me.

 

[Charles 22]

I'm familiar with both the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the Warsaw uprising. Warsaw was heavily damaged by the Luftwaffe and other bombardament, but nothing close to "wiped out" in the German invasion, so your timeline is at least off because people (Polish Jews) were herded OUT of captured Warsaw INTO the ghettos, which were then "liquidated" to fill the death camps. The Germans demolished Warsaw at the end of the war, long after the ghettos had been destroyed, when the Red Army approached from the East but then halted and allowed the Uprising to be crushed. They scattered and impoverished the residents of Warsaw, but did 'wipe them out' as they had the ghettos.

And although there were many Poles who saw the Nazis as a worse enemy than their own Jewish neighbors, there were also a great many Poles who valiantly opposed German occupation and yet wholeheartedly agreed with everything the Nazis said and did regarding the Jews. So yes, the Polish hatred of the Jews killed a great many, both before and after the Germans arrived. By letting the Germans destroy Warsaw the Russians treated the Poles as the Poles had treated the Jews.

Man, I think you're contradicting yourself. I didn't say the invasion of Poland wiped out Warsaw, far from that. I was speaking of a period of years where Warsaw was more or less turned into a death camp; systematically. As far as Jews herded out of Warsaw, or the very great majority of them, I didn't say otherwise, in fact I alluded to that.

You seem pretty focused on the Warsaw Uprising and it's preceeding and succeeding actions, but what for what I was talking about, the Uprising was practically a minor part of that considering the entire invasion time. I mean, it wasn't just Jews, but it was priests, intellectuals, and just about any Pole and this was going on ALL THE TIME. I do not credit the Luftwaffe or any regular german outfit with what I'm talking about, because it was basically a regime of making Warsaw a hellhole over the years and it has little to do with any military actions that may had come and gone. The direct crushing of the Uprising itself was certainly military in nature, but the military wasn't regularly siphoning people off to the certain areas of the city systematically either, which approaches what I was talking about.

For some reason I get the sense that you think that not only was Warsaw full of Jews, and therefore Warsaw was empty if the germans took them out to camps, but also that there was an uprising there with this same empty city. That's the contradiction I speak of. If you don't understand it, there were still Jews in Wasaw in '44, very few though, and there were a great many Poles of non-Jewish origin, and the uprising occured because there were regular non-jewish Poles in Warsaw in '44 (and always) and some of them rebelled. Warsaw was a Pole-hating ghetto, or at least very much of it was. The nazis decided to hate a good many Poles there and try to starve them to death, etc., while the Jew-hating (and some non-jewish poles too) approach was to send them to the camps.

I will repeat this portion of your text and then comment, because it doens't make a lot of sense to me:

so your timeline is at least off because people (Polish Jews) were herded OUT of captured Warsaw INTO the ghettos, which were then "liquidated" to fill the death camps. The Germans demolished Warsaw at the end of the war, long after the ghettos had been destroyed, when the Red Army approached from the East but then halted and allowed the Uprising to be crushed. They scattered and impoverished the residents of Warsaw, but did 'wipe them out' as they had the ghettos.

1. herded out of warsaw into the ghettoes. Which ghettoes? Part of the ghettoization was in Warsaw proper, but I can't say whether much Warsaw ghettoing was for the Jews or just the non-Jews.
2. Liquidated to fill the death camps? You mean the jews were liquidated or the ghetto buildings themselves? And, again, which ghettoes? If you meant the jews, you can't fill the death camps with those liquidated, so surely the death camp comes first and not the other way around. BTW, the cattle car treatment that those sent to camps were subjected to, that was the basic attitude towards almost all the poles in Warsaw.
3. Scattered and impoverished (after the Uprising?)? Maybe you're agreeing with me that was going on all along, and the Uprising stepped it up a bit (aside from the military action of dealing with the uprising) but the impoverishing and scattering, and isolating entire blocks of the city had been going on for a very long time before the Uprising. I'm quite sure the Uprising occurred because the treatment of the occupants, and their property, before that time, was a significant factor in spurring them on. From what I recall the USSR had given them some sort of guarantee that they would allow Poland to be a sovereign state if they rebelled too, as well as that they would attack to time with the rebellion. I can't recall what the reason was the USSR later claimed they couldn't attack afterall, and what ended up being the case. IIRC the USSR claimed the Poles just got excited that the Red Army was near and went off on their own starting an uprising. It's been a while since I read up on it.

Here's a pretty interesting website, though this isn't where I got my pre-uprising information:
http://www.warsawuprising.com/

 

[Charles 22]

Sure. How could that have slipped by me.

So whether you agree with it or not, you do understand how people of a region would identify themselves with the most dominant civ to had been there, do you not? It's all the more easy to do if you are racially not opposite to the civ in question (such that being a descendant might at least be 'possible') and with the more time that passes, such as the Roman one long passed, it's all the more easy to identify with something that basically no longer exists.

 

[Antilogic]

Eskel,
Thank you for your calmness and facts. I agree that the Poles resisted heroically against the German occupation. While the French split between brave resisters and grovelling Vichy, and the Norwegians had their Quislings*, the Poles almost unanimously fought back. When the war was over, they continued resisting as the Goliath from the East replaced the one from the West. It is the heroic resistance to German occupation that makes the seeming indifference or support for the Holocaust so very cruel. If you say anti-semitism is unnatural to Poland, and truly your nation did have many centuries as a land of tolerance, then I will take your point and am glad to hear it. I will also try to get ahold of that book right away.


* I have no doubt that if America had been overrun an enormous number of us would have collaborated. We had our fascists, and we always have opportunists.

Following the Depression era after World War 1, just about every country had major communist and fascist movements. The United States had the advantage in this sense, being blessed with a truly prodigious number of natural resources as well as a top-notch elected administration. As opposed to the ineffective Weimar Republic or any of the other states in Central and Eastern Europe that had liberal governments succumb to the forces of fascism or authoritarian communism.

From what I understand, the Poles were somewhat more moderate in their Antisemitism than other European countries throughout the Middle Ages (relative terms here), which is one of the reasons why large numbers of Jews congregated there. I'm only guessing that trend continued into the Modern Era. It's been awhile since my "Europe Since the Renaissance" class, though, so I'd want a second opinion.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Yeah, yeah, especially here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kircholm

"The battle was decided in 20 minutes by the devastating charge of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth cavalry, the Winged Hussars"

Amd after a while the Swedes came back and carried the day. The only time Poland "won" a war against Sweden was when the Russians did it for them.

 

[a4phantom]

Man, I think you're contradicting yourself. I didn't say the invasion of Poland wiped out Warsaw, far from that. I was speaking of a period of years where Warsaw was more or less turned into a death camp; systematically. As far as Jews herded out of Warsaw, or the very great majority of them, I didn't say otherwise, in fact I alluded to that.

You seem pretty focused on the Warsaw Uprising and it's preceeding and succeeding actions, but what for what I was talking about, the Uprising was practically a minor part of that considering the entire invasion time. I mean, it wasn't just Jews, but it was priests, intellectuals, and just about any Pole and this was going on ALL THE TIME. I do not credit the Luftwaffe or any regular german outfit with what I'm talking about, because it was basically a regime of making Warsaw a hellhole over the years and it has little to do with any military actions that may had come and gone. The direct crushing of the Uprising itself was certainly military in nature, but the military wasn't regularly siphoning people off to the certain areas of the city systematically either, which approaches what I was talking about.

You said "Maybe you ought to read up on Warsaw, as virtually the whole population was wiped out (and then some people from other areas herded over to the Warsaw ghettoes the nazis set up),". I took this to refer to the damage done by the Germans during the invasion, because unless I am mistaken Warsaw was never "wiped out" between the German invasion and the Uprising that preceded the German retreat. If you have information to the contrary, please share it.

For some reason I get the sense that you think that not only was Warsaw full of Jews, and therefore Warsaw was empty if the germans took them out to camps, but also that there was an uprising there with this same empty city. That's the contradiction I speak of. If you don't understand it, there were still Jews in Wasaw in '44, very few though, and there were a great many Poles of non-Jewish origin, and the uprising occured because there were regular non-jewish Poles in Warsaw in '44 (and always) and some of them rebelled. Warsaw was a Pole-hating ghetto, or at least very much of it was. The nazis decided to hate a good many Poles there and try to starve them to death, etc., while the Jew-hating (and some non-jewish poles too) approach was to send them to the camps.

I clearly don't think that Warsaw was an entirely or even majority Jewish city if I spoke of the removal (to ghettos) and liquidation (killed in the Ghetto uprising or death camps) of the Jews and then the Warsaw Uprising.


I will repeat this portion of your text and then comment, because it doens't make a lot of sense to me:

1. herded out of warsaw into the ghettoes. Which ghettoes? Part of the ghettoization was in Warsaw proper, but I can't say whether much Warsaw ghettoing was for the Jews or just the non-Jews.

To some degree the Jews already lived in segregated neighborhoods, but the Nazis seperated them by law and by force. If you want to call Warsaw proper a ghetto for "just the non-Jews", I suppose that makes sense in a way.

2. Liquidated to fill the death camps? You mean the jews were liquidated or the ghetto buildings themselves? And, again, which ghettoes? If you meant the jews, you can't fill the death camps with those liquidated, so surely the death camp comes first and not the other way around.

The Germans, having isolated the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, took the next step of liquidating the Ghetto. The plan was to send the Jews to the death camps where they could be killed most efficiently, but because of the Ghetto Uprising many were killed on the stop resisting the Germans.

BTW, the cattle car treatment that those sent to camps were subjected to, that was the basic attitude towards almost all the poles in Warsaw.

The Nazis despised all Slavs (although they stole blond, blue eyed babies and children to raise as their own). No one denies this, although I think it's wierd to claim they had the same "basic attitude" towards Catholic Poles as they did towards Jews.

3. Scattered and impoverished (after the Uprising?)? Maybe you're agreeing with me that was going on all along, and the Uprising stepped it up a bit (aside from the military action of dealing with the uprising) but the impoverishing and scattering, and isolating entire blocks of the city had been going on for a very long time before the Uprising.

The Germans were particularly brutal occupiers, but I am not aware of any effort to destroy Warsaw before the Uprising.

I'm quite sure the Uprising occurred because the treatment of the occupants, and their property, before that time, was a significant factor in spurring them on.

The Polish resistance launched the Warsaw Uprising as the Russians approached because they wanted to liberate themselves, hoping that this would keep them from falling under Soviet domination after the war. It was worth a try, I suppose.

From what I recall the USSR had given them some sort of guarantee that they would allow Poland to be a sovereign state if they rebelled too, as well as that they would attack to time with the rebellion. I can't recall what the reason was the USSR later claimed they couldn't attack afterall, and what ended up being the case. IIRC the USSR claimed the Poles just got excited that the Red Army was near and went off on their own starting an uprising. It's been a while since I read up on it.

Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt had declared that after the war countries would be free to make their own decisions. Every probably knew Stalin was lying, the Poles certainly didn't trust him and thought they would be in a better bargaining position if they drove the Germans out of Warsaw than if the Russians did it for them. They ended up with the worst of all worlds, because the Red Army sat across the river and watched them fight the Germans for a very long time without intervening, because they wanted Poles who were willing to die for freedom to do so at the hands of the Germans. Surivors of the Polish resistence who escaped the ruin of the Uprising were murdered by the Soviets. The Red Army and the Western Allies met up in Germany, Stalin imposed Soviet puppet regimes on Eastern Europe (what Churchill called the fall of the Iron Curtain), and there you have it.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Kinda like how "Poland has never been a seminal power in Europe" is a minor detail, or how Vienna was an unimportant city during the Turkish invasions is a minor detail?

Vertico beat me to the punch, but why is it I am the one accused of making stuff up when this sort of thing gets posted? Really now.

I have never claimed that Vienna wa an unimportant city, merely that the battle against the Turks outside Vienna isn't enough to make Poland a good candidate for inclusion in Civ. I maintain that Poland has never been a seminal power, that is, that it has never been that important in European or world history. If new civs are to be included, there are lots of them: the Hittites, Babylon, Brazil, the Maya, the Iroquois, Ethiopia, the Khmer...

 

[a4phantom]

Following the Depression era after World War 1, just about every country had major communist and fascist movements. The United States had the advantage in this sense, being blessed with a truly prodigious number of natural resources as well as a top-notch elected administration. As opposed to the ineffective Weimar Republic or any of the other states in Central and Eastern Europe that had liberal governments succumb to the forces of fascism or authoritarian communism.

I agree with that. Now, if the United States had not also been blessed with the Atlantic ocean and a huge area and population, and the Germans had cut through us as they very easily would have in 1939 or 1941 if we'd shared a border, do you think they would have had a hard time recruiting a collaborator government as they did in France? That's all I was saying.

From what I understand, the Poles were somewhat more moderate in their Antisemitism than other European countries throughout the Middle Ages (relative terms here), which is one of the reasons why large numbers of Jews congregated there.

Yes.

I'm only guessing that trend continued into the Modern Era. It's been awhile since my "Europe Since the Renaissance" class, though, so I'd want a second opinion.

That's the debate, you're gonna get a lot more than one more opinion.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

That is common historic knowledge as far as I know - at least I've never heard someone disputing it. Anti-Jewish mindsets were very common at that time - in Germany, in France, in the US, in Poland, anywhere. It wasn't a specifical German thing (the Germans *did* put it to unspeakably cruel extremes though). In every country that Germany invaded there were also people who agreed with Anti-Jewish politics (not that they had to be *killed*, but the notion "they are a problem, something has to be done about them, we would be better off without them" was *very* common at that time, in the whole western world, including Poland.

Except that Poland was the only European country that after WWII massacred survivors from the death camps and then implemented an anti-Semitic policy which ended in the expulsion of the last remaining Polish Jews in the 1970s.

 

[a4phantom]

Except that Poland was the only European country that after WWII massacred survivors from the death camps and then implemented an anti-Semitic policy which ended in the expulsion of the last remaining Polish Jews in the 1970s.

I'll shock my Polish friends by admitting that it was the Soviet occupiers who controlled Poland's legal and official anti-Semitic acts after World War II. I have heard of the Polish resistance actually murdering escapees from the Treblinka rebellion, but I cannot swear this is true.