80 years after the invasion of Poland by the Nazis, Warsaw does not forget and demands a repair – Telam

80 years after the invasion of Poland, which began the Second World War, which deeply marked Polonia, city marked by successive tragedies, it is proud of this resistance and now asks Germany for a repair historical for the damage.

The world was not the same since the Nazi troops entered Poland on September 1, 1939, in a blitzkrieg that devastated that country, now part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO). The young Polish republic was created with former territories of the German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empire.

In order to access the Baltic Sea, Poland had the Danzing Corridor (mainly German population), which divided the former Prussian territory in two: east and west.

Aware of Polish weaknesses, Hitler began in March 1939 to demand a corridor in the Danzing corridor to join the Prussian territories by an extraterritorial band 30 meters wide.

In addition to a 1934 pact guaranteeing Poland's security against Germany, Warsaw received support from France and Britain. However, none of these countries could militarily defend the sovereignty of Poland.

The German propaganda of those days emphasized that Hitler wanted to save 1.5 million Germans "oppressed by Polish brutality".

One of the leading Nazi leaders, Heinrich Himmler, is the ideal pretext for declaring war on Poland: German common prisoners and SS agents disguised as Polish soldiers attacked a German radio station near the border.

Hitler's reaction was brutal. Without prior declaration, the lightning war (lightning war using armor) was launched by the Germans at 4:45 am, as part of the so-called "White Plan" operation, with the aim of recovering the territories lost by Germany. during the World War One.

The attack was conducted from three different flanks: north of East Prussia, west of West Prussia and south of Czechoslovakia. By the end of September 1, 1939, the Germans had already conquered the city of Danzig thanks to the tanks and the air force of the Luftwaffe.

Nevertheless, sixteen days after the German incursion, the fall of Poland would be sealed by the invasion of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on September 17 of the same year. This was possible thanks to the non-aggression pact signed by Stalin and Hitler on August 23, 1939, which also includes a secret clause dividing Poland.

After being divided by the Nazis and Bolsheviks, Poland lost almost all of its army, estimated at one million men, while its civilian population, especially its population of Jewish origin, began to suffer from occupation.

During the first weeks of the war, about 70,000 Polish soldiers died, about 130,000 were wounded and 700,000 were taken prisoners of Germans or Russians. Some 80,000 others managed to escape to Romania and eventually joined the armies of France and the United Kingdom as foreign troops, while the few units that remained free in Poland were engaged in a struggle. illegal. After five weeks of heroic resistance, the capitulation took place on October 6th.

Two days after the invasion of Poland, England and France declared war on Hitler. "We are going to war because they imposed it on us, not because we asked for it," said French Prime Minister Edouar Daladier.

Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, despite his pact with Nazi Germany, did not want to go to war immediately, while US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said Washington would remain neutral in the race, to which he finally participated. December 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The years, the end of the cold war and, closer, the integration of the two countries in the European Union and NATO, have suggested that Germany and Poland had left the conflict behind, but this situation changed with the coming to power in Warsaw of conservatives and nationalists, who hold critical positions in the eyes of the EU and Berlin.

"Poland has not received adequate compensation, we lost six million people during the Second World War, far more than any other state with major repairs, it is not fair. this can not go on like this, "said the Polish prime minister last week. Mateusz Morawiecki

This issue had already been put on the table in 2017 by the leader of the conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS), Jaroslaw Kaczynski.