Pequeños sucios secretos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial o la historía no es tan solo como nos dicen que fué.

Otro buen artículo de www.rense.com

Dirty Little Secrets Of WWII
 The Hidden, Awkward Origins Of World War 2
By Jason Collett
9-6-10

 

The unexpected views of four key diplomats who were close to events: Just consider the following:   Joseph P. Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to Britain during the years immediately preceding WW2 was the father of the famous American Kennedy dynasty. James Forrestal the first US Secretary of Defense (1947-1949) quotes him as saying "Chamberlain (the British Prime Minister) stated that America and the world Jews had forced England into the war". (The Forrestal Diaries ed. Millis, Cassell 1952 p129).   Count Jerzy Potocki, the Polish Ambassador in Washington, in a report to the Polish Foreign Office in January 1939, is quoted approvingly by the highly respected British military historian Major-General JFC Fuller. Concerning public opinion in America he says "Above all, propaganda here is entirely in Jewish handswhen bearing public ignorance in mind, their propaganda is so effective that people have no real knowledge of the true state of affairs in Europe It is interesting to observe that in this carefully thought-out campaign no reference at all is made to Soviet Russia. If that country is mentioned, it is referred to in a friendly manner and people are given the impression that Soviet Russia is part of the democratic group of countries Jewry was able not only to establish a dangerous centre in the New World for the dissemination of hatred and enmity, but it also succeeded in dividing the world into two warlike campsPresident Roosevelt has been given the power.. to create huge reserves in armaments for a future war which the Jews are deliberately heading for." (Fuller, JFC: The Decisive Battles of the Western World vol 3 pp 372-374.)   Hugh Wilson, the American Ambassador in Berlin until 1938, the year before the war broke out, found anti-Semitism in Germany 'understandable'. This was because before the advent of the Nazis, "the stage, the press, medicine and law [were] crowded with Jewsamong the few with money to splurge, a high proportion [were] Jewsthe leaders of the Bolshevist movement in Russia, a movement desperately feared in Germany, were Jews. One could feel the spreading resentment and hatred." (Hugh Wilson: Diplomat between the Wars, Longmans 1941, quoted in Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh, Hodder 1976).   Sir Nevile Henderson, British Ambassador in Berlin 'said further that the hostile attitude in Great Britain was the work of Jews and enemies of the Nazis, which was what Hitler thought himself' (Taylor, AJP: The Origins of the Second World War Penguin 1965, 1987 etc p 324).   Is all of this merely attributable to terrible 'anti-semitism'?   The economic background to the war is necessary for a fuller understanding, before casting judgement on the originators of these viewpoints.   At the end of the First World War, Germany was essentially tricked [see Paul Johnson A History of the Modern World (1983) p24 and H NicholsonPeacemaking 1919 (1933) pp13-16] into paying massive reparations to France and other economic competitors and former belligerent countries in terms of the so-called Treaty of Versailles, thanks to the liberal American President Woodrow Wilson. Germany was declared to be solely responsible for the war, in spite of the fact that 'Germany did not plot a European war, did not want one, and made genuine efforts, though too belated, to avert one.' (Professor Sydney B Fay The Origins of the World War (vol. 2 p 552)).   As a result of these massive enforced financial reparations, by 1923 the situation in Germany became desperate and inflation on an astronomical scale became the only way out for the government. Printing presses were engaged to print money around the clock. In 1921 the exchange rate was 75 marks to the dollar. By 1924 this had become about 5 trillion marks to the dollar. This virtually destroyed the German middle class (Koestler The God that Failed p 28), reducing any bank savings to a virtual zero.   According to Sir Arthur Bryant the British historian (Unfinished Victory (1940 pp. 136-144):   'It was the Jews with their international affiliations and their hereditary flair for finance who were best able to seize such opportunities.. They did so with such effect that, even in November 1938, after five years of anti-Semitic legislation and persecution, they still owned, according to the Times correspondent in Berlin, something like a third of the real property in the Reich. Most of it came into their hands during the inflation.. But to those who had lost their all this bewildering transfer seemed a monstrous injustice. After prolonged sufferings they had now been deprived of their last possessions. They saw them pass into the hands of strangers, many of whom had not shared their sacrifices and who cared little or nothing for their national standards and traditions. The Jews obtained a wonderful ascendancy in politics, business and the learned professions (in spite of constituting) less than one percent of the population.   The banks, including the Reichsbank and the big private banks, were practically controlled by them. So were the publishing trade, the cinema, the theatres and a large part of the press ­ all the normal means, in fact, by which public opinion in a civilized country is formed.. The largest newspaper combine in the country with a daily circulation of four millions was a Jewish monopoly.. Every year it became harder and harder for a gentile to gain or keep a foothold in any privileged occupation.. At this time it was not the 'Aryans' who exercised racial discrimination. It was a discrimination that operated without violence. It was exercised by a minority against a majority. There was no persecution, only elimination.. It was the contrast between the wealth enjoyed ­ and lavishly displayed ­ by aliens of cosmopolitan tastes, and the poverty and misery of native Germans, that has made anti-Semitism so dangerous and ugly a force in the new Europe. Beggars on horseback are seldom popular, least of all with those whom they have just thrown out of the saddle."   Goodness gracious, Sir Arthur! What made you get out of the wrong side of the bed?   Strangely enough, a book unexpectedly published by Princeton University Press in 1984, Sarah Gordon (Hitler, Germans and the "Jewish Question") essentially confirms what Bryant says. According to her, 'Jews were never a large percentage of the total German population; at no time did they exceed 1% of the population during the years 1871-1933.' But she adds 'Jews were over-represented in business, commerce, and public and private service.. They were especially visible in private banking in Berlin, which in 1923 had 150 private Jewish banks, as opposed to only 11 private non-Jewish banks.. They owned 41% of iron and scrap iron firms and 57% of other metal businesses.. Jews were very active in the stock market, particularly in Berlin, where in 1928 they comprised 80% of the leading members of the stock exchange. By 1933, when the Nazis began eliminating Jews from prominent positions, 85% of the brokers on the Berlin Stock exchange were dismissed because of their "race".. At least a quarter of full professors and instructors (at German universities) had Jewish origins.. In 1905-6 Jewish students comprised 25% of the law and medical students.. In 1931, 50% of the 234 theatre directors in Germany were Jewish, and in Berlin the number was 80%.. In 1929 it was estimated that the per capita income of Jews in Berlin was twice that of other Berlin residents..' etc etc.   Arthur Koestler confirms the Jewish over-involvement in German publishing. 'Ullstein's was a kind of super-trust; the largest organization of its kind in Europe, and probably In the world. They published four daily papers in Berlin alone, among these the venerable Vossische Zeitung, founded in the eighteenth century, and the B.Z. am Mittag, an evening paper.. Apart from these, Ullstein's published more than a dozen weekly and monthly periodicals, ran their own news service, their own travel agency, etc., and were one of the leading book publishers. The firm was owned by the brothers Ullstein - they were five, like the original Rothschild brothers, and like them also, they were Jews.' (The God that Failed (1950) ed. RHS Crossman, p 31).   Edgar Mowrer, Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, wrote an anti-German tract called Germany Puts the Clock Back (published as a Penguin Special and reprinted five times between December 1937 and April 1938). He nevertheless notes 'In the all-important administration of Prussia, any number of strategic positions came into the hands of Hebrews.. A telephone conversation between three Jews in Ministerial offices could result in the suspension of any periodical or newspaper in the state.. The Jews came in Germany to play in politics and administration that same considerable part that they had previously won by open competition in business, trade, banking, the Press, the arts, the sciences and the intellectual and cultural life of the country. And thereby the impression was strengthened that Germany, a country with a mission of its own, had fallen into the hands of foreigners.'   Mowrer says 'No one who lived through the period from 1919 to 1926 is likely to forget the sexual promiscuity that prevailed.. Throughout a town like Berlin, hotels and pensions made vast fortunes by letting rooms by the hour or day to baggageless, unregistered guests. Hundreds of cabarets, pleasure resorts and the like served for purposes of getting acquainted and acquiring the proper mood..' (pp. 153-4). Bryant describes throngs of child prostitutes outside the doors of the great Berlin hotels and restaurants. He adds 'Most of them (the night clubs and vice-resorts) were owned and managed by Jews. And it was the Jews.. among the promoters of this trade who were remembered in after years.' (pp. 144-5).   Douglas Reed, Chief Central European correspondent before WWII for the London Times, was profoundly anti-German and anti-Hitler. But nevertheless he reported: 'I watched the Brown Shirts going from shop to shop with paint pots and daubing on the window panes the word "Jew", in dripping red letters. The Kurfürstendamm was to me a revelation. I knew that Jews were prominent in business life, but I did not know that they almost monopolized important branches of it. Germany had one Jew to one hundred gentiles, said the statistics; but the fashionable Kurfürstendamm, according to the dripping red legends, had about one gentile shop to ninety-nine Jewish ones.' (Reed Insanity Fair (1938) p. 152-3). In Reed's bookDisgrace Abounding of the following year he notes 'In the Berlin (of pre-Hitler years) most of the theatres were Jewish-owned or Jewish-leased, most of the leading film and stage actors were Jews, the plays performed were often by German, Austrian or Hungarian Jews and were staged by Jewish film producers, applauded by Jewish dramatic critics in Jewish newspapers.. The Jews are not cleverer than the Gentiles, if by clever you mean good at their jobs. They ruthlessly exploit the common feeling of Jews, first to get a foothold in a particular trade or calling, then to squeeze the non-Jews out of it.. It is not true that Jews are better journalists than Gentiles. They held all the posts on those Berlin papers because the proprietors and editors were Jewish' (pp238-9).   The Jewish writer Edwin Black notes 'For example, in Berlin alone, about 75% of the attorneys and nearly as many of the doctors were Jewish.' (Black,The Transfer Agreement (1984) p58.   To cap it all, Jews were perceived as dangerous enemies of Germany after Samuel Untermeyer, the leader of the World Jewish Economic Federation, declared war on Germany on August 6 1933. (Edwin Black The Transfer Agreement: the Untold Story of the Secret Pact between the Third Reich and Palestine (1984) pp272-277) According to Black, 'The one man who most embodied the potential death blow to Germany was Samuel Untermeyer.' (p 369). This was the culmination of a worldwide boycott of German goods led by international Jewish organizations. The London Daily Express on March 24, 1933 carried the headline Judea Declares War on Germany. The boycott was particularly motivated by the German imposition of the Nuremberg Laws, which ironically were similar in intent and content to the Jewish cultural exclusivism practiced so visibly in present-day Israel (Hannah ArendtEichmann in Jerusalem p 7).   Hitler saw the tremendous danger posed to Germany by Communism. He appreciated the desperate need to eliminate this threat, a fact that earned him the immense hatred and animosity of the Jewish organisations and the media and politicians of the west which they could influence. After all, according to the Jewish writer Chaim Bermant, although Jews formed less than five percent of Russia's population, they formed more than fifty percent of its revolutionaries. According to the Jewish writer Chaim Bermant in his book The Jews (1977, chapter 8):   'It must be added that most of the leading revolutionaries who convulsed Europe in the final decades of the last century and the first decades of this one, stemmed from prosperous Jewish families.. They were perhaps typified by the father of revolution, Karl Marx.. Thus when, after the chaos of World War I, revolutions broke out all over Europe, Jews were everywhere at the helm; Trotsky, Sverdlov, Kamenev and Zinoviev in Russia, Bela Kun in Hungary, Kurt Eisner in Bavaria, and, most improbable of all, Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin.   'To many outside observers, the Russian revolution looked like a Jewish conspiracy, especially when it was followed by Jewish-led revolutionary outbreaks in much of central Europe. The leadership of the Bolshevik Party had a preponderance of Jews.. Of the seven members of the Politburo, the inner cabinet of the country, four, Trotsky (Bronstein), Zinoviev (Radomsky), Kamenev (Rosenfeld) and Sverdlov, were Jews.' Other authors agree with this:   "There has been a tendency to circumvent or simply ignore the significant role of Jewish intellectuals in the German Communist Party, and thereby seriously neglect one of the genuine and objective reasons for increased anti-Semitism during and after World War 1.. The prominence of Jews in the revolution and early Weimar Republic is indisputable, and this was a very serious contributing cause for increased anti-Semitism in post-war years.. It is clear then that the stereotype of Jews as socialists and communists.. led many Germans to distrust the Jewish minority as a whole and to brand Jews as enemies of the German nation." (Sarah Gordon Hitler, Germans and the 'Jewish Question' Princeton University Press (1984) p 23).   "The second paroxysm of strong anti-Semitism came after the critical role of Jews in International Communism and the Russian Revolution and during the economic crises of the 1920s and 30s Anti-Semitism intensified throughout Europe and North America following the perceived and actual centrality of Jews in the Russian Revolution.. Such feelings were not restricted to Germany, or to vulgar extremists like the Nazis. All over Northern Europe and North America, anti-Semitism became the norm in 'nice society', and 'nice society' included the universities." (Martin Bernal, Black Athenavol. 1 pp. 367, 387).   "The major role Jewish leaders played in the November (Russian) revolution was probably more important than any other factor in confirming (Hitler's) anti-Semitic beliefs." (J&S Pool, Who Financed Hitler, p.164).     Hitler came to power in Germany with two main aims, the rectification of the unjust provisions of the Versailles Treaty, and the destruction of the Soviet/ Communist threat to Germany. Strangely enough, contrary to the mythology created by those who had an opposing ethnic agenda, he had no plans or desire for a larger war of conquest. Professor AJP Taylor showed this in his book The Origins of the Second World War, to the disappointment of the professional western political establishment. Taylor says, "The state of German armament in 1939 gives the decisive proof that Hitler was not contemplating general war, and probably not intending war at all" (p.267), and "Even in 1939 the German army was not equipped for a prolonged war; and in 1940 the German land forces were inferior to the French in everything except leadership" (p104-5). What occurred in Europe in 1939-41 was the result of unforeseen weaknesses and a tipping of the balance of power, and Hitler was an opportunist 'who took advantages whenever they offered themselves' (Taylor). Britain and France declared war on Germany, not the other way around. Hitler wanted peace with Britain, as the German generals admitted (Basil Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill 1948, Pan Books 1983) with regard to the so-called Halt Order at Dunkirk, where Hitler had the opportunity to capture the entire British Army, but chose not to. Liddell Hart, one of Britain's most respected military historians, quotes the German General von Blumentritt with regard to this Halt Order:   "He (Hitler) then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilisation that Britain had brought into the world. He remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that the creation of its Empire had been achieved by means that were often harsh, but 'where there is planing, there are shavings flying'. He compared the British Empire with the catholic Church ­ saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she should acknowledge Germany's position on the Continent. The return of Germany's colonies would be desirable but not essential, and he would even offer to support Britain with troops if she should be involved in difficulties anywhere.." (p 200).   According to Liddell Hart, "At the time we believed that the repulse of the Luftwaffe in the 'Battle over Britain' had saved her. That is only part of the explanation, the last part of it. The original cause, which goes much deeper, is that Hitler did not want to conquer England. He took little interest in the invasion preparations, and for weeks did nothing tospur them on; then, after a brief impulse to invade, he veered around again and suspended the preparations. He was preparing, instead, to invade Russia" (p140).   David Irving in the foreword to his book The Warpath (1978) refers to "the discovery.. that at no time did this man (Hitler) pose or intend a real threat to Britain or the Empire."   This gives a completely different complexion, not only to the war, but to the successful suppression of this information during the war and afterwards. Historians today know only too well where the boundaries lie within which they can paint their pictures of the war and its aftermath, and the consequences of venturing beyond those boundaries, irrespective of the evidence. Unfortunately, only too few of them have been prepared to have the courage to break out of this dreadful straitjacket of official and unofficial censorship.   E-mail comment received:   I worked and studied in Berlin for three years, have an MA in International Relations and a BA in Government with a minor in History. I am embarrassed to say that until I read this article, I had no idea of the scope and cause for the anti-Semitism in Germany before WWII. The Halt Order at Dunkirk was never mentioned in my studies, nor was the ownership of the media, banks and businesses.   Thank you for the excellent article. It certainly gives me a new perspective. I have always questioned the actual numbers of Jewish victims of the concentration camps, as the numbers didn't make sense based upon Germany's population. Perhaps it was fear of failing or being labeled an anti-Semite by my history professors (all but two were Jewish) and classmates that I refrained from demanding an honest discussion during my classes.   I once said that the only reason Israel existed was out of Holocaust guilt, and I was immediately labeled a terrorist sympathizer.   I see what is now happening in Israel and I am aghast. The parallels to WW II are frightening. Even today, one cannot bring up this subject without being labeled a Holocaust denier or white supremacist.   Thanks again for an excellent article. I am forwarding it to several friends.   JBP

Rusia condena a UK, Francia y Polonia de haber entrado en la guerra. Los tres países a su vez condenan a Rusia.

Que interesante, ingleses y franceses y polacos culpan el tratao de no agresión entre la URSS y Alemania como palanca para que Hitler invadiera Polonia, haciendo a URSS/Rusia responsable medianamente también en el inicio de la guerra.

Rusia invadió Polonia 15 días después de Alemania pero nadie le declaró la guerra, nadie le culpa mucho hasta ahora. Rusia nunca se ha disculpado de esa invasión aparentemente injustiificada, menso aun se ha disculpado por los 20,000 oficiales polacos asesinados a manos de las fuerzas rusas en el bosque de Kaytn y que los rusos ponian como un crímen cometido por los alemanes, pero no fué así. (¿ Mentiritas con los muertos ? Algo me dice que mucho de los campos de concentración es así también, mentiras convenientes)

Pero Rusia desclasifica documentos donde se ve que Polonia también tenía ambiciones expansionistas antes de la guerra, como lo muestra su anexación de territorios originalmente de Checoslovaquia en 1938 y más aun donde hay muestras de colaboración entre polacos y alemanes para atacar a la URSS/ Rusia.

También Rusia declara que fue la mala política de Francia e Inglaterra la que propició el inicio de hostilidades de la mano de su tratado con Alemania de 1938.

Que bonito es verlos tratando de librarse de sus culpas: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1210264/Putin-condemns-Moscow-signing-1939-treaty-Berlin--blames-Britain-wartime-pacts-Nazi-Germany.html

A 70 años, polonia sigue traumada y resentida.

A mi que me disculpen sus muertos pero esas visiones y actitudes rencorosas, revanchistas no dejan ver de fondo más que un mediocre desempeño como país, mediocre emocional y materialmente en tanto culpan los acontecimientos de hace 70 años como causa de su situación actual y pasada inmediata así como los usan comomedio de coerción para lograr más poder dentro de la UE sin mérito real, simplemente el poder del chantaje y la lastimita. Polonia no seas mediocre, crece ya, no culpes a otros si en 70 añso no has hecho nada y ni en los ultimos 20 no tiene que ver ya ni con Hitler, ni con las SS ni con tus judíos muertos ni con la URSS o Ribbentrop-Molotov o la OTAN, tienen que ver con tu incapacidad para hacer algo.

70 years on, Poland's WWII wounds haven't healed

By VANESSA GERA (AP) – 6 hours ago

WARSAW, Poland — Back home in Germany, Erika Steinbach is hardly a household name. But in neighboring Poland she is a national hate figure, caricatured on magazine covers as a Nazi in SS uniform.

Her offense, in Polish eyes, is that she claims to speak for the millions of ethnic Germans who were expelled from their homes in Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe after World War II. These accusers say she is revising history and drawing a moral parallel between the cruelties the Germans inflicted and the sufferings they later endured.

The recriminations go to the heart of the resentments that still bubble up from the war that broke out with Hitler's attack on Poland on Sept. 1, 1939.

Today, as Polish, German and Russian leaders join on Tuesday to mark the anniversary, Polish-German relations are at one level an idyll of open borders and shared membership in the prosperous, democratic European Union.

But at another level, they are one rancorous episode after another: a Polish prime minister demanding greater voting power in European forums to make up for Poland's war-related loss of population; a German magazine article that stirs Polish outrage by saying Germany had the willing help of Poles and others in executing its genocidal actions; and now a new museum in Berlin, championed by Steinbach, that will exhibit the hardships of the world's refugees through history, especially the wartime Germans.

Steinbach, 67, strenuously denies minimizing Poland's afflictions. But she is a lightning rod for Poles' fears that future generations of Germans will grow up in a historical muddle about the war and its aftermath.

"We'll probably reach a point — and we are hearing this already — that Germans suffered equally because someone expelled them from somewhere and that they were killed as well," complains Jacek Patoka, a 42-year-old Polish businessman.

What irks the Poles most is Steinbach and her Federation of the Expellees, the group that demands recognition of the suffering inflicted on some 14 million Germans when the postwar borders were redrawn and they were driven out of their homes.

When Steinbach pushed for the Berlin museum, Poland's government was indignant, seeing it as a sign that Germans were trying to play down their crimes and highlight their own suffering and resistance to Hitler's regime.

"We don't like these activities," said Romualda Tudrej, an 82-year-old woman who fought in Poland's anti-Nazi resistance. "The Germans are unfortunately changing history a little. There's a new generation now and this generation wants to have heroes, and not the bandits that it actually had for ancestors."

As tempers rose, Poland lobbied to block Steinbach's appointment to head the board of the planned museum. It would be tantamount to putting a Holocaust-denier in charge of relations with Israel, charged Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, an Auschwitz survivor and Polish government representative on German issues, in an interview with Poland's Dziennik newspaper.

After much discussion between Warsaw and Berlin, Poland last year consented to a German government-backed museum in Berlin to be called the "Center against Expulsions." That was after it was assured by Chancellor Angela Merkel that the exhibit would include information on expulsions of other peoples worldwide and throughout history.

At a gathering of Steinbach's federation Aug. 23, Merkel defended the idea, saying that the history of flight and expulsions is "part of our national identity and part of our shared cultural memory." But she insisted it did not mean Germany wants to diminish its responsibility for starting the war.

"We will not forget: This was a direct consequence of the German war and the Nazi tyranny," she said. "Yes, we admit our responsibility for the darkest chapter in Germany's history — there is no reinterpretation of history."

Many Poles are still not convinced, and to them, Steinbach's own biography is salt in their wounds: Her family was not native to Poland, but came there when her father was assigned to the German occupation forces as a Luftwaffe technician.

Steinbach represents Merkel's Christian Democratic Union in the parliament, which sharpens Polish suspicions that her views are close to the mainstream.

Steinbach's supporters say she is being maligned. They note that she has distanced herself from even more controversial efforts by a tiny number of Germans to regain prewar family property now in Poland.

At her federation's gathering, she made a point of stressing that Nazi Germany was ultimately responsible for the fate of the expelled Germans. "Our fate was preceded by something atrocious," she said.

But she insisted that her country had the right to commemorate the plight of Germans who faced "malice and viciousness" when forced from parts of Eastern Europe. Some were killed, beaten or murdered in revenge by Poles, Czechs and others.

Both Poland and Germany preserve reminders of the war. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, with its spire broken by Allied bombing and never restored, is a landmark of the Berlin cityscape. In Warsaw's war museum, the first thing visitors see is rubble salvaged from the capital's bombed royal castle, a historic seat of Polish kings, sending a clear message that the best of the nation was demolished by Nazi atrocities.

Now Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has launched plans for another war museum in Gdansk, a city with a mixed German and Polish history that took some of the opening salvos of the war.

Gdansk is where Merkel and Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin will join Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Tusk in commemorating the outbreak of the war.

To most Germans, the expelled are a marginal issue, of relevance only to an elderly, dwindling group, and the Poles' fears tend to be seen as exaggerated or unfounded.

They can point to the hundreds of memorials across Germany honoring victims of the Nazis, the compensation Germany paid to millions of Hitler's victims, the more than $22 billion invested by Germans in Poland since the Cold War ended.

Relations are much better between younger Poles and Germans, especially those who have studied or worked in each other's countries.

"I have nothing against Germans," said Piotr Roguski, 39, a real estate agent in Warsaw. "For me contemporary Germans and the Germans of World War II are two different things."

Among Polish youth, German army jackets are considered cool attire, much to their elders' dismay.

Angelica Schwall-Dueren, of the German-Polish Society that promotes cooperation and cross-border exchanges between the two nations, calls today's relationship a "political and humanitarian miracle," given the shared horrors of the past.

And what horrors they were. Less than three weeks after the Germans attacked, the Soviet army invaded from the east. The Nazis regarded Poles as an inferior race. Centuries of shared history, during which innumerable Germans had settled in what is now Poland, became a master-slave relationship. The Germans blitzed Polish cities and built Auschwitz on Polish soil. At the end of the war, 6 million Polish citizens out of a prewar population of 35 million were dead — half of them Jews, half Christians.

The war left Poland feeling massively betrayed — by its Western allies who failed to come to their aid; by the Soviet army that first invaded it, then stood aside as the Germans crushed the country; and by the postwar settlement that opened the way to 40 years of communist dictatorship.

Poland today has 38 million people to Germany's 82 million, which qualifies it as medium-sized in a European Union where voting is weighted by population size. And even that ties in to the war. In arguing in 2007 for enhanced voting rights, the then prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, argued: "If it hadn't had to live through the years 1939-1945, Poland would today be a country of 66 million."

Associated Press writers Marta Kucharska in Warsaw and Melissa Eddy in Berlin contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

El Top Ten del Centro Wiesenthal de criminales "nazis" aun buscados.

Yo me pregunto toda la bola esta de ociosos del Wiesenthal y la Anti Defamation League ¿ Que irán a hacer cuanod ya no haya nazis ? Irán por sus hijos y familias o perseguiran cualqueir cosa perseguible. Creo sinceramente que deberían re orientar un poco su vida pues están al borde de padecer un vacío existencial.

TRAJE ESTA NOTA PUES SE ME CRUZÓ MIENTRAS BUSCABA DOCUMENTOS DE LA CRUZ ROJA INTERNACIONAL SOBRE EL NUMERO DE MUERTOS EN LA SEGUNDA GUERRA.

Pero resultó de interés ver como los criminales nazis que quedan del top 10 del centro este NI SON ALEMANES YA, Y DUDO QUE NAZIS PUES NO CREO QU EFUERAN PARTE DEL PARTIDO, los actuales más buscados son de Europa oriental.

Podría tal vez ser demandado el centro ese por tendencioso pues como dije, su listado actual ni alemanes ni nazis.

FACTBOX-Wiesenthal Center's top 10 WW2 war criminals
12 May 2009 08:37:01 GMT
Source: Reuters
May 12 (Reuters) - Accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk arrived in Germany on Tuesday from the United States to face charges he participated in the killing of 29,000 Jews in 1943.

Demjanjuk is number one on a list of 10 most-wanted war criminals compiled by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, according to a statement issued in April 2009. Here are details about the 10 accused and two further people accused but thought likely to be dead (*).

* ALOIS BRUNNER -- Right-hand man to the Gestapo's "technician of death" Adolf Eichmann, he helped organise deportations of Jews to death camps and would probably top the Center's list of most-wanted Nazi criminals, if it did not think the chances of his still being alive to be slim.

* ARIBERT HEIM -- Heim killed hundreds at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria with injections of poison and removed organs from victims without anaesthetic. Various media reported in February that he died in Cairo in 1992, aged 78.

1. IVAN (JOHN) DEMJANJUK -- Accused in 1977 of being the infamous "Ivan the Terrible", a Treblinka extermination camp guard, he was extradited to Israel and sentenced to death, then freed on subsequent evidence.

Returning to the United States in 1993, his citizenship was revoked in 2002 after a U.S. court convicted him of working at three other camps. German prosecutors, who issued an arrest warrant for him in March, suspect him of helping in the deaths of 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp.

2. DR. SANDOR KEPIRO -- Serbia's war crimes prosecutor in Sept. 2008 requested an investigation into the Hungarian suspected of committing genocide against Jews and Serbs in World War Two.

Prosecutors said Kepiro is suspected of taking part in a raid by Hungarian forces in Jan. 1942 in northern Serbia "when, in an attempt to destroy members of the Jewish and Serbian national groups, they killed at least 2,000 of them".

Sentenced to 10 years in jail in 1944; both that verdict, and his acquittal later the same year, came when Hungary was under fascist rule and an ally of Nazi Germany. In 2007 a Hungarian court ruled the then 93-year-old could not be investigated as his murder conviction had been overturned.

3. MILIVOJ ASNER -- Alleged to have been a senior security official during the 1941-45 rule of Croatia's pro-Nazi Ustasha regime, Asner says he ordered wartime deportations of Jews and Serbs to their homelands, not to death camps in Croatia.

Asner moved to Austria when a Nazi-tracking group found him living in Croatia in 2005. Austria previously rejected a Croatian extradition request on grounds that Asner's physical and mental condition was fragile.

4. SOEREN KAM -- The Danish-born former SS member is accused of helping Nazi forces in Denmark, and of the 1943 murder of anti-Nazi Danish journalist Carl Henrik Clemmensen in Copenhagen.

Kam fled to Germany after the war, obtaining German citizenship in 1956. Following his 2006 arrest, a German court delayed a decision on his extradition to Denmark.

5. KLAAS CARL FABER -- Accused of serving in the German Security Service in Holland, he was sentenced to death in Holland for murders of prisoners of Westerbork transit camp and Groningen prison in 1944; the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1948. He escaped from prison to Germany in 1952.

6. HEINRICH BOERE -- Accused of killing three Dutch civilians in 1944 as a member of an SS hit squad that targeted anti-Nazi resistance fighters, Boere confessed after being captured by U.S. forces.

Escaping to Germany, he was sentenced to death in absentia in Holland in 1949. After refusing a 1980 Dutch extradition request, a German court indicted him in April 2008.

Boere was due to be tried in Aachen early in 2009 in what would have been one of Germany's last Nazi war crimes trials, but in January the court there said a medical examination had found his health was too poor for him to stand trial.

7. KAROLY ZENTAI -- Zentai is accused of killing Jewish teenager Peter Balazs in Budapest. At the time Zentai was a 23-year-old warrant officer in the pro-Nazi Hungarian military, but argues he left Budapest with his regiment the day before the murder in 1944.

He emigrated to Australia in the early 1950s and was arrested by Federal Police in July 2005. A Perth Federal Court judge last month upheld that Zentai was eligible for extradition to Hungary to face justice.

8. MIKHAIL GORSHKOW -- Alleged to have been an interrogator for the Gestapo, he is accused of helping kill about 3,000 men, women and children in the Slutsk ghetto in Minsk, Belarus. Estonian-born Gorshkow became a U.S. citizen in 1953 but was denaturalised in 2002 and is under investigation in Estonia.

9. ALGIMANTAS DAILIDE -- Dailide volunteered for Lithuania's Nazi-backed secret police, the Saugumas, but said he was only a humble clerk. Entering the United States in 1950, he worked as a real estate agent. In March 2006 Lithuania convicted the then 86-year-old of handing over Jews attempting to flee from the Vilnius ghetto. They were subsequently murdered. A Lithuanian court sentenced him to five years in jail, but suspended his sentence due to his health.

10. HARRY MANNIL -- The Caracas-based auto sales millionaire and member of Venezuelan high society is accused of arresting Jews and communists who were later executed by the Nazis while serving in Estonia's political police force during the Nazi occupation. Cleared of the accusations by Estonia, he remains on a U.S. watch list barring him from entering the United States.

Sources: Simon Wiesenthal Center/Reuters/BBC