Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity, by Alexander B. Rossino. 2003

Similar German Attitudes to Poles and Jews. Leading Nazis Openly Rejected Christianity. “Poles Nazi-Sympathetic on Jews” Turned Around. Early Polokaust

NAZISM ANTI-CHRISTIAN. MANY LEADING NAZIS HAD SPECIFICALLY REPUDIATED CHRISTIANITY

Nowadays, Christianity is sometimes blamed for the Jewish Holocaust–never mind the fact that Nazism had been a secularist ideology. Furthermore, many leading Einsatzgruppe and Gestapo officials, later involved in the rape of Poland, are specifically identified by Rossino as having repudiated Christianity. These include: Bruno Streckenbach (p. 32), Bruno Mueller (p. 33), Karl-Heinz Rux (p. 40), Wilhelm Scharpwinkel (p. 42), Fritz Liphardt (p. 42), Lothar Beutel (p. 44), and Otto Hellwig (p. 51). (So, of course, did Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Frank, Kaltenbrunner, and other top Nazis.).

“POLES NAZI-SYMPATHETIC ON JEWS” TURNED AROUND

The German invaders of 1939 saw the crushing poverty of Polish farmers as one that kept them 200 years culturally behind the poorest German farmer, and attributed this state of affairs to Jewish economic dominance (pp. 209-212). Ironic to the modern portrayal of Poles as eager anti-Semites and Jew-killers, certain Germans chided Poles for their “stupidity” for letting the Jews cheat them and keep them in such poverty! (p. 210)

THE 1939 WAR: BEYOND MILITARY OBJECTIVES. THE EARLY POLOKAUST

Rossino recognizes the fact that German plans to destroy Poland went far beyond the “injustices” of Versailles, and had long preceded Hitler’s rise to power (p. 6, 221-226). He also touches on Pilsudski’s 1933 suggestion for a preventive Polish-French war against the infant Nazi state (p. 2).

Author Rossino understands the 1939 German conquest of Poland as one exhibiting a level of viciousness unprecedented in European warfare up to that time, and not to be matched until Operation Barbarossa (p. 1). There was no love lost between the Pole and the Hun and, although atrocities occurred on both sides, German atrocities against Poles greatly dwarfed the reverse. Wehrmacht officers commonly opposed SS atrocities–not from ethical motives, but out of fear of adverse effects on military discipline (p. 115, 232). Still, the Wehrmacht was responsible for the massacres of 16,000-27,000 Polish civilians (p. 263). In addition, German forces murdered Polish POWs at hundreds of locations (p. 185). The SS alone murdered 43,000 Poles and 7,000 Jews through December 1939 (p. 234, 300). This is, of course, in addition to the colossal level of death and destruction resulting from German military operations.

Rossino elaborates on “Bloody Sunday” at Bydgoszcz (Bromberg). Some 1,000 Volksdeutsche were killed during their fifth-column actions against armed Poles prior to the Wehrmacht’s entry (p. 62). This German propaganda embellished into a Polish massacre of 5,400 (p. 62) and then 50,000 (p. 258) implicitly-innocuous and defenseless German civilians. (I knew an eyewitness, Mr. Stefan Marcinkowski, who reported that there was no wholesale killing of unarmed German civilians by Poles at Bydgoszcz). For details, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/1939-war-myths-bydgoszcz-polish-killers-serwanski/

SIMILAR NAZI GERMAN ATTITUDES TO BOTH JEWS AND POLES: AS RACIAL ENEMIES

Nowadays we hear the silly notion that, whereas Jews were targeted because they were Jews, Poles were targeted because it was war, or because “they did something” that broke German rules. This book quickly dispels such Holocaust supremacist nonsense.

Rossino recognizes the fact that German atrocities continued even after Polish civilian resistance decreased (p. 153) and often had no relationship to the latter at all (p. 160, 178). Most of all, he also recognizes the fact that the Nazis saw both Poles and Jews as enemies in a collective, racial sense: “According to the SS, the soldier was first and foremost a National Socialist Kampfer (fighter) who saw enemies in practical as well as in racial terms. SS personnel thus defined Polish soldiers and the civilian population (Jewish and non-Jewish) alike as legitimate targets of aggression.” (p. 115).