Westerplatte, the beginning of WW II
Russian Defence Ministry has accused Poland of being responsible for World War II in an article published on its official web site.
The article was written by Colonel Sergey Kovalov from the Institute of War History at the Russian Defence Ministry and published in a War Encyclopedia under the title “History – against lies and falsification”.
“Everyone who studies the history of WW II without prejudice knows that the war started because Poland refused to satisfy German claims. However, not everyone knows what exactly Adolf Hitler wanted from Poland. His claims were rather moderate: to incorporate the Free City of Danzig (currently Gdansk) into the Third Reich and to let Germans build exterritorial motorway and a railway [through Poland] which would join East Prussia with the rest of German territory,” writes the Russian historian. In his opinion, “it is hard to regard these claims as unjustified”.
“Poland aimed at becoming a regional super power and by no means wanted to play the role of a younger partner to Germany. That is why on 26 March 1939 it finally rejected German demands,” argues Kovalov.
Russia knows better
The Russian historian also justifies the attack of the USSR on Poland on 17 September 1939. He claims that Josef Stalin had no choice but to sign a non-aggression pact with Hitler in order to postpone, at least in the short term, war with Germany.
The Russian daily Wriemia Nowostiej has criticized the article published by the Defence Ministry, saying that “the war against falsification of history ‘to the detriment of Russia’, proclaimed by the highest state authorities, is grotesque.”
The daily ironically predicts that “soon Adolf Hitler will turn out to be an effective manager and East European countries, smashed by Soviet and Nazi ‘effective management’, will be found guilty for getting in their way,” writes Wriemia Nowostiej.
In May, the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, created the Committee for the Counteraction against Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia. The committee consists of Russian politicians, historians, officials and secret service agents and its goal is to investigate ‘distortions of the historical record’ caused by Polish, Ukrainian, Latvian and Estonian historians.
The Russian Defence Ministry’s deputy spokesman Aleksandr Petrunin refused to give thenews.pl a commentary on Kovalov’s article. (mg/pg)
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