German discourses on Poland

Anyone who wants to have insight into historical German politics, and to be aware of the German State's attitude towards Poland, should read the book by Prof. Marek Kornata. It is about “Tatar country”, “Polish anarchy”, “season state”, “Polish management” (polnische Wirtschaft) or Polish “wilderness”. These issues are highly important, due to the fact that any of them besides function in German optics today. Almost a 100 years ago, they were utilized to make their own (German) society and global opinion. present they service German media to plan a sense of shame among Poles themselves, and, in addition, anti-Polish bias to invoke German authority.

Below respective passuses

(1) On the image of Poland during the Weimar Republic:

"Poland and Poles were the subject of a negative discourse by German political propaganda with the characteristics of large stability. The 1918 defeat exacerbated Polish-German antagonism, making it the biggest conflict in Versailles Europe. The German propaganda reflected a negative policy of the government in Berlin towards its east neighbour. The central motive for this propaganda was the explanation of the inferiority of the Slavs, including Poles. Not always in the German submitted thesis was taught explicite, but it was the essential basis. The slogans about “Saisonstaat” [seasonal state] and “polnische Wirtschaft” [Polish management] undoubtedly aroused in German society hopes of a successful rematch on Poland, which will come in the future. A strong discourse about the civilizational superiority of his own state and nation and inferiority of Poland and Poles was fed on negative stereotypes formed during the long term, propagated in Prussia after the partitions of the Republic of Poland and in Vilnius Germany.

The intellectual rooting of Poland's negative stereotype in German society was based on the evidence of the harm suffered – as it was claimed – from a nation below in terms of civilization. It was said that the Polish state grew up at the expense of humiliated Germany. Being a primitive society and representing the “East”, Poles were able to accomplish their goal, reaching for German lands [Pomorze, Silesia] with the aid of the Ententa powers, but it was to be a temporary success.”

"The image of the fresh Polish state in German abroad propaganda resembles caricature in almost all respect. Poland is simply a seasonal state – a temporary state created by France in the chili of extraordinary difficulties of Germany to torment it. It remains doomed to fall, to which it should be brought at the first opportunity. He is not capable of living, there is no chance of surviving between Germany and russian Russia. Its economy is Polnische Wirtschaft, and the natural passion of Poles for anarchy and interior strife do not give a chance to stabilise the state. The image of Poland as the “public enemy” of Germany has surely developed in the political publishing manufacture of the Weimar era (...).

Summing up the Weimar period: what, among many threads, peculiarly attracted my attention, is the immense influence of the German opinion on Poland in Europe and the USA. On the 1 hand, there was the influence of anti-Polish propaganda on the Germans themselves. But on the another hand, just listening to German politicians, journalists and scientists, driving around the planet with lectures.

As Prof. Kornat writes: “We should not forget that in the times in question, the average Western man gained cognition about east Europe and, in this context, Poland primarily from German historical and political literature. The tendened German historiography, expressing the “Prussian spirit”, weighed on the image of Poland in the eyes of the West.

Importantly, “The economical Society played an crucial function in the improvement of Germany’s information policy for abroad usage – as a specialised organization in this area, and as an organization set up for life in 1922. It had in its statutory tasks the information of abroad opinion, and the funds for business were provided by German companies." But that's not all, many were non-German authors who created anti-Polish texts in France or England, any of them were inspired and paid for. Unfortunately, as in the 1920s, so now there is simply a deficiency of Polish voice and Polish position in the West.

(2) Germany's attitude to Poland during the period of the Polish-bolshevik War:

"During the russian offensive and retreat of the Polish army in the summertime of 1920. The Germans were truly euphoric. The fall of the Polish state seemed close. Hopes associated with the defeat of a hated fresh neighbour obscured any concerns that the Red Army's march westwards could have caused in the Reich. The president of the German Reich... announced on July 20 the neutrality of his country to this war. It was a neutral attitude that was kind to the Soviets... In fact, political and military circles were preparing to dismantle Poland in agreement with russian Russia (...).

The defeat of Poland was widely expected. This would have had no chance of a fresh demarcation in the east. After the collapse of the Polish state, its western border would not remain, fundamentally defined in Versailles. There would be a fresh strategy of forces. The way to a dismembered transaction between Berlin and Moscow would be an beginning (...). Not being able to go military against Poland and hit her from behind, The Germans sympathized with the Red Army in its origin west. There were many cases of the support of the Bolsheviks by the Reich – even in the passing of troops that crossed the border, without their disarmament."

"(...) among German railwaymen, sailors and transport workers the surviving temper began to spread, the alleged revolutionary – alternatively prominently anti-Polish, under the cover of communism manifested. russian communist agents in Germany, with the silent agreement of the German authorities, organized peculiar “control commissions” of a supervisory nature over the systematically conducted sabotage and boycott of Poland in Germany. These commissions brought to life the “factory and industrial commissions” that already actively prevented the passage from France to Poland – food transports, weapons and war materials for the overwhelming russian forces of the Polish army. And the railwaymen, according to instructions received from the communist party, detached freight wagons going to Poland with cargo and pushed them on the side tracks (...) In Erfurt alone, German railwaymen attacked even a number of wagons with war materials designed for Poland (...) as a consequence of strong russian propaganda (...) broke out in Gdańsk organized by the communist organization and sustained by another political groups German general strike of port and transport workers (...). The strikers of Gdańsk workers, not only did they not pass through the cargo, but they plundered the warehouses, broke the crates, in search of war materials. This fact proves conclusively that the order announced by Komintern to sabotage Poland and aid the invading russian troops (...) was strictly executed by the German proletariat".



Written by prof. Marek Kornat. Year of issue: 2020. luminaire: soft. Format: 238 x 168 mm. Number of pages: 536

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