you are correct that after WWII they are completely anti-war, but that's because war was taken to their doorsteps.
I dispute the Germans did experience war like few other people ever had -- I live now in Poland (moved here 2 years ago) and everywhere I go I see how WWII affected the Poles -- they lost the most numbers of people (20% of the population) and were in the process of being eliminated by the GErmans.
on every street corner in warsaw -- sometimes in 2/3 places on the street you will see a memorial saying "on xx date in 194__ yy numbers of poles were killed by Germans"
You can see pictures of how the Germans levelled Warsaw.
In fact, if you go hiking in the mountains in the south you'll find places where Germans killed Poles.
imho the Poles had it the worst in WWII -- more than the Germans or Russians.
They had it pretty bad in WWI as well -- 5 different armies fought on their lands and the lands were exchanged nearly 14 times through the war, millions of soldiers and civilians killed.
No, I had sympathy for the Germans before I moved here, but they got what was coming to them (I mean the Germans in 1945 got what was coming to them).
Even today I see Polish kids with graffitti that says "Pamiętamy" -- or "We will remember". Not that they keep the hate, but they rather remember the sacrifices their ancestors paid for their independance.
Every August 1st at 5:00 PM, Warsaw stops for one minute, to commemorate "W Hour" the beginning of the Warsaw Uprising.
The other thing that happened after the war, was that the ethnic Germans were kicked out of Silesia and Pomerania and the Sudetenland, so that there would be no more exploits like before the war.....Of course, Poles were kicked out of Western Ukraine and shipped West to the lands that the Germans were kicked out of.
We have absolutely no disagreement.
I said few others had experienced War like the Germans. The Poles and Russians are among the few. I have cited the fact that the Poles suffered more in proportion to their population than any other people from World War II, with the exception of the Jews, more than once in other threads. One of the most frustrating aspects about the fate of the Poles is that they were probably the least deserving of that fate; they prepared as best they could for the War and fought valiantly against Nazis and the Russians simultaneously.
In September 1939 there were five German divisions between the Rhine and Berlin. The Belgians and Dutch could mobilize 30 divisions between them. If the Belgian Army had invaded Germany in September 1939, it would have been a race between the Germany Army in the East and Belgians to see who would have gotten there first. Don’t. Even. Talk. About. The. French. Sheltering. Behind. The. Maginot. Line.
The suffering of the Poles was imposed by both the Germans and the Russians.
Speer said that the Nazi leadship comprised people who had, for the most part, never or rarely traveled outside of Germany. Most Germans holidayed in Paris or London or Rome occassionally, and would never have looked forward to the destruction of those cities.