Probably the most misused country in Western and Central Europe has been Poland. It is difficult to find another country in the region that has been as abused by not only the communists, but by its supposed allies, as that nation.
Poland at one time was a very powerful country, perhaps the most powerful around the 1600s. In fact, if it were not for the Polish army lifting the siege against Vienna and defeating the Islamic hordes of the Ottoman Empire, Europe would have become a Muslim region.
In addition, Poland was probably the most liberal country relative to religious freedom, and the royal government’s attitude was one of tolerance. As a result, Poland did not suffer the religious wars of the Reformation and was also settled by a very large number of Jews who found their religion officially tolerated as well.
Over time, Poland went through a number of transitions which weakened it and for a time even the nation ceased to exist due to the politics of Prussia and the Napoleonic Wars.
However, at the end of World War I, their country was restored.
Then came Hitler and Stalin and their pact which divided Poland between them in their vicious attack in September 1939 which led to the beginning of World War II. From this time forward, the betrayal by just about every party connected to the Allies against Germany led to Poland being divided along the lines of the Hitler-Stalin Pact after the war, allowing Russia to take Eastern Poland and incorporate it into the USSR outright.
During World War II, Polish citizens fought admirably in the British RAF during the fight in the air to prevent the British Isles from being invaded by Germany. They fought in the thousands in Italy alongside American and British forces up the boot of Italy against the Germans in such battles as Monte Casino, where they lost 4,000 men.
During the war, the prime minister of Poland in exile, Wladyslaw Sikorsi, died in a strange airplane accident in July 1943 after he called for a Red Cross investigation of the slaughter of Polish leaders and army officers three years earlier by the Soviet secret police, then called the NKVD, in the forest of Kaytn near Smolensk, Russia, and in a large number of prison camps and prisons.
Literally, the cream of Polish leadership and military officers were wiped out, including Catholic priests and others who could not be considered prisoners of war.
The Russians tried to blame the killing field at Katyn on the Germans, but though the Nazis committed terrible crimes during World War II, the communists did as well, and the evidence showed that the Katyn Forest massacre was committed by the communists.
But Western Allied leadership ignored the crime. This included the Roosevelt administration, which knew long before the end of World War II that the atrocity was committed by our Soviet ally, but did not want the American people to know.
After the war, British and American leaders sold out Poland, and the best documentation for this is contained in the book, I Saw Poland Betrayed, by U.S. Ambassador to Poland Arthur Bliss Lane. The book did not sell well when originally published, but The John Birch Society reprinted it 10 years later, and it sold well over 100,000 copies. It is still read in Poland today.
Some leaders of the established churches, Catholic and Protestant, tried to stand up to the communists, but they systematically “disappeared,” leaving only those church leaders who simply went along with the communist government. As a result, there is a large segment of Polish society that does not trust their church leaders even today.
The betrayal of Poland continued to be perpetrated by communist and socialist leaders in the West and within Poland itself by communist agents posing as anti-communists. The latter, documents show, included Lech Walesa. They simply got in front of a growing anti-communist movement in order to steer it into ineffective action. Many of these false leaders are looked upon as heroes in Western society today due to the buildup of their reputations in the “fake news” network.
Upon the apparent collapse of communism, a Polish actress came on television to announce that beginning on the next day, Poland would no longer be ruled by the Communist Party. The next day, nothing happened.
No communist walked out of the government buildings saying that he was now out of work. Teachers and judges who worked very well under communism remained on the job. However, there was a large anti-communist sentiment in the country and some aspects of Polish life and government slowly started to change. But the teachers and judges were still on the job.
Gradually, a more “Polish” government was established, and the leadership of this government, under President Lech Kacynski flew to the Katyn memorial site at Smolensk, Russia, to commemorate 70th anniversary of the massacre. But on April 10, 2010, the airplane mysteriously crashed (or blew up in mid air), and the bulk of the Polish government leadership was wiped out.
Recently, the Polish government tried to replace the Polish judicial system with Polish-first personnel rather than retaining those appointed under the communist leadership. They were warned by the European Union that they could not do this unless they were willing to abide by EU sanctions. The movement collapsed in the face of EU pressure.
In addition, the Polish government is replacing anti-communists within their government with those less inclined to stand up to what is happening in Europe today with the rule by the EU, wholesale immigration of Muslims into Europe, etc.
The battle continues in Poland by a large number of Polish citizens who are trying to organize against the inclusion of Poland back under a Soviet-style system in the EU where the citizens do not really have a say in their future but are beholden to the EU government in Brussels, Belgium.
One of the recent initiatives of one such group, Go Against the Tide, is a petition to ask President Trump to push for an investigation of the 2010 Smolensk plane crash. We heartily recommend that our readers sign this petition (see here) in the hope that such an investigation will reveal the duplicity of the Russian government and those who have helped cover up their crimes for decades.
During World War II, no country served the Allied cause better than did the Poles — and they were betrayed for it. The least we can do is to help them expose those forces that continue to work against their country, and one way to do this is to sign this petition.
Photo: djedzura/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Arthur R. Thompson is chief executive officer of The John Birch Society.
