DISINFO: Poland is rewriting history of Second World War
SUMMARY
Poland has been revising that devastating conflict’s history for quite some time, seeking to shun any responsibility relating to events during that period, while presenting itself as a victim of both Nazi and Soviet aggression and occupation.
Warsaw has been removing monuments to Soviet soldiers who died while liberating the city from Nazi Germany occupation, and also initiated an EU Parliament resolution in September, which claims that the 1939 non-aggression pact between Moscow and Berlin had “paved the way for the outbreak of the Second World War.”
This last move did not sit well with Moscow, which labeled it a falsification of history. Putin himself eventually joined the heated debate between the two nations, when he called Jozef Lipski, the Polish ambassador to Berlin from 1934 to 1939, “a bastard and an anti-Semitic pig.”
The Russian president referred to the fact that the envoy had promised Adolf Hitler that Poles would “erect for him a beautiful monument in Warsaw” if he expelled all European Jews to Africa. Warsaw took offense to Putin’s remarks, though no one disputed Lipski’s words, which have long been known to the public.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative professing the unimpeachability of Soviet decision-making before and during the Second World War; minimizing the role of the 1939-41 Nazi-Soviet alliance in provoking conflict; and accusing Poland of historical revisionism.
The Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939 is an objective fact, not an exercise in revisionism. This two-sided aggression was waged in accordance with the provisions of the Nazi-Soviet pact, which entitled the Third Reich and the USSR to clearly defined spheres of influence in a series of secret protocols.
The European Parliament resolution in question stresses the fact that WWII was an immediate result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It aims to promote historical remembrance of the Second World War, and is supported by broad consensus on the causes of its outbreak.
Putin's remarks about Lipski have indeed been disputed, not least by Poland's chief rabbi Michael Schudrich who has called them "scandalous" and "taken totally out of context." See here for our full disproof concerning Lipski's stance on Hitler and the European Jewry.