As between Germany and Poland the settlement is just enough. The Germans were responsible for the death of some eight million Polish citizens. They killed 700,000 in Warsaw alone. Poland had a higher percentage of human losses than any other participant in World War II. The Germans did their best to murder the Polish nation and to enslave the remnant permanently. They used every device of sadistic cruelty to torture and degrade the Polish people. The Dark Side of the Moon, the Polish book of horrors in Russia, is a record of much heartlessness and inhumanity, of callousness to suffering and ruthless exaction of labor, but it contains little of deliberate, sadistic cruelty. Odd Nansen, the son of Fridtjof Nansen, has left a full record of his eternity spent in German prisons, including Sachsenhausen, in his diary From Day to Day.^55^ It contains many instances of “the purest sadism, of a craving for the sight of pain, the display of power, the exercise of hate.”^56^ I do not find in The Dark Side of the Moon any such record of calculated bestiality and deliberate depravity. It was left to the Germans to exterminate races in wholesale fashion, including multitudes of little children, by starvation, cremation and other methods, after suffering every kind of indignity.^57^
Polish industry was wrecked, her soils, forests and livestock gravely depleted, her transportation system ruined “beyond belief”; her schools, public buildings of every kind, private dwellings and business houses were damaged beyond use in huge numbers. If ever a people deserved restitution at the hands of their destroyers, it was the Poles.

Ibid., chapter IX

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It's heartbreaking to read.

[–] Edie@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

How do I get libs to read this fucking tankie.

There was general agreement that a most remarkable national revival began in Poland during the first three years after Germany’s defeat. In the summer of 1948 John Gunther visited Warsaw and was astonished at what he saw. He reported the “massive energy and zip” the Poles had put into the rebuilding of Warsaw. He spoke of “electric animation and effervescence.” Warsaw was the liveliest capital in Europe. Food was cheap, good and plentiful. The people were rebuilding the city almost entirely with hand tools, with very few of the great machines we use so plentifully, but every Pole he met was “almost bursting with hope.”
This was by no means due solely to the character of the Government. Indeed, most Poles hated Russia. He did not see in Warsaw a single Red flag, a photograph of Stalin or a Russian soldier. There were few signs of overt pressure on the people. An American who bitterly hated the regime told him that there was no arbitrary use of the police power, no concentration camps or terrorism. The Poles were building for the future. They did not expect another war to tear down their city again.

Ibid.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago

Sadly, I find book recommendations usually work better for leftists than libs. I wonder why...