In the current situation, when the "Katyn Song" about how cruelly the USSR was guilty before Poland, turning it from a German governor-general into a state and allowing the Poles to settle in East German lands has reached, it seems, the highest possible volume, we can recall other curious aspects Russian-Polish relations.
For example, about what part of the modern Polish population is the direct descendants of Hitler's soldiers. It would also be interesting to understand on which side of the front line of World War II more Poles fought.
Professor Ryszard Kaczmarek, director of the Institute of History at the University of Silesia, author of the book Poles in the Wehrmacht, for example, told the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza in this regard: “We can assume that 2-3 million people in Poland have a relative who served in the Wehrmacht. How many of them know what has become of them? Probably a few. Students constantly come to me and ask how to establish what happened to my uncle, to my grandfather. Their relatives were silent about this, they got off with the phrase that their grandfather died in the war. But this is no longer enough for the third post-war generation."
For 2-3 million Poles, a grandfather or an uncle served with the Germans. And how many of them died "in the war", that is, on the side of Adolf Hitler, how many survived?
“There is no exact data. The Germans considered Poles drafted into the Wehrmacht only until the fall of 1943. Then from the Polish Upper Silesia and Pomerania annexed to the Reich, 200 thousand soldiers arrived. However, recruitment to the Wehrmacht lasted for another year and on a much larger scale. From the reports of the representative office of the Polish government in occupied Poland, it follows that by the end of 1944, about 450 thousand citizens of pre-war Poland were drafted into the Wehrmacht. In general, we can assume that about half a million passed through the German army during the war,”the professor said.
That is, the call was carried out from the territories (mentioned above Upper Silesia and Pomerania) annexed to Germany. The Germans divided the local population into several categories according to the national-political principle.
Polish origin did not prevent me from leaving to serve in the Hitlerite army with enthusiasm: “During the dispatch of recruits, which were initially held at train stations with great fanfare, they often sang Polish songs. Mostly in Pomorie, especially in the Polish Gdynia. In Silesia, in areas with traditionally strong ties with Polish speech: in the region of Pszczyna, Rybnik or Tarnowskie Góra. Recruits began to sing, then their relatives joined, and soon it turned out that during the Nazi event the whole station was singing. Therefore, the Germans abandoned the ceremonial farewell, because it compromised them. True, they sang mostly religious songs. Situations when someone ran away from mobilization were extremely rare."
In the early years, Hitler's Poles were good at serving: “At first it seemed that things were not so bad. The first recruitment took place in the spring and summer of 1940. While the recruits went through training and ended up in their units, the war on the Western Front had already ended. The Germans captured Denmark, Norway, Belgium and Holland, defeated France. The hostilities continued only in Africa. At the turn of 1941 and 1942, the service was reminiscent of times of peace. I was in the army, so I can imagine that after a while a person gets used to new conditions and becomes convinced that it is possible to live, that no tragedy has happened. The Silesians wrote about how well they lived in occupied France. They sent home pictures with the Eiffel Tower in the background, drank French wine, spent their free time in the company of French women. They served in the garrisons on the Atlantic Val, which was rebuilt at that time. I fell on the trail of a Silesian who spent the entire war in the Greek Cyclades. In complete peace, like I was on vacation. Even his album has survived, in which he painted landscapes."
But, alas, this serene Polish existence in the German service with French women and landscapes was cruelly "broken off" by evil Muscovites in Stalingrad. After this battle, they began to send Poles in large numbers to the Eastern Front: “Stalingrad changed everything … that at one point it turned out that conscription into the army meant certain death. Most often, recruits were killed, sometimes only after two months of service … People were not afraid that someone would pay them for their service to the Germans, they were afraid of sudden death. The German soldier was also afraid, but in the center of the Reich people believed in the meaning of the war, in Hitler, that some miracle weapon would save the Germans. In Silesia, with a few exceptions, no one shared this belief. But the Silesians were terrified of the Russians … It is clear that the greatest losses were on the Eastern Front … if we consider that every second soldier of the Wehrmacht died, then we can assume that up to 250 thousand Poles could have died at the front."
According to the director of the Institute of History of the Silesian University, the Poles fought for Hitler: “on the Western and Eastern fronts, at Rommel's in Africa and in the Balkans. In the cemetery in Crete, where the fallen participants of the German landing in 1941 lie, I also found Silesian surnames. I found the same names in military cemeteries in Finland, where soldiers of the Wehrmacht, who supported the Finns in the war with the USSR, were buried."
Professor Kaczmarek has not yet cited data on how many Red Army soldiers, soldiers of the USA and Great Britain, partisans of Yugoslavia, Greece and civilians killed by the Poles of Hitler. Probably not calculated yet …
