Comments by "PeterC" (@peterc4082) on "History on YouTube" channel.

Great video. And incredibly rare to find an Englishman willing to learn the difficult pronunciation of Polish place names. Probably up there with Norman Davies.
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What would our colleague, Dr MF think, though?
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Good video. Thank you. My great grandparents had a house with an orchard in Pawlow near Radom during WW2. They had to host German military officers and themselves use the barn. My teenage grandfather refused to carry water for the Germans so my great grandfather had to do it. A junior adjutant even wanted to shoot him once but a senior officer stepped in to calm the situation down. One day apparently a German soldier went AWOL and he was found dead, killed by the Poles. Only my great grandfather remained in his house and everyone ran away. Thankfully no reprisals occurred, I suppose because he had been drunk and had left his post or such. The German officers who stayed in my great grandfather's home were later surrounded in a cauldron in a nearby forest and finished off by the Red Army. Upon their earlier departure they told my great grandmother that they had done a "great service" to Poland by committing the horrible atrocities you describe in these high quality videos.
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With the likes of AfD rising across Germany, true.
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Warsaw is not as glamorous as London, Berlin or Paris. But at least we resisted these highly civilized, industrious and organised guys who came over in '39 and tried to 'improve us'.
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@suzannenorth308 I really don't care about the American socialist vs capitalist nonsense. You guys should not impute your 'class struggles' into our Polish / central European WW2 history. You don't know anything about WW2. For you it's D-Day and Band of Brothers. For us it was heck as our homes were occupied for many years and we were oppressed by these Nazi monsters. People who think revisionism are suspect, whatever their economic points of view.
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@HistoryonYouTube Thanks. I actually live abroad in SA (Cape Town) and speak English since mid primary school, even did English First Language High Grade back in the day. Thanks for the shout-out and for the level headed presentation of your videos. Will watch and promote.
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Slavonic origin names mean little. There was much intermarriage between Poles and Germans, and Poles and French and French and Germans. Our foreign minister in 39 was a guy called Beck. That's not even a Polish surname. A big SS thug in WW2 was called Kaminski.
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@HistoryonYouTube Walesa is an embarrassment to us as Poles. The real deal was Gwiazda but he was sidelined.
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At 10:08 they are so happy, these girls. But when their brothers and husbands died on the Eastern Front, the mood changed. The farm where my Polish grandmother was taken as a slave labourer, was run by a bauer who later lost his two sons in Stalingrad. They were decent people though. My father was born in Austria. His father was an ANZAC POW who was later shot by the Germans after he said something bad about Hi1ler.
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@cleightorres3841 The problem was that the Soviets led up to a German resurgence. When the Germans attacked, the Russians aided them with naval bases, radio beacons, deliveries of food and oil. Secondly the Soviets trained up the German army, in the 1920s the Germans had a paper army and learned panzer tactics at Kama and also learned to fly Russian planes they were not allowed to own. Molotov Ribbentrop also helped Hitler and it was also an attack on Poland in terms of military. But you have to remember that the Russians would not have won the war had the Americans (and Brits) not been bombing their factories and the Russians had not been supplied with Studebakers, spam, ammo and so on. Heck even the T-34 was based on a suspension designed by the US designer Christie. And remember that Ford et al industrialised Russia, as most industrial parts of the Russian Empire were lost with the loss of Poland. My grandfather's brother, was an officer in the Polish army at the time and ended up on a train to Katyn from which he managed to escape while the train had stopped to replenish. Another relative died on day one at Westerplatte. As for the comments about Jews you have to note that many of the Jews in Poland were not influential at the time. Majority were very poor people. There were also many patriots among Jewish people in Poland and Poland had gotten by with the Jews for 100s of years. Let's not introduce Hitlerite nonsense into this. Yes I know currently some Jewish organisations attack Poles because they claim we should have done more, but what more could we have done? Many Poles lost their lives and Poland was the only country in Europe were there was a death penalty for everyone living in the house should a Jewish person be discovered. I appreciate the efforts of your ancestors. There were many ethnic or Polonised Germans who fought for Poland, for example in the Warsaw Uprising. But there were also Volksdeutsche. My grandfather would tell me that these were the worst. Because they could speak perfect Polish and could blend in and they would give away information about Polish opposition to the Germans.
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Józef Różański is another character you could produce a video on. And then there's Leszek Kolakowski who is reputed to had gone out pistol in hand with KBW units to hunt Polish anti-communist resistance (Zołnierze Wykleci/ Cursed Soldiers, people like Rotmistrz Pilecki), in the late 40s, before he had his anti-communist "conversion" and move to the West. On the subject of that, Józef Światło is yet another "gentleman" you could also document on the English YT. Thanks.
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@HistoryonYouTube Thank you. He was passing the torch to you.
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Only one indictment out of 34 led to prosecution of 4 of Dirlewanger's people. The West Germans surely went out of their way to make sure this was handled diligently or maybe not. That's what happens when your own people are not free and are captured by Russian totalitarians because had Belarus and Poland been free then all these West German SS men would have been investigated and prosecuted. You guys in the West need to thank your lucky stars you had a good life with your own people in charge of you in freedom. This kind of thing also illustrates why most of us Poles don't like the Germans very much.
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Just a point. When you initially introduced Lviv, your intro made it sound as though it was known as Lemberg before it had been known as the Polish Lwow. But Lwow (as we call it in Poland) was officially given Magdeburg rights by the Polish King Cassimir III the Great in 1356. The Germanics would come later in 1772, with Lemberg. That intro may give people the wrong idea that Lviv was German (Austrian) before it was Polish and that maybe all input into Lviv the Poles had was in the period between the world wars. Thank you.
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@HeavilyCensoredKitty Why do you think Slavic people would be in love with him? There are open Neo-Nazi organisations in Germany. In Poland maybe there are a handful of Nazis. Don't confuse the right wing for neo-Nazis, please. Heck the AfD has revisionist groups. Google some old videos from West Germany of the SS holding conventions. There are videos of British lads larping as Dutch SS divisions on YT too, British lads.
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They were much more courteous to the French, Belgians and Dutch. They didn't like the Jews and after them, they didn't like us Poles. But since Polish jokes are not uncommon in the US, maybe they knew something about us, Poles. Oh well. At the end, we made it. And despite Stalin too. And maybe now, despite Putin. Polish jokes are still common in Germany.
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@HistoryonYouTube Actually not always. If you look at what the Pilecki Institute looked at recently you'll find that the Germans know relatively little of what they did to Poles. Recently there's even less education about that. They are hyper-focused on what they did to Roma and homosexuals. They know about the Holocaust. But recent surveys show that Germans claim they can teach Poles about war and so on and most don't know much about the suffering of the Catholic Poles. If you look at history you'll find that even Bismack claimed that Poles may need a permanent solution.
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@sjb3460 You're very rude. How about you show some proof?
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@cleightorres3841 Had they won, 99% of all Poles would also have been ext-erminated. I'm sorry but don't tell me about the Germans and their ways. You guys were safe in the UK or the US.
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What lies did the Church spread? The Church gave many baptism certificates to Jewish kids. I'm sorry but this was more help than any English or American organisations at the time. When the Polish Gov In Exile presented the Holocaust the accusations were laughed out by Americans. Everything should be placed in the correct context.
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@HistoryonYouTube The problem is that Europe did not care about this war until Trump threatened to pull out of NATO or not to defend them. Please explain why American boys should fight in Europe when Europe has a larger population and more resources than the US?
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Bolek?
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I don't know why non Poles keep on repeating this sort of nonsense. Is this because you want us to waste our people while you sit in Berlin sending us first aid kits? Or is it because you misunderstand young people "sh-t talking". Poles do not want to fight anyone and we certainly don't think we would be very effective against Russian artillery or their (tactical) nuclear weapons. It's all nice to go to war like COD as a kid, but if your home town is destroyed or your women and kids are "Bucha'ed", things look different.
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@HistoryonYouTube I do understand but there are people on YT I sometimes come across who think only Austria had cultural input in Lwow. Polish and Ukrainian influences are considered backward hence I brought this up. As you may imagine the influence of Nazism is increasing on YT. And sadly people out there are ignorant. We Poles are considered uncultured clods. Maybe not by you, but by many in the Anglosphere, or at least online. Thanks for your response.
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@HeavilyCensoredKitty Croats? Hister didn't hate all Slavs. He was OK with Bulgarians, Croats, and the Slovaks. He treated the Czechs quite well too unless they resisted. I don't know why you push Slavic people when Germany has open Nasi organisations. West Germany never punished most of her Nasis. When the Germans bombed Wielun for example in Poland, the West Germans rejected the Polish requests to have the crimes of bombing of hospitals and civilians assessed. I'm sorry again, why do you speak about Slavs in this context? And you're part Slavic? What has that to do with anything? Many of the people working for the Jerries in WW2 were part Slavic, one is even mentioned in the latter part of the video, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. AfD has some pretty revisionist ideas, far more revisionist than any football troll in Poland. Also remember we have Schengen in Europe, so anyone from the Netherlands, Sweden or Germany can visit any part of Poland and attend any museum. So again, not sure about the Slavic angle. Maybe leave it out.
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@HeavilyCensoredKitty Are you a Russian troll Kitty? I just realised maybe you're hinting at the Ukrainians. My father knew many people who survived Wolyn. But let's not promote Putin talking points. Come on.
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@HistoryonYouTube Nothing political about it. My father lost his grandfather and father thanks to the Germans. My uncle died on day 1 at Westeplatte, he was a kid. We never invaded them, they came to us. No politicians. My grand dather was taking food across the border between the General Gouverment and The Reich which had been created overnight, and he was arrested and thrown in a German prison. He died of 'stomach cancer' there. There is a book about that prison, a 1/3rd of the prisoners died of stomach cancer according to German 'doctors'. My father's father was a POW who was un-alived by the Germans. As in all cases history has to be highlighted and people need to remember the past. The Germans mock us Poles at every moment they get so it's fair we remind them of their foray into our country in the 40s. Thank you.
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@HistoryonYouTube Why do you say they are patently 'absurd'? Serious researchers have claimed this. Remember, Poland never underwent decommunisation. Things were simply swept under the table. Poland should have had a TRC like South Africa had.
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@ImaginationUser Are you saying everyone was coerced? And the UB themselves were coerced too? It was easy not to join the PZPR my friend, it only limited your career choices and prevented advances beyond a certain position. My parents avoided joining the PZPR and those were career limiting moves but I know people and even had relatives who did join and benefited from that.
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People of Europe had it different under the Hitlerites. People like me were to be ultimately put out of existence. People like you, were Aryan, I suspect.
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@dougieranger I hope this channel gets similar numbers.
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@HistoryonYouTube Yes, maybe but a Germanic name nethertheless. The famous Polish chocolatier Wedel who sided with the Poles was of German origin.
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@HistoryonYouTube Some others: Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer, Ignacy Boerner, Władysław Anders, Jan Schuch.
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