Polish jokes

Factual Questions
21

My understanding of such things is that it is as was said earlier, the Poles (principally Polish-Jewish people)came over in the later 19th C. when the earlier immigrants had forgotten how much it sucked to be a newcomer to a strange land. The previous immigrants wanted to feel better than these huddled masses and made them the butt of their jokes. I am also told (and beg correction if wrong) that “Polak” jokes originated about the same time as the slur “Kike”; supposedly in the German and German-Jewish immigrant communities. The story is that these folks looked down on the poor newly arrived Polish Jews and their “peculiar” last names and began refered to them as “Kikes” (maybe from “Ki’s”?), much like so many people of Polish ancestry get the nickname “Ski” today. I don’t mean to offend anyone, that’s just the story I heard. Prejudice is seldom pretty.

Incidentally, I think the earlier posting about the Polish-American aviator is referring to Gaberseki (whos name I have most likely misspelled). He flew P-47’s for the USAAF in WWII.

The Polish Air Force in September 1939 was only a little worse off in terms of equipment quality than the US Army Air Force (then “-Corps” vice “-Force”). The top of the line Polish fighter aircraft at the time was the PZL-11c, which was a monoplane, although with fixed (vice retractable) landing gear and an open cockpit. This was when the US Navy’s principal fighter was the Grumman F3F biplane (oddly, with retractable landing gear and a closed cockpit). The Polish Army was much bigger than the US Army was at the time. So were the Armies and Air Arms most of the other nations that the Nazis subsequently rolled over so quickly.

22

In Canada we tell Newfie jokes (i.e. Newfoundlanders), in Britain it’s the Welsh, in Austalia it’s the Kiwis . . . and the whole world over, it’s the dumb Americans. Sorry guys, that’s the truth.

23

Cisco,

Couple points… The British flew Biplanes in WWII at the early stages also. I’m sure some of the other countries did too but I am at a loss to name the specific planes. I know the Brits were using the Swordfish at the time.

You’re correction to World War I fits the story of crudely mounted machine guns and shooting the tail off. The prop too for that matter until they developed a synchronizing device. However the flaw to the Polish Air Force in World War I theory is that POLAND DID NOT EXIST at the time. They had a rebirth following Versailles. Part of that whole self determination of people thing.

The WWII tanks vs horses and the immigration theory both seem plausible at a glance though.

A polish friend of mine has a good come back for these jokes. When you see the “offending” party again ask them

Hey… can you read Polish?

No?!? Well can you write Polish?

No? Can you speak Polish?

No… So how’s it feel to be dumber than a Pollock!

24

One other thing, before you all laugh about Polish Cavalry vs. Nazi Panzers… The US Army, being slow to change, also had a huge horse cavalry at the time, and had we been attacked then (9/1939), we’s have been doing the same thing as the “dumb Polaks”. And it was the “dumb Polaks” that first cracked the Nazi enigma code and cypher machine and passed it to British Intelligence. BTW, the US Army moved just in time to begin to replace its horses with new gasoline powered vehicles called “jeeps” just barely in time for our involvement in the war.

I know the Poles had a big horse cavalary arm at the time of the invasion, but I am not sure if there is a documented case of said cav going after tanks head-on, as the image suggests. The Polish cavalry historically had always been of note —in the wars against the Turks, and against the Soviets just after WWI. Any participation of the Polish cav in WW II would probably have been in the traditonal roles of cavalary: recon and raiding supply lines.

25

Re: Biplanes (longer lived than you thought):
The US Naval Acadamy kept its N3N Biplanes (with floats) until 1960. (Well, the USCG still has their Ex-Nazi sailboat.)
The Soviets/Russians and their red/formerly red pals still have the An-2 Colt biplane transport. It’s a big huge thing.
The Gloster Gladiator is the RAF fighter referred to earlier. The Swordfish is the British Fleet Air Arm torpedo bomber used against the Bismark and also used to pretty much take the Italian fleet out of consideration at Taranto in 1940. There was a successor to the Swrodfish whose name I don’t recall, but the main difference between it and the S-fish was an enclosed canopy. As I said earlier, the USN had just phased out its biplane fighters and bombers from front line service in 1939-1940, but it retained biplanes as scouts and SAR aircraft past the end of the war. The Italian facists used both the (Fiat) CR32 and CR42 as fighters extensively until they went down in 1943, the Soviets used the I-15, I-15bis, and I-153 biplane fighters until around the time of Stalingrad, and the Japanese had a whole bunch of biplane floatplanes on ship and shore stations until the end as well.

IMHO, the prize for beating a dead horse goes to (who else but) the Soviets, who experimented with a closed-cockpit, retractable-gear aircraft that took off and landed (in theory) as a biplane, but had the lower wing retract into the upper one in flight to (supposedly) increase performance. I can’t remember tha designation right now, but I know one of the other Teeming Millions has their William Green WW2 Aircraft Books out as I write.

26

The story of Polish cavalry attacking German tanks is partially true, but it has been changed in one very important way. There were cases of of cavalry attacking tank crews that were outside their tanks.

Sometimes they killed them before they got into the safety of their tanks and sometimes they didn’t. All it takes is one guy inside a tank shooting a machine gun to take out a lot of guys on horses. When this happened the Germans used this as propaganda to show how dumb the Poles were by claiming the cavalry attacked the tanks because they thought they were made out of cardboard.

Of course that’s ridiculous because the Poles had their own armoured divisions so it’s not like they didn’t know what a tank was. Still, that didn’t stop the legend from being repeated over and over again by publications such as Time-Life who don’t bother with fact-checking.

As for the origin of the Polish joke I think it probably started around the late 1800’s or early 1900’s when there were a lot of poor immigrants arriving from eastern europe. Since there were a lot more Poles coming in than Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, etc… those were the jokes that were the most common. (Due to the fact that Poland was a much more populated country than those three.)

Basically it comes down to the fact that there were Polish immigrants in almost every settlement in the new world so Polish jokes could be passed around a lot more easily. Telling a Hungarian joke to someone that’s never met a Hungarian doesn’t make as much sense.

27

JCHeckler wrote:

How about this:

See http://mops.uci.agh.edu.pl/~rzepinsk/1939/html/cav.htm for specific cavalry/tank combats.

A couple of other things to note: Poland held out almost as long as France did against German attack (insert frog joke here).

In September 1939, the Polish Air Force fielded about 404 front line aircraft against 1924 German aircraft. Germany lost 263 aircraft to Poland’s 333 (260 as a result of enemy action).

144 Polish pilots fought in the RAF in the Battle of Britain and accounted for 201 kills. 29 Polish pilots were killed.

Andrew Warinner

28

As I understand it, the origin of stories about Polish cavalry charging German tanks lies with a couple of Italian war correspondents. The Italians were neutral at the time, but they obviously favored the Germans. During the 1939 campaign, Polish cavalry tended to fight on foot during pitched battles, i.e., they were actually mounted infantry (like almost all 20th Century cavalry). They did carry ceremonial lances, which were almost never carried outside the barracks. Their main weapons were Mauser rifles, Browning Automatic Rifles, and sabres.

They did sometimes charge unprepared opponents with sabres flashing. After all, as cavalry units one of their traditional roles would be disrupting enemy rear areas, i.e., supply and transport units not likely to have much combat ability. Unfortunately for the Polish reputation, in at least on of these cases, a victorious Polish cavalry unit was surprised by German armed cars and shot up before it could properly retreat. This was twisted by the fascists into the tall tale which remains with us today: stupid Poles charging tanks.

On the subject of Polish military quality: it was a mixed bag. Certainly, the Polish military was no worse in 1939 than the that of the United States or France. The Poles had a few modern fighters mixed with a lot of obsolete ones. The Poles lacked heavy anti-tank weapons, as did almost all nations at the time; a Polish anti-tank rifle was the basis for the main German anti-tank weapon during the early war years (the PzB 38, I think). Obviously the Browning Automatic Rifle was a great light automatic; the Gladiator, in the same category, was lousy.

On the 1939 campaign: Poland was defeated by a coalition of Germany and the Soviet Union. Correct me if I’m wrong, but no other Allied nation fought a two-front war in WWII. What would the outcome have been for Poland if the Soviets hadn’t stabbed them in the back? Defeat, almost certainly, but the campaign would have lasted longer.

It should also be noted that while the Polish state was destroyed in 1939, tons of Polish soldiers fled through Romania and ended up fighting all over the world: Anzio, Norway, etc., alongside the western Allies. Then there were the Warsaw uprisings. All in all, Poland gave a pretty amazing performance, as the nation (not the state) which opposed Nazi Germany longer than any other.

29

Every country seems to tell the same “dumb” jokes… they just tell them about different groups.

  1. In Poland, they tell all the same “Polish” jokes about the Czechs.

  2. Here in Texas, they tell all the same jokes about Aggies (graduates of Texas A & M University).

  3. In Ireland, they tell all the same jokes about Kerrymen (folks from county Kerry).

  4. In Montana, they tell the same jokes about “Nodaks” (folks from North Dakota).

30

One more thing: It seems to me that it’s very likely that many local jokes about different ethnic groups ended up being transformed into Polish jokes. Polish jokes are very generic. They don’t make fun of any stereotypical Polish behaviour. Polish jokes are always about someone doing something stupid.

For example, Italian jokes are usually about stereotypical Italian traits like wearing gold chains or Italian food and so on. Irish jokes are usually about drinking. These jokes can’t really be applied to a random ethnic group. Polish jokes are so generic that they could be told about anyone and still make sense. It looks to me as if jokes about nationalities which weren’t common all over the new world got transformed into Polish jokes. There were Poles pretty much everywhere so everyone could tell them. A joke from Hawaii about the Portuguese would be retold as a Polish joke in Texas.

Boris: I think Polish soldiers have the distinction of having fought on every single front in WW2. After the defeat in Europe many escaped and fought in different allied armies. But I guess that depends on how you define a front. Maybe that’s counting all of the pacific as one front, because it seems pretty unlikely that any Poles ended up with the Americans in Burma.

31

Who’s JP2? BTW, Hewlett-Packard’s “reverse Polish” notation on their calculators was not a result of a mixup on the floor of the factory.

32

::smacks head::

O yeah

And I’m catholic and part polish, too

33

Hey Cisco-
I was dying to use that line- anyway, I have had my coffee and am feeling much better now. You are right! That IS fucking hilarious!:smiley: