Ordinary Germans or Poles don’t really care about returning any land back to originnal owners.
But someone obviously is stirring old nationalistic feelings in both countries,who is it?
It is USA,why? As Europe is uniting and year by year gets stronger America see in Unified Europe huge threat both economically and millitairly.
So, how America can disrupt this process? answer is very simple as I said before stirr old nationalistic feelings and VOILA you can have second Yugoslavia if it goes as planned ,and from what I see, it is going in that direction.
If that plan is fullfylld ,forget about Unified Europe for another 100 years.
So to answer OP ,young people and new generation of Germans and Poles want to live side by side in peace ,only someone with evil agenda tries to disrupt process of European Unification.
Sorry if I went off the main topic ,but I just want to shed some more light on E.European affairs.
Are you nuts? Germany won’t get East Prussia back, nor has it made stong demands for it to be returned, did you happen to miss out on your history lesson of World War Two?
Quit blaming America for all your and the worlds Ills, people can think on their own you know, without American support.
What about Silesia? Won’t anyone speak for po’ Silesia?
BTW, aren’t Prussians ethnically Slavic rather than German?
I don’t think the German government is actively asking for Prussia, but when I visited Germany a few years back I noticed a two small monuments in different cities that spoke of the ‘lost provinces’. Prussia, Silesia, etc. ONe gets the impression that they would like to have it back, but Germans asking for territory puts a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
“weren’t” would be a better term for the question. It seems the original Prussians, a Baltic people, got assimilated into the cultures of their various conquerors.
nonpolar, do you have any cite, or any proof of any kind, to support the proposition that the U.S. is acting to stir up the issue of East Prussia’s status? Or doing anything at all to interfere in the process of European unification?
So far as I know, the only thing Bush has done with respect to EU affairs is to urge the EU to admit Turkey – which would advance the process of European unification.
The nation-states of Europe will all disappear, and be replaced by the old Holy Roman Empire. No more squabbles about who owns Danzig, or whatnot.Are the old ethinc hatreds dead?
The German Government understands that asking for the lost territories would end up opening an old dispute, and as Mr. Miskatonic said, people would feel unconfortable if Germany asked for their territories (logically, due to their past experiences). As in this century the German government has became a little bit more civilized, they’d rather live peacefully amongst their neightbors instead of invading and slaughtering them, with the obvious consequence of being hated.
Of course, I do not favour unjust and evil wars of aggression to build a Germany like that. However Germany was entitled to Austria, Danzig, and Sudetenland at the least IMO to unite all Germans.
How odd, there was a German with a funny looking mustache who thought Germany was entitled to those same places.
Regarding Danzig and the plight of dispossessed East Prussians: I’m all in favor of the undoing of this shameful ethnic cleansing. All I’d ask that they do first is undo the ethnic cleansing they visited upon Poland from 1939-45. The problem there is zombies again: the Nazis murdered them.
That’s a very dangerous viewpoint. Is the Netherlands entitled to half of Belgium and a small part of France in order to unite the Dutch peoples? Or is Belgium entitled to the Netherlands for that same reason? Is Hungary entitled to much of Romania and chunks of Slovakia and Serbia? For that matter, shall Serbia gain much of Bosnia (because we know that is so popular there)? Shall Spain have Portugal (hey, they are only as distinct as the two governments decide they are)? Shall Russia annex the eastern half of Ukraine? Or, while we’re playing that game, is Britain entitled to huge parts of North America, Australia, South Africa, etc? What the hell are the criteria you use to decide which countries get to annex others?
What makes the ‘German people’ distinct from, say, the Dutch or the Danes? Why are the Austrians included, but not (most of) the Swiss? What about Liechtenstein? Are they German?
I don’t mean to be a dick, but the words ‘entitled to’ strike me as both bizarre and disturbing. I believe that you have not thought through the implications of your words.
Really… PanGermanism, PanArabism, PanSlavism, you name it… haven’t exactly led the Peoples to new dawns of happiness have they?
Saying a nation-state is “entitled” to every square yard of land that their predecessor states ever occupied in the past, or that any nation-state is “entitled” to any land where people of a particular defined ethnocultural grouping live at a given time, is a very risky proposition. Ask the Serbians how well that went.
German is a language, not a race. The German language once appeared rather far to the east, but admixed among peoples who were not German. And not all who speak German would want to live under Berlin.
No. I think new annexation/permanent occupation/ect are wrong, but currently land shouldn’t be given up. The thing is, if you decide country X should have borders more matching it’s previous ones, then what happens when countries Y and Z also start demanding that? How far back do you go? Go back far enough and you’ll be kicking out people who were born and raised on ‘their’ land in order to give to to someone who has spend 80% of their life elsewhere. Go even farther and the maps really start looking strange.
Already there are issues in Europe regarding a very significant percentage of Serbs supporting the ideology of “Greater Serbia”.
Also not to go too off topic but how has Poland’s status in the EU changed since earlier debate?
Why does the capital of East Prussia, Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) (otherwise most famous as the hometown of Immanuel Kant), belong to Russia now?! So that it forms a Russian exclave with Lithuania on one side and Poland on the other. Stalin’s call, post-WWII, I suppose. But Stalin was no Russian himself (he was a Georgian). Why didn’t he give the city to Poland or Lithuania? It would have made more sense, and the city would have remained under Soviet control in any case.
