Betrayal

Discussion in 'Poland' started by Polish_Street_Soldier, Jun 26, 2004.

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  1. Neil B

    Neil B Member

    No 9,
    You're getting more reasonable by the minute!
    But if it's just a case of semantics why the broad generalisations and attempts to take away from the Polish contribution? Honestly if your post above was your original post I don't think anyone would have commented.
    I would say though that Poland's fate under the Soviet occupation was a bit harsher than a friend not showing up to help you out.
    I'd rather not have to comment on this again.
    Take care & God Bless,
    Neil :closedeyes:
     
  2. laufer

    laufer Senior Member

    There is one point on which I can agree with No.9 - 'betreyal' is not the best word in a historical context of this subject.
    It doesn't change the fact that some of his opinion are untrue or oversimplified. For example: "On the other hand, the guerrillas, or Partisans, who lived and operated in the field were, as said, were mostly uncoordinated and fragmented and resisted attempts to establish cohesive order and control. They were politically divided and did squander meagre resources (only about 10% were armed) fighting among themselves. The Communist Partisans generally accepted Polish Jews while others generally rejected and/or persecuted them which was found to be a similar practice among the populous. Homesteads and villages were often as terrified of the ‘Partisans’ as they were of the Germans as their meagre homes were raided equally brutally by either. Militarily their accomplishments were of minor significance, especially when compared to the achievements of the major Partisan forces operating in Russia, Yugoslavia and Italy." Yeah! Especially in Italy!
    I'm afraid to ask where did he read it becouse it looks so familiar to me.

    There you can find some basic facts:
    http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/19%20Article.htm
    http://www.polishresistance-ak.org/2%20Article.htm
     
  3. Rebel

    Rebel Junior Member

    Umm, Poland was not betrayed, What should we have done, start WW3???

    I applaud all Polish bravery in WW2.
     
  4. No9,

    What do you mean by 'one of us'?

    Lloyd-George went out of his way after the war to distance Britian from Poland and even France was often distanced from them. Some of this was because of Polands foriegn policies and some because it suited them to be distant (France and Britian that is).

    Poland was not happy about the borders it had and rightly did not think that Germany would accept the boundries settled on by either the sword or the pen. they were proved right in the long term. Poland wanted what most countires want in the long run its land that they percieve to be rightfully theres. the problems arise that time means that land is often 'owned' by two or three nations. The Falklands and Gibraltor come to mind!

    Teschen was a point in fact. Benes the Czech PM did a great job of out manouvering Poland in the early 1920s and gained this area. It had a heavy population of Poles and more importantly mines and resources. The fact that poland lost this land, if lost can be used seeing as it was centuries since they had it,ranckled with them for twenty years and when the time came they took it back. Justified in their eyes but not in many, I would perhaps have to agree.

    Poland did much in twenty years to p**s off not only its neighbours but the european nations. So maybe they were not one of us.

    Accept when a country has a treaty then i seem to think that it should be honour bound to comply to it. Call me old fashioned if you are not going to honour an agreement then do not sign it. We all have skeletons in our cupboards as an Englishamn with no polish connection I can say I am proud to be English yet at the same time i can see that much we have done has had a diverse effect on the world.

    Given a choice I would have rather had the Poles on our side than not during the War, to me that is them being one of us. one of a great many men who fought.

    IMHO Poland played a part of a whole in winning the war, the same as Britian did but could not have done so without the contribution played by America and especaillly Russia. It is fair to say that if Poles had not fought in WW2 then the outcome would have been the same where without America and Russia it would cetainly have been a different matter.

    Accept I have to say that had Britian not had the help of the Enigma machine etc then it would have been a different matter. Without this would we have been able to react as quick as we were able i think not.

    hope this makes sense but is probably a ramble.
    Arm.
     
  5. smc66

    smc66 Member

    On the subject of the Enigma I think you'll find that Hinsley's official History of Intelligence agrees that the Poles had a part to play in the eventual cracking of the codes. Hinsley also notes that intelligence gathering is often one of teamwork and often a result of using information gathered all over the pace. No 9's history is correct to a point but omits the fact that in 1932 a German Enigma machine was accidentally posted over the German border. The Poles dismantled, reassembled and copied pans for this machine in the space of 24 hours. From this information they were able to construct their bombas. Consequently up to 1939 the Poles had the lead on cracking coded messages due in part to Polish mathematical skill and German laziness in setting codes. It was only when the Germans increased the number of wheels that the Poles could no longer crack the codes by Mathematics alone. It was during the summer of 1939 that the Poles turned everything they knew over to the French and British who at that point, according to Hinsley, had got nowhere with it.

    One other point, secure codes are reliant on vigilant setters, regular changes and sensible precautions. Many of the Enigma codes were broken because the Germans were lulled into a false sense of security regarding its fallibility. Many codes were cracked due to the laziness of the operator setting the code, the army in particular was prone to this. However, some sections of the German armed forces did maintain rigid discipline over the setting and changing of codes and remained uncracked over the duration of the war. I think the luftwaffe's remained uncracked throughout and the Kriegsmarine until the capture of a code book from a U Boat. It is a myth that Bletchley Park broke all the codes.

    The breaking of the Enigma takes in a German who spent too much money on women selling codes, an incompetent German postman, a team of Polish mathematicians, the French and from 1939 the British. Each side added extra intelligence to that already gained which eventually led to the activities at Bletchley Park. No one side can claim the moral highground on its discovery.
     
  6. morse1001

    morse1001 Very Senior Member

    Consequently up to 1939 the Poles had the lead on cracking coded messages due in part to Polish mathematical skill and German laziness in setting codes. It was only when the Germans increased the number of wheels that the Poles could no longer crack the codes by Mathematics alone. It was during the summer of 1939 that the Poles turned everything they knew over to the French and British who at that point, according to Hinsley, had got nowhere with it.


    Rather than just the addition of the two rotors, there was the earlier move of changing the [/I]Grundstellung[/U] or the basic setting of the machine. the polish respose was to devise both the Bombe and perforated sheets.


    I think the luftwaffe's remained uncracked throughout and the Kriegsmarine until the capture of a code book from a U Boat. It is a myth that Bletchley Park broke all the codes.


    "In the first half of 1938 the Polish Cipher Department reached the height of its achievements. Only naval ciphers still caused trouble, since they used five rotors on their Enigmas, while Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe traffic was being read almost daily and very rapidly" Garlinski Jozef., Intercept - Secrets of the Enigma War, london, Dent, 1979 P35

    in addition, Bletchly Park began on 21st May 1940 to crack on a daliy basis the Luftwaffe "Red" code which provided valuable information to Fighter command during the Battle of Britian.

    it is sad to think that the polish cryptoanalyists were not allowed to work on Enigma at bletchly park as they were considered to be security risk!!!
     
  7. smc66

    smc66 Member

    Thank you Morse for clearing that up, I posted that off the top of my head and couldn't remember exactly which part of the armed forces remained hard to crack.
     
  8. sapper

    sapper WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Betrayal? You are joking? We went to war in support of Poland and Danzig, tens of thousands of our young men died. This country did all we could in support.

    The fact that we were not able to restore Poland to its original state is hardly Britains fault, In 1945 if we had fought the Russians for Polands freedom, that country would have been reduced to rubble, and would be in the center of a hundred year war.

    Poland got her freedom in the end. Though it took a long time.
    Consider this? What if we had tried to drive the Russians out of Poland? The country you see to day would not exist, the population would have long been killed off, as the war rolled backward and forward with no pity over that layed waste country. In the end Poland had resurfaced better than could have been expected.
    Sapper
     
  9. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    The real reason why the Enigma machine became an "open secret" is of its origin.The machine was brought out in 1919 as a commercial unit and to protect it ,it was patented.By the fact it was patented led to its design and specification being available to the public eye.

    The machine was used at the time by banks in the field of commerce.The Weimar Republic adopted it for use in the German Navy in 1926,the German Army in 1928 and finally the Nazis introduced it to the Luftwaffe when it's existence was revealed, in 1935. The Reichbahn also used it extensively and its use was extended to the Gestapo and SD as they became powerful departments of the interior.

    The involvement of the Polish Secret Service is well known and their ability to break the German ciphers through their prototype Bombe.However the work of keeping up with cipher development was lost to the Poles when Poland fell to the Germans from the west and three weeks later,the Russians from the East. Fortunately Britsh Itelligence at Bletchley Park had been given help by the Poles shortly before the fall of Poland.

    It was left to a team of mathematicians led by Max Newman and Alan Turing to develop the electro mechanical Bombe further to try and break the German codes.The British Bombe that Newman and Turing commissioned was 15 times more powerful than the Polish Bombe and this proved to be sufficient to keep pace with German codes. A breakthrough was achieved early on when slack use and indiscipline of Luftwaffe operators with the Enigma machine led to the breaking of the Luftwaffe codes.German operators always tended to transmit "dry runs" when new codes were introduced and usually committed errors which were soon used to "open the door".Apart from the Luftwaffe ciphers other ciphers could only be broken after the appropriate code books had been captured.The Gestapo and SD codes remained intact at the war's end.

    The problem with breaking codes was that with revealed intelligence there were times when there was a danger that intelligence would be of little use when events had overtaken it.To bring it up to as near real time as possible,Bletchley Park developed the first operational digital computer,the Colossus which was able to deal with the morse ciphers.Non morse ciphers were also broken but this work took longer( termed Fish information),again with the aid of Colossus.

    Bletchley Park started the war with a staff of less than 200,by the end of the war,the staff had risen to 7000.The Bletchley day started at 0001 hrs and by breakfast that day the majority of the previous day intercepts had been broken and were available for investigation.At its peak 30000-90000 Enigma and Fish decrypts a month were being handled by its staff. This was a tremendous achievement especially when there could be 30 Enigma machines and 5 Fish machines operating simultaneously.

    Germany,Italy and Japan were unaware of the British success although the Italians suspected a failure of security and advised the Germans to have an inquiry.

    I have not seen a reference to Polish code breakers being excluded from work at Bletchley Park.
     
  10. sappernz

    sappernz Member

    Poland was probably" betrayed" as were New Zealand and Australia.
    Churchill lied to us as he did about Singapore.
    We can repeat ad nauseum the quote that the first casulalty of war is the truth, or Churchills famous comment that the truth is so important it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies.
    What must be remembered above all else is that if Britain had fallen then there would be no talk of Poland, or any other country being betrayed.
    While it may sound harsh, is it not better that some are betrayed that millions more are liberated.
    And I do not mean any disrespect to the bravery of the Poles.
     
  11. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

     
  12. morse1001

    morse1001 Very Senior Member

    The real reason why the Enigma machine became an "open secret" is of its origin.The machine was brought out in 1919 as a commercial unit and to protect it ,it was patented.By the fact it was patented led to its design and specification being available to the public eye.

    What was brought out in 1919 was the "secret writer" which was invented by Dutchman Hugo Alexander Koch, who like every other inventor patented his invention in order to protect it.

    However, it was a German engineer Arthur Scherbius who modified the basic ideas of Koch and also invented the "reversing" or reflector rotor. Scherbius produced the first "enigma" machine in 1923.


    The machine was used at the time by banks in the field of commerce.The Weimar Republic adopted it for use in the German Navy in 1926,the German Army in 1928 and finally the Nazis introduced it to the Luftwaffe when it's existence was revealed, in 1935. The Reichbahn also used it extensively and its use was extended to the Gestapo and SD as they became powerful departments of the interior.

    “During the following few years the machine went through several stages of development and several fundamental changes were made as a result of the purchase of Hugo Koch's patent. Koch himself had been stricken by a mortal illness.20 The company started an extensive advertising campaign in the hope that the machine would interest large firms and that they would start to buy it for commercial purposes. It did not, however, meet with success: those were the years in which industry was still unwilling to incur the considerable costs connected with preserving trade secrets.”
    Garlinski Jozef., Intercept - Secrets of the Enigma War, London, Dent, 1979 P9

    The Reichbahn started using the enigma when Germany went to war.

    It was left to a team of mathematicians led by Max Newman and Alan Turing to develop the electro mechanical Bombe further to try and break the German codes.

    It was Alan Turing who drew up the specifications of the britsh bombe 1939.


    The Gestapo and SD codes remained intact at the war's end.


    “But the Polish mathematicians had managed one final triumph before being stymied. The SD, Reinhard Heydrich's "Security Service," which had begun as an intelligence branch of the SS but which expanded to become, like the Gestapo, an organ of internal repression with a network of a hun¬dred thousand or more informers, used the Enigma for its own coded mes¬sages. In a remarkable lapse of security, the SD continued to use the old indicator procedure even after September 15,1938, and, more important, even after December 15, when the two new rotors were introduced. It was another incredibly lucky break, for it meant that Rejewski's tried and true methods for recovering rotor wirings would still work for the traffic on that one network.” Budiansky, Stephen., Battle of Wits- The complete story of codebreaking in World War II, Penquin, London, 2001, P110

    Apart from the Luftwaffe ciphers other ciphers could only be broken after the appropriate code books had been captured.

    Firstly may I point out that there is a fundamental difference between codes and ciphers. That aside, please see the above quote which gives an example of the cracking of a machine cipher without the need to capture a code book.


    Park developed the first operational digital computer,the Colossus which was able to deal with the morse ciphers.Non morse ciphers were also broken but this work took longer( termed Fish information),again with the aid of Colossus.


    “The great Cryptanalyst, John Tiltman broke the first Fish messages at Bletchley in 1941 using hand-methods that relied on statistical analysis,” http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/page.cfm?pageid=206

    “”The immediate problem for GC&CS was to recover the sequence of five-bit additives used to mask the plain text characters, and here the ubiquitous talents of John Hitman again came to the fore. On August 30,1941, a Ger¬man operator sent a four-thousand-character-long message. His recipient did not receive it properly and asked it to be resent. The operator then sent it again, using exactly the same wheel starting position, but abbreviating the first word, Spruchnummer—"message number," This was a fabulous piece of depth. Subtracting the two streams of cipher text from one another stripped the additive out of the equation entirely, producing a stream of five-bit groups that was the difference of two plain-text messages. Tiltman set to work on it, guessing at words as needed, and discovering that they were indeed simply the same text shifted a few characters over from one an¬other. Subtracting the recovered plain text from the original cipher text then yielded a four-thousand-character-long key sequence.”” Budiansky, Stephen., Battle of Wits- The complete story of codebreaking in World War II, Penquin, London, 2001, P313



    Park developed the first operational digital computer,the Colossus which was able to deal with the morse ciphers.Non morse ciphers were also broken but this work took longer( termed Fish information),again with the aid of Colossus.


    “”The first machine designed to break the Lorenz was built at the Post Office research department at Dollis Hill and called ‘Heath Robinson’ after the cartoonist designer of fantastic machines. Although Heath Robinson worked well enough to show that Max Newman’s concepts were correct, it was slow and unreliable.

    Max Newman called in the help of Tommy Flowers, a brilliant Post Office Electronics Engineer. Flowers went on to design and build ‘Colossus’, a much faster and more reliable machine that used 1,500 thermionic values (vacuum tubes). The first Colossus machine arrived at Bletchley in December 1943. This was the world’s first practical electronic digital information processing machine – a forerunner of today’s computers.””
    http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/page.cfm?pageid=206



    5 Fish machines operating simultaneously.


    There were eventually 10 working Colossus machines at Bletchely Park.
    http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/page.cfm?pageid=206

    Germany,Italy and Japan were unaware of the British success although the Italians suspected a failure of security and advised the Germans to have an inquiry.


    IN 1943, the kriegsmarine carried out a inquiry into its comms security.

    I have not seen a reference to Polish code breakers being excluded from work at Bletchley Park.

    They were all sent to work on SS and police handcyphers and kept away for BP.

    As for references, it would be interesting to see the sources that you checked
     
  13. laufer

    laufer Senior Member

    Betrayal? You are joking? We went to war in support of Poland and Danzig, tens of thousands of our young men died. This country did all we could in support.


    You mean, there were no other reasons for smashing the nazis? :unsure:
    It is possible that without western promises Poland would have made some compromise with Hitler. War might have been less destructive for us then. The end could be the same of course.


    The fact that we were not able to restore Poland to its original state is hardly Britains fault, In 1945 if we had fought the Russians for Polands freedom, that country would have been reduced to rubble, and would be in the center of a hundred year war.

    I agree that Britain was unable to change the fate of Poland in 1940s, but when some of us use words like ‘betrayal’ we think about beginnings of the war rather than its end. And also some absolutely unnecessary incidents in our relations after 1939.

    Consider this? What if we had tried to drive the Russians out of Poland? The country you see to day would not exist, the population would have long been killed off, as the war rolled backward and forward with no pity over that layed waste country. In the end Poland had resurfaced better than could have been expected.

    Did you mean the devastations that might have been caused by British bombers? ;)
    Poland and former German territories we've got after the war were wastelands anyway.

    regards
     
  14. Friedrich H

    Friedrich H Senior Member

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  15. Neil B

    Neil B Member

    Fascinating, Freidrich. If Britain and France were incapable of providing an offensive in the West, then why promise Poland they could in August 1939?
    Poland's decision to fight in 1939 was based on Anglo-French Guarantees.
    Are you saying that Britain had no idea of her own offensive capability when these guarantees were made. Please keep in mind the Soviet assault in the East was not launched until it was clear there would be no ANglo-French attack in the West.
    True Poland acted in her own interests between the wars but this was not towards countries who Poland has chose to Ally herself with and guarantee their frontiers. Therein lies the difference.
    In regards to the Warsaw Uprising, the Red Army broadcast it's intentions to unite with the Home Army and called for an Uprising. The Home Army launched it's Uprising, the Red Army did not make an attempt to liberate Warsaw, the Home Army was crushed.

    Do you honestly consider the people's republic to be a Polish manifestation? Were the victims of the Soviet class-based exterminations and deportations any less victims than those of the Nazies.
    I do find it fascinating that the Poles contributions have been belittled here and their civilian casualties mocked but a moderator choses to mention the 'Chauvanist Poles'.

    :) :)
     
  16. Friedrich H

    Friedrich H Senior Member

    Poland's decision to fight in 1939 was based on Anglo-French Guarantees.

    Not, it was not. Poland decided to fight because 80 German divisions invaded her with the ultimate objective of destroying Poland as a nation, geographically, politically, demographically and culturally.

    In regards to the Warsaw Uprising, the Red Army broadcast it's intentions to unite with the Home Army and called for an Uprising. The Home Army launched it's Uprising, the Red Army did not make an attempt to liberate Warsaw, the Home Army was crushed.

    Stalin didn't give the order. He did not care of the Poles, who were, after all, traditional enemies of the Russians and Ucranians.

    But still, the Red Army DID try to break into Warsaw, but its frontline units had not been re-fitted since the end of 'Operation Bagration', the German supply lines had shortened and there were substantial German forces around Warsaw at the time. The breakthrough was simply not possible.

    Do you honestly consider the people's republic to be a Polish manifestation? Were the victims of the Soviet class-based exterminations and deportations any less victims than those of the Nazies.

    Let's put it this way: how many people dissappeared or was killed in the 45 of communist rule in Poland?

    From September 1939 until May 1945 6 million Poles were killed, many of them assassinated within an industrial killing machine of unparalleled proportions.

    It's not the same. An authoritarian communist Polish régime (controlled from Moscow, yes) is very different from a German totalitarian and genocidal rule.

    Which were the main aims of the communist régime in Poland? Was it the total erradication of the Polish people? 30 million people turned into smoke?

    I do find it fascinating that the Poles contributions have been belittled here and their civilian casualties mocked but a moderator choses to mention the 'Chauvanist Poles'.

    You better be careful with what you say, because I never implied that. I am precisely saying that 6 million Polish people were brutally assassinated by Nazi Germany. But you and others don't seem to understand that it was the brutal Soviet Union the country that stopped the butchery, that 45 years of tiranny were the price for EXISTANCE. Because that was not possible with Nazi Germany.

    And the Western Allies simply do not have nor voice nor vote in here.
     
  17. Friedrich H

    Friedrich H Senior Member

    Glad to see how Goebbel's propaganda has lost power… :rolleyes:

    [​IMG]
     
  18. laufer

    laufer Senior Member

    Originally posted by Friedrich H@Feb 18 2005, 01:15 AM
    Glad to see how Goebbel's propaganda has lost power… :rolleyes:


    Speaking about propaganda. Reading you reminds me books I had to learn from about 20-25 years ago. Do we all repeat "theirs" lies?

    And one more thing, before I end my participation in this utterly senseless discusion: choose words carefully yourself Friedrich :excl:

    yours sincerely

    Laufer - 'chauvanist Pole and traditional enemy of the Russians and Ukrainians' (don't forget about the Jews and Germans) :P
     
  19. Neil B

    Neil B Member

    Freidrich,
    To clarify you certainly did not belittle Poland's sacrifice's here but others did, yet you as a moderator singled out 'Chauvanist Poles'. That is what I was objecting to.
    Also you miss my point, was Britain responsible for German or Soviet actions towards Poland, of course not. My point here has been that Poland whilst a member of the Allies contributed all it could to the Western Allied war effort. Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1939 and was only coerced to ally herself with a country who invaded her just as the Germans did in 1939.
    At the end of the war Poland found, not freedom but a different form of oppression.
    That's it. No historical inevitability, no condemnation, no Poland deserved it because....
    I really do tire of this. :) :wacko: :closedeyes:
     
  20. Friedrich H

    Friedrich H Senior Member

    And one more thing, before I end my participation in this utterly senseless discusion: choose words carefully yourself Friedrich

    I chose it well. At least with myself, some of you are taking a position in which I'm anti-Polish who disregards all Polish participation in WWII. And I am not. I'm half French and half German and, when studying History, I realise and fully accept the stupid mistake and horrible attrocities both countries did. You and others are blaming the defeat and the fate of Poland on France, Great Britain and the USA, and completely disregarding Poland's own responsibility. In the same way we all accept the valuable contribution of the Polish sailros, soldiers and airmen in exile, during the Battle of Britain, at Cassino or North Africa, I also accept that Poland had acted arrogantly and unfriendly in the previous decades, that she was a quasi-fascist dictatorship and highly anti-semitic. Not wanting to see that is cheauvinism.

    My point here has been that Poland whilst a member of the Allies contributed all it could to the Western Allied war effort.

    Completely agreed. I have not stated the opposite.

    Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1939 and was only coerced to ally herself with a country who invaded her just as the Germans did in 1939.

    Indeed. I am aware of that. But are you aware that it was a consequence of an ancient historical conflict between both nations and not the result of a Franco-British conspiration against Poland?

    At the end of the war Poland found, not freedom but a different form of oppression.

    Indeed. But, again, compare the nature and consequences of both opressions. They are indeed very different. One could be overcome by the Poles themselves with the help of time, and was, after all, a form of opression that didn't seek the complete extermination of the Polish people.
     

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