Ah shit, here we go again …
German here, we are used to it. They do this every election to distract from their own mistakes, nobody in Germany has been taking it serious for many years because we all know that it´s just their usual election campaigning.
I just hope people in Poland ignore it as much as we do.
I´m afraid it worked in the past considering they have now been in the government for more than one legislative period. Understandably since WW2 Germany is not quite popular in Poland. It´s a cheap populist tactic that sadly seems to work pretty well.
There’s nothing like being made responsible for something my great grandparents were at least somewhat responsible for…
Yeah! It´s so much fun! Source: I spent half of my childhood and teenage years in Austria and was bullied and mobbed constantly, simply for being of german heritage and they did not care at all that I was born in 1981, several decades after the Nazi regime had ended. With Poland having been invaded by the Wehrmacht and not “angeschlossen” like Austria, it´s only natural that the rejection is even deeper. We must also consider that, while we were born long after the Nazi regime ended, there are still elderly people in Poland, who witnessed the war horrors and the atrocities of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust. All these horrible things were done mostly by Germans. That is why I, while not feeling responsible on one hand, can also not judge people for still being angry about those horrible crimes. The thing I really condemn though is when populist politicians instrumentalize these emotions for their own advantage.
I get being angry. I don’t get (or accept) blaming everything that’s shit. Instead of working together in union they stir up bullshit like that constantly to keep their audience entertained. And that I’m angry about. Get your shit together and let’s move on a as a union.
As a humanist I personally agree with that but PiS voters -who are mostly nationalists, similar to AfD voters in Germany- are a whole different story …
Not saying they are right or wrong, but when you are born in a country you are directly affected by his history, and they are affected by something your grandparents were (?) responsible for. Look at more extreme examples, imagine a person born in the Belgian Congo, knowing all atrocities Belgium did to keep the country a shit, how you would expect this person to look at Belgium as a partner? To nurtur any kind of admiration towards the ppl?
Besides not agreeing I can totally understand the feeling,
Germany was split but received tons is Marshal’s money even being the aggressor, while Poland was stuck in URSS after being traded by Hitler and Stalin and then abandoned by thr allies in the Yalta conference even being the first victim.
How much is enough to repair this kind of damage? How much of their modern failures are actually stupid decisions and how much is historical inheritance?
Oh no, that’s a completely new take I’ve not heard for… At least half a week. Come on Poland, you got to learn some new tricks at one point. That one is getting old.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WARSAW/BERLIN, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Fighting to win an unprecedented third term in office, Poland’s nationalist government has seized on a target close to home: Germany, its NATO ally and biggest trading partner.
In a tight race ahead of Poland’s Oct. 15 election, leaders of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party have accused Germany of trying to dictate Polish government policy from Berlin on anything from migration to gas.
The feud has frayed Europe’s broadly united front supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, shredding a plan for a joint Polish-German tank repair plant for Kyiv’s benefit.
“It’s very unhelpful that Poland, the people from the Law and Justice Party, continues to criticize Germany in such a harsh public way,” U.S. General Ben Hodges, who commanded U.S. Army forces in Europe in 2014-17, told Reuters.
The tank plant would have been a joint effort by German manufacturers Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall (RHMG.DE), neither of which responded to a request for comment, and the Polish defence conglomerate Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ).
A German Foreign Office spokesperson said Berlin and Warsaw work closely together on European security and defence but declined comment on “current domestic political debates in Poland”.
The original article contains 981 words, the summary contains 196 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It’s very unhelpful that Germany closed its nuclear reactors in favor of coal and Russian gas lmao. Yes the party is using Germany as a boogeyman or whatever but Germany isn’t innocent here.
They’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember. Got nothing to do with coal, Russia or anything else. If something is bad, it’s the Germans that did it.
They prepared for some football world cup with images of severed heads of German trainers or players in one of their newspapers. Because… dunno, reasons?
Always the same uniformed comments repeating the same talking points.
Germany is not importing any Ruzzian gas anymore and in Poland, coal actually has the largest share in electricity production by a HUGE margin. The share is about 70% for Poland and 30% for Germany.
Polish conservatives gotta get over their victim complex.
That’s not what they even said. Maybe you should get over your superiority complex?
Enlighten us then, tell us what they said/meant and how it relates to the article?
You can also shove your quip about a “superiority complex”, I was merely responding to misleading (and that’s the generous interpretation) statements about Germany’s energy sector which get repeated ad nauseam. Germany has plenty of issues, but I expect people to engage in factual discussion and not just repeat the same old talking points that have little basis in reality.
