Der Spiegel and Der Stürmer
The antagonism being directed from Germany towards Poland has reached alarming and incredible heights. The outsider has difficultly in grasping what is driving this, but the hatreds are both ancient and modern. This is Europe, after all, with its blood-soaked history and its tribal antagonisms that rumble just beneath the civilized surface. The latest to join the posse bullying Poland is Der Spiegel, which can always be relied upon to serve up something that makes one cringe. But we have been here before when it comes to caricaturing the neighbour on the other side of the Oder-Neisse line.
As regards who is really the "unloved neighbour" here, context and memory are critical. So it is worth bearing this in mind: "Documentation remains fragmentary, but today scholars of independent Poland believe that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jews) were victims of German Occupation policies and the war. This approximate total includes Poles killed in executions or who died in prisons, forced labor, and concentration camps. It also includes an estimated 225,000 civilian victims of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, more than 50,000 civilians who died during the 1939 invasion and siege of Warsaw, and a relatively small but unknown number of civilians killed during the Allies' military campaign of 1944—45 to liberate Poland."
Comments
Der Spiegel's cover probably alludes to this picture that was published in a Polish magazine. I wonder whether heads will explode over the Spiegel cover in Warsaw again, as they did after the taz satire. After all, the current Polish government still has some totalitarian tendencies (maybe they ask Merkel again to "prevent" publishing such stuff, and threaten to sue der Spiegel again?).
Of course Poland doesn't trust Germany, and "will fight to the death" for this unrepresentative square-root thingy. Defending national interests is quite normal, to come back to rational grounds. It will be interesting to see whether a compromise will be made or whether the summit in Brussels will be a failure, which might not necessarily be such a bad thing after all.
Posted by: hans ze beeman | June 18, 2007 9:56 AM