Israeli, American, German envoys to Poland weigh in on Russia’s WWII claims

WARSAW, Poland — The Israeli, American and German ambassadors in Warsaw weigh in against claims by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Poland bears part of the blame for the outbreak of World War II.

“Dear President Putin, Hitler and Stalin colluded to start WWII. That is a fact. Poland was a victim of this horrible conflict,” Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher of the United States said on Twitter in English and Polish.

The Russian Embassy countered with a tweet saying: ”Dear Ambassador, do you really think that you know about history any more than you do about diplomacy?”

World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi German troops invaded Poland. Two weeks later, the Soviet Red Army also attacked embattled Poland from the east, in what Poles still refer to as a “stab in the back.” Days earlier, Germany and Russia had signed a pact with a secret protocol to carve up Poland and the Baltic states between themselves. Some six million Poles lost their lives during the whole of WWII.

Recently, Putin has argued that collusion between Western powers and Adolf Hitler paved the way for World War II. He also cast Poland as an anti-Semitic country that welcomed Hitler’s plans to destroy Europe’s Jews.

German Ambassador Rolf Nikel and Israeli Ambassador Alexander Ben Zvi took a stand Monday to blame the war’s outbreak on the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact.

Polish historian Mariusz Wolos told the Onet portal that Putin is aiming at “creating discord between Poland and the US and the international Jewish diaspora.” He said Putin is trying to erase Stalin’s alliance with Hitler from history.

British historian Roger Moorehouse tweeted to say that Putin’s words “provoked a much better popular understanding of the pact’s true nefarious nature and significance.”

— AP