Germany Doesn't Betray Russia

2-The actuall colonization started after 1880s in fullest. Why should colonists and military stationed with the exact intention of removing the ethnic majority of conquered population be given a vote ? It would mean agreeing with agressive ethnic policies of German Empire aimede precisely at disadvantege of etnic minorites.
The Germanization policies of the kaiserreich were... colossal failures. They did nothing to affect the demographics one way or the other. So, yes, we would be talking about going against the wishes of people who had lived in the area for at least hundred years, if not more.
One reason why Germanization didn't work I find to be ironic. It was because the Junkers were opposed to the policy. They were actually anti-nationalist and didn't like the idea of the government meddling in local affairs. Also, they needed cooperative, not pissed-off Polish labor for their plantations. Kinda like how the French need their Polish plumbers. :)
 
1-The territories in question had population in support of resigning from Germany. In Silesia this was reflected in local plebiscites that decided if a district would go to Germany or Poland. Kashubs from XIX century were anti-Prussian in politics and voting in majority for Polish parties.

Who would have voted where is not the point. Without the corridor and the Grenzmark, it's certainly possible that Poland would have won anyway. It's the spirit of the thing. One has to work from present realities rather than trying to turn the clock back 100 years, and if you don't believe in doing this, why do the words "100 years" keep coming up? Shouldn't you talk about demographics and democracy rather than the distant past?

2-The actuall colonization started after 1880s in fullest. Why should colonists and military stationed with the exact intention of removing the ethnic majority of conquered population be given a vote ? It would mean agreeing with agressive ethnic policies of German Empire aimede precisely at disadvantege of etnic minorites.

I gave my argument in the thread I mentioned that to be native to a territory one only has to be born there and reside there, since one can't choose where one is born, and even if one or both of one's parents are colonists one can't help that. If colonisation started in the 1880s, there must have been thirty years worth of people who weren't guilty of anything except being born and being German. That's not to say Germany would win a plebiscite in any given area, only that your rhetoric about centuries of oppression is a fancy way to disreagrd individual rights by going on about national ones.

This was never my argument-sadly again I find you are creating sentences and alledge views that weren't written and stated by others. My argument was that ignoring a repressive policy aimed at changing the ethnic situation and acting like nothing happened and simple plebiscite is enough is somewhat unacceptable, since the other-repressed side-is at disadvantage of not having state's means, tools and power for over a century to revert what was already done.

I myself earlier gave reasons as to why a plebiscite in 1939 acting like it was 1939 is an undemocratic farce. But so, equally, is a plebiscite in 1919 acting like it's 1772. What is "ignoring the effects and acting like nothing happened"? What is the alternative? Does it involve a democratic vote among all people both born and resident in the territory? Anything else is a violation of people's rights. What is "reverting what was already done"? Cultural repression and harrasment of the people who happen to speak the same language as cultural repressors and harrasers? And the whole world is blind...

Please give a link.

I left off on page three.

The Germanization policies of the kaiserreich were... colossal failures. They did nothing to affect the demographics one way or the other. So, yes, we would be talking about going against the wishes of people who had lived in the area for at least hundred years, if not more.

Well, it's entirely possible that there would be a Polish result anyway. But yes, all my reading indicates that the dominant demographic trend of the Imperial German trend was large migration of people to the indsutrial west without regard to ethnicity. I can't pull out any exact figures at present, but I rather feel that Polish nationalists are prone to feel that the existence of the repressive policies more than any actyal effect justifies their claims (although there was some German migration late in the period from my reading).
 
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why do the words "100 years" keep coming up?
You continue to manipulate as to what was written. And the past is important as well. I do not however that sometimes you are more interested in arguing.
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If colonisation started in the 1880s,
Again ? I didn't wrote it started in 1880s. Sigh...

If colonisation started in the 1880s, there must have been thirty years worth of people who weren't guilty of anything except being born and being German. That's not to say Germany would win a plebiscite in any given area, only that your rhetoric about centuries of oppression is a fancy way to disreagrd individual rights by going on about national ones.
Spoils of the victor as "individual rights" ? How funny, it gives the right of conquest to any succesfull dictatorship as long as it manages to settle conquered land Somehow it doesn't sound right to me.
But so, equally, is a plebiscite in 1919 acting like it's 1772.
But that's what you are proposing. You are proposing to ignore all the colonization policies and attempts to eradicate non-German presence and act like nothing happened and the situation is completely neutral on the ground. While in fact one side starts from severily disadvanteged position. What you are proposing to offset that disadvantage ?


What is the alternative? Does it involve a democratic vote among all people both born and resident in the territory? Anything else is a violation of people's rights.
According to what definition ? Voting procedures are often subject to various clauses Are you seriously claiming Germans born to colonists during Nazi occupation of Poland have right to claim voting rights on status of territories there ? Anyway-what are you proposing as alternative to offset the policies of German Empire. How about Poland gets 100 years of reversing Germanisation and then we would have a plebiscite ?

The Germanization policies of the kaiserreich were... colossal failures. They did nothing to affect the demographics one way or the other.
It depends on the local region where the settlement took place. In some regional districts it was succesfull. In others military and officials formed a large part of the German population-in Corridor this was the case. Overall it slowed down restoration of Polish majority and prevented restoration to pre-1815 levels.
 
So I suppose Extrasolar Angel thinks that Native Americans and they alone should hold a binding referendum to boot all those Imperial Colonists in the US back to Yerp.
 
You continue to manipulate as to what was written. And the past is important as well. I do not however that sometimes you are more interested in arguing.

I'm not more interested in arguing than in justice and the equality of peoples and you have no grounds to claim that I am unless you are in fact possesed of telepathic powers. Kindly make arguments rather than accusations, and respond to my arguments rather than claiming they are based on what you didn't say without elaborating as to what you did.
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Again ? I didn't wrote it started in 1880s. Sigh...

Well, you did write:

2-The actuall colonization started after 1880s in fullest.

So I think it was a justifiable assumption. If you didn't mean that, what did you mean?

Spoils of the victor as "individual rights" ? How funny, it gives the right of conquest to any succesfull dictatorship as long as it manages to settle conquered land Somehow it doesn't sound right to me.

Think about this. Large parts of modern western Poland are the spoils of "victory" taken over by a communist dictatorship which managed to settle conquered land. Would this be valid grounds to deny the rights of Poles born in those territories since that time to take part in some hypothetical plebiscite in the 1980s? Obviously not. The situation seems to me fairly analogous.

Picture, if you will, a German just come of voting age in 1919. Born at the turn of the century, then. His mother gave birth young: she was born in the same region, to some recent migrants in the 1880s. Our young man has lived his whole life in... let us say this is in the Corridor. He has been a good neigbour to German and Pole alike: an inoffensive sort of chap, having a spotless criminal record. Your proposal is apparently that this young man, by virtue of his nationality and native tongue, be denied the right to decide the fate of the country in which he and his parents spent their entire lives.

But that's what you are proposing. You are proposing to ignore all the colonization policies and attempts to eradicate non-German presence and act like nothing happened and the situation is completely neutral on the ground. While in fact one side starts from severily disadvanteged position. What you are proposing to offset that disadvantage ?

I am proposing that talk of "offsetting disadvantages" is undemocratic nationalistic nonsense. To deny the vote to people who migrated within their own lifetimes would be just about admissable (it will, however, disenfranchise people who, for instance, moved to marry and have nothing to do with sinister German colonisation schemes), but to deny the vote to our hypothetical young man is to deny the vote to somebody based on his being a German. Once again, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Let us make your principle, that the fates of territories in 1919 ought to have been decided with some measure to "revert" the injustices of the revious hundred years, into a general law. The vast majority of the populations of Australia and New Zealand, and of western Canada and the United States, will be immeidately disenfranchised. The population of Vladivostok will find themselves subject to China completely against their will. Europeans populating much of the Argentine south will be disenfranchised as well.

Between 1919 and 1819, or between 1919 and 1772, changes had taken place in the demographics of many, many disticts of the world. If we wish to "revert" things to a yeart that nobody remembers in the interests of some warped sense of justice in which the rights of human beings are subjected to those of what are, when you get right down to it, and I say this as a passionate advocate of nations and languages (all nations and languages), blobs of ink on a map, why stop there? Let us rveert my native land. The Scots will have to be stripped of their rights, but that's what they get for being distantly related to invaders from Dalriada! What exactly is the differance between 1772 and 600, if nobody from either time is alive? They are equally irrelevant to the proper conduct of democracy and respect for the rights of all people without regard to their nationality. While you dress it respectably in the clothes of "national justice", making an appeal to victimhood, at root your proposal, as best I can gather, is to disenfranchise Germans based on blood (which raises the question: what of families who have shifted to German language and sentiment since 1819?). This is racism. This is wrong.

According to what definition ? Voting procedures are often subject to various clauses Are you seriously claiming Germans born to colonists during Nazi occupation of Poland have right to claim voting rights on status of territories there ?

I have suggested earlier that the horrors of Nazi-ismm were such as to upend much of my moral view of the world, but anyway there were barely any such people, none of them older than six and therefore not able to vote at all. If in the hypothetical situation that, heaven forbid (and I should hope you have read through the thread and seen my many condemnations of the Nazis as the most vile and unnatural band of scum to ever take the helm of a nation), the Nazis were to somehow not be stopped, and a century or multiple centuries were to pass until the people of Poland had by monstrous cruelty been all but destroyed, I as an ihabitant of that imaginary, distant and dark future would not advocate that the German majority of what had been Poland be stripped of their rights. I would condemn with all my heart the process which had created that majority, but that is differant from denying rights to the citizens who did not take part in these processes and were not colonists, murderers, or criminals. This is precisely my attitude in the case of the western Hemisphere or Australia.

Anyway-what are you proposing as alternative to offset the policies of German Empire. How about Poland gets 100 years of reversing Germanisation and then we would have a plebiscite ?

Once again, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. How do you propose to offset the colonisation of the United States of America? Shall the natives be permitted four centuries in which to reverse it? Should they be allowed to deny the European-descended population of their rights?

The argument that you are justified in doing something wrong because "they started it" befits children who squabble over toys in the sandpit, not two of the great civilised nations of Europe. Nations are very differant from children. For one thing they aren't collective. One can be entirely innocent of any supposed "national" crimes. I can solemnly attest that I have never murdered a Tasmanian.

So I suppose Extrasolar Angel thinks that Native Americans and they alone should hold a binding referendum to boot all those Imperial Colonists in the US back to Yerp.

UA, I'm suspicious. Are you entirely sure you're not me? :D
 
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It depends on the local region where the settlement took place. In some regional districts it was succesfull. In others military and officials formed a large part of the German population-in Corridor this was the case. Overall it slowed down restoration of Polish majority and prevented restoration to pre-1815 levels.
Yes, but statistically insignificant overall. Sure in some district German population increased-- and in some districts Polish population INCREASED. Furthermore, there is no evidence that it did anything significant demographically one way or another in partitioned Polish regions. Really, this is something not really disputed by any mainstream Western historians anymore. Maybe there are some Polish historians who object, but on the whole, the verdict of the majority of respectable Western historians (American, British, German) is that the Germanization projects had practically no effect on East Prussian demographics overall. The dmographic reality on the ground was set long before the kaiserreich started to get seriously in the 1900's. Surely you are not suggesting we should ignore almost hundred years of free population movement in the region between 1814 and 1900 just because in 1780 the area had Polish majority?
 
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