Quote:
Originally Posted by raharris1973 View Post
Poland existed for a much longer period than it didn't exist over the last thousand years.
I would argue that it had about 745 years as a sovereign state, compared with only 123 years as a partitioned state and roughly 139 years as a satellite state.
As for the "Polish Corridor" it was Polish (or local slavic) for about 741 years, and only "German" controlled for 252 years, on separate occasions by the Teutonic Knights, Prussian Kingdom and Third Reich.
I just dont get it - what is your point?
Norbert, to me this was just an observational exercise about real history without an explicit what-if scenario proposed. This forum is a good audience for historical discussion. In the past at times I have posted non-what-if history items in "chat" but folks commented I should direct those items to the appropriate pre-1900 or post-1900 forums. Actually if the mods have a preference, let me know.
So, back to the point. It is just to counter the idea in some historic German and Russian circles (and among some historians of European realpolitik) that Poland is a temporary or unviable state. A German nickname for Poland in the interwar era was that it was a "seasonal state", only existing because of simultaneous German and Russian weakness. If one's historical horizon is restricted to say 1750 to 1950, this idea makes sense because Poland was partitioned (or at least satellitized) for most of that time. Even later, some opponents of NATO expansion likewise considered it a mistake to consider Poland a defensible position. However, my point was to offer the counter-argument based on a longer historical horizon extending from the foundation of Poland to the present.
The thousand year perspective shows that for a majority of that time, Poland was a European actor genuinely independent from Russia and the HRE/Germany. For the great bulk of that time, Poland at least existed as a political entity, even if it was satellitized for periods by Russia or Sweden.
The discussion of the Polish corridor, which is a much criticized feature of the Versailles and interwar settlements, considered such an unstable element, was added just to show that a sovereign Polish corridor dividing German-speaking sovereign states has been much more the European norm than the all-German ruled south Baltic coast that Prussians and Germans considered the natural and proper state of affairs from 1772 through 1945.
For balance now, I would add that in the thousand year perspective, the current limitation of German-speaking areas west of the Oder-Neisse and Sudeten mountains is also historically atypical, with areas of predominant German-speaking settlement common in Bohemia, Silesia, Pomerania and Prussia for the majority of that time.