The Warsaw Uprising and How We Got Where We Are

"I do not consider it advantageous to the long-range general war prospect for me to join you"

Those words came from the man I regard as the greatest President of modern times, FDR.  They have also come to symbolize the cruelty of war more than anything ever could as, once the primary enemy is defeated or nearly so, the friends start fighting each other.  The price, as always, is paid by the citizens.

The first thing to lose is this had anything to do with Judaism.  This was about killing NAZIs and getting them the hell out of Warsaw and Poland.  The Uprising was driven by the Polish Resistance and they were timing it to coincide with the Russians entering the city from the East.

Only the Russians didn't enter the city from the East, they stopped.

And no-one came.

This has been with me ever since reading "Mila 18" as a child.  No-one came and the Resistance was slaughtered.

Churchill really did try to help as he figured, fuck Stalin, they need help.  He is said to have begged Roosevelt to be part of it but the opening sentence was the reply.

Politics.

Two hundred thousand people died.  Many of them were Jewish but remember always these were the Poles uprising.  They were fighting for Poland, every damn one of them.

Poles flying with the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain were said to be among the bravest fliers in the sky.

We hear politicians now but when the best there may ever have been would not help then why would you think anyone else would.

This is not needless cynicism as this really happened and it's one of the biggest disgraces of World War II.  It was also a battle Heinrich Himmler said was as deadly as the streets of Stalingrad, previously the worst of the war.

The point is not we have a more corrupt system now than existed then.  There are frequent partisan references to the Kennedy or the Bush families doing business with the NAZIs prior to the war and the focus will be on one or the other depending on which team.  The salient aspect isn't the name but rather the class as the rich had no problems dealing with NAZIs and, thus, had no more ethical backbone then than they have now.

Sanders will not take their money and that's why he is the man to watch.  You can believe him because he has already said he won't come to help, he can't.  Only together can it be fixed and conservatives dismiss that as socialism but they're a bunch of bleedin' nong nongs; they deal in buzzwords, we deal in thought.  Take your pick.

Note:  nong nong - slang in some dialect of Chinese which means idiot.  My ol' Mother grew up there.

(Ed:  then you're a damn Communist?)

No and she wasn't Chinese either.  Life didn't just start to get unusual, it has been unusual for quite some time.

If you have not read "Mila 18" by Leon Uris then maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea given how readily people talk about war.  They don't know anything about it as I'm older than they and all I know of it is old B&W movies.  It's never seemed quite real.

It's real in "Mila 18" and Uris isn't a favorite writer but he wrote of important things.  Uris' focus is the Warsaw Ghetto and the unspeakable brutality against it but, emphasizing again, the Uprising was by the Poles together.  They rose as Poles and they were slaughtered as Poles and in so doing fell as martyrs to what people must do to defend their homeland even at the expense of death.

People will often tell you now they are defending their homelands but it's not true in many places except the Middle East and it's usually a defense against Americans.  Bring those boys back home.  Let them defend this homeland and then there will be peace.

It makes me proud in a way to see you have put "Only the Good Die Young" and "Fix It or Burn It" at the top of the list in the sidebar lately.  It's not so much that it makes me proud of me but rather it makes me proud of you and I have wanted that for a long, long time.

It's easy, if you try.