Quote:
Originally Posted by unipus
Poland is at least as anti-Russian as they are anti-German if not more so, so yeah, that doesn't really hold water.
|
In my experience the anti-German notions have largely ebbed off by now. There was always big hat-tipping by the Polish towards Germans and Germany in certain aspects. For example, after the Great War, the Polish military was closely modeled after the Prussian and German army and its experiences of the war. Of course, the other too likely role models would have been the Imperial Russian and Imperial Austrian army, which didn't exactly fare with bravado during that particular war. But somewhat interestingly the victor's armies, UK and France, were not close role models, probably because Józef Piłsudski had knit close ties with the Germans between 1917 and 1919.
The following decades certainly put heavy strain on German-Polish relationships, but since 1990 they have become very amicable in both directions. And personaly I think it's a waste of opportunities that Germany does not commit itself more to European defense, the Polish certainly have been begging for it for 30 years. Especially now that their Eastern neighbor is resurgent in military power, has Poland more than once uttered the need for more allied troops on its soil and the explicit wish that Germany commits more fully.