Freenations

FRANCO-GERMAN THREATS TO PRO-AMERICAN POLAND

Date of Report 12 May 2003
Translated 13 May 2003

WROCLAW - Germany and France are strengthening their pressure on Poland. This is aimed at increasing the country's subordination to Berlin and Paris. In preceding months Poland had aligned itself with the war policy of the USA and thereby incurred the displeasure of Berlin - the frustrated hegemonial power.

Schroeder and Chirac used the joint press communique at the German-French-Polish summit in Wroclaw to make their demands clear. They "expressed" how greatly Poland's "return to the European family after all the historical divisions" was anticipated. It has been decided to hold regular, trilateral consultations in future. By these Warsaw would be bound into the German-European foreign, security and defence policy. So Poland would be distanced from its new patron-state, the USA.

"ANNEXE OF THE USA" OR "PARTNER"(*1) IN THE EU

There were, in the meantime, unconcealed threats that Poland must decide for Berlin and the EU, if it did not wish to be torn apart between these rivals for world power. The Berlin Foundation for Research & Policy (SWP) had already pointed to the economic pressures available and declared "The reality of Poland's new political life as an EU member, and its fear of losing influence in Europe through crude pro-Americanism will ........ add weight to the view that Poland should not behave as America's "Trojan Ass (sic)".

The "Tageszeitung" (which is close to the government) now demands that the Polish government must "finally say clearly what sort of Europe it really wants and what restrictions on national sovereignty it is prepared to accept". The political elites in Poland have, for a long time, carefully avoided taking a position on this. Now Poland would have to allay the fear that it was attempting to influence the EU only as "an annexe of the USA". The "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (a forthright supporter of German expansionism in the 1930s and 1950s - ed) remarked threateningly that Poland had "every interest, including material interests" in accepting in earnest the role proferred to it by Berlin and Paris.

"THE STONES SPEAK GERMAN"

In the event of non-compliance by the Polish government, further possible consequences are being mentioned. The "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" asserts that the district of Poland where the summit meeting took place is not basically (urspruenglich) Polish: "the stones speak German". With reference to the conference venue, Wroclaw , which was called Breslau "when Silesia still belonged to the Reich", it remarked "In Breslau a Pole can only feel at home if he feels as much European as Polish".

In the Polish border areas adjoining Germany, regional and separatist organisations have been active for a long time; these cooperate with the "German minorities" in Poland. The whole border area is taken over by "Euro-Regions" which are slowly bringing about a continual dissolution of loyalty from the centre to the periphery. The summit meeting in Wroclaw is, for the first time, to be flanked by a meeting of "regional politicians from Alsace, Saxony and Silesia". (Another example of the German use of EU "regionalism" to assert their nationalistic territorial expansion - ed)

(*1) TRANSLATOR'S NOTE . The term "partner" was also used by Reichsminister Walther Funk, President of the Reichsbank, to describe the European countries which paritcipated in the European Economic Community ("Europaeische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft") which he officially launched in June 1940 . Note that even the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper now dares (see above) to use the term "Das Reich" in discussing Poland!