German troops at start of WWII saw Polish lives as expendable: historian

German troops who attacked Poland in September 1939 at the start of World War II put into practice a horrific Nazi racial vision which saw Polish lives as "essentially expendable", a British historian has written.

German soldiers knock down a border post during Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939.

Photo: PAP/Reprodukcja

Historian Roger Moorhouse offered his analysis in an article included in an academic publication issued by Poland's Pilecki Institute.

The article is entitled: Prelude to Race War: The Ideological Drivers behind German Atrocities Committed against POWs and Civilian Populations during the September Campaign of 1939."

Moorhouse says: "German troops had imbibed from the Nazi regime a racial vision, which saw Jewish and Polish lives – unlike French and British lives – as essentially expendable, as collateral damage in the creation of a Nazi utopia. This was the horrific vision that they put into practice in 1939."

Tracing back historical German attitudes to Poles, Moorhouse writes that in the 19th century, these "could be seen as broadly comparable to the contemporary attitudes held by the British towards the Irish; a modicum of sympathy at best, but much more a sense of superiority towards an impoverished, backward and primitive neighbour."

(pk)

Source: tvp.info/PAP