One of the real tragedies of the November Revolution (for those of us that refuse to call it by its Julian Calendar name) was that one of its chief architects, General Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937)--who put Lenin on the sealed train from Switzerland to Finland Station--never lived to see the Red Army that he effectively helped birth storm his native Posen, in Pomerania. And proceed to then ethnically cleanse all the Germans there, while abolishing both the Province of Posen and the State of Prussia, while giving all of Ludenforff's ancestral lands to the Poles. Poles who in turn had been exported from their ancestral lands in Galicia, that was now given to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine. If I had any literary talent, I would rewrite Dante and explore where the protagonists in this Revolution are currently residing. Is the demonic Lenin residing in a circle of the Inferno closer to the great winged beast Satan, or are the cynical German staff officers who put him on the train?
While Poznań--which is not part of Pomorze--was incorporated into Prussia after Poland was partitioned between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, it has always been a predominantly Polish area (Greater Poland, as opposed to Lesser Poland around Kraków). In fact, Poznań and nearby Gnieźno (some of my ancestors were from those two cities) were the center of the first Polish state--first bishopric and capital. Germans, at the time of WW1, made up only 10% of the population--which is why it was assigned to the new Polish state following WW1. The Poles who were deported from Western Ukraine/Galicia were sent to the areas that had not been heavily populated by Poles--for example, Wrocław (Breslau) and Szczecin (Stettin).
I believe Ludendorff was born to a Junker family that worked essentially Polish serfs on its estates in the area to which you are referring, which had been taken by Frederick "The Great" during the 2nd Partition of Poland. Perhaps the area, as you say, was given to the new Polish State at the end of WWI, but I could have sworn Ludendorff lived on his ancestral estates until the day he died. Perhaps they were a rural or exurban area of Poznan that remained part of the new State of Prussia (formerly Kingdom), while the city itself was given to Poland along with the Danzig Corridor for historical reasons?
I would have to do more research on Ludendorff than I have time right now to answer that question, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis. Thank you for the information on the Polish deportations from Galicia--I had always assumed they just pushed east and the Germans died or were pushed east; I did not realize that they leapfrogged and replaced German populations evacuated near the Oder. Fascinating.
I stand by my larger point though--the Red Army invaded Ludendorff's home and abolished the Province and State in which he had been born and to which he had devoted his life in military service. That Army was arguably both one of Satan's instruments on this Earth, and would not have existed had Ludendorff not sent Lenin in the "sealed train." Perhaps Ludendorff's personalized torture room in hell is being forced to read about the ironic consequences of his actions for all eternity. There's a story there for someone better at writing short works of sci-fi/fantasy fiction than me.
He died in Munich and the town or village he was born in was definitely part of Poland after WW1. I recommend you consult a map. Poles from Western Galicia were loaded onto cattle cars and sent by train to the new western parts of Poland. Several of my Polish teachers were among them.
I don’t understand how I miscommunicated my point or caused apparent offense. I know that Stalin, pursuant to the Yalta and Potsdam settlements, brutally ethnically cleansed Germany and Poland by forcing Germans east of the Oder into the West, and deporting the Poles from the territory seized by Soviet Ukraine into the now depopulated Prussian areas.
I knew that Ludendorff was a Prussian Junker born on an estate in the overwhelmingly Polish East, and when I googled him found it in this area of East Prussia/Modern Poland. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruszewnia
I thought eyeballing the map, it looked like that town fell under the State of Prussia under the Weimar Republic, rather than the new Polish Republic. I wasn’t trying to establish where his homeland was during the interwar period, nor where he died, however. I was just admiring the irony that the province and kingdom that he grew up in and served as one of the King’s elite general staff officers, rising to the rank of General, was thoroughly conquered, destroyed and ethnically cleansed by the godless communist horde of an army that he effectively created in his cynical desire to destroy Russia by sending a bunch of communist revolutionaries to Petrograd in a sealed train.
If my argument that Ludendorff is largely responsible for the creation for the Red Army is wrong than I’m sorry, but I thought it intellectually defensible. If my mocking his ghost for having ensured the destruction of what was left of his country because of said Red Army’s conquests in 1944-1945 has been interpreted as mocking the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population in 1945-1947, well then I don’t know what to say. Certainly wasn’t my intent. My wife and sister accuse me frequently of being a high functioning autistic person, so maybe I’m just missing something everyone with normal emotions are seeing here.
I don’t think any of the ethnic cleansing done in Eastern Europe after this day in hoc anno domini 1918 is or was a good thing. I don’t think I’m a bad person for appreciating the irony that some of its victims have been the very people that brought it about through their actions. Lenin was a demon; summoning him forth should have been as obvious as Faust bargaining with Mephistopheles.
Thanks for reminding us that today is the anniversary of The Great October Debacle. It’s more than a little annoying to me that people assume that Lenin toppled the Tsar. As you point out, he overthrew a government of feckless liberals who refused to take Russia out of the war despite the fact that it was destroying the country (sound familiar?). Indeed, I would argue that Nicholas was brought down by that same war, without which Russia would never have gone Red. As for the Bolsheviks “masquerading as socialists” — I’d say Lenin had as much right (or more) to claim Marx as his intellectual progenitor as did the so-called “Socialist Democrats” of his day.
Milley is a clown. Any competent people could easily withdraw 20-30K troops and equipment in less than a day, so this tells me Milley is an incompetent person who can't imagine such a thing- sort of like the people running the vote counting operations out west.
Considering Milley's conduct during the Trump administration, specifically his interaction with China re. warning them of attack, he should be up on charges of treason at the least. Hanging or firing squad should be his only options.
One of the real tragedies of the November Revolution (for those of us that refuse to call it by its Julian Calendar name) was that one of its chief architects, General Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937)--who put Lenin on the sealed train from Switzerland to Finland Station--never lived to see the Red Army that he effectively helped birth storm his native Posen, in Pomerania. And proceed to then ethnically cleanse all the Germans there, while abolishing both the Province of Posen and the State of Prussia, while giving all of Ludenforff's ancestral lands to the Poles. Poles who in turn had been exported from their ancestral lands in Galicia, that was now given to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine. If I had any literary talent, I would rewrite Dante and explore where the protagonists in this Revolution are currently residing. Is the demonic Lenin residing in a circle of the Inferno closer to the great winged beast Satan, or are the cynical German staff officers who put him on the train?
While Poznań--which is not part of Pomorze--was incorporated into Prussia after Poland was partitioned between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, it has always been a predominantly Polish area (Greater Poland, as opposed to Lesser Poland around Kraków). In fact, Poznań and nearby Gnieźno (some of my ancestors were from those two cities) were the center of the first Polish state--first bishopric and capital. Germans, at the time of WW1, made up only 10% of the population--which is why it was assigned to the new Polish state following WW1. The Poles who were deported from Western Ukraine/Galicia were sent to the areas that had not been heavily populated by Poles--for example, Wrocław (Breslau) and Szczecin (Stettin).
I believe Ludendorff was born to a Junker family that worked essentially Polish serfs on its estates in the area to which you are referring, which had been taken by Frederick "The Great" during the 2nd Partition of Poland. Perhaps the area, as you say, was given to the new Polish State at the end of WWI, but I could have sworn Ludendorff lived on his ancestral estates until the day he died. Perhaps they were a rural or exurban area of Poznan that remained part of the new State of Prussia (formerly Kingdom), while the city itself was given to Poland along with the Danzig Corridor for historical reasons?
I would have to do more research on Ludendorff than I have time right now to answer that question, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis. Thank you for the information on the Polish deportations from Galicia--I had always assumed they just pushed east and the Germans died or were pushed east; I did not realize that they leapfrogged and replaced German populations evacuated near the Oder. Fascinating.
I stand by my larger point though--the Red Army invaded Ludendorff's home and abolished the Province and State in which he had been born and to which he had devoted his life in military service. That Army was arguably both one of Satan's instruments on this Earth, and would not have existed had Ludendorff not sent Lenin in the "sealed train." Perhaps Ludendorff's personalized torture room in hell is being forced to read about the ironic consequences of his actions for all eternity. There's a story there for someone better at writing short works of sci-fi/fantasy fiction than me.
He died in Munich and the town or village he was born in was definitely part of Poland after WW1. I recommend you consult a map. Poles from Western Galicia were loaded onto cattle cars and sent by train to the new western parts of Poland. Several of my Polish teachers were among them.
I don’t understand how I miscommunicated my point or caused apparent offense. I know that Stalin, pursuant to the Yalta and Potsdam settlements, brutally ethnically cleansed Germany and Poland by forcing Germans east of the Oder into the West, and deporting the Poles from the territory seized by Soviet Ukraine into the now depopulated Prussian areas.
I knew that Ludendorff was a Prussian Junker born on an estate in the overwhelmingly Polish East, and when I googled him found it in this area of East Prussia/Modern Poland. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruszewnia
I thought eyeballing the map, it looked like that town fell under the State of Prussia under the Weimar Republic, rather than the new Polish Republic. I wasn’t trying to establish where his homeland was during the interwar period, nor where he died, however. I was just admiring the irony that the province and kingdom that he grew up in and served as one of the King’s elite general staff officers, rising to the rank of General, was thoroughly conquered, destroyed and ethnically cleansed by the godless communist horde of an army that he effectively created in his cynical desire to destroy Russia by sending a bunch of communist revolutionaries to Petrograd in a sealed train.
If my argument that Ludendorff is largely responsible for the creation for the Red Army is wrong than I’m sorry, but I thought it intellectually defensible. If my mocking his ghost for having ensured the destruction of what was left of his country because of said Red Army’s conquests in 1944-1945 has been interpreted as mocking the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population in 1945-1947, well then I don’t know what to say. Certainly wasn’t my intent. My wife and sister accuse me frequently of being a high functioning autistic person, so maybe I’m just missing something everyone with normal emotions are seeing here.
I don’t think any of the ethnic cleansing done in Eastern Europe after this day in hoc anno domini 1918 is or was a good thing. I don’t think I’m a bad person for appreciating the irony that some of its victims have been the very people that brought it about through their actions. Lenin was a demon; summoning him forth should have been as obvious as Faust bargaining with Mephistopheles.
Thanks for reminding us that today is the anniversary of The Great October Debacle. It’s more than a little annoying to me that people assume that Lenin toppled the Tsar. As you point out, he overthrew a government of feckless liberals who refused to take Russia out of the war despite the fact that it was destroying the country (sound familiar?). Indeed, I would argue that Nicholas was brought down by that same war, without which Russia would never have gone Red. As for the Bolsheviks “masquerading as socialists” — I’d say Lenin had as much right (or more) to claim Marx as his intellectual progenitor as did the so-called “Socialist Democrats” of his day.
Milley is a clown. Any competent people could easily withdraw 20-30K troops and equipment in less than a day, so this tells me Milley is an incompetent person who can't imagine such a thing- sort of like the people running the vote counting operations out west.
Considering Milley's conduct during the Trump administration, specifically his interaction with China re. warning them of attack, he should be up on charges of treason at the least. Hanging or firing squad should be his only options.