[legitster]

> strange believe that if not the communists Poland would be a global superpower

I think it's fair to consider Poland the birthplace of the modern computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography)

Maybe not a global superpower, but it is very easy to me to imagine a Poland not destroyed by Nazi then communist rule being an innovation center of the world.

[BalinKing]

According to that link, The Martians were Hungarian :-P

[legitster]

Oops. Updated to be less wrong.

[HayBale]

Prewar Poland was a military dictatorship(mild but was) in the permanent state of crisis, on a brink of a civil war with all of its minorities. And it is a wild take to blame communists for the nazi atrocities.

But communist solved most of the problems that prewar Poland would have problem of solving. Yeah Polish tech was amazing especially if you consider the resources

[ein0p]

Communists also happen to be the sole reason why Polish people still exist, because a certain Austrian painter was going to eradicate them all after he was done with the Jews.

[omega3]

With friends like this… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish...

[ein0p]

And I’m not arguing with that, Stalin also did massive purges of his own officers, leaving the red army severely deficient right before the war, but as horrible as this is, this is not total genocide, which is what awaited Poland had the USSR not won the war.

[6d6b73]

German genocide of other nations consisted of exterminating weak people and forced labor for the strong. They integrated people with "Aryan features" into their society and we're slowly getting rid of the rest.

Soviets exterminated scientist, priests, doctors and officers - the very people who could fight back. They integrated poor and weak. Their idea was to melt the remaining people into one nation. This is a form of ethnic cleansing.

Both Nazi and Soviets had the same goal - to take over the world by killing the people they didn't like and integrating people they needed. They just had difference of opinion in show to achieve their goals. Fortunately they didn't succeed, unfortunately it still resulted in millions killed by both sides.

[waffleiron]

> exterminated scientist, priests, doctors and officers

So did the Nazis, in higher quantities too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost

[ein0p]

Jesus freaking Christ, read the German plans for Slavs - it's all public information. They were going to starve and work them all until they are dead, and then populate the lands with Germans. Poles are Slavs. To draw moral equivalence between Soviets and Hitler is idiotic. If it wasn't for the Soviets, you'd be writing this in German, or (depending on your ethnicity) you wouldn't exist at all.

[6d6b73]

Communists partitioned Poland in 1939 together with Germans. War would take a different direction if they didn't join Nazis. They were not really the good guys.

[ein0p]

Actually no, the war would take the exact same direction because Hitler did not consider Slavs to be human. It would have just got to the USSR a couple of years before it was even remotely ready for the war, and, ironically, would probably cause it to lose the war, which, let me remind you, would lead to full eradication of Poles and Poland. To accuse the USSR of “joining Nazis” would require you to be completely unaware of the historical context, and forget that Poland itself “joined Nazis” in a non-aggression pact in 1934 (5 years before Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), and occupied parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938. By that logic a lot of other countries in Europe (including Britain) “joined Nazis” by signing agreements with them and partitioning other states such as Czechoslovakia.

[6d6b73]

The war would take a different direction because it would take slightly longer for Germans to conquer the rest of Poland. That few weeks could help France and Germany to decide to actually join the war and attack Germany instead of just sitting there for months waiting for Germans to attack. The non-agression pact between Poland and Nazi Germany was signed to normalize relations between the country, and not to partition another country. Ribbentrop-Molotov act on the other hand had a secret protocol where they decided to divide Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into their spheres of influence. Yes, Poland did take part of Czechoslovakia after 1938, but it was a tiny sliver of land with polish ethnic majority. It was a bad move but nothing that can be compared to Soviet invasion in 1939.

[ein0p]

They wouldn’t have to “conquer” it. They’d just march straight through and end up in Ukrainian SSR and Belarus. My point is, the USSR was hardly unique in signing “intersting” pacts in late 30s, and its desire to surround itself with at least some semblance of buffer states is quite understandable given that there are, famously, no natural geographical obstacles between it and invading European hordes. And regardless of anything else, Poland would be fucked far worse if it wasn’t for Stalin. That’s a tough pill to swallow, sure, but you don’t have to take my word for it. The Nazis did document their plans.

[linearrust]

> I think it's fair to consider Poland the birthplace of the modern computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography)

"The first machine was built by the Poles and was a hand operated multiple enigma machine."

There were polish contributors to the general idea of computation. But computation is not the same thing as modern computer. No serious person can view the bomba as a 'modern computer'. It took the discovery of the transistor to give birth to the modern computer.

> but it is very easy to me to imagine a Poland not destroyed by Nazi then communist rule being an innovation center of the world.

Poland doesn't that the population, resources, etc for that. Whatever great innovators poland would have possibly had in your alternate universe would have been siphoned off by germany, russia, britain, france, US, etc. There is a reason why so many renowned poles pre-ww2 made their contributions outside of poland.