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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32785 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Because the article contains multiple sources with citations? If it didn't contain citations I wouldn't take it at face value:

There is no question that the secret documents taken from the Polish Foreign Ministry in Warsaw are authentic. Charles C. Tansill considered the documents genuine and stated, “Some months ago I had a long conversation with M. Lipsky, the Polish ambassador in Berlin in the prewar years, and he assured me that the documents in the German White Paper are authentic.”[6]

William H. Chamberlain wrote , “I have been privately informed by an extremely reliable source that Potocki, now residing in South America, confirmed the accuracy of the documents, so far as he was concerned.”[7] Historian Harry Elmer Barnes also stated, “Both Professor Tansill and myself have independently established the thorough authenticity of these documents.”[8]

Edward Raczyński, the Polish ambassador to London from 1934 to 1945, confirmed in his diary the authenticity of the Polish documents. He wrote in his entry on June 20, 1940: “The Germans published in April a White Book containing documents from the archives of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, consisting of reports from Potocki from Washington, Łukasiewicz in Paris and myself. I do not know where they found them, since we were told that the archives had been destroyed. The documents are certainly genuine, and the facsimiles show that for the most part the Germans got hold of the originals and not merely copies.”[9]

The official papers and memoirs of Juliusz Łukasiewicz published in 1970 in the book Diplomat in Paris 1936-1939 reconfirmed the authenticity of the Polish documents. Łukasiewicz was the Polish ambassador to Paris, who authored several of the secret Polish documents. The collection was edited by Wacław Jędrzejewicz, a former Polish diplomat and cabinet member. Jędrzejewicz considered the documents made public by the Germans absolutely genuine, and quoted from several of them.

Tyler G. Kent, who worked at the U.S. Embassy in London in 1939 and 1940, has also confirmed the authenticity of the secret Polish documents. Kent says that he saw copies of U.S. diplomatic messages in the files which corresponded to the Polish documents.[10]

The German Foreign Office published the Polish documents on March 29, 1940. The Reich Ministry of Propaganda released the documents to strengthen the case of the American isolationists and to prove the degree of America’s responsibility for the outbreak of war. In Berlin, journalists from around the world were permitted to examine the original documents themselves, along with a large number of other documents from the Polish Foreign Ministry. The release of the documents caused an international media sensation. American newspapers published lengthy excerpts from the documents and gave the story large front-page headline coverage.[11]

Charles C. Tansill

is a revisionist historian, for what it is worth.

In the 1930s, Tansill was a staunch isolationist, arguing that the United States should not participate in World War II.[1] At the same time, he was an advisor to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.[2] In 1952, Tansill published Back Door to War, a book about the war.[1][6] According to A. S. Winston, Tansill, "blamed Franklin Roosevelt for forcing a peace-minded Hitler into war and used the standard Rudolph Hess line that Hitler wanted only a free hand to deal with Bolshevism in the East."[1] Tansill went on to argue that it was Roosevelt who persuaded Neville Chamberlain to assure Poland that it would be defended by Britain if it was attacked by Germany, which happened in 1939 during the German invasion of Poland.[2] Winston goes on to suggest, "The book became a foundation for revisionist history of World War II."[1]

Barnes is similar, if a little kookier.

In his 1947 pamphlet, "The Struggle Against The Historical Blackout", Barnes claimed that "court historians" suppressed that Hitler was the most "reasonable" leader in the world in 1939, and that France's Premier Édouard Daladier wanted to commit aggression against Germany, aided and abetted by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Edward Raczyński

was later President of Poland in exile and is a reputable figure. "he provided the Allies with one of the earliest and most accurate accounts of the ongoing Holocaust". A statement by him should be believed in this matter.

Łukasiewicz

was a marginal figure who committed suicide in 1951. I find him credible, but much less so than Raczyński. However, Wacław Jędrzejewicz is a completely solid figure, awarded many honors and was a professor at Wellesley.

Tyler Kent, a fascist (in the sense he was a member of a fascist organization, the Right Club), was convicted of spying as he leaked documents to the Germans.

At his trial, Kent also admitted he had taken documents from the US Embassy in Moscow, with the vague notion of someday showing them to US senators who shared his isolationist, antisemitic views.

Wikipedia says:

Isolationist groups in the United States claimed he had been framed and that the trial was an attempted cover-up of an attempt to get the US to join the war. The documents, finally released in 1972, did not support this claim. The papers that Kent had purloined indicated British-American naval co-operation, but they also showed that Roosevelt was not prepared to go further without support from the US Congress or the public.

but this ends with "citation needed" so it is unsourced.

Overall, if the source that says Raczyński vouched for them is accurate, then I believe the documents are accurate. I find the claims of Kent, Tansill, and Barnes unconvincing, as I would expect them to make those claims. I would also place significant weight on Jędrzejewicz, but he was reporting on someone else's beliefs as I read it.

I hate when people mix reliable figures with others that are completely partisan.

So you maintain it's genuine?

Of course, they got ahold of the original facsimiles according to the diary entry of one of the Polish ambassadors who said "the documents are certainly genuine..."

In the spirit of the recent post on fake quotations, I found the quote from the diary entry as cited.

Love your stuff which is the only reason I'm bothering to comment, 'original facsimile' is an oxymoron. A facsimile is a copy. It's fallen out of use but once upon a time someone might have said 'make a facsimile of this document so we have two carbon copies'

(You need to write 'facsimiles', not 'fascimile', for it to work. )

Right, so a DR guy would think it's easy to prove.

Someone has just responded to the OP in the manner I expected:

Unz goes through a litany of historians who (seemingly?) confirm the authenticity of the papers. Whereas the JTA link you posted reasserts the denial of the Polish ambassador who would have surely said the same thing no matter the veracity of the documents, as the documents were embarrassing to Poland’s relationship to the Allies. In any case I am also interested in your question.

And wouldn't you know, he seems to think that the ambassador's denial is worthless. Hey, maybe foreverlurker will stick around and win the debate, that would really surprise me.

I understand your point, you think he's raising the question just to increase engagement on what is a salient piece of Revisionist evidence. I think it's possible, but I can see his posts also explained by seeking others to reassure him that it isn't true, I see it all the time in historical debates around Revisionism where someone basically asks "can someone debunk this?" in earnest.

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