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Comment by fwr | Hacker News Reader

It's a touchy subject in Poland, it's generally not accepted that anyone other than the Poles deserves any recognition and any mention of the actual state of history gets you shifty looks. So while the world is starting giving credit to Rejewski's team, the broad audience here is just now discovering that it wasn't solely their work.

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> It's a touchy subject in Poland, it's generally not accepted that anyone other than the Poles deserves any recognition

Hmm... Think of it differently:

- Poland regained independence because president Wilson [1] (hurray for USA)

- Poland was expecting British and French help early in the second world war (boo to UK / France)

- Poland was left under Stalin's influence after the war (boo for UK / USA)

Now mainstream media rarely mentions polish contribution [2] [3] [4] to war efforts. Allow us to complain. We like to complain.

And yes, we would like to be recognized, and complaining is pretty much the only thing we can do about it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson#The_Fourteen_Po...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._303_Polish_Fighter_Squadro...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/II_Corps_(Poland)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Polish_Armoured_Division

Update 1: Added final sentence.

Update 2: Also relevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Total_... (especially the rightmost column)

And there was this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Monte_Cassino where my (ex) Father-in-Law was part of. They returned to the site in celebration for many years.

And of course the most famous participant of the battle, Wojtek the Brown bear:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(soldier_bear)

I actually found a beer named after the bear the other day - I didn't get a chance to drink any though!

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