The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.
—SS chief Heinrich Himmler, October 17, SS officers' conference
Warsaw has to be pacified, that is, razed to the ground.
—Adolf Hitler, 1944[2]
I'm not saying what's right and what's wrong but your sentence made me think of the age old quote "history is written by the victors".
The Soviets, on the other hand, had a desire for Polish territory.
At the end of the war Churchill did ask the military to come up with a plan to free Poland from Soviet control by force - but that was never going to be a realistic option, even with US assistance:
Same thing happened to the French - the German army moved so fast through the low countries that the French couldn't move fast enough to block them. The last time everyone fought, months would go by with only a few miles of land exchanged. This time round, a few miles of land only took an hour to obtain.
In any case, the UK deserves some credit for hastily allying with the Polish in an attempt to dissuade Germany from invading in the first place. And after the war, the Soviets were ascendent in Europe, with the rest of the Allies afraid that they would continue their march through the rest of the continent. They had a plan to take on the Soviets, but they didn't have the power to realistically defeat them.
Yeah, that's a great excuse. That should be written in the anglo-polish military alliance:
"in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power... Unless of course the germans use tanks and move very quickly. In that case, sorry".
The UK did not ally itself with Poland to help them from being taken over. It was a way of saying to Hitler, that he can't just do what he wants in Europe (like anecting Czechoslovakia) without the Germans and French approving it. The war was immenent, and everybody seemd to know that except for Chamberlain. This was only an act of self interest on behalf of the UK, and hey, who could blame them for that?
What you can't reasonably argue though, is that they tried to really help Poland in the beginning of WW2, and that they didn't betray them at the end in Yalta. And the occupation by the Soviets really wasn't much better than by the Nazis.
There was no real plan to take the Soviets on, because the Allies had no real stake in it.
The UK allied with Poland in an attempt to contain Germany, as I've already said. It's normal for countries to make such big gestures in their own interest. Should the UK have just allied with Poland out of a sense of charity? What in particular had Poland done for the UK before this time, to demand the UK's unquestioning selfless military intervention? What became Poland was, after all, part of the central powers that opposed the UK in WWI.
And, like I said, no-one knew how rapidly Poland would fall under Blitzkreig; the mobility of the German armies was still not countered by the time they invaded France months later.
The war was immenent, and everybody seemd to know that except for Chamberlain.
Chamberlain was buying time to rearm the UK. I've always found it amusing that people take the position that the UK is responsible for 'letting Germany annex Czechoslovakia'. Apparently the other powers in the region didn't have a moral responsibility to protect an unrelated central European country, only the UK.
One wonders, if it's all about morals rather than capabilities, why Poland didn't step in and prevent Germany from annexing Czechoslovakia?
There was no real plan to take the Soviets on, because the Allies had no real stake in it.
The rest of the Allies had a huge stake in preventing the Soviets from dominating Europe. They just had no way to feasibly follow it through.
She offered words of consolation: 'Well, but that really was a long time ago.' - 'Maybe, but all those people are still dead.'
I refuse to find closure with that part of my countries' history. The least I can do is be eternally sad about what my country has done to the world.
Thank you to the OP and thank you for sharing those links. They have reminded me once again to stay deeply disturbed and humbled.