On history, lies and outrage - Shaun Walker in The Guardian:

;Poland’s prime minister has launched a furious response to claims by Vladimir Putin that Poland was partially responsible for the outbreak of the second world war.

It is the latest episode in a bitter conflict over historical memory that is likely to intensify as the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazism approaches next May.

Mateusz Morawiecki issued a four-page statement on Sunday accusing the Russian president of “repeated lies” over the history of the conflict. Earlier, the Polish foreign ministry said Putin’s words resembled “propaganda from the time of Stalinist totalitarianism”.

Morawiecki was responding to a speech by Putin at a summit of heads of former Soviet states in St Petersburg on 20 December. Putin gave the assembled leaders an hour-long history lecture, drawing on a sheaf of archival documents he had brought with him. The Russian president has also raised the issue at a number of other meetings in recent days, including a gathering of top army generals in which he called Poland’s ambassador to Nazi Germany “a scumbag and an antisemitic pig”.

Morawiecki said Putin was playing with history in order to distract from international pressure over issues such as sanctions and a doping ban for Russian athletes. “I consider president Putin’s words as an attempt to cover up these problems. The Russian leader is well aware that his accusations have nothing to do with reality.”

The Polish foreign ministry also summoned the Russian ambassador to complain to him about Putin’s comments last week.

Putin is particularly angry about a recent European parliament resolution that said the Soviet Union bore responsibility for starting the second world war, alongside Nazi Germany. That, in turn, came after a concerted effort from the Russian foreign ministry earlier this year to rehabilitate the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, which 10 years ago Putin had called “pointless, harmful and dangerous”. This year, Russia’s culture minister called it “a triumph of Soviet diplomacy”.

Putin, in his recent speech, insisted that the pact was born of Soviet defensive requirements and only came about after other western powers, including Poland, had signed their own agreements with the Nazis. Putin pointed to Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 Munich agreement in particular, saying war became inevitable after this point.'

Read the article here.

Politics is among other things the attempt to rewrite history all the time.
Unfortunately, this is not an innocent pastime.

Sooner or later we will hear: International Jewry started the war. Which is what Hitler claimed till the bitter end.