Mama Mia! Swedish Rockers Invade Poland to commemorate WWII
On Sept. 1, 1939, Poland was attacked by Nazi Germany. Now, 70 years later, a Swedish heavy metal band is swooping down on Poland lauding the Poles for their valiant effort against the German blitzkrieg that started World War II and captured all of Europe.
The German "lightning war" from the West and the Soviet Union's invasion from the East sandwiched Poland between Europe's two most ruthless armies. It was a prearranged plot by Hitler and Stalin to split Poland in half and decimate the Polish nation. But in the small town of Wizna, a unit of fewer than 1,000 Poles held off 42,000 German invaders for three days.
The Swedish band Sabaton has written a thunderous guitar song "40-1" that has young Polish head bangers jumping into mosh pits, and Polish war-veterans weepy eyed over the video that shows their brothers in arms trying to hold off the Nazi attack.
Call it history through heavy metal.
It's not your father's patriotic war song, but many Poles are moved that their Nordic neighbors would praise local heroes; especially given the irony that Sweden also invaded Poland in the 16th century.
The rock video superimposes images of outnumbered Polish troops standing up to German Panzer tank leader commander General Heinz Guderian over scenes of the band's heavy guitar riffs with the words:
"Baptised in fire
Forty to one
Spirit of spartans
Death and glory
Soldiers of Poland
Second to none"
When Swedish rockers were looking for ideas for their album, "The Art of War," they band's lead singer, Joakim Broden learned about the Battle of Wizna where a band of 720 Polish soldiers stood up to more than 42,000 German soldiers and 350 tanks from Hitler's Wehrmacht.
Most of the Polish soldiers fought to their deaths at the Battle of Wizna, but not before destroying more than 50 German Panzer tanks using little more than heavy machine guns. Over the ensuing months, Germany invaded all of Europe, and even though Poland was the first to fight, it was the only country occupied by the Germans not to form a Quisling government to collaborate with the Nazis.
The unlikely mix of Polish WWII veterans and rock and roll also takes place at 17 Irving Place in New York City where the Polish War Veterans rent the bottom floor of their building to the concert venue, "The Fillmore NY at Irving Plaza" which has hosted acts such as U2, Sting and Prince.
Upstairs, Polish war veterans have established a museum of the Polish Army with a fascinating exhibition of war memorabilia and historic artifacts. Teofil Lachowicz, the curator of the museum showed the video to the members of the veterans group. "They were quite moved," Lachowicz said. "They had tears rolling around in their eyes."
The Sabaton tour of Poland kicks off in Warsaw on August 31st, the eve of the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epeQwq-aYV0
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Interesting article. Brings to mind the fact that an "ally", the Russians, never did return back to Poland the part of Poland they stole. Seems to be an acceptable an ironic history that one invader is victimized and another is part of the international community as if it never happened.
Russia was an ally and without them Germany would have won the war outright...
Russia defeated the Germans and broke their war machine, not the other allies that enetered too late and hit what was left of the Germans...
Really? And what were the Allies doing in North Africa, Italy, etc. prior to the Normandy invasion? And what about the vast amounts of war materiel sent to theSoviets by the U.S. ? Furthermore, the U.S. and Britain were simultaneously fighting the Japanese in Asia and the Germans in Europe.
Each and every Pole, Czech, Slovak, Bosnian, Hungarian, Romanian and Austrian should bow low in eternal gratitude to millions Soviet soldiers who liberated Eastern Europe from Nazis. And that's fact. Instead of splitting hairs on who did waht during and before the war. There is not a SINGLE nation in Europe which can absolve itself of guilt over the rise of Nazism.
Poland was liberated by the Soviets? The Poles would beg to differ To begin with, the secret protocol of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 1939 allowed the Soviets to grab the eastern half of Poland which was never restored to the Poles. In 1945 the Soviet s imposed almost a half century of communist totalitarianism from which Poland has yet to fully recover. The Nazi horror was replaced by communist terror and occupation. This was not a liberation.
When my parents went to Poland, they toured the concentration camps. The most haunting was Birkenau, a death camp. The size of twenty football fields, and dedicated solely to extermination. During the tour of Dachau, some other American tourist asked the guide about "when the Americans freed everyone", and the guide tried to explain that the Soviet army liberated Dachau. The tourist wouldn't hear of it.
Nobody focuses much on what happened to the Polish citizenry during the Nazi occupation. The Nazis considered them subhuman as much as the Nazis considered Jews and Gypsies subhuman.
Actually, Dachau was indeed liberated by the U.S. Army, although the camps in occupied Poland were liberated by the Soviets.
Sabaton has brought cultures and generations together with this song. Way to go, Sabaton! You rock! I hope to read more about the reaction to the song by the Polish soldiers who fought in the Resistance. Thank you for the article, Mr Storozynski!
It's good to see somebody giving the Poles credit for the fight they put up. That's a good start for getting past some of the many things "everybody knows" about that war that aren't necessarily so.
Like the Greeks who gave the allies one, if not their first victory in Europe on October 28, 1940 called "oxi" day...
Out-numbered 2 to 1 they defeated the Italiens and Albanians and pushed them back deep into modern day Albania from Greek territory...
Or of the Serbs that faught bravely against the fascist forces and the story of the 500 allied airmen rescued during the war by courageous Serbs that kept them alive from Albanian and German savages...
Serbs, Greeks and Belorussians were the best at the guerrilla warfare. Not Poles.
But there was a considerable number of Poles fighting in British and Soviet armies.
Despite a few heroic stands surrender in a few weeks speaks for itself.
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