The war aim does not consist in attaining particular goals but in the physical annihilation of the enemy. My order is to send every man, woman and child of Polish origin and language to their deaths mercilessly and without pity.
Adolf Hitler, 1939
To a sickening degree, Nazi Germany obeyed the Fiihrer's genocidal injunction. By the end of World War II, one out of every five Poles6,000,000 in all had perished at German hands. After the war, the Poles were unbendingly hostile toward the West Germans in particular, regarding them as the moral heirs of Hitler's Third Reich.
Last week in Warsaw,...