Polish Death Toll (of Poles)

[ironeagle757]

Do the Poles make a similar claim to the Jews that 6 million Poles died at the hands of the Germans? Is there any revisionist material addressing the Polish death toll claims?

[Otium]

Yes, the claim often made was that 6 million Poles were killed.

See this article which discusses Polish population losses in WW2:

Polish Population Losses during World War Two by Dr. Otward Müller | Archive

In fact, the population losses inflicted on Poland came more from the Soviet side than the German, yet this fact is ignored and really never spoken about today by most mainstream historians.

The number of victims murdered by Soviet authorities in occupied Poland by June 1941—about five hundred thousand—was likewise three or four times higher than the number of those killed by the Nazis. Amazingly—despite his own war of conquest against Poland being, if not as deadly as Hitler’s during its military phase, then marked by a geometrically larger number of executions and deportations and far more destruction in economic terms—the Vozhd received not even a slap on the wrist from the Western powers for his crimes.

Sean McMeekin, Stalin's War: A New History of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2021), Pp. 110.

In more detail from another source we read:

Finally, I must comment on the loss of life among the Polish people under the two occupiers. According to figures compiled by the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, 100,000 Polish Jews were killed or died as a direct consequence of German measures during the first two years of the Nazi occupation. From 1939 through 1941, 10,889 Poles were shot by the Germans in mass executions. Perhaps another 10,000 were killed clandestinely, in the backyards of prisons. Thus, during the first two years of occupation the Germans killed a total of about 120,000 victims in Poland. The Soviet security police, on the other hand, matched that figure in just two episodes of mass execution. The NkvD may have killed as many as 100,000 people during the evacuation of prisons in the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia during June and July 1941 (about two-thirds of the prison population at the time), and in the spring of 1940 the Soviets murdered Polish prisoners of war. (About 5,000 bodies were discovered in mass graves near the Katyn forest, and the remaining 10,000 have never been accounted for.)

But the total list of casualties for which the Soviets are responsible is much longer. Scores of people were killed during the first weeks of the occupation, and executions continued throughout.’ Further, onefourth of the deportees and concentration camp inmates must have been dead by the end of summer 1941—another 300,000 victims. These very conservative estimates show that the Soviets killed or drove to their deaths three or four times as many people as the Nazis from a population half the size of that under German jurisdiction. This comparison, I repeat, holds for the first two years of the Second World War. . . This somewhat mechanistic comparison may at least serve to counter any possible incredulity at the record of Soviet rule in the Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Life was more dangerous in many respects under the Soviets than under the Nazis. And, as I have stated before, people at the time compared the two. Many, including thousands of Jews, came to this very conclusion and voted accordingly “with their feet.”

Jan T. Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Beolorussia (Princeton University Press, 2002), Pp. 228-229.

The author notes that the losses under the Soviets could even be as high as 750,000:

“By the time that the Amnesty was granted in 1941 (for crimes that had not been committed), almost half of the one-and-a-half million Poles deported in the previous years were already dead. The victims included 100,000 Polish Jews, headed by the Chief Rabbi of Warsaw, Moses Shore. The exact numbers will never be known.” This is the assessment of Norman Davies in his deservedly acclaimed history of Poland, God’s Playground, 2: 451. I believe he chose the highest plausible estimates; but, if we accept 1.5 million as the total number of Polish citizens sent to the Soviet interior, then perhaps the staggering 750,000 dead is not far off the mark. Two Polish government reports prepared in London at the end of the war estimated that 800,000 to 850,000 Polish citizens remained in Russia following the breach of Polish-Soviet diplomatic relationships in April 1943. Given that 120,000 were evacuated when the Anders Army left the Soviet Union and that the total number of deportees might have been 1.25 million to begin with, I think an estimated 300,000 deaths in exile is more plausible.

Ibid., p. 229.

Regarding deportations of Poles, they suffered much more under the Soviets:

Of the 2.5 million victims of German deportations, 1.5 million were sent from western Poland (incorporated into the Reich) to central Poland (the Generalgouvernement). The others were Pows, victims of street roundups, and conscripts sent to work in Germany. (Only a small fraction of this group, 6—7 percent, was confined in concentration camps.) Their trip to either destination was brief—one to three days at most—so that they suffered much less than those deported by the Soviets (assuming they traveled in similar conditions), who faced ten days to three weeks or more of discomfort.

The circumstances awaiting the Nazi victims at the end of the journey were also much less forbidding. Those dumped into the Generalgouvernement were literally abandoned to their own devices upon arrival, to the great annoyance of the local authorities, who would suddenly have a transport of destitute people to provide for. Some, ideally, could be accommodated by relatives or assisted by friends. In any case, they were among compatriots and eligible for some rudimentary form of assistance through the Main Welfare Council (Rada Gtéwna Opiekuricza). Those sent into Germany for labor were treated shabbily; workers from Poland probably suffered the most among all foreign workers.’ But they were not dying from exhaustion, hunger, and exposure to the elements, as were scores of their compatriots whom the Soviet authorities forcibly resettled. If nothing else, Germany had a better climate and was much better off materially than the Soviet interior in Stalin’s time. That meant the difference between life and death for tens of thousands of people.’ As for confinement in camps, several hundred thousand people were sent to Soviet concentration camps at the time, while substantially fewer than one hundred thousand met with a similar fate at the hands of the Nazis.

Ibid., p. 228.

Thus the Soviets deserve much more responsibility placed on them then they currently receive from anybody.

Also see Lamprecht's thread on Poland under Communism:

Poland under Communism / Jewish domination of Polish Communism