Demographics and Polish losses in WW2

[Mkk]

(Note: The purpose of this thread is not to deny sufferings of Poles and anyone else in WW2, but to investigate the demographic impact of these losses)

Just like 6M Jews myth, another figure that is popular in the literature and in the media is one of 6 million Polish deaths in WW2 : 3 Million Polish Jews and 3 Million ethnic Poles.

The following piece focuses mainly on ethnic Pole losses. It seems that much of the alledged 3 million deaths among ethnic Poles were actually made up out of non-Poles - mainly Germans and Ukrainians - who were expelled or remained behind the Curzon line. Also many Poles who had fled during the war never returned home.Further evidence of this conclusion is given in population growth, finding the Polish population turned out to be much larger if they had really lost 3 million people.

http://vho.org/tr/2003/2/Mueller151-156.html

[Kingfisher]

Carolyn Yeager has something about this on her site, and Fritz Berg had something quoting General Jaruzelski saying that the increase of the Polish postwar population implied by the alleged figures for 1946 was simply not possible. I'll look them up and post links.

Comnon sense says that given the huge population movements and border changes, figures for 1946 must have a very large margin of error.

[Kingfisher]

Here is the quote from Berg's site. Unfortunately the site itself is horribly designed and impossible to use. Strange, because it was much better in the past.

“To this day I fail to understand how 24 million Poles could have been counted after World War 2 when already by the next census in 1970 there were suddenly 14 million more Poles. Then, as if hit by lightning, the population explosion ended and fluctuated at a level of about 38 million inhabitants which is still unchanged to this day. Obviously it was a strong aphrodisiac which had led to the birth of X-millions of new Poles because in the grocery stores there had been only vinegar and millions had died even after the war” according to the former Polish president [General Wojciech Jaruzelski] as he spoke to the amazed journalist of the daily newspaper “Iswestija.”

Clearly, the well known official growth of the Polish population in the postwar years is very mysterious and differs from the figures given by Wojciech Jaruzelski by “only” approximately 6 million persons. According to the ex-president who is regarded as an honorable person in spite of his history, there were in 1946 only 24 million people left over from a population of 37 million people in the late 1930’s. Consequently there were 13 million missing Poles of whom 5.9 million had supposedly died during the war, including almost 2.9 million Jews. The fate of the remaining 7 million Poles is still unexplained. The numbers from official Polish statisticians (GUS) give 23.6 million for 1946 and 32.7 million for 1970 which is 5.8 million fewer than in 1990 after the fall of communism and after which there were 38 million Poles.

Since the end of communism, the birthrate in Poland is only 1.3 children per woman–the population growth rate, even 20 years after 1990, is at 0.00 percent. However, according to Jaruzelski the birthrate had already been stagnant since 1970. By which gigantic leap must the birthrate have climbed already shortly after the war in order to make Jaruzelski’s statement plausible? A population of only 23.6 million Poles produced according to official (GUS) statistics 312,000 children in 1946. From these 72,500 died during or shortly after birth. But it was not just the child mortality that was enormously high in 1946, it was high generally . In addition, several million men in the best years of their lives had died during the war also. Bigamy was strictly forbidden, illegitimate children were denounced as “bastards,” and “in the grocery stores, there was only vinegar” as General Jaruzelski admitted to “Iswestija.

Berg also posted on this forum: http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5769&start=0
I can't vouch for the authenticity of the quote, but it's not really that important as the figures are unlikely to be invented and should be verifiable, in which case the sentiment and the conclusions seem valid, regardless of whether Jaruzelski said it. (Maybe a Polish speaker can find the Polish source from Isvestija.)

While there is little doubt that WW2 was the most horrific conflict in history, it does seem likely that the numbers of dead have been exaggerated for political advantage by Jews, Poles and Russians. And, of course all the deaths are attributed to the Germans, never to that nice Uncle Joe.

[Mkk]

There is a discussion at AHF where a user brought this up: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 9&start=15 A number of criticisms are offered, such as that the author overestimated the number of Poles in 1946 as being about 800,000 more than it really was, and that former German-citizens "became" ethnic Poles after 1945. Later in the thread it is estimated that 2.2 million Poles died in all, but doesn't mention the Germans who "became" Poles (supposedly over a million of them) so that number would be higher.

[Mkk]

and Fritz Berg had something quoting General Jaruzelski saying that the increase of the Polish postwar population implied by the alleged figures for 1946 was simply not possible

Are we sure about that? According to this site, looking at Poland's neighbor Slovakia, 3.459,1 million people lived in the country in 1945. Now its 5.851 million. http://www.populstat.info/Europe/slovakic.htm Not much different than what Poland went through.

The same can be seen for Romania:

1945: 13,680,000
1955: 17,325,000
1965: 19,083,400
1975: 21,353,200
1985: 22,724,800
1995: 22,681,000

Also, the quote that:

To this day I fail to understand how 24 million Poles could have been counted after World War 2 when already by the next census in 1970 there were suddenly 14 million more Poles.

But that wasnt the case. Looking at 1950 when most population movements had subsided, there were 24.824 million people in Poland. By 1970 there was 32.642,0 million which was an increase of about 7.8 million http://www.populstat.info/Europe/polandc.htm

Jaruzelski also said that:

because in the grocery stores there had been only vinegar and millions had died even after the war”

Assuming that deprivation causes low birthrates. Well. the opposite seems to be the case. The most prosperous states in the world have barely 1.5 births per woman, while countries such as Niger with very high levels of poverty have over 6 per woman.

Berg added:

The fate of the remaining 7 million Poles is still unexplained

This is incorrect. The remaining 7 million were not Poles, but ethnic Ukrainians/Belarusans/Lithuanians who after the war no longer lived on the territory of Poland but rather in those respective SSRs.

So you can take either official statistics or the offhand comment of Jaruzelski which doesn't seem to be based upon much. One could argue that the communists fabricated the census statistics, but one would also have to assume that for Slovakia or Romania which were in similar situations.