Western betrayal
view that Western countries failed to meet their obligations with respect to Czechoslovak and Polish states during the prelude to and aftermath of World War II
Western betrayal or Yalta betrayal are popular terms in many Central European countries, especially in Poland and the Czech Republic but also in non-Western nations which refers to the foreign policy of several Western countries which violated allied pacts and agreements during the period from the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 through World War II and to the Cold War, as rooted in hypocrisy and betrayal.
About the Western betrayal concept:
Quotes
edit- ...and so in the evening released from facts I can think
about distant ancient matters for example our
friends beyond the sea I know they sincerely sympathize
they send us flour lard sacks of comfort and good advice
they don't even know their fathers betrayed us
our former allies at the time of the second Apocalypse
their sons are blameless they deserve our gratitude therefore we are grateful
they have not experienced a siege as long as eternity
those struck by misfortune are always alone
the defenders of the Dalai Lama the Kurds the Afghan mountaineers...- Zbigniew Herbert, Report from the Besieged City
- It is said that by doing that [i.e abandoning Eastern Europe] they secured the imminent participation of Stalin in war against Japan. Already armed with the Atomic bomb, they did pay for Stalin so that he wouldn’t refuse to occupy Mandzhuria, to help Mao Zedong to gain power in China and Kim Ir Sen in half of Korea!… Oh, misery of political calculation! When later Mikolajczyk was expelled, when the end of Benesh and Masaryk came, Berlin was blocked, Budapest was in flames and turned silent, when ruins fumed in Korea and when the conservatives fleed from Suez – didn’t really some of those who had better memory recall for instance the case of giving away the cossacks?
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, Part I, ch 6 (‘That Spring’)
