70th anniversay of World War II outbreak
GDANSK: European leaders remembered the victims of World War II Tuesday at ceremonies marking the start of the conflict 70 years ago, as the
countries involved disputed its historical legacy.
Veterans of the war joined Poland's leaders for a ceremony in the port of Gdansk - the site of the first battle on September 1, 1939, when a German ship opened fire on a Polish base.
"We are here to remember who in that war was the aggressor and who was the victim, for without an honest memory neither Europe, nor Poland, nor the world will ever live in security," said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Events marking history's bloodiest conflict began at 4:45 am (0245 GMT) on the Westerplatte peninsula near Gdansk, the site of the base.
The Polish army, outnumbered by more than two to one, surrendered on October 6 and a brutal Nazi occupation began. Almost six million Polish citizens perished in the war, half of them Jewish.
Bogdan Kolodziejski, who was 10 when the war started and became a resistance courier, was one of those at the ceremony.
"I've never forgotten the day the Germans marched into Warsaw, singing at the top of their voices," he said.
Further events were scheduled throughout the day at Westerplatte, with German Chancellor Merkel and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin due to attend.
Ahead of her departure, Merkel had underlined Germany's responsibility.
"Germany attacked Poland, Germany started World War II. We caused unending suffering in the world. Sixty million dead ... was the result," Merkel said on German television.
But she also said that the post-war expulsion of more than 12 million Germans from Eastern Europe was an injustice that also had to be recognised.
That was unlikely to go down well in Poland, which in 1945 gained former German territory in the west to compensate for the land seized by the Soviet Union in the east.
Warsaw has protested that a planned memorial in Berlin for the expelled Germans could overshadow the suffering of the Nazis' victims, including the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Putin's visit will also be closely watched by Poles, especially given the renewed attempts by Russia to justify the August 23, 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Under the terms of that agreement, Germany and the Soviet Union carved up Poland between them at the start of the war.
Putin, who met with Tusk Tuesday, avoided the issue of the Red Army invasion of September 17, 1939.
But he told reporters that Russia disliked "persistent attempts" to pin all the blame on the pact.
"There were a huge number of mistakes made by many sides. All these actions together allowed the massive aggression by Nazi Germany," he said.
He pointed to the Munich agreement of 1938 where Britain and France let Germany annex a slice of Czechoslovakia.
Britain and France, bound to Poland by military pacts, declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, each pulling their vast empires into the conflict.
For Russia, what is known as the "Great Patriotic War" started on June 22, 1941 when the Nazis tore up their non-aggression pact and invaded.
Suddenly the Soviet forces, from having been the occupiers of part of Poland, found themselves fighting against a common enemy.
"We always viewed the Poles as brothers in arms in the common victory," said Putin.
But earlier Tuesday Polish President Lech Kaczynski said the Soviets had "stuck a knife in the back of Poland".
Tusk said Poles would never forget that. Around 8.6 million Soviet soldiers and 27-28 million civilians were killed in the war, which ended with Germany's crushing defeat in 1945.
Accusations by a top Russian foreign intelligence officer at a press conference in Moscow Tuesday were not likely to improve relations between the two countries.
Major General Lev Sotskov of the Russian foreign intelligence service (SVR) produced documents he claimed showed that Poland had been excessively close to the Nazis ahead of World War II.
