At a final press conference on December 19, Putin said that he was going to write an article about the origins of World War II, as well as the role of the Western powers and East European limitrophs in unleashing it. However, he said that extensive archival materials on this subject have already been provided to him and he is studying them.

The study had a strong impact on the president. Without waiting for the publication of the article, he already began to share certain facts.

Speaking at an expanded collegium of the Ministry of Defense, he said that as early as 1938 Hitler had told the Polish ambassador in Berlin, Jozef Lipsky, about his idea of ​​sending Jews to Africa (to Madagascar) "to extinction, to destruction." The ambassador wrote about the conversation with the Fuhrer in his report to the Polish Foreign Minister Beck: “When I heard this, I answered him: if he does, we will put him a magnificent monument in Warsaw.” “You bastard, an anti-Semitic pig, you can’t say otherwise,” V.V. summed up. Putin

The fact that Polish interwar diplomacy was provocative - or, using S.V. Lavrova, was arrogant, - one way or another, everyone outside Poland recognized. Pilsudski’s young autocracy (and, after his death, the colonels) was squeamish, very ambitious and, as a result, rather indiscreet, as the Poles became convinced on September 1, 1939.

The fact that the attitude of the Poles towards the Jews cannot be called a model of benevolence is also a well-known thing. During the war, there were Jewish pogroms, and the reaction of the Poles to the doomed uprising in the Warsaw ghetto was described by the poet Aronov:

When the ghetto burned

Warsaw was amazed

Four consecutive days.

And there was so much cod

And there was so much light

And people said:

"The bugs are burning."

The pogroms of the few survivors were after May 1945, and already in the 1960s, under the communist Gomulka, almost the entire Jewish community was squeezed into exile. So Ambassador Lipsky was not some outstanding person, but he thought in the spirit of a strong common tradition.

Of course, from the diplomatic point of view, he hardly should have - with all his “love” for Jews and with all his desire to please the Führer — talk about the desire to erect a glorious, beautiful statue of A. Hitler in the center of Warsaw. This is the case when the ambassador could show his respect for the Reich Chancellor in a more tactful way.

However, Lipsky was only 44 years old then, for the ambassador in Poland, a key country, he was a young man, and indeed his diplomatic experience was not great, so that all sorts of faux pas, although not excusable, are understandable. But then, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was then nothing at all - less than twenty years old ("Where, they say, and what kind of geographical news?"). Hence the strangeness of the personnel policy that entrusted the fate of Poland (Lipsky - one of the creators of cordial agreement with the Third Reich) into the hands of an effective manager. It’s like Ogryzko with Klimkin is something better.

Finally, it should be noted that until the early 1940s, Hitler was considered by all politicians who made decisions as a subject, perhaps not the most pleasant, but in some cases potentially useful. And it’s not at all like an arch-villain and a beast from the abyss.

“The history of Hitler is the story of his underestimation,” and why should Lipsky be far-sighted and insightful of his older colleagues?

Although one does not have to be particularly insightful to understand that the plans for the resettlement of European Jews (about ten million) or even just Reich Jews (according to the 1933 census - half a million) to Madagascar, even in a purely logistical sense, are either unrealistic or mean death ships, in comparison with which the slaveholding transports of the XVII — XVIII centuries from Africa to North America are a model of comfort. Monuments for this do not put. Except, of course, those cases when hostility towards Jews is blind.

But, of course, the question is also relevant, whether it was necessary to poke the ridiculous gentry into their product, whether it was diplomatic or pragmatic. Perhaps here was the case when the limit of patience was exceeded. Pans, we must pay tribute to them, tried their best.

Perhaps the appeal to unpleasant archives signifies the desire to shorten the reproachful messianic rhetoric of the Europeans, which will infuriate the angel.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.