Talk:2nd Rifle Division (Poland)

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Military history: European / Polish Start‑class

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Dubious claim

Regarding the statement about a "rapid and secret retreat" of French forces near the Polish 2nd Division in June 1940. By the time the 2nd Division crossed the Swiss frontier, the French Army was in a chaotic state brought about by a series of retreats. If anything, it was the prevailing chaos that allowed for situations where some units were retreating and other units were not aware of the retreat -- a common situation on battlefields, by the way. The command situation of the Polish units in the French Army became confused in late June 1940 when the Polish government-in-exile gave orders to the two divisions to either place their units under British sponsorship/control or to intern themselves in Switzerland, while the French military was ordering the divisions to continue operating within the framework of their mission with the French Army (Grandes Unités Françaises, Vol. 3, pp. 293-300.) In fact, this statement is accusatory and explosive enough that it requires citation from serious work(s). I'll give the editors who have worked on this article one month to obtain solid citation(s) for the statement, else it will be removed. W. B. Wilson (talk) 08:30, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have any serious references that W.B.Wilson speaks of (Polish sources should be able to document I would think) but I do know as a personal antidote from my father, who was on the scene, that The Poles fully believed that the French pulled out and left the Poles stranded. This created significant animosity and, again antidotaly, provided the Germans with propoganda againt the ability of French military leadership.Finally, my father was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his actions there but returned the medal to the French due to his firm distaste of what happened. --Vumba (talk) 00:29, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Vumba -- My grandfather was in the 1940 campaign as well (a different Allied army). I can well understand the distaste your father had for what happened and I can also well understand how the Poles may have believed they were deliberately denied vital information on the course of combat events around them. For an encyclopedia, though, to include that statement is to rely on hearsay, and hearsay is not an acceptable source of information. I would have no issue were the phrase changed to "rapid retreat" vice "rapid and secret retreat". Saying that the retreat was "secret" without a citation from a historical work is too sensational and is not encyclopedic. As I mentioned above, there was a fair amount of confusion resulting from the conflicting orders of the French military and the Polish government-in-exile, and that alone could have easily resulted in the Polish unit having a different understanding of what was going on around it. If a citation can be found for the "secret" assertion, then that is fine -- but it really needs to be documented. W. B. Wilson (talk) 05:36, 25 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Been almost three years since I posted the above. No citation has been provided for the claim that the retreat was "secret", so I have removed that from the text of the article. W. B. Wilson (talk) 11:06, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]