page_title: Anti-Polish sentiment
section_title: Anti-Polish sentiment to 1918
hierarchical_section_title: Anti-Polish sentiment / Anti-Polish sentiment to 1918
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Obraz "Poranek", tytułowany również "Poranek w kopalni", "W drodze do katorgi", "Jutrznia" i "Ranek". Obraz przedstawia katorżników idących do pracy. Obok strażnika namalowany został św. Rafał Kalinowski. Autorem malowidła jest Aleksander Sochaczewski (zm. 1923).English: A painting by Aleksander Sochaczewski showing Polish exiles in Siberia. The person standing right next to the guard is Polish Saint Rafał Kalinowski.
context_page_description: Polonophobia, anti-Polonism, and anti-Polish sentiment are terms for a variety of negative attitudes, prejudices, and actions against Polish people and Polish culture. These include racial prejudice against Poles and persons of Polish descent, ethnically-based discrimination, and state-sponsored mistreatment of Poles and the Polish diaspora. This prejudice led to mass killings and genocide or it was used to justify atrocities both during and after World War II, most notably by the German Nazis, Ukrainian nationalists and Soviet communist authorities.
  Nazi Germany's Directive No.1306 stated: "Polishness equals subhumanity. Poles, Jews and gypsies are on the same inferior level." Nazi Germany killed an estimated 2.8 million ethnic Poles, of which over 75,000 were murdered in Auschwitz.
  Anti-Polish sentiment includes defamation and derogatory stereotyping of Poles as unintelligent and aggressive, as thugs, thieves, alcoholics, and anti-Semites. It also includes rising workplace discrimination and criminal violence against Poles.
context_section_description: Anti-Polish rhetoric combined with the condemnation of Polish culture was most prominent in the 18th-century Prussia during the partitions of Poland. However, anti-Polish propaganda begins with the Teutonic Order in the 14th century. It was a very important tool in the Order's attempt to conquer the Duchy of Lithuania which eventually failed because of Lithuania's Personal union with the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Christianization of Lithuania to Catholicism.  The first major thinker to openly call for the genocide of the Polish people was the 14th century German Dominican theologian John of Falkenberg who on behalf of the Teutonic Order argued not only that Polish pagans should be killed, but that all Poles should be subject to genocide on the grounds that Poles were an inherently heretical race and that even the King of Poland, Jogaila a Christian convert, ought to be murdered.  The assertion that Poles were heretical was largely politically motivated as the Teutonic Order desired to conquer Polish lands despite Christianity having become the dominant religion in Poland centuries prior.
  Germany, becoming more and more permeated with Teutonic Prussianism, has never since abandoned these tactics. For instance, David Blackbourn of Harvard University speaks of the scandalised writings of German intellectual Johann Georg Forster, who was granted a tenure at Vilnius University by the Polish Commission of National Education in 1784. Forster wrote of Poland's "backwardness" in a similar vein to "ignorance and barbarism" of southeast Asia. Such views were later repeated in the German ideas of Lebensraum and exploited by the Nazis. German academics between the 18th and 20th centuries attempted to project, in the difference between Germany and Poland, a "boundary between civilization and barbarism; high German Kultur and primitive Slavdom" (1793 racist diatribe by J.C. Schulz republished by the Nazis in 1941). Prussian officials, eager to secure Polish partition, encouraged the view that the Poles were culturally inferior and in need of Prussian tutelage. Such racist texts, originally published from the 18th century onwards, were republished by the German Reich prior to and after its invasion of Poland.
  Frederick the Great of Prussia nourished a particular hatred and contempt for the Polish people. Following his conquest of Poland, he compared the Poles to "Iroquois" of Canada. In his all-encompassing anti-Polish campaign, even the nobility of Polish background living in Prussia were obliged to pay higher taxes than those of German heritage. Polish monasteries were viewed as "lairs of idleness" and their property often seized by Prussian authorities. The prevalent Catholicism among Poles was stigmatised. The Polish language was persecuted at all levels.
  After the Polish–Russian War in early 1600s, Poland was greatly antagonized by the Russians as the cause of chaos and tyranny in Russia. The future House of Romanov, who would found the Russian Empire after taken power from the Rurik dynasty, used a number of distortion activities, describing Poles as backward, cruel and heartless, praising the rebellion against Poles; and heavily centered around the Orthodox belief. When Tsardom of Russia invaded Poland at the Russo-Polish war of 1650s, the Russians caused a number of atrocities, and destroyed most of Eastern Poland, sometimes joining destruction with its Ukrainian ally led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Swedes in the parallel Swedish invasion. The war was held as a Russian triumph for its attempt to destroy Poland.
  Sweden, which developed anti-Polish sentiment due to previous Polish–Swedish wars in hope to gain territorial and political influence, as well as dispute with the Polish Crown because of Sigismund III Vasa, launched an invasion known as the Deluge. Swedish invaders, joined force with Russian invaders in the east, together destroyed Poland and took away many of the Polish national treasures, as well as causing atrocities against Poles. The Poles were treated very brutally by Swedes, and as a result, Poland l
caption: 19th-century Polish exiles in Siberia (painting)
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