Polish people

Poles are a West Slavic ethnic group and nation who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Central Europe. The preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland defines the Polish nation as comprising all the citizens of Poland, regardless of heritage or ethnicity. The majority of Poles adhere to Roman Catholicism.

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Quotes

I judged the Poles by their enemies. And I found it was an almost unfailing truth that their enemies were the enemies of magnanimity and manhood. If a man loved slavery, if he loved usury, if he loved terrorism and all the trampled mire of materialistic politics, I have always found that he added to these affections the passion of a hatred of Poland. She could be judged in the light of that hatred; and the judgment has proved to be right.
- G. K. Chesterton, Introduction to Charles Sarolea’s Letters on Polish Affairs (1922), p. 8

There are few virtues which the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.
- Winston Churchill, in the House of Commons, after the Potsdam Conference. Quoted in Churchill, Winston Spencer (2005). Maxims and Reflections. Kessinger Publishing.

The Polish soldier is a marcher of extraordinary endurance.
- Charles de Gaulle, as quoted in Warsaw 1920: Lenin's Failed Conquest of Europe (2008), William Collins, p. 105.

Ich habe den Befehl gegeben – und ich lasse jeden füsilieren, der auch nur ein Wort der Kritik äußert – daß das Kriegsziel nicht im Erreichen von bestimmten Linien, sondern in der physischen Vernichtung des Gegners besteht. So habe ich, einstweilen nur im Osten, meine Totenkopfverbände bereitgestellt mit dem Befehl, unbarmherzig und mitleidslos Mann, Weib und Kind polnischer Abstammung und Sprache in den Tod zu schicken.
I have issued the command – and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language.
- Adolf Hitler, Obersalzberg Speech (22 August 1939), par. 3, as translated by Louis Paul Lochner, What About Germany (1942), pp. 11–12