Battle of Warsaw (1920)

• By Edgar Vincent D'Abernon — "If Charles Martel had not checked the Saracen conquest at the Battle of Tours, the interpretation of the Koran would be taught at the schools of Oxford, and her pupils might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet."
  "Had Pilsudski and Weygand failed to arrest the triumphant advance of the Soviet Army at the Battle of Warsaw, not only would Christianity have experienced a dangerous reverse, but the very existence of Western civilisation would have been imperilled. The Battle of Tours saved our ancestors from the Yoke of the Koran; it is probable that the Battle of Warsaw saved Central and parts of Western Europe from a more subversive danger – the fanatical tyranny of the Soviet.
  "On the essential point, there can be little room for doubt; had the Soviet forces overcome Polish resistance… Bolshevism would have spread throughout Central Europe and might well have penetrated the whole continent."

• Ralph Peters — Again and again, Poles rose against their occupiers, only to be savagely put down, with their finest young men slaughtered or marched to Siberian prisons. Then, at the end of the Great War, Poland suddenly reappeared on the maps.

What did the Poles do? They immediately saved Western civilization yet again. In the now-forgotten "Miracle on the Vistula," a patched-together Polish army turned back the Red hordes headed for Berlin. One of history's most brilliant campaigns, it saved defeated Germany from a communist takeover.

Poland's thanks? The slaughter of World War II. Then the Soviet occupation.

From "Shafting the Poles", originally published in the New York Post, December 23, 2003.

See also

• quotes about the Polish-Bolshevik War