ABSTRACT
The fundamental circumstance affecting the thinking of the Polish political elite is that over the last two hundred years Poland has only functioned as an independent state for 28 of them. Partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century, it re-emerged on the maps of Europe in 1918 only to succumb 21 years later to joint German-Soviet aggression. After the Second World War, Poland reappeared having lost an important part of its territory in the east for which it was compensated with a chunk of Germany. In addition, due to the joint efforts of Messrs Hitler and Stalin, it went through an ethnic cleansing that deprived it of most of its minorities.
