Russian historian blames Poland for WWII

WARSAW, Poland, June 4 (UPI) -- A Russian historian blamed Poland for the start of World War II in 1939 when Warsaw rejected Adolf Hitler's territorial claims, officials said.

War historian Col. Sergey Kovalov, in an article on the Russian Defense Ministry's Web site, said Poland refused to satisfy Germany's moderate claims to incorporate the city of Danzig, now Gdansk, on the Baltic Sea coast, into Nazi Germany and build the ex-territorial motorway and railway through Poland.

Kovalov said it is "hard to regard these claims as unjustified."

He said the Soviet troops attack on Poland in September 1939 was acceptable because dictator Josef Stalin had to sign a non-aggression deal with Hitler to delay war with Germany, Poland's thenews.pl Web site reported.

Aleksandr Petrunin, a deputy spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry refused to comment on Kovalov's article, thenews.pl said.

On May 21, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev formed a committee of Russian politicians, historians and state secret service agents to rectify alleged historical distortions made by foreign historians about Russia.

Sergey Markov, an activist of the pro-Medvedev United Russia Party, said there were no cases of history distortions in Russia. Markov singled out Poland, Latvia, Ukraine and Estonia whose authorities and historians, he said, keep falsifying history.