Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, fought a series of wars to
colonize Silesia (Poland), preferring a
more industrious German population. These wars were based upon
shifting alliances and involved Austria, France, Russia, Great
Britain, Sweden, Saxony, the Ottoman Empire, etc. In fact,
Frederick the Great viewed the Poles as "slovenly Polish trash",
saying that "... Polish society was 'stupid'",
stating that "all these people with surnames ending with
-ski, deserve only 'contempt'."
Frederick the Great referred to Poles in a letter from 1735 as "dirty"
and as "vile apes", and compared the Polish peasants
to American Indians, saying that Poles were like the Iroquois,
adopting the racist views of John Locke, or racists like Benjamin Franklin,
George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson.
The attitudes of Frederick the Great that the Poles were filthy was influenced by the
use of the "Plica polonica", or the "Polish koltun".
See: Plica polonica, or the Polish koltun.
Attempts were continually made to "Germanise" the Polish/Lithuanian people
through requiring the use by Poles of the German language, preferential
treatment of Germans in shools or governmental offices, expulsions of Poles, etc.
Adolf Hitler agreed so strongly with Frederick the Great's views of
colonizing the OST, that Hitler permanently
kept a painting of Frederick the Great in his bunker.
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