IN reply to Pete Winstanley’s analysis of current German economic success (HAS, May 2), I was thinking not so much of present circumstances as of the early post-Second World War period.

The latter was, for Germany, a time of revival, growth, optimism and renewed prosperity.

For us, it was a time of stagnation, decline and national humiliation (at the hands of our supposed friends, the US and France).

What’s more, we went to war in 1939 to defend Poland. Yet in any meaningful sense we didn’t lift a finger to help the Poles.

In fact, they helped us. It’s now generally recognised that without the contribution of Polish pilots in 1940, we would have lost the Battle of Britain and, therefore, the war.

And, of course, in 1945 we left Poland and the whole of Central and Eastern Europe under a tyranny that, in terms of cruelty, rapacity and systematic enslavement was actually worse than that of Adolf Hitler.

So, while it’s true to say that the Soviet Union and the US both did very well out of the outcome in 1945, for us it was a very hollow victory indeed.

Tony Kelly, Crook.