Marriage: a Woman’s Free Choice

Understanding the complexities and nuances of societies which existed long ago requires both patience and the ability to set aside one’s own cultural concepts. We must reflect on our own society and recognize our era’s assumptions; we must then set those assumptions aside in order to enter into the society of a different civilization.

Historians have done this by examining personal letters and diaries of individuals from previous centuries. We are happy to have papers detailing the personal lives of a married couple, Emm Potter and Roger Lowe, who met in the 1660s in England.

Roger was learning a trade; he was learning to be a mercer. A ‘mercer’ is someone who works with fabrics. He was progressing through the system in which one begins as an apprentice, advances through a series of stages including ‘journeyman,’ and then finishes as a ‘master.’

Some English towns had a regional holiday called the ‘wakes.’ In the town of Ashton, the Ashton Wakes was celebrated on the third Sunday in September. Concerning Roger Lowe, historian Paul Griffiths notes that

It was in an alehouse during Ashton wakes that he first plucked up the courage to talk with Emm Potter his future wife.

Roger Lowe was not a major historical person. That’s what makes this event important: we see how ordinary people met, fell in love, and married. They were not the rich and famous, not the kings and queens, but the ordinary working people. Roger and Emm represent the vast majority of ordinary English folk of their era.

Significant in the marriage of Roger and Emm is that the society of the time gave her the power to accept or reject Roger’s offer of marriage. Historian Olwen Hufton writes:

Most young people, wherever they lived in western Europe, sought to bring their marriage plans together in their mid-twenties. Roger Lowe, an apprentice mercer, felt he was approaching the time for marriage in 1663 when he saw reasonable prospects of the mastership and a livelihood. However, he waited five years to wed Emm Potter, whom he met in the company of friends and relatives in an alehouse during Ashton Wakes in 1664. His courtship of Emm consisted of walks and drinks in the company of friends as well as escorting her to weddings and funerals. At the latter he also met her parents. Emm waited, however, before making up her mind.

By contrast, American society of the early 21st century has reduced the woman’s power in social relationships. Many couples live together before marriage, which reduces the social leverage of the woman.

Note that an ‘alehouse’ is considered a reasonable place for people of different genders to meet. The consumption of alcohol was done in moderation, in well-lit institutions with windows, during daylight hours.

The psychology of alcohol in England in the 17th century, compared to America of the 21st century, was much more likely to avoid both addiction and excess.

Comparing America of the 21st century with England of the 17th century, we see that Roger Lowe was taught by society to respect the will of the woman, and to respect her honor.

Despite narratives which focus on the concept of marriages arranged for money, power, land and politics, the reality for the vast majority of English people was marriage based on mutual consent and love.

The only people who did endure negotiated weddings for land, money, power, and politics were the thin layer at the top of society - the “one percent” - but, happily, the “99%” were able to marry voluntarily for love.

Of course, the popular phrase “one percent” and “99%” are not exact mathematical measurements, but merely hyperbole reflecting the small number of aristocrats and royals at the upper levels of society.

As it turns out, being one of the “upper crust” was a pain: you didn’t get to marry the person you loved.

The people of that time and place understood marriage as a free choice to give your life away to another person, to surrender your own desires for the well-being of another: it was not a right, but rather the giving up your rights. Marriage is freely letting go of any claims you might make, and offering your service to help another person.

Marriage, then, at the time of Roger Lower and Emm Potter, observed the will and humanity of the woman in a way which has sadly since then decreased in frequency.

Poland Suffers under Stalin While Allies Vegitate

One of the events which triggered the start of WWII was the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. The western allies declared war on Germany and on the Soviet Union, which at that time was allied with Germany and had also invaded Poland.

By 1941, the USSR would join the western allies and fight against Germany. But the Soviet change in alliances did not change Soviet behavior toward the Poles.

In 1940, a unit of the NKVD, part of the Soviet secret police, executed approximately 22,000 Poles at or near a place called Katyn. The victims were unarmed, mostly civilians, and not part of any combat operation: the invasion of Poland had already ended in late 1939.

In addition to terrorizing the Poles, Stalin also annexed Polish territory. In 1945, the USSR seized 77,000 square kilometers of Poland and made it part of the Soviet Union.

The question raises itself: why did the western allies allow, or even enable, the USSR to perpetrate atrocities against Poland? Historians Herbert Romerstein and Stan Evans write:

Among the most striking features of wartime diplomatic history was the oft-repeated belief of the Western leaders that they had to make concessions to Moscow, while asking little or nothing in return from Stalin. The rationale for this would vary from one case to the next: to keep the Soviets from making a separate peace with Hitler, to build up their confidence in our intentions, to reward them for “killing the most Germans,” to placate them because of their great military power. Whatever the stated purpose, the result in nearly all such instances was the same: to give Stalin things that he demanded.

The postwar world was shaped by a series of agreements made among the Allies at a series of major conferences. These meetings were held at Teheran in 1944, and at Yalta and Potsdam in 1945.

Stalin claimed that he needed to keep Poland under Soviet domination because it would act as a defensive shield: a “buffer” zone. Anyone trying to invade the USSR by going through Poland, Stalin argued, would be stopped before reaching Russian soil.

In reality, however, no such potential aggressors existed by the time Stalin used this excuse: Germany and Italy had been soundly defeated, and their industrial and military strength dismantled.

The scenes at Teheran and Yalta where these matters were discussed would read like a comedy of errors if they hadn’t been so tragic. Stalin’s posturing on the danger of invasion via Poland — a country he had himself invaded — has been noted. Equally bizarre were his objections to having outside observers monitor Polish elections, on the grounds that this would be offensive to the independent-minded Poles. This was said by Stalin with a presumably straight face, even as his agents were imposing a brutal dictatorship in Poland that would crush all hope of independence. All this was known by the Western allies to be bogus, but in the end they would swallow the whole concoction.

One reason why the western allies stood by while the USSR ravaged Poland was because the NKVD had placed secret agents (“moles”) inside their governments. These Soviet operatives fed only selected bits of information to the policymakers in the allied governments.

Winston Churchill was one of the few western allies who was alert to Stalin’s deceptions and plans to create a communist hegemony in eastern Europe. Churchill was, however, unable to alert or persuade other western leaders about this.

Allied foreign policy was therefore shaped on the basis of reports generated by the international communist conspiracy. Acting on the Stalinist propaganda which had been presented to them as military intelligence or foreign policy analysis, the Allies let the USSR occupy and oppress Poland under a ruthless dictatorship for several decades after 1945.

Poland after WWII

In April and May of 1940, the NKVD, a branch of the Soviet secret police, executed approximately 22,000 unarmed Polish citizens at or near the town of Katyn in Poland. The majority of the victims were civilians and had nothing to do with the war effort.

In 1940, the USSR was still one of Hitler’s allies, and Poland was caught between the Soviet army invading from the east and the Nazis invading from the west. Poland was quickly vanquished in 1939; the 1940 Katyn massacre was not a part of any combat operations.

By the end of 1941, the USSR would be fighting against Hitler. But that didn’t change Soviet aggressiveness toward the Poles.

Hitler’s attack on Poland in 1939 was the trigger which caused the western allies to enter the war; one of their goals was to fight for Polish freedom. Although the Allies ostensibly won the war, they did not, at war’s end, liberate Poland.

In the two decades after the war, Poland was mercilessly subjugated; in the two decades prior to the war, Poland enjoyed more political liberty than at any other time in its history.

The Allies began the war in order to free Poland. The war, however, damaged Polish freedom, and the peace settlement at the end of the war - negotiated in Teheran and Yalta - made that damage permanent. Historians Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

The political outcomes of World War II were disastrous not only for the defeated nations, but also for many who sided with the victors. Nowhere was this more obviously so than in the case of Poland. The war in Europe was ostensibly fought for Polish independence, but would end in the country’s total subjugation. Poland thus embodied the tragedy of the conflict as described by Churchill: the democracies at terrible cost had won the war, then lost the peace that followed.

When the Soviets invaded Poland, one of their goals was the permanent annexation of Polish territory. At the war’s end in 1945, with Poland totally controlled by Stalin’s army, the USSR took 77,000 square kilometers of area from Poland.

Several other border adjustments in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1970s, brought about further territorial losses for Poland. The worst losses for Poland, both in terms of human life and in terms of land mass, came not from the 1939 invasion by the Nazis, but rather from the communists. Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

Poland became the proximate cause of fighting by the Western powers in September 1939, when it was invaded first by Hitler, then by Stalin, and the dictators divided up the country between them. Hitler’s invasion triggered a guarantee from England and her ally France to come to the aid of Poland in the event of such aggression. However, neither the British nor the French had the means of enforcing these brave pledges, so that Poland quickly fell to the invaders (as France herself would fall some nine months later).

The focus and goal of the Soviet communists, in the case of Poland, was to seize territory from the Poles, and tyrannize the land mass which remained as Poland.

The wartime understanding, that the Allies were working to liberate Poland, was instantly discarded at war’s end. The western allies stood back and allowed the USSR to occupy Poland.

Subsequently, when the United States entered the war as well, the Anglo-Americans would make further vows to Poland, as to other nations conquered by the Nazis. Such pledges were implicit in the Atlantic Charter of 1941 and related statements by the Allies about self-government and freedom, reinforced in comments to Polish exile leaders about the reign of liberty that would follow when the war was over. But these promises too would not be honored. Rather, when the fighting ended, Poland would again be conquered and dismembered — this time with the explicit sanction of the Western powers.

The question stands: why did the western allies allow the brutal imposition of communism on Poland? The answer is simple but shocking: Soviet agents had been planted as “moles” inside various western governments.

These agents controlled the flow of information to the policy makers in those governments. Advisors, who were actually Soviet operatives, apprising leaders about foreign relations reported some items prominently, concealed other items, and fabricated narratives when events did not play into their hands.

Thus it was that some of the western leaders unwittingly enabled the Soviet plot. Others, like England’s Winston Churchill, saw that Stalin was a threat, but could not do anything about it.