One of the persistent metaphors for Polish nationalism in the post-1989 period was that Poland was the Christ of Europe. To put it succinctly the post-Communist twist on this idea is the Polish nation suffered and died under Nazism, was buried during Communism, and was resurrected after 1989. This narrative melds both victimhood and triumph and has been a staple of contemporary Polish nationalism. The problem with the Christ of Europe metaphor is that it sidelines, downplays, or ignores inconvenient aspects of Polish history. The video in question displays a lot of the myopic tendencies of the Christ of Europe concept.

Starting with the opening minutes of the video, it outlines how Poland alone was surrounded and a target for destruction in August 1939. The video's visual language shows a grey, inert Poland surrounded by encroaching black and red tentacles. While the video's claim was true that there was a pact between Germany and the USSR to destroy Poland, it leaves out the messy politics of the interwar period that do not exactly paint the Warsaw government in the best light. Poland, for example, provided Hitler with one of his first foreign policy coups in January 1934 when it signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. This was among the first international agreements with the new dictatorial government in Berlin and provided Germany something of a secure eastern flank while it pursued rearmament and abrogation of Versailles. Contrary to ideological expectations, the Polish-German relationship was surprisingly cordial through 1938 with Warsaw and Berlin finding a degree of common ground over anti-communism and antisemitism. Pilsudki's memoirs were published in German with a fawning introduction by Göring and there was a functional diplomatic relationship between the two countries. Poland likewise was a party to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and backed Germany prior to the Munich Pact and received Czechoslovakian territory as a reward. The video's animation does not show an expansive Poland in 1939 and the more nuanced picture of Poland playing its weak hand in the 1930s and failing.

The video also overemphasizes the homogeneity and determination of the Home Army (AK) and resistance to occupation. The AK certainly did exist and it was one of the more visible partisan forces within German-occupied Europe. But there were other partisan groups and forces within Poland as well, some of whom had different politics than the AK leadership or were composed of various ethnic minorities. The AK's war was also not necessarily a heroic one; partisan war is often nasty and quite brutal. The AK and other partisans did carry out reprisals on Poles who were perceived as collaborators and the AK's operations were not some sanitary battle between regular military forces.

The video is on a bit firmer ground when describing the work of Polish troops in exile. There were large formations composed of emigres and refugees and they often were enfolded into the British and Commonwealth organization. A number of contemporaries did note too that Polish troops fought with great determination against the Germans. The Poles' cryptography was also essential for breaking Enigma and other intelligence coups too. The video though does omit the existence of the so-called "Berling Army." This was a group of Poles raised in the USSR and not loyal to the Polish government-in-exile. While it did not have the same prestige as the Western Anders Army, the Berling Army did fight with the Red Army within Poland and did participate in the direct liberation of the country from Germany. This omission of the Berling forces is not accidental; the video's thesis is that 1939 ushered in an occupation that sought to destroy Poland. The idea that the Soviets could liberate Poland, or Poles allied to the the "inhuman lands" of the USSR, is anathema to this video's precepts.

The section on the Holocaust is quite problematic. While a good many Poles did try to rescue Jews, there were also more than a few Poles who turned in Jews to the Germans. The interwar polish Polish Republic was far from Judeophilliac and the idea that one could be Polish and a Jew was something that fell way outside of the mainstream of Polish discourses on national identity. Warsaw was one of the more vigorous champions of a Zionist national home in Palestine during the 1920s and 30s for the reason that such an entity would provide a future home for Poland's Jews. Antisemitism was also common among many Polish intellectuals who made up the bulk of the AK's leadership. This antisemitism was not as extreme as Nazi antisemitism, but it was quite strong. Zofia Kossak's letter to the the Warsaw population in the wake of the ghetto uprising shows how even strong antisemitism was even when done in the name of helping Jews and is worth quoting at length:

Our feeling towards the Jews has not changed. We continue to deem them political, economic and ideological enemies of Poland. Moreover, we realize that they hate us more than they hate the Germans, and that they make us responsible for their misfortune . . . We do not want to be Pilates. We have no means actively to counteract the German murders; we cannot help, nor can we rescue anybody. But we protest from the bottom of our hearts, filled with pity, indignation, and horror . . . Who does not support the protest with us, is not a Catholic.

Kossak was a prominent Catholic intellectual and she was one of the main lights within Warsaw's underground. Saving Jews was a Catholic obligation for her, but there was a tone that the Jews somehow deserved the scorn gentiles heaped on them. This letter encapsulates some of the contradictory responses to the Holocaust within occupied Poland. Some Poles may have saved Jews out of moral convictions, others were more mercenary and Jewish survivor accounts do talk of having to bribe their rescuers with jewelry or other valuables. The AK provided some assistance to the Warsaw Ghetto, but few of its leaders relished doing so and Jewish partisans did not have an easy time within Poland. Poles were instrumental in smuggling out reports on the Judeocide within Poland, but the Polish government-in-exile generally did not take much of an active interest in the plight of the Jews within Poland. There were some officials who did, but the leadership as a whole approached the Holocaust from a position of indifference and ambivalence. Poland was many things during the war, but it was not the conscience of the world which the video strongly implies.

The truncated section of Poland under communism is likewise fraught with contradictions and omissions. Building on the Anglo-American "betrayal" at Yalta, the video contends the West abandoned Poland to a foreign Soviet invader. While the Anglo-American policies towards Poland were hardly laudatory, there was little they could do about it. The Red Army gave Stalin a degree of latitude to impose a dictatorship upon Poland and renege on promises of free elections. Nonetheless, Stalin had significant assistance from Poles in this process. Although Polish communists were a minority and lacked a degree of popularity, they were not phantoms either. The ruling Polish Communist Party was composed of Poles; there was a pernicious myth of Żydokomuna (Jew communism) within the postwar period that the Communist government was composed primarily of Jews. This built on prewar antisemitism that contended it was impossible to be both Jewish and a Pole and while there were a number of Jews within the Communist government, the bulk of the dictatorship was made up of gentile Poles. This complicates the video's image of resistance to Communism in which animated Poles fight of unseen oppressors. The reality was that uprisings against Communism were often Poles acting against other Poles. Moreover, the video links these disturbances with wartime events like the Warsaw uprisings in 1943 and 44. This is a dangerous way of thinking because the disturbances in the Cold war period were far less violent (both from the insurgents' view and their suppression) than the war. The suppression of the Poznań riots in 1956 did lead to a large number killed, but the destruction was nowhere near the scale of the 1944 uprising. All of this speaks to the fact that resistance to Communism was fundamentally different than resistance to Nazism; Poles worked within civil society and institutions such as labor unions with the aim for a peaceful change. Such civil disobedience was not possible or effective under Nazism. This underscores a disturbing facet of Communist rule that runs against the grain of the Christ of Europe narrative. Poles found that they could live under Communism. It may not have been enjoyable and the dictatorship was never popular, but it was a livable ideology. And while nationalism certainly played a role in the protests and resistance to Communist rule, the shortcomings of the planned economy and domestic shortages arguably played a bigger role in the regime's unpopularity than the idea that it was a foreign entity propped up by Soviet power. While it is hard to disentangle nationalism from everyday disgruntlement- the two often intertwined in Communist Poland- it was not the simple David and Goliath tale the video portrays.