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that real life floor is a part of Poland
is not yet lost so says the national
anthem of Poland but Poland's geography
doesn't help very much in keeping her
safe just take a look at this world map
and think to yourself where would the
worst possible spawn points for my
civilization be at sure there's plenty
of pretty awful locations but one of the
absolute worst is this general area in
Europe and it's terrible for a very long
list of reasons it's flat in every
direction and has no natural protection
against outside attackers save for the
Baltic in the North or the Carpathian
Mountains in the South but it also has
very limited natural resources it's only
access to the sea is in the Baltic which
means that in order to break out into
the global ocean you have to pass
through these narrow straits which
presents two additional problems a
you're at the mercy of whoever is
controlling them for trade flowing in
and out and be all it takes to blockade
you is a few ships blocking the way here
further all of the surrounding lands
give civilizations starting there better
opportunities for expansion any
civilization to the east can expand way
far out into the sparsely populated
lands of Asia
well civilizations to the west and the
south will have an easier time getting
access to better ocean trade routes in
the North Sea or the Mediterranean any
civilization that started here would
have a difficult history and it just so
happens that the civilization that did
was Poland so Poland's greatest
Geographic challenges to overcome have
always been establishing a base on the
coast and balancing the area's poorly
defensible flat terrain against outside
attacks from strong powers in every
direction Swedes and Danes in the north
Russians in the east Ottomans in the
south and Germans in the West the
consequences of Poland's geography have
led to the modern-day state of Poland
being a mere shadow of what it used to
be for a time Poland was ranked among
one of the global great powers and
occupied a truly massive amount of land
that stretched from the Baltic to the
Black Sea and included all of modern-day
Lithuania Latvia Belarus and most of
Ukraine with a good chunk of Russia to
that for a time
even included Moscow but neither the
Baltic nor the black are great seas to
have access to we already discussed the
problems with the Baltic but the Black
Sea has a very similar problem - in
order to break out into the
Mediterranean and the world ocean from
there you have to pass through this
extremely narrow strait here which at
the time of poland's black sea access
was controlled by the ottomans who are
almost always a hostile state to poland
so sea access was always hard for Poland
and consequently Poland never became a
historically significant naval power and
over time the weak physical geography of
Poland led to almost constant attacks
from strong outside powers who combined
their forces to overwhelm Poland and her
weak natural defenses at various times
the Swedes Russians and Ottomans all
took their turns invading and seizing
land before the disastrous year of 1772
when the armies of Russia Prussia and
Austria all joined forces to attack
Poland from every direction
Poland's struggle to defend herself
against superior enemy numbers who
attacked from three different fronts
across mostly flat and hard to defend
terrain and so Poland lost and one-third
of her land and her population was
annexed by the conquerors over twenty
years later and still crippled from the
last war Poland was invaded and attacked
again from the West in the east by
Prussia and Russia and lost even more
land and smelling the blood of a dying
corpse with easy to take food Russia
Prussia and Austria joined forces again
and took over the rest of Poland in 1795
dividing the remaining land between
themselves
Poland's geography was simply overrun
without much to stop or slow down the
attackers and Poland itself
ceased to exist as an independent entity
for the next 124 years Poland only
regained her full sovereignty from the
conquerors in 1919 in the chaotic
aftermath of all three conquering
empires collapsing after World War one
and she immediately found herself in a
new war with a Soviet Union the Soviets
wanted to use the flat land of Poland as
a bridge to export the Communist
revolution to Germany while the new
Polish government wanted to reclaim the
lost
Lan's from the 18th century partitions
it kind of went both ways before both
sides just agreed to a ceasefire in 1920
which largely established the first
iteration of poland in the 20th century
but this poland's geographic position
was severely flawed she had only this
tiny strip of land to connect to the sea
that was flanked on both sides by
territory belonging to germany she
shared too long land borders across hard
to defend terrain with both germany and
russia who had both invaded and
conquered Poland together before and
would soon do it once again after the
Nazis took power in Germany and annexed
Austria the Sudetenland and then
occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia
Poland's geographic position became even
more tenuous when the Germans invaded
Poland in 1939 after only 19 years of
peace and Poland they could do so from
three different directions the west from
mainland Germany the south from occupied
Czechoslovakia and the northeast from
German East Prussia and they could
quickly cut off Poland's tiny access to
the sea from the two flanks Poland
bravely managed to hang on for a while
until the Soviet Union also invaded from
the east and Poland found herself
fighting enemies on all sides across
hard to defend terrain like a repeat of
the 18th century Poland was conquered
and occupied by the Germans and Russians
again for another six years before
Poland was finally reestablished as
effectively a satellite puppet state of
the Soviet Union in 1947 Poland didn't
recover true self-rule or sovereignty
that was separated from the Soviet Union
again until 1990 after another 51 years
of effective occupation in short out of
the past 225 years of history Poland has
been occupied or ruled by a foreign
power in some fashion for 175 of those
years or 77% of the time the aftermath
of the Second World War in the Soviet
occupation gave Poland a new geographic
reality however that's maybe only
marginally better than what it used to
be before after the war a significant
portion of eastern Poland was annexed
directly into the Soviet Union and the
ethnic Polish residents were expelled in
compensation for this Poland was given
all
these formerly German lands that the
Soviets had conquered and forced them to
give up the ethnic German populations
here were expelled and most of the
expelled Polish population from the east
ended up coming and resettling in these
new lands because of this the modern
Polish state has achieved a significant
coastline on the baltic with two natural
harbors in the cities of good diets in
Chechen and after the collapse of the
Eastern Bloc and communism after 1989
Poland has sought to distance herself
from Russia and integrate further with
the West the new reality meant that
Poland only shares a tiny border with
her former occupier Russia here in the
Kaliningrad Enclave which is separated
from the rest of Russia by the now
independent Baltic states and Belarus
but Poland's geography is still mostly
flat and difficult to defend safer a
portion of the Carpathian mountain range
in the south and so Poland joined NATO
in 1990 and joined the European Union in
2004 effectively securing her geography
with friendly States in almost every
direction safer potentially the East
arguably for the first time since 1772
Poland's geographic position and
independence became relatively secure
and safe again after centuries of
uncertainty in 1999 when she joined the
NATO alliance but recent events in the
East like what's been happening in
Crimea between Ukraine and Russia has
made Poland weary
and uneasy from her history Poland
joined the defense network of NATO to
secure stronger allies that could
compensate for her indefensible terrain
and she joined the European Union to
help further those aims any attack by
Russia or by anybody else on Poland
would be considered an attack on every
other NATO and EU Member State which
would be almost suicidal for anybody to
attempt after centuries of struggling to
simply exist
Poland may have finally discovered the
secret to staying alive when your
country's geography is terrible have a
lot of strong friends after all Poland
is not yet lost
geography however is just one of many
aspects about our planet that influences
one civilization success and another
ones hardships I could tell you all
about how geology physics biology
psychology and even chemistry also all
have major critical roles in
civilization successes
or you could just watch the great
documentary series that'll explain all
of that in much more detail called deep
time history which is available right
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comm slash real life floor and as always
thank you so much for watching