Poland’s chargé d’affaires in Washington, Bogdan Klich, demanded that Tucker Carlson publicly retract remarks that Klich said justified Nazi Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland and apologize.
The Oct. 5 letter concerns Carlson’s conversation with Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. Klich accused Carlson of defending the invasion by citing Hitler’s territorial claims and of misrepresenting Britain’s role in the war.
The Polish Embassy shared the letter on X, saying the statements insulted Poles, British citizens, Holocaust victims and those who died fighting Nazism.
The conversation appeared in an Oct. 2 episode of The Tucker Carlson Show. Its broader subject was Britain’s preparedness for conflict with Russia, before the discussion turned to whether Britain benefited from fighting World War II.
According to interview excerpts published by Mediaite, Carlson questioned Britain’s decision to enter the war. Rees-Mogg defended defeating Hitler, saying, “We did the right thing.”
Carlson also said, “I’m certainly not here defending Hitler,” while arguing that territorial losses explained Germany’s invasion and that the war had damaged Britain. That denial concerned his position during the conversation, rather than Klich’s subsequent letter.
Klich’s letter challenged Carlson’s assertion that Hitler said 15% of Poland had previously belonged to Germany and was transferred to Poland under the Treaty of Versailles.
Klich described the remark as an insult to millions of Nazi victims. He included hundreds of thousands of American soldiers killed or wounded while helping liberate Europe from German occupation.
He also rejected Carlson’s statement that “the UK had nothing to do with it at all,” which appears in both the letter and the published interview excerpts.
Klich argued that Britain and France declared war on Germany for reasons beyond their obligations to allies. He wrote that Hitler sought world conquest and the destruction of democratic states, putting both countries at risk of attack regardless.
In the letter’s account, Germany’s Sept. 1, 1939, invasion was a planned war of aggression intended to destroy the Polish state and exterminate its population.
Klich also cited Hitler’s cooperation with Joseph Stalin. He wrote that they planned a fourth partition of Poland through the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
That agreement paved the way for suffering across Central and Eastern Europe, including the near-total extermination of Europe’s Jewish population, according to the letter.
Klich accused Carlson of becoming “an apologist for Adolf Hitler” and falsifying the historical record. He argued that freedom of speech should not provide cover for reviving Nazi propaganda or dishonoring World War II victims.
“I demand that you immediately and publicly retract and apologize for these deceitful and disgraceful statements.”
The embassy material included no response from Carlson to Klich’s demand.
