A key to the map symbols is on my profile.
A key to the map symbols is on my profile.
Related story: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2342365/posts
One of the German princes was killed in the western offensive (I think Holland, but it may have been Belgium) and received a state funeral. The Nazis were alarmed by the outburst of Royalism, and Hitler ordered that none of the Royals could participate in future combat operations.
On a separate note, it’s interesting to see that even at this early date, the British are showing their hypocritical nature. It’s a great evil and a cause for war when Hitler invades Poland, but Stalin’s invasion doesn’t draw much more than a yawn. And they are already conspiring to violate Norway’s neutrality (no mention of the proposed invasion of Sweden yet), and trying to spin it to blunt US objections.
As Europe sank deeper into Hell, Americans headed off to their Rumba lessons at Arthur Murray’s [ad in one of the screenshots].
EDITORIALSREUNION IN POLAND
"German troops advancing east and Russians marching west met yesterday at Brest-Litovsk. The name stirs memories. It was at Brest-Litovsk that Germans and Russians met on one earlier occasion, to sign the historic treaty which ended Russia's participation in the World War.
"In the terms of that treaty, the Germans, who have never ceased to complain of the "injustice" and the "cruelty" of the Treaty of Versailles, gave the world a stinging lesson in the kind of treaty they could write when they themselves were victors in a war.
"They stripped Russia of the districts of Kars, Batum and Ardahan, and handed those districts over to their ally, Turkey. They forced Russia to renounce sovereignty over Lithuania, Estonia, Livonia, Courtland and Russian Poland -- not in order to set up those provinces as self-governing nations, as was the case when the Allied Powers broke up the old Austro-Hungarian Empire for the sake of liberating its subject peoples -- but in order to permit German and her partner Austria to divide the spoils.
"They forced Russia to recognize the independence of the Ukraine and Georgia and to pay six billion marks in reparations. By the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk a dismembered Russia, cut off from the Black Sea and very nearly from the Baltic also, lost one-third of its people, half of its industries and nine-tenths of its coal mines."
This editorial makes the point I've tried to make several times -- that the allies' 1919 Treaty of Versailles was no rougher on Germany than the German Treaty of Brest-Litovsk imposed on Russia.
The reparation of "six billion marks" is hard to figure, in terms of how much it was really worth, then or now.
If the conversion is old Gold Marks, then 2,790 marks equals one kilogram of gold, in today's money, around $26,000. So, six billion marks is around $57 billion in today's money -- but in gold.
And consider that Russia's economy was in absolute shambles in 1918 -- six billion marks was a huge burden.
I take it the South African pilot was white? Not that it matters. But if he were black I think we would have heard his name a LOT in the last 70 years.