Sep. 1 is commemorated in Poland as a day of mourning, while they celebrate November 11 as independence day.
The Poles did nazi that coming.
So that’s where Johnson got the idea for the Tonkin Gulf incident.................
Also, Hitler's intelligence services set up a whole fake Russian radio traffic network, by which they tricked Stalin into believing that a vast number of his own military command were cooperating with the Nazis. As a result, Stalin liquidated about one-third of his senior command structure in the months before Hitler launched operation Barbarossa
This horror might not have happened if Germany had a free and independent press at the time. But the German press in 1939 was, of course, nothing more than a propaganda arm of the state.
We are in much the same situation today. And yes, American mainstream media, I’m talking about you.
Dang it. Since I missed on timely posting on another important anniversary yesterday, can I shoehorn it in here off topic? Thanks
The fall of the western Roman Empire was a very long process, not something easy to pit point to a particular day. Nevertheless, many do so by pointing to August 31, 476 when the teenage emperor, Romulus Agustulus abdicated the throne. He’d been a puppet of the German warlord Odoacer anyway, who proceeded to send the imperial regalia to the eastern emperor, saying there was no further need for an emperor in the west. 1550 years ago yesterday
An unpublished secret agreement of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact had the Germans halting at a pre-determined line for the Soviet troops to match upon their 'conquest' starting on 17 September. The fact that it took that amount of time for Stalin to advance his soldiers was another fact that convince Hitler of the weakness of the Red Army. Added factors were the 1938-39 Purge and the disastrous invasion of Finland in December of 1939-40.
Nonetheless, Poland was completely conquered by October 1939 with an exile Government in London along with some military, enough for a Polish Air Force Squadron to fight with the RAF in the Battle of Britain. Still, in divided Poland, it was difficult to impossible for the Polish victims to prefer one police state over the other. The German Gestapo even had a conference with their Soviet NKVD counterparts in March 1940 on Polish Pacification. One does wonder what working friendships were disrupted when the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941, some 22 months after German & Soviet soldiers shook hands over Poland's bleeding corpse!
A note about the above map where one sees Lithuania. Like Poland, the Baltic Countries of Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland all had their independence recognized by the international community following the end of WW1 in 1918-19. In the period between the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Operation Barbarossa, Stalin's Soviet Union conquered Lithuania, Estonia & Latvia, and systemically decapitated their leadership, frequently with a bullet. They did not regain that independence until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, 50 years later. Finland lost significant territory and casualties to Soviet Invasion in this 2 years but retained its independence following WW2.
‘’Operation Canned Goods’’.
And not long after the Germans invaded the Soviets did the same per the secret agreement with Germany. But people don’t talk about it much. But when I was in Poland I found out that they absolutely remember. And they remember what the Soviets did in Poland after the war.
Why isn’t East Prussia German in that map?
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