THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR APRIL 14, 2022 AT 8:10 PM
Paul Plante says:
And if we go back for a moment to the post above, and p. 319 of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, we come across this following which is all but incomprehensible to Americans of today, how old the history of Europe really is compared to the United States, and how that history shaped the views of people in Europe such as Hitler, to wit:
CZECHOSLOVAKIA, concluded …
In somewhat characteristic vein, he boasted of other things, and especially of the first German Reich, which had been born again.
That German Reich had been the Holy Roman Empire, reaching far across the Rhine into France and across the Alps into the heart of Italy.
end quotes
The Holy Roman Empire, which might merit a paragraph in a high school or college history course today, because it happened more than a week ago and so is now old news, was a political entity in Western, Central and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.
From the accession of Otto I in 962 until the twelfth century, the Empire was the most powerful monarchy in Europe, while it would be a good 600 years or more before any Europeans in any numbers began showing up over here, given that it was in 1534 when Cartier, a French adventurer, entered the St. Lawrence River in Canada, and Jamestown would not be founded until 1607.
On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as emperor, reviving the title in Western Europe, more than three centuries after the fall of the earlier ancient Western Roman Empire in 476, and the Franks, who later were to become the French, were in fact Germans, which is where Hitler got his ideas about what really belonged to Germany as a nation at the outbreak of WWII.
I personally have been studying the history of Europe for years now, going back in time to when the Romans were around, and Germany was nothing more than a collection of tribes, and what a muddled up mess it really is, with small nations coming into existence one day, like Ruthenia, which is now Ukraine, or actually, a part of Ukraine, and then blinking back out of existence as did Ruthenia on 15 March 1939, when Carpatho-Ukraine – the approximate core of Ruthenia – declared itself an independent republic only to find that by teatime on the same day, the Hungarian army had moved in with Hitler’s blessing.
As to when and how Ruthenia then became Ukraine, after the apocalyptic retreat of the Nazis through the region in 1944, the Hungarians were ousted from the region and replaced by Soviet rule and under orders of Stalin, Ruthenia became the Transcarpathian oblast of the Ukrainian SSR.
So who does Ukraine really belong to, given that during the early modern period, the exonym Ruthenian was most frequently applied to the East Slavic population of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, an area encompassing territories of modern Ukraine and Belarus from the 15th up to the 18th centuries, while in the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the same term was employed up to 1918 as an official exonym for the entire East Slavic population within the borders of the Monarchy?
As to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, it was a country and bi-federation of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch in real union, who was both King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania and it was one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th to 17th-century Europe.
At its largest territorial extent, in the early 17th century, the Commonwealth covered almost 1,000,000 square kilometres (400,000 sq mi) and as of 1618 sustained a multi-ethnic population of almost 12 million.
The Commonwealth was established by the Union of Lublin in July 1569, but the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been in a de facto personal union since 1386 with the marriage of the Polish queen Jadwiga (Hedwig) and Lithuania’s Grand Duke Jogaila, who was crowned King jure uxoris Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland.
The First Partition in 1772 and the Second Partition in 1793 greatly reduced the state’s size and the Commonwealth was partitioned out of existence with the Third Partition in 1795.
After several decades of prosperity, it entered a period of protracted political, military, and economic decline and its growing weakness led to its partitioning among its neighbors Austria, Prussia, and Russia during the late 18th century.
To see how confusing that muddled-up history is, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania underwent an alternating series of wars and alliances across the 13th and 14th centuries.
The relations between the two states differed at times as each strived and competed for political, economic or military dominance of the region.
In turn, Poland had remained a staunch ally of its southern neighbour, Hungary.
The last Polish monarch from the native Piast dynasty, Casimir the Great, died on 5 November 1370 without fathering a legitimate male heir.
Consequently, the crown passed onto his Hungarian nephew, Louis of Anjou, who ruled the Kingdom of Hungary in a personal union with Poland and a fundamental step in developing extensive ties with Lithuania was a succession crisis arising in the 1380s.
Louis had died on 10 September 1382 and, like his uncle, did not produce a son to succeed him so that his two daughters, Mary and Jadwiga (Hedwig), held claims to the vast dual realm.
The Polish lords rejected Mary, then betrothed to Sigismund of Luxembourg, in favour of her younger sister Jadwiga.
The future queen regnant was destined to wed young William Habsburg, but certain factions of the nobility remained apprehensive believing that the Austrian William would not secure domestic interests.
Instead, they turned to Jogaila, the Grand Duke of Lithuania.
Jogaila was a lifelong pagan and vowed to adopt Catholicism upon marriage by signing the Union of Krewo on 14 August 1385.
The Act imposed Christianity in Lithuania and transformed Poland into a diarchy, a kingdom ruled over by two sovereigns; their descendants and successive monarchs held the titles of king and grand duke respectively.
The ultimate clause dictated that Lithuania was to be merged in perpetuity (perpetuo applicare) with the Polish Kingdom; however, this did not take effect until 1569.
Jogaila was crowned as Władysław II Jagiełło at Wawel Cathedral on 4 March 1386.
In 1569, the Union of Lublin joined the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1569, and several minor agreements were struck before unification, notably the Union of Kraków and Vilnius, the Union of Vilnius and Radom and the Union of Grodno.
Lithuania’s vulnerable position and rising tensions on its eastern flank persuaded the nobles to seek a closer bond with Poland.
The idea of a federation presented better economic opportunities, whilst securing Lithuania’s borders from hostile states to the north, south and east.
Lesser Lithuanian nobility was eager to share the personal privileges and political liberties enjoyed by the Polish szlachta, but did not accept Polish demands for the incorporation of the Grand Duchy into Poland as a mere province, with no sense of autonomy.
So who owns Ukraine today?
Besides Joe Biden, I mean.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... -of-wwiii/
HISTORY REDUX ON THE EVE OF WWIII
Re: HISTORY REDUX ON THE EVE OF WWIII
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR APRIL 18, 2022 AT 6:13 PM
Paul Plante says:
Going back to WWII, we are confronted with the question Hillary Clinton, a shallow-thinker much more Wanker than Wonk when it comes to not only history, but pretty much everything else, raised on 6 March 2014 where she was indeed comparing Putin’s actions in Ukraine today to Hitler’s actions in Czechoslovakia in the run-up to WWII of how exactly did Adolph Hitler end up with possession of Czechoslovakia, and the answer history Hillary appears unaware of, is that Britain and France handed it to Hitler on a silver platter, making security guarantees from either nothing more than cheap and worthless pieces of paper, something we should give some very serious thought to today as Joe Biden edges us ever closer to WWIII with France and Britain backing his action as his allies.
And we see that despite any of this, Hitler completely taking over Czechoslovakia, WWII has not started yet, nor has any action been taken to stop Hitler by either England or France, which takes us to Chapter XII of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, titled “Second World War” at pp. 320-21, to wit:
The occupation of Prague made war nigh inevitable.
Up to that event there was always a chance, though a slim one, that Hitler would be content with his many victories; from now on it was evident to all but the blind that the Nazis were bent on further conquest.
Always hitherto they had been able to advance the argument that their successive victories had simply united to the Reich good Germans who longed for a united fatherland.
That argument no longer held.
The Czechs were not Germans, and the brutal and unprovoked on their country in March, 1939, seemed conclusive evidence that Hitler would not stop until the entire continent lay under his thumb – and perhaps not then.
Presumably Poland might well be his next victim, but after Poland, what country?
It might be Russia; but there were those in London fully aware that Britain administered former German colonies; and there were those in Paris who remembered the ominous words in Mein Kampf, “The German people’s irreconcilable and mortal enemy is and remains France.”
In the spring of 1939, therefore, France and England increased their military preparations, drew closer their political ties, sought allies.
They struck alliances with Poland and Turkey; they guaranteed to march to the aid of the former if she were invaded by Germany; they joined the latter in a mutual defense pact to preserve the status quo in the eastern Mediterranean; they promised unilateral protection to Greece and Rumania; and they invited the Soviets to join them in a defense pact against German aggression.
Joseph Stalin pondered deeply.
He hated and distrusted Hitler; he also hated and distrusted Chamberlain.
If the Germans drove through Poland or across the Baltic states and attacked Russia, guarantees were needed of armed support from France and Britain.
But suppose these two countries failed him at the last hour; suppose they consented to a second Munich whereby Poland fell a prey to Germany and the Wehrmacht stood on the borders of the Ukraine.
France and England had ignored Russia in 1938; Stalin had not been invited to Munich; the protests of his representative, Litvinoff, had been ignored at Geneva; the two western powers had abandoned, apparently, the whole idea of collective security.
There seemed to be more than an even chance, so Stalin thought, that they would not be displeased at a German-Russian war from which they would stand aloof.
The inept and temporizing character of Franco-British diplomacy did much to heighten his suspicions.
Chamberlain three times had flown to Germany to placate Hitler, and Chamberlain, accompanied by Lord Halifax, secretary of state for foreign affairs, had visited Mussolini; but to Moscow at the height of the crisis the British had accredited as their special envoy an under-official of the foreign office, without prestige, without authority.
Nevertheless, Stalin stood ready to make a hard and fast military alliance with France and Britain, provided that it included not only guarantees for Poland but for all six small countries on the western Russian frontier, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Rumania; guarantees not only against external but also against internal aggression.
What this latter meant was clear enough to Stalin.
He proposed to ward off and prevent Fascist propaganda and revolt from within, such as had given Hitler his excuse for invading Czechoslovakia.
These guarantees the British and French were unwilling to give.
They feared, and perhaps justly, a Soviet advance in the regions of the Baltic, and they argued that the Baltic countries did not want a Soviet guarantee.
They would guarantee Poland and Rumania alone; but Stalin thought an attack by the Germans on Russia might readily be staged through the Baltic countries, and he held out for their inclusion in any pact.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-600279
Paul Plante says:
Going back to WWII, we are confronted with the question Hillary Clinton, a shallow-thinker much more Wanker than Wonk when it comes to not only history, but pretty much everything else, raised on 6 March 2014 where she was indeed comparing Putin’s actions in Ukraine today to Hitler’s actions in Czechoslovakia in the run-up to WWII of how exactly did Adolph Hitler end up with possession of Czechoslovakia, and the answer history Hillary appears unaware of, is that Britain and France handed it to Hitler on a silver platter, making security guarantees from either nothing more than cheap and worthless pieces of paper, something we should give some very serious thought to today as Joe Biden edges us ever closer to WWIII with France and Britain backing his action as his allies.
And we see that despite any of this, Hitler completely taking over Czechoslovakia, WWII has not started yet, nor has any action been taken to stop Hitler by either England or France, which takes us to Chapter XII of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, titled “Second World War” at pp. 320-21, to wit:
The occupation of Prague made war nigh inevitable.
Up to that event there was always a chance, though a slim one, that Hitler would be content with his many victories; from now on it was evident to all but the blind that the Nazis were bent on further conquest.
Always hitherto they had been able to advance the argument that their successive victories had simply united to the Reich good Germans who longed for a united fatherland.
That argument no longer held.
The Czechs were not Germans, and the brutal and unprovoked on their country in March, 1939, seemed conclusive evidence that Hitler would not stop until the entire continent lay under his thumb – and perhaps not then.
Presumably Poland might well be his next victim, but after Poland, what country?
It might be Russia; but there were those in London fully aware that Britain administered former German colonies; and there were those in Paris who remembered the ominous words in Mein Kampf, “The German people’s irreconcilable and mortal enemy is and remains France.”
In the spring of 1939, therefore, France and England increased their military preparations, drew closer their political ties, sought allies.
They struck alliances with Poland and Turkey; they guaranteed to march to the aid of the former if she were invaded by Germany; they joined the latter in a mutual defense pact to preserve the status quo in the eastern Mediterranean; they promised unilateral protection to Greece and Rumania; and they invited the Soviets to join them in a defense pact against German aggression.
Joseph Stalin pondered deeply.
He hated and distrusted Hitler; he also hated and distrusted Chamberlain.
If the Germans drove through Poland or across the Baltic states and attacked Russia, guarantees were needed of armed support from France and Britain.
But suppose these two countries failed him at the last hour; suppose they consented to a second Munich whereby Poland fell a prey to Germany and the Wehrmacht stood on the borders of the Ukraine.
France and England had ignored Russia in 1938; Stalin had not been invited to Munich; the protests of his representative, Litvinoff, had been ignored at Geneva; the two western powers had abandoned, apparently, the whole idea of collective security.
There seemed to be more than an even chance, so Stalin thought, that they would not be displeased at a German-Russian war from which they would stand aloof.
The inept and temporizing character of Franco-British diplomacy did much to heighten his suspicions.
Chamberlain three times had flown to Germany to placate Hitler, and Chamberlain, accompanied by Lord Halifax, secretary of state for foreign affairs, had visited Mussolini; but to Moscow at the height of the crisis the British had accredited as their special envoy an under-official of the foreign office, without prestige, without authority.
Nevertheless, Stalin stood ready to make a hard and fast military alliance with France and Britain, provided that it included not only guarantees for Poland but for all six small countries on the western Russian frontier, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Rumania; guarantees not only against external but also against internal aggression.
What this latter meant was clear enough to Stalin.
He proposed to ward off and prevent Fascist propaganda and revolt from within, such as had given Hitler his excuse for invading Czechoslovakia.
These guarantees the British and French were unwilling to give.
They feared, and perhaps justly, a Soviet advance in the regions of the Baltic, and they argued that the Baltic countries did not want a Soviet guarantee.
They would guarantee Poland and Rumania alone; but Stalin thought an attack by the Germans on Russia might readily be staged through the Baltic countries, and he held out for their inclusion in any pact.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-600279
Re: HISTORY REDUX ON THE EVE OF WWIII
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR APRIL 19, 2022 AT 9:03 PM
Paul Plante says:
So, Hitler has Czechoslovakia, and Joe Biden’s allies England and France are dithering, as they most likely will do again as Joe Biden takes us into WWIII and choices have to be made as to who will pay the butcher’s bill.
So how did Germany then end up with Poland?
Was it as the shallow-thinking Hillary Clinton said on 6 March 2014, that “The claims by President Putin and other Russians that they had to go into Crimea and maybe further into eastern Ukraine because they had to protect the Russian minorities, that is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when Germany under the Nazis kept talking about how they had to protect German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia and elsewhere throughout Europe?”
Or is Hillary all wet and completely off-base here with that comment about Germany and Poland in the run-up to WWII?
For that answer, let us go to pp. 321-324 of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, where the invasion of Poland by not only Germany but the Soviet Union under Joe Stalin is about to begin, to wit:
Germany, meanwhile, claiming that she was being encircled, and flushed with her bloodless victory of March pounced upon the tiny area of Memel on her northeastern border, hitherto administered by Lithuania in the name of the League of Nations, and made demands on Poland for the return of Danzig to the Reich, together with a strip of land across the Polish corridor.
As she did so Hitler denounced his ten-year peace pact with Poland, proclaiming that the treaties just made by that country with the western democracies had broken friendly relations between Germany and Poland.
Likewise for good measure he denounced Germany’s naval treaty with Great Britain.
At the other end of the Axis was Italy.
The Duce, not to be outdone, let forth a tremendous blast against the follies of democracy and peace, invaded Albania, and annexed that country to Italy.
The spring of 1939 had been hectic, the summer more so.
None could tell just what was happening in Moscow.
Then in late July the French and British sent a military commission to Moscow.
Despite many clear warnings from a number of authoritative sources that Stalin might bargain with Hitler, it did not go by airplane; it took a slow steamer and did not reach Moscow until August 10th.
Immediately it encountered a snag.
The Russians were willing to fight the Germans in Poland provided the Red army was permitted to defend Poland’s western boundary.
But neither the Poles nor the western allies would accept this qualification.
If the Russians were once in Poland, who could or would evict them?
On the other hand, from the Russian viewpoint, if the Red army was to fight the Nazis it did not intend to wait until the latter swallowed Poland and were on the Russian border.
Stalin, in the meantime, determined not to be caught napping.
If the anti-Nazi powers would not do business with him, he would do business with the Nazis.
It would be a risky thing to do, but to wait longer was also risky.
So it came about that on August 23rd the Nazi foreign minister, Von Ribbentrop, was welcomed in Moscow, and one day later a Soviet-German non-aggression pact was signed, the two contracting parties agreeing that for a period of ten years they would “refrain from any violence, from any aggressive action, and any attack against each other, individually or jointly with other powers.”
This act gave the green light to the Nazis in Poland and in Germany the government-controlled press unleashed a slashing attack on that country, accusing her not only of refusing all concessions but of maltreating Germans within her borders.
The Polish question must be settled immediately, said Hitler.
He would be content with the return of Danzig to the Reich and the ownership of a super-corridor across the Polish border, in other words with a strip of territory one kilometer wide, sufficient for four railways or motor roads; but that strip must be German.
Polish lines of communication north and south must go over or under this strip.
Hitler pressed the Poles hard; and as he did so the Japanese created a diversion by blockading the port of Tientsin, where the British had granted sanctuary to several Chinese whom the Japanese accused as being assassins.
British citizens were stripped naked by Japanese sentries, but England did nothing.
The royal navy was needed at home.
England was determined that there should not be a second Munich.
In the summer the skies darkened over Poland.
Poles were persecuted in Germany, according to the Polish newspapers; Germans were brutalized in Poland, if the German press was to be believed.
Hitler outdid himself in truculence; he would negotiate no longer with the Polish ambassador; the Poles must send a plenipotentiary to Berlin, presumably their prime minister, to accept a German ultimatum, else Germany would act.
In vain did the French and British ambassadors at Berlin assure the Fuehrer that they would investigate fully and carefully German charges made against the Poles.
Hitler would not listen to them, asserting that it was none of their business, that he had no quarrel with western Europe, that England and France had no right to intervene in Polish-German controversies.
German troops were concentrated on the Polish border and south of it in Slovakia, supposedly an independent country.
Then, to frighten the democracies even further, Hitler published in triumph a ten-year non-aggression pact with Soviet Russia, his old enemy.
Germany was secure now on the east; let the two democracies to the west beware.
Paul Plante says:
So, Hitler has Czechoslovakia, and Joe Biden’s allies England and France are dithering, as they most likely will do again as Joe Biden takes us into WWIII and choices have to be made as to who will pay the butcher’s bill.
So how did Germany then end up with Poland?
Was it as the shallow-thinking Hillary Clinton said on 6 March 2014, that “The claims by President Putin and other Russians that they had to go into Crimea and maybe further into eastern Ukraine because they had to protect the Russian minorities, that is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when Germany under the Nazis kept talking about how they had to protect German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia and elsewhere throughout Europe?”
Or is Hillary all wet and completely off-base here with that comment about Germany and Poland in the run-up to WWII?
For that answer, let us go to pp. 321-324 of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, where the invasion of Poland by not only Germany but the Soviet Union under Joe Stalin is about to begin, to wit:
Germany, meanwhile, claiming that she was being encircled, and flushed with her bloodless victory of March pounced upon the tiny area of Memel on her northeastern border, hitherto administered by Lithuania in the name of the League of Nations, and made demands on Poland for the return of Danzig to the Reich, together with a strip of land across the Polish corridor.
As she did so Hitler denounced his ten-year peace pact with Poland, proclaiming that the treaties just made by that country with the western democracies had broken friendly relations between Germany and Poland.
Likewise for good measure he denounced Germany’s naval treaty with Great Britain.
At the other end of the Axis was Italy.
The Duce, not to be outdone, let forth a tremendous blast against the follies of democracy and peace, invaded Albania, and annexed that country to Italy.
The spring of 1939 had been hectic, the summer more so.
None could tell just what was happening in Moscow.
Then in late July the French and British sent a military commission to Moscow.
Despite many clear warnings from a number of authoritative sources that Stalin might bargain with Hitler, it did not go by airplane; it took a slow steamer and did not reach Moscow until August 10th.
Immediately it encountered a snag.
The Russians were willing to fight the Germans in Poland provided the Red army was permitted to defend Poland’s western boundary.
But neither the Poles nor the western allies would accept this qualification.
If the Russians were once in Poland, who could or would evict them?
On the other hand, from the Russian viewpoint, if the Red army was to fight the Nazis it did not intend to wait until the latter swallowed Poland and were on the Russian border.
Stalin, in the meantime, determined not to be caught napping.
If the anti-Nazi powers would not do business with him, he would do business with the Nazis.
It would be a risky thing to do, but to wait longer was also risky.
So it came about that on August 23rd the Nazi foreign minister, Von Ribbentrop, was welcomed in Moscow, and one day later a Soviet-German non-aggression pact was signed, the two contracting parties agreeing that for a period of ten years they would “refrain from any violence, from any aggressive action, and any attack against each other, individually or jointly with other powers.”
This act gave the green light to the Nazis in Poland and in Germany the government-controlled press unleashed a slashing attack on that country, accusing her not only of refusing all concessions but of maltreating Germans within her borders.
The Polish question must be settled immediately, said Hitler.
He would be content with the return of Danzig to the Reich and the ownership of a super-corridor across the Polish border, in other words with a strip of territory one kilometer wide, sufficient for four railways or motor roads; but that strip must be German.
Polish lines of communication north and south must go over or under this strip.
Hitler pressed the Poles hard; and as he did so the Japanese created a diversion by blockading the port of Tientsin, where the British had granted sanctuary to several Chinese whom the Japanese accused as being assassins.
British citizens were stripped naked by Japanese sentries, but England did nothing.
The royal navy was needed at home.
England was determined that there should not be a second Munich.
In the summer the skies darkened over Poland.
Poles were persecuted in Germany, according to the Polish newspapers; Germans were brutalized in Poland, if the German press was to be believed.
Hitler outdid himself in truculence; he would negotiate no longer with the Polish ambassador; the Poles must send a plenipotentiary to Berlin, presumably their prime minister, to accept a German ultimatum, else Germany would act.
In vain did the French and British ambassadors at Berlin assure the Fuehrer that they would investigate fully and carefully German charges made against the Poles.
Hitler would not listen to them, asserting that it was none of their business, that he had no quarrel with western Europe, that England and France had no right to intervene in Polish-German controversies.
German troops were concentrated on the Polish border and south of it in Slovakia, supposedly an independent country.
Then, to frighten the democracies even further, Hitler published in triumph a ten-year non-aggression pact with Soviet Russia, his old enemy.
Germany was secure now on the east; let the two democracies to the west beware.
Re: HISTORY REDUX ON THE EVE OF WWIII
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR APRIL 20, 2022 AT 8:17 PM
Paul Plante says:
So, there we are and Poland is about to go down, so let us go back to the play action at pp. 324, 325 of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, where we are going to see the name “Ukraine” emerge, as follows:
The Germans, set on forcing the issue, on August 31 presented the British ambassador (they refused to have any dealings with the Polish ambassador) with a peace proposal in sixteen points which considerably enlarged their demands on Poland.
Not only were Danzig and the extraterritorial traffic zone to be annexed, but also there were to be plebiscites whereby the Germans hoped to add the entire Polish corridor to the Reich.
The Poles, unwilling to sign on the dotted line, were not unwilling to negotiate.
But Hitler refused to wait longer.
On September 1, without declaration of war, the German armies invaded Poland, Hitler asserting that he had waited two days for the Poles to submit, that Germans were being mutilated by Polish mobs, and that the preceding night Polish troops had fired across the border.
end quotes
There, I believe, is the pretext that Joe Biden is going to use to get U.S. troops now stationed in Poland into the fight before the mid-term elections, a charge that the Russians fired across the border into Poland when Joe has made a sacred vow to defend every square inch of NATO territory, which is a lot of square inches to defend, indeed.
Getting back to the downfall of Poland back when, the story continues as follows:
Within one month Poland was conquered.
England and France declared war on Germany on September 3, but did nothing to stave off annihilation of their ally, aside from scattering propaganda pamphlets over the German countryside.
The very first day of September saw Warsaw bombed three times and German armies advancing on doomed Poland from four different points.
So swift was the German onrush by motorized divisions on land and by squadrons of planes in the air that the Poles never had a chance.
While optimistic prophets in London and Paris predicted that French and British planes would soon be shuttling back and forth across Germany to Polish air-fields to refuel and return, those very air-fields were wrecked by German bombs, and Polish planes were destroyed on the ground.
The famous Polish cavalry was helpless against the German panzer (armored) divisions.
Brilliant sunshine baked the Polish plain, and the rain upon which the Poles depended to make their fields a sea of mud failed to materialize.
By the middle of the month all of Poland’s important cities (except Warsaw) were in German hands and the Polish government had begun its flight toward the Rumanian frontier.
The Poles fought bravely; they simply were not equipped for modern war.
Here and there, scattered Polish divisions thrust vigorously at the encircling Germans; at the Danzig Westerplatte and at Warsaw they made notable stands.
The civilian population of Warsaw turned out en masse to dig trenches around their capital, and the Warsaw radio alternated martial music, defiance of the enemy, and appeals to the world for succor as German planes droned overhead, reducing the proud city to a mass of ruins.
Then, on September 17, came an invasion of Poland by the Soviet army.
The Polish government, so the Russians said, no longer existed, and Soviet forces were needed to restore order and to rescue peasants from oppression.
Caught between the Germans and the Russians, Poland collapsed.
Warsaw, that shell of a city, bombed and burning in a dozen places, held out until the end of the month.
On October 1 the Germans occupied what was left.
Russian and German armies met as Russia and Germany divided Poland between them, the lion’s share of the booty in economic resources going to the Reich, the eastern marshes and the Polish Ukraine falling to Russia.
Thus within one month perished Poland, a country of 50,000 square miles and 35,000,000 people.
Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were in accord.
Their non-aggression pact was now supplemented by another agreement, the opening paragraph of which struck an ominous note.
“In the case of the war’s being continued,” it read, “joint consultations will take place between the German and Soviet governments on the subject of necessary measures.”
Just what did that mean?
The rest of this pact simply provided for lines of demarcation in Poland and for economic cooperation between the two signatories, Russia agreeing to supply Germany with raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods.
From the German point of view this economic accord by itself seemed sufficient guarantee of victory; if the Germans could depend on the Soviets for oil and food, what more was necessary?
Paul Plante says:
So, there we are and Poland is about to go down, so let us go back to the play action at pp. 324, 325 of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, where we are going to see the name “Ukraine” emerge, as follows:
The Germans, set on forcing the issue, on August 31 presented the British ambassador (they refused to have any dealings with the Polish ambassador) with a peace proposal in sixteen points which considerably enlarged their demands on Poland.
Not only were Danzig and the extraterritorial traffic zone to be annexed, but also there were to be plebiscites whereby the Germans hoped to add the entire Polish corridor to the Reich.
The Poles, unwilling to sign on the dotted line, were not unwilling to negotiate.
But Hitler refused to wait longer.
On September 1, without declaration of war, the German armies invaded Poland, Hitler asserting that he had waited two days for the Poles to submit, that Germans were being mutilated by Polish mobs, and that the preceding night Polish troops had fired across the border.
end quotes
There, I believe, is the pretext that Joe Biden is going to use to get U.S. troops now stationed in Poland into the fight before the mid-term elections, a charge that the Russians fired across the border into Poland when Joe has made a sacred vow to defend every square inch of NATO territory, which is a lot of square inches to defend, indeed.
Getting back to the downfall of Poland back when, the story continues as follows:
Within one month Poland was conquered.
England and France declared war on Germany on September 3, but did nothing to stave off annihilation of their ally, aside from scattering propaganda pamphlets over the German countryside.
The very first day of September saw Warsaw bombed three times and German armies advancing on doomed Poland from four different points.
So swift was the German onrush by motorized divisions on land and by squadrons of planes in the air that the Poles never had a chance.
While optimistic prophets in London and Paris predicted that French and British planes would soon be shuttling back and forth across Germany to Polish air-fields to refuel and return, those very air-fields were wrecked by German bombs, and Polish planes were destroyed on the ground.
The famous Polish cavalry was helpless against the German panzer (armored) divisions.
Brilliant sunshine baked the Polish plain, and the rain upon which the Poles depended to make their fields a sea of mud failed to materialize.
By the middle of the month all of Poland’s important cities (except Warsaw) were in German hands and the Polish government had begun its flight toward the Rumanian frontier.
The Poles fought bravely; they simply were not equipped for modern war.
Here and there, scattered Polish divisions thrust vigorously at the encircling Germans; at the Danzig Westerplatte and at Warsaw they made notable stands.
The civilian population of Warsaw turned out en masse to dig trenches around their capital, and the Warsaw radio alternated martial music, defiance of the enemy, and appeals to the world for succor as German planes droned overhead, reducing the proud city to a mass of ruins.
Then, on September 17, came an invasion of Poland by the Soviet army.
The Polish government, so the Russians said, no longer existed, and Soviet forces were needed to restore order and to rescue peasants from oppression.
Caught between the Germans and the Russians, Poland collapsed.
Warsaw, that shell of a city, bombed and burning in a dozen places, held out until the end of the month.
On October 1 the Germans occupied what was left.
Russian and German armies met as Russia and Germany divided Poland between them, the lion’s share of the booty in economic resources going to the Reich, the eastern marshes and the Polish Ukraine falling to Russia.
Thus within one month perished Poland, a country of 50,000 square miles and 35,000,000 people.
Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were in accord.
Their non-aggression pact was now supplemented by another agreement, the opening paragraph of which struck an ominous note.
“In the case of the war’s being continued,” it read, “joint consultations will take place between the German and Soviet governments on the subject of necessary measures.”
Just what did that mean?
The rest of this pact simply provided for lines of demarcation in Poland and for economic cooperation between the two signatories, Russia agreeing to supply Germany with raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods.
From the German point of view this economic accord by itself seemed sufficient guarantee of victory; if the Germans could depend on the Soviets for oil and food, what more was necessary?
Re: HISTORY REDUX ON THE EVE OF WWIII
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR APRIL 21, 2022 AT 9:15 PM
Paul Plante says:
And here, because we can, let us for a moment fast-forward back to March 6, 2014, this being seventy-one (71) years after World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 was written, and when Joe Biden was Hussein Obama’s executive deputy president, and an Associated Press article titled “Clinton slams Putin, a day after her Hitler remark” wherein we had as follows from Hillary, an imp up from Hell bent on the destruction of our civilized world if there ever was one, to wit:
“The claims by President Putin and other Russians that they had to go into Crimea and maybe further into eastern Ukraine because they had to protect the Russian minorities, that is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when Germany under the Nazis kept talking about how they had to protect German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia and elsewhere throughout Europe,” she said.
“I just want everybody to have a little historic perspective.”
And since I too want everybody to have a little historic perspective, let us then go to p. 315 of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, where we see that while Germany may have taken over the bulk of Czechoslovakia, there were others who also moved in to pick the remaining meat off the bones, to wit:
The Germans took what they wanted, marched to within forty miles of Prague, and absorbed about 750,000 Czechs in the new Germany.
As they did so the Poles invaded Teschen, annexing about 80,000 Poles and 120,000 Czechs.
Hungary then advanced on the helpless Czechs from the south, crossed the Danube, took Bratislava, and would have divided Ruthenia and perhaps Slovakia with Poland had she been permitted to by the all-powerful Germans.
end quotes
So there was a bit more going on there than Hillary admitted to, probably because she never learned this history, and that takes us to p. 325 of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, where we have as follows concerning Ukraine, to wit:
Russian and German armies met as Russia and Germany divided Poland between them, the lion’s share of the booty in economic resources going to the Reich, the eastern marshes and the Polish Ukraine falling to Russia.
end quotes
And that takes us back to 1912, and a map of Europe, which map shows Galicia, but no Ukraine, because at that time, there was no such thing as Ukraine:
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/res ... 0Kedleston.
According to the Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, after World War I, the Allied Supreme Council, which was determining the frontiers of the recently reestablished Polish state, created a temporary boundary marking the minimum eastern frontier of Poland and authorized a Polish administration to be formed on the lands west of it (December 8, 1919).
That line extended southward from Hrodna, passed through Brest-Litovsk, and then followed the Bug River to its junction with the former frontier between the Austrian Empire and Russia.
Whether eastern Galicia, with Lviv, should be Polish or Ukrainian was not decided.
When a subsequent Polish drive eastward into Ukraine collapsed, the Polish prime minister, Władysław Grabski, appealed to the Allies for assistance (July 1920).
On July 10, 1920, the Allies proposed an armistice plan to Grabski, designating the line of December 8, 1919, with a southwestward continuation to the Carpathian Mountains, keeping Przemyśl for Poland but ceding eastern Galicia; the following day the British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, whose name was subsequently attached to the entire line, made a similar suggestion to the Soviet government.
Neither the Poles nor the Soviets, however, accepted the Allied plan.
The final peace treaty (concluded in March 1921), reflecting the ultimate Polish victory in the Russo-Polish War, provided Poland with almost 52,000 square miles (135,000 square km) of land east of the Curzon Line.
Although the Curzon Line, which had never been proposed as a permanent boundary, lost significance after the Russo-Polish War, the Soviet Union later revived it, claiming all the territory east of the line and occupying that area (in accordance with the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939) at the outbreak of World War II.
Later, after Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, the Red Army pushed back the German troops and occupied all of the former state of Poland by the end of 1944; the United States and Great Britain then agreed to Soviet demands (Yalta Conference; February 6, 1945) and recognized the Curzon Line as the Soviet-Polish border.
On August 16, 1945, a Soviet-Polish treaty officially designated a line almost equivalent to the Curzon Line as their mutual border; in 1951 some minor frontier adjustments were made.
And there is how there came to be a Polish Ukraine.
And that brings us to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan formation that during World War II was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet Union, the Polish Underground State, Communist Poland, and Nazi Germany.
The political leadership of the army belonged to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Bandera, OUN-B, and it was the primary perpetrator of the ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
The OUN’s stated immediate goal at the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was to re-establish a united, independent, Nazi-aligned, mono-ethnic Nation state in a territory that included parts of modern-day Russia, Poland, and Belarus.
Violence was accepted as a political tool against both foreign and domestic enemies of their cause, which would be achieved by a national revolution led by a dictatorship that would drive out occupying powers and set up a government representing all regions and social groups.
From late spring 1944, the UPA and Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B (OUN-B) — faced with Soviet advances — also cooperated with German forces against the Soviets and Poles in the hope of creating an independent Ukrainian state.
Outside of western Ukraine, support was not significant, and the majority of the Soviet eastern Ukrainian population considered, and at times still viewed, the OUN/UPA to have been primarily collaborators with the Germans.
Initially, the UPA used the weapons collected from the battlefields of 1939 and 1941.
In 1944, German units armed the UPA directly with captured Soviet arms.
In the attacks against Polish civilians, axes and pikes were used.
Sooooo, hmmmmmm, ethnic cleaning?
The Ukrainians?
Do tell!
So, these are things Hillary never told us!
One has to wonder why.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-602300
Paul Plante says:
And here, because we can, let us for a moment fast-forward back to March 6, 2014, this being seventy-one (71) years after World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 was written, and when Joe Biden was Hussein Obama’s executive deputy president, and an Associated Press article titled “Clinton slams Putin, a day after her Hitler remark” wherein we had as follows from Hillary, an imp up from Hell bent on the destruction of our civilized world if there ever was one, to wit:
“The claims by President Putin and other Russians that they had to go into Crimea and maybe further into eastern Ukraine because they had to protect the Russian minorities, that is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when Germany under the Nazis kept talking about how they had to protect German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia and elsewhere throughout Europe,” she said.
“I just want everybody to have a little historic perspective.”
And since I too want everybody to have a little historic perspective, let us then go to p. 315 of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, where we see that while Germany may have taken over the bulk of Czechoslovakia, there were others who also moved in to pick the remaining meat off the bones, to wit:
The Germans took what they wanted, marched to within forty miles of Prague, and absorbed about 750,000 Czechs in the new Germany.
As they did so the Poles invaded Teschen, annexing about 80,000 Poles and 120,000 Czechs.
Hungary then advanced on the helpless Czechs from the south, crossed the Danube, took Bratislava, and would have divided Ruthenia and perhaps Slovakia with Poland had she been permitted to by the all-powerful Germans.
end quotes
So there was a bit more going on there than Hillary admitted to, probably because she never learned this history, and that takes us to p. 325 of World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900 by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, where we have as follows concerning Ukraine, to wit:
Russian and German armies met as Russia and Germany divided Poland between them, the lion’s share of the booty in economic resources going to the Reich, the eastern marshes and the Polish Ukraine falling to Russia.
end quotes
And that takes us back to 1912, and a map of Europe, which map shows Galicia, but no Ukraine, because at that time, there was no such thing as Ukraine:
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/res ... 0Kedleston.
According to the Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, after World War I, the Allied Supreme Council, which was determining the frontiers of the recently reestablished Polish state, created a temporary boundary marking the minimum eastern frontier of Poland and authorized a Polish administration to be formed on the lands west of it (December 8, 1919).
That line extended southward from Hrodna, passed through Brest-Litovsk, and then followed the Bug River to its junction with the former frontier between the Austrian Empire and Russia.
Whether eastern Galicia, with Lviv, should be Polish or Ukrainian was not decided.
When a subsequent Polish drive eastward into Ukraine collapsed, the Polish prime minister, Władysław Grabski, appealed to the Allies for assistance (July 1920).
On July 10, 1920, the Allies proposed an armistice plan to Grabski, designating the line of December 8, 1919, with a southwestward continuation to the Carpathian Mountains, keeping Przemyśl for Poland but ceding eastern Galicia; the following day the British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, whose name was subsequently attached to the entire line, made a similar suggestion to the Soviet government.
Neither the Poles nor the Soviets, however, accepted the Allied plan.
The final peace treaty (concluded in March 1921), reflecting the ultimate Polish victory in the Russo-Polish War, provided Poland with almost 52,000 square miles (135,000 square km) of land east of the Curzon Line.
Although the Curzon Line, which had never been proposed as a permanent boundary, lost significance after the Russo-Polish War, the Soviet Union later revived it, claiming all the territory east of the line and occupying that area (in accordance with the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939) at the outbreak of World War II.
Later, after Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, the Red Army pushed back the German troops and occupied all of the former state of Poland by the end of 1944; the United States and Great Britain then agreed to Soviet demands (Yalta Conference; February 6, 1945) and recognized the Curzon Line as the Soviet-Polish border.
On August 16, 1945, a Soviet-Polish treaty officially designated a line almost equivalent to the Curzon Line as their mutual border; in 1951 some minor frontier adjustments were made.
And there is how there came to be a Polish Ukraine.
And that brings us to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan formation that during World War II was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet Union, the Polish Underground State, Communist Poland, and Nazi Germany.
The political leadership of the army belonged to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Bandera, OUN-B, and it was the primary perpetrator of the ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
The OUN’s stated immediate goal at the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was to re-establish a united, independent, Nazi-aligned, mono-ethnic Nation state in a territory that included parts of modern-day Russia, Poland, and Belarus.
Violence was accepted as a political tool against both foreign and domestic enemies of their cause, which would be achieved by a national revolution led by a dictatorship that would drive out occupying powers and set up a government representing all regions and social groups.
From late spring 1944, the UPA and Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B (OUN-B) — faced with Soviet advances — also cooperated with German forces against the Soviets and Poles in the hope of creating an independent Ukrainian state.
Outside of western Ukraine, support was not significant, and the majority of the Soviet eastern Ukrainian population considered, and at times still viewed, the OUN/UPA to have been primarily collaborators with the Germans.
Initially, the UPA used the weapons collected from the battlefields of 1939 and 1941.
In 1944, German units armed the UPA directly with captured Soviet arms.
In the attacks against Polish civilians, axes and pikes were used.
Sooooo, hmmmmmm, ethnic cleaning?
The Ukrainians?
Do tell!
So, these are things Hillary never told us!
One has to wonder why.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/o ... ent-602300