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Blitzkrieg! 1939
- Thread starter Mumbles
- Start date
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Yankee Uniform Tango
What most people tend to forget, is that soon after the Nazis invaded from the West, the Soviets came storming through the East. The two dictators met in the middle and partitioned the land. An interesting fact is that Poland was the only country invaded by Germany during the war, that never officially surrendered; to punish the Poles, Hitler ordered Warsaw leveled to the ground.
Story time:
My grandfather on my dad's side was in the Polish horse cavalry (and no, they didn't rush tanks riding them; that's a myth made up by Nazi propaganda), and was captured about a month into the war. He was forced to work at a slave labor camp somewhere in Germany. Shortly after arriving he weaseled his way into kitchen duty, by posing as a baker ("I knew I wouldn't starve if I was where the food was"
).The first piece of bread he tried to bake was a disaster, but the German supervising him just laughed it off and taught him how to do it properly ("You're as much of a baker as I am a Saint!" ). Apparently the German civilians treated them pretty well; he managed to escape one day though, and eventually joined the resistance movement and became a runner. He was full of stories, but unfortunately I was too young at the time to appreciate most of them. I remember for a long time after the war, whenever he'd plow fields on his farm, he'd always end up finding Nazi artifacts (helmets, belts, boots, knives, once even a large swastika flag, etc). He was a great man, and a hero of mine. He passed away in 1994.
Grandad on my mom's side was in the resistance for the duration of the war, and was rattled for the rest of his life by what he saw and experienced. On two occasions him and his buddies got caught and were being executed; on two occasions the Nazis ran out of bullets before they got to him, and let him go.
Got plenty of stories like this from all my family members...most of them are gone now though.
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Yankee Uniform Tango
Victory at Sea was always a 'must see' which occupied 30 minutes of every Sunday night in the days before VCRs and Tivo ... it was great even if somewhat heavily laced w/ 'staged' footage, incorrect file footage, and outright propaganda borrowed from the WW2 period. The Richard Rogers music score was second to none ... I used to have the album, if you can believe that.
Another, lesser known series -- 10 out of 10 stars -- but one 1960 season only -- was "Winston Churchill -- The Valiant Years" ... narrated by Gary Merrill, written by Quentin Reynolds, William L. Shirer (The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich), Richard Tregaskis (Guadalcanal Diary), produced by Patrick McNee (The Avengers), directed by John Schlesinger, and voice-overs for Winston Churchill provided by Sir Richard Burton -- it just doesn't get any better than that group. The footage was first-hand and excellent ... if I could find the DVD collection, assuming it exists, I'd buy it.
Another, lesser known series -- 10 out of 10 stars -- but one 1960 season only -- was "Winston Churchill -- The Valiant Years" ... narrated by Gary Merrill, written by Quentin Reynolds, William L. Shirer (The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich), Richard Tregaskis (Guadalcanal Diary), produced by Patrick McNee (The Avengers), directed by John Schlesinger, and voice-overs for Winston Churchill provided by Sir Richard Burton -- it just doesn't get any better than that group. The footage was first-hand and excellent ... if I could find the DVD collection, assuming it exists, I'd buy it.
nombrescreeno
New Member
What a lot of people miss with regards to Poland, largely due to the jokes/myths people talk about, is that Poland, despite being horribly overmatched, still gave the Germans as much hell as they could. IIRC, > 16,000 Germans were killed during the month or so invasion, and while that was a drop in the bucket compared to what the war would claim, that is certainly quite a total people forget to mention!