Word: backed
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Chieh, Chinese Ambassador to Moscow: The day before the German-Russian pact was announced, Yang Chieh called on Russian Premier Viacheslav Molotov and asked what was up. Said he with Oriental suavity, he had heard rumors of a German-Russian plan to dismember Poland. . . . Thunderstruck, Premier Molotov gasped, drew back, while the veins of his forehead stood out in his apoplectic fury: this, he reminded his visitor, was the Soviet of Socialist Republics, the fatherland of the toiling masses, the vanguard of the antifascist struggle; that any ambassador could believe such a slander of the Socialist State made him, Molotov...
History. Everybody thought the Germans were fast, but Russians found them particularly impressive. Nineteen years ago last August Russians, too, were knocking at the gates of Warsaw. In the spring of that year Pilsudski had invaded the Russian Ukraine, been driven back so far that on August 12 Marshal Tukachevsky, following a plan worked out by a Tsarist general in 1831, circled Warsaw to the North; SimeonBudenny,with the Red Cavalry, had taken Lwow; a third force was ready to encircle Warsaw from the South; Dzerzhinsky, Polish-born nobleman, ruthless organizer of the Cheka, waited outside Warsaw to spring...
Underlying all these explanations, however, was the conviction that the Poles were magnificent fighters. If Sheridan's victorious armies at the end of the Civil War had driven into French-dominated Mexico, reached Mexico City, then been driven smack back to Denver, the legend of Mexican fighting strength might have been as firmly rooted in U. S. life as the legend of peppery Poles was ingrained in Russian thought. That was one of the reasons why, last week, Russians had a lot of trouble explaining the German advance and their own defeat...
...Premier Molotov soon came back to the big problem: "Nobody could have expected the Polish state would have such impotence . . . collapse is a fact . . . Polish statesmen have revealed their utter bankruptcy...
Still the Polonaise sounded over the radio, and Warsaw thought it had actually thrown the Germans back. Part of the Army fighting in the narrow pocket to the west of the capital, between the German pincers, fell back into the city, joining the defenders. To the north, Modlin fortress fell and a German force crossed the Bug River east of Warsaw, cutting off retreat. From the southwest, the German drive swung eastward past Radom, crossed the Vistula. Warsaw was surrounded. Once again it faced its historic fate. For ten times Warsaw had been taken by an invader-the last time...