Word: blitzkrieged
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Western ideals, combined with the failure of Communist ideals he still defends and opposition to Soviet domination he represents, which brought millions into the streets. It is true that he could have repressed the demonstrations, but it might not have worked and would have inevitably derailed his brilliant diplomatic blitzkrieg aimed at psychologically disarming the West. Instead, he is now getting credit for developments he could not contain...
...August 23, 1939, Germany and Russia signed a pact that included a secret agreement to partition eastern Europe, including Poland, between them. A few weeks after signing the agreement, the Red Army rolled into a Poland already prostrate from the German blitzkrieg. The Soviets deported thousands of Poles--including 14,500 officers--to Russian labor camps. Their motives are not difficult to discern; they wished to short-circuit any future Polish leadership...
...even Hitler was surprised at the suddenness of his success. Yet many of his seemingly invincible tanks were very lightly armored and carried no offensive weapons heavier than machine guns. More important, the German war machine depended heavily on imported supplies: Swedish steel, Rumanian oil, South African chromium. The blitzkrieg was in part a response to the fact that a Germany blockaded by Britain did not then have the resources to wage war for more than six months. In addition to his natural gall and guile, though, Hitler had one attribute indispensable to a commander: luck...
...surprise raids on that first gray morning, the German Luftwaffe virtually wiped out the entire 500-plane Polish air force on the ground. The dawn surprise, the rampaging panzers, the shrieking dive bombers, all were elements in a new German invention that was to change the nature of warfare: blitzkrieg...
...Blitzkrieg and deception. In disputed Danzig, the once German port administered by the League of Nations since the end of World War I, the attack had begun half an hour before the invasion, when local Nazi Storm Troopers seized several key buildings and intersections. From the harbor, the battleship Schleswig-Holstein, which had arrived a few days earlier on a "courtesy visit," began emptying its 11-in. guns at the Westerplatte peninsula, where the Poles were authorized to station 88 soldiers. The only real resistance came from the Polish Post Office on Heveliusplatz, where 51 postal workers barricaded the doors...