Word: germanic
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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This week, after only eleven days of fighting, it was a grave question whether Poland was not already crushed. Perhaps Marshal Smigly-Rydz was to blame, for having his generals resist too long; perhaps the speed and power of the German advance surpassed even German calculations; perhaps the weather made the difference, staying dry and leaving the roads passable for motorized advance; perhaps the German air-power exceeded all expectations, breaking Poland's wings before they left the ground, smashing defensive positions before they could be organized. Certainly all these factors combined to make half Poland a shambles...
...entry of one motorized unit, traveling far ahead of its support, into the heart of Warsaw, led to premature announcement of the capital's invasion on Friday. Snipers at windows, machine gunners on roofs, drove the invaders back to Warsaw's southwestern suburbs, but there the main German forces soon arrived, too, and Warsaw was hemmed in on at least two sides. To its defense from the west came Polish divisions retreating in good order out of the big pocket formed around Poznan, where the Nazi attack had been light for fear of harming the thick German population...
While the battle for Warsaw took form, in the south the German columns smashed on westward toward Lublin and toward Przemysl on the San River, gateway through the hills toward Lwow. Slovakian columns, too, came out of the border mountains to threaten Lwow, for through that city ran Poland's one remaining lifeline; the road and railroad to Rumania...
...much on the fate of Warsaw-heavy blow to morale though that would be if it fell-as on the whereabouts and condition of Poland's remaining divisions. If they could form their mass of maneuver, as the French did around Paris, and strike at the separated advancing German armies, they might accomplish a master counterblow. If that did not work, there were still the rains to hope for and the Allied pressure at Germany's back...
Although the British censor passed several conflicting reports on this affair (see p. 25), a later "official report" set the gossip straight. A German squadron had indeed started over Chatham. Home fighters had indeed gone up. But so prompt were they, so excited their brother gunners below, that when they returned (after scaring off the German eagles) their own guns powed them. One British pilot crashed dead...