Word: polished
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Adolf Hitler left Berlin that same night to survey his armies' progress in Poland, and what he saw pleased him mightily. General Heinz Guderian, the tank commander who had already swept across the 50-mile-wide Polish Corridor, the once German area linking Poland to the Baltic Sea, took the Fuhrer on a tour of the newly conquered territory. Hitler was amazed at the low number of ! German casualties, only 150 killed and 700 wounded among four divisions; his own regiment had suffered 2,000 casualties during its first day of combat in World War I. And he was impressed...
Many of the Poles had fought gallantly, though, and it was here in the battle for the corridor that there spread the legend of the Polish cavalry charging German armor, like medieval knights lost in a time warp. "The Polish Pomorska Cavalry Brigade, in ignorance of the nature of our tanks, charged them with swords and lances," Guderian recalled with some wonder, "and suffered tremendous losses." Actually, the Polish cavalry was organized to combat infantry charges, and it had proved its value when the Poles defeated the Soviets in 1920. But by the time it confronted the German tanks...
...early as Sept. 4, the Polish government began evacuating Warsaw. The Bank of Poland sent its gold reserves south, to a haven near the Rumanian border. On Sept. 7 the Foreign Ministry told all diplomats that President Ignacy Moscicki, Premier Felicjan Slawoj-Skladkowski and their Cabinet ministers were leaving immediately by truck convoy for Naleczow, a resort 85 miles southeast of Warsaw. Finding no telephone lines working and almost no electricity, the ministers and diplomats trekked onward the next day to Krzemieniec, some 200 miles farther southeast. Throughout this flight, they were repeatedly attacked by German planes, for the Germans...
...might have lasted longer. But the Poles refused to abandon an inch of their land, and the Germans' surprise attack across the unfortified frontier threw the defenders into confusion. Military units got separated and cut off; refugees jammed the highways; communications systems broke down; the Germans not only knew Polish codes but also broadcast false information on Polish radio frequencies...
...Soviet treaty. Only the date of the Soviet invasion had been left uncertain. Stalin had a little difficulty in thinking up an excuse to attack, but he finally declared that he was acting "to restore peace and order in Poland, which has been destroyed by the disintegration of the Polish State...