Word: rydz
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...peak; the Prut River flowing nearby. Enter Colonel Josef Beck, Foreign Minister of Poland. No longer the same man as in Act I and II, the Colonel is haggard, sleepless; the sardonic elegance that marked his appearance has vanished. With him is Marshal Smigly-Rydz, Commander in Chief of the Polish Armies, equally haggard, desperate. The two men approach, talking angrily. Beck suddenly stops, faces the General, Smigly-Rydz draws back; onlookers crowd nearer. Beck speaks...
Baranowicze, Rowne, Tarnopol, Zaleszczyki were all invaded at once. Out of the raving wilderness that was Poland came word that Marshal Smigly-Rydz diverted a whole Army corps from Wilno to confront the Russians in the northeast, that a hot fight ensued at Molodeczno, rail junction between Wilno and Minsk. Elsewhere opposition was nominal or minus. Refugees over the Rumanian border described the new invaders as traveling peaceably along the same Ukrainian roads as the fugitive Poles. It was a mass movement of occupation rather than of conquest, although performed the same way as the crashing German onslaught-mechanized forces...
...defense line from Loruń south through Lódź and Kielce to Cracow, and after that to the angle between the Bug and Vistula Rivers in the north and the Industrial Triangle (Cracow to Lublin to Lwow) in the south, was the strategy approved for Marshal Smigly-Rydz by his Allied military advisers (see map, p. 16). He need endanger only 15 Polish divisions by this plan, holding 45 in reserve to smite the Germans after their supply lines and communications were extended. His own defense line would be less than 500 miles long instead of more than...
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...
...Pronunciation: Shmigwy-Ridzh. Meaning: nimble-mushroom. The Marshal's family name was Rydz (Mushroom), indicating peasant origin. But because of the quickness of both his wits and his body, his companions in the Pilsudski Legions gave him the sobriquet Smigly (Nimble). He sometimes wears it before, sometimes behind Rydz, prefers it behind so that the name has less meaning...