Word: secret
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...protesters linked hands to mark the 50th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939, which included secret protocols that cleared the way for the annexation of the Baltics by the U.S.S.R. during World War II. In a sharply worded declaration, a coalition of popular-front leaders denounced the Soviet occupation and demanded the right to "restore independent statehood." The day before, a special commission of the Lithuanian parliament had declared that the U.S.S.R.'s annexation of the republic in 1940 was invalid, flatly contradicting Moscow's denial that the protocols had any bearing on absorption...
...buttress its military strategy, Japan forged ties with another international outcast -- Germany. In 1936 they signed a pact to oppose Communism that included secret protocols to come to the other's aid during a war with the Soviet Union. With Berlin balancing out Moscow, Tokyo accelerated its conquest of China with another "incident." On July 7, 1937, a Japanese soldier stationed near Beijing's Marco Polo Bridge left his post to urinate. His superiors announced that he had been abducted by a nearby Chinese garrison and began shelling the unit. Japanese forces soon overran eastern China...
...reformers. In East Germany the government sought to rid itself of malcontents by handing out unprecedented numbers of exit permits, while thousands of other unhappy citizens simply fled over the Hungarian border. In Poland the Communist Party Politburo marked the 50th anniversary of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact -- whose secret protocols resulted in the partition of Poland at the onset of World War II -- by denouncing the agreement as a violation of "sanctified moral norms of international coexistence." Lest anyone miss the point, Polish opposition leader Lech Walesa spelled it out in an interview with an Italian newspaper...
...ordinary citizens below. Goring had roughly 1,400 bombers and nearly 1,000 fighters, the R.A.F. defenders fewer than 900 fighters. The opposing planes were roughly equal, the German Messerschmitts with a slightly faster rate of climb, the British Spitfires and Hurricanes more maneuverable. (The British also had some secret weapons: a radar warning system that the Germans greatly underestimated, and the Operation Ultra computer that broke most German military codes, particularly those of the Luftwaffe.) The outnumbered British fought with a kind of desperation that inspired Churchill to say of them, "Never in the field of human conflict...
...knew nothing of the secret protocol between Hitler and Stalin that contained provisions for the attack on Poland. German newspapers were full of reports of Polish violence and provocations against the German minority. Who knew whether the reports were correct? Most were believed...