Word: ub
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Unfederated Republic. The activities of the security police in the election campaign suggest that Poland is almost as much an unfederated Soviet republic as Yugoslavia. The UB (security force) is modeled after (and trained by) Russia's MVD. The chief is Stanislaw Radkiewicz, former schoolteacher and longtime Communist. When his assistant, Stanislaw Vachowicz, a Socialist, complained of the UB's activities, he was forced to resign. When Premier Edward Osubka-Morawski, Socialist stooge of the Communists, protested about the UB in Cabinet meetings, he was told to mind his knitting...
...regular army. Between 50 and 60 thousand are engaged in routine snooping and spying. The rest are mobilized in flying squads for mass arrests or operations against the "underground." The underground, official label for practically any group that opposes the Government, is also the official excuse for UB activities. The secret police may arrest without warrant anyone in Poland except district secretaries and higher officials of the Communist Party...
Nominally the secret police are responsible to the Polish Parliament and Cabinet. Since the Parliament has proved a willing tool of the Communist ruling group, the UB is responsible to three Russian-trained Communist Cabinet members and Poland's No. I Communist: Jakub Berman, Under Secretary of State Without Portfolio and Secretary of the Cabinet, who has the last word on foreign affairs; Hilary Minc, Minister of Industry; Colonel Roman Zambrowski, vice director of the political department of the Foreign Ministry and a member of the six-man Presidium of the National Council; and Wladislaw Gomulka, Secretary General...
Doenitz knew the British well, and he had profound contempt for them at the war's start. In the last war, after service on a cruiser in the Mediterranean, he was transferred to U-boats, earned his own command. His UB-68 was sunk by the British off Malta in 1918. Rescued, Doenitz was taken to England as a prisoner of war. There he so successfully feigned mental illness that his captors kept him comfortably in a sanatorium...