Jerzy Soltan, UD‘s father-in-law,
a lieutenant in the Polish cavalry.
He fought until the last battles of
October 1939.
He spent the duration of the war
a prisoner of the Germans,
in Murnau.
Jerzy Soltan, UD‘s father-in-law,
a lieutenant in the Polish cavalry.
He fought until the last battles of
October 1939.
He spent the duration of the war
a prisoner of the Germans,
in Murnau.
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September 1st, 2009 at 9:09AM
He was able to walk away from it, which was not the fate of much of the Polish officer corps.
That Polish cavalry reference will probably bring out recollections of lancers charging tanks. Not so: the horse served as a delivery system for light infantry.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:56AM
I just re-linked an old post on the beginning of WWII, with emphasis on British political decision-making,here.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:53PM
My wife recently brought me home a book from a library book sale with the upbeat title Failure of a Mission (Putnam’s 1940) by Sir Nevile Henderson, UK ambassador to Berlin 1937-39. At first I wasn’t thrilled that she’d wasted a dollar on it, since Henderson was known to be cozy with top Nazis, and I thought it would just be a sob story about how his friends had let him down and gone and invaded Poland. But I finally read it, and it’s really a fascinating story about how it (slowly) dawned on him that Hitler was simply crazy evil and no amount of diplomacy was doing to work. It’s worth tracking down in a university library or requesting on Interlibrary Loan.
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:22PM
Stephen: Mr UD says his father walked away from it for two reasons:
1. He was a communications officer – a radio man – and so he wasn’t in the front lines.
2. He went into a German, not a Soviet, camp. “If you went into the Soviet camp, you didn’t survive.”
Peter: Thanks for that reference. Mr UD thanks you too.