Reply To: Poland 1939 – Preparing for 80th Anniversary of World War II

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Hi @piers, the Germans made a bit of a show of it taking and showing the Italian reporters  the casualties caused by the armoured cars when they counter attacked and finally displaced the cavalry after a bitter fight.  However every time this action was retold it got bigger and bigger and finally it was poor innocent tanks that the Poles used their faces to penetrate their armour. Ok I got a bit carried away, but why let facts get in the way.  😉

Yep and we all know that German propaganda did a very poor recreation of the story.  Some how the armoured cars were forgotten about.

This was an interesting case of a creation of a myth and an accidental user of a  story telling device,  the doomed hero has had the opposite effect to the desired propaganda.  The Germans were trying to show just how useless the Poles are.  A little revenge for the boarder wars and the humiliation to the Germans,  but instead created the doomed hero that the rest of the world had nothing but empathy and admiration for the Poles and their desperate and doomed struggle.

As I was saying earlier to @yavasa I can understand to some extent the niggling annoyance of a myth that should have been put to bed by now but hadn’t.  In movies when they show the Australian Light Horse carrying lances in WW1 when well before this war we had retired the lance to the parade ground.

It at first looks like the pot calling the kettle black when they mocked the Poles for having cavalry.  I believe it was meant to be an attack to humble the Poles on the international stage.  The Polish cavalry was Poland’s elite formations and during the horse and musket period the Polish Lancer in their different forms over this period were considered by many to be the best cavalry in the world.  In a childish manner the German propaganda was trying to smear both.  This childish smearing was right up Hitler’s alley like referring to the Americans as mindless noisy chickens  lead by Jewish Wall Street. This is my take on it having read the book Warlords,  if you have read it or seen the multi part documentary that the History Channel made from it takes particular interest of his liking of schoolyard humour often used by Hitler.

By the way how is the Stalingrad book for BG coming along.  If it is not something that would be a spoiler will it be just the battle,  or will it cover the road to Stalingrad and will it include the hard fought tank battles fought a few miles to the North.  With my current study of Izyum a question stands out to me. Why was Paulus’s inability for field command such a shock to German high command when the writing was on the wall back in late January of 42. I find this curious.  While I will be using Barbarrosa to cover Izyum as you recommended,  I am looking forward to the Stalingrad supplement even if it is a way to go yet.