Adolph and Lech

I'm not sure how much coverage this will get, but this is the 65th anniversary of the "start" of WWII. 9-1-1939 was when the Germans rolled into Poland from the west, soon to be followed by the Russians rolling in from the east (we forget that those two were buddies for a time). Here's a Canadian piece on the remembrances in Poland.

I was remembering my history of the era; one of the trigger points was the city of Danzig, which gave Poland a sea outlet and cut off parts of Germany from direct access, much as BC and the Yukon separate Alaska from the lower 48 (No, Bene, we have no plans for northwestern lebensraum).

What we sometimes miss is once the dust cleared after WWII and Poland got back Danzig is that they renamed it Gdansk. It was there at the Lenin Shipyards that the Solidarity movement got started. Has it been 24 years already since Walesa and friends got things rolling? Given that it's been a decade and a half that the Cold War ended, we take those successes for granted.

I got a very pleasant chill up my spine when I did a "Gdansk Lech" google to double-check stuff; they've renamed the Gdansk airport Lech Walesa Airport. For someone who watched Solidarity's struggles through the 80s, seeing that has a weird sense of watching a sci-fi piece of (T+50 years) where they have airports and buildings named after current politicians and heroes. Well, we're now at T+24.

Comments

[Bene Diction]

Lebensraum...easy translation...living space.
Tougher one...imperialisation.

LoL.
We'll talk.:^)
I believe the missle defense shield is on the negoitating radar screen. Blog on!

[J. Michael Matkin]

"I got a very pleasant chill up my spine when I did a "Gdansk Lech" google to double-check stuff; they've renamed the Gdansk airport Lech Walesa Airport. For someone who watched Solidarity's struggles through the 80s, seeing that has a weird sense of watching a sci-fi piece of (T+50 years) where they have airports and buildings named after current politicians and heroes. Well, we're now at T+24."

Hunh, has it really been that long? Time flies, eh? It's amazing how the struggles of yesterday become the footnotes of tomorrow. There's a humbling truth in that. We don't exactly forget, but it certainly recedes from our daily consciousness. So if we're going to fight and maybe die for something, we had better be assured in our own souls that it's for the right reasons. An airport and a mention in the history books isn't going to be enough of a reason. We've got to stand for things that matter in and of themselves and be satisfied that we were in the right as best we saw the right, whether or not those who come after us remember what we have done.