Polish outfitting & positioning of their armed forces, 1935-39(40?)

Howard Gibson said:

The word "jiggerypokey" covers multiple chapters of a long book. it is a useful word.

Click to expand...

The space was spellcheck's doing.

Wurger said:

Yes, the word is used in all mentiond above countries but it is from the Russian language actually. For the reason the word "kulomiot" also was used in old Polish especially by Poles living at the Russian Partition and servicing in the Tsarist Army before regaining independence and the whole freedom of Poland after the WW1. Similarly the Poles living in the Prussian Partition and the Austria-Hungary one used the "Maschinengewehr". When Poland became the independent country the vocabulary was unified and the "karabin maszynowy", what is the Polish translation of the German world, was introduced.

Click to expand...

You may be surprised, but Russians themselves (or rather, Russian-speaking linguists studying Russian) believe that the word "pulya" in Russian was borrowed - quite late! - from Polish (kula) and contaminated with the word "pushka" (cannon). I suspect that this word was also borrowed in Polish from German (die Kugel).

The best solution for the Poles would have been to raise red flags and join the USSR accompanied by the beat of drums. And then wait for 1990 with clenched teeth - as it happened in reality. As a result, the losses of the Poles would have been much less - even taking into account the possible scale of Soviet repressions in Poland. Clearly, this is as completely unrealistic an alternative as all the alternatives proposed here, except that it is slightly less pointless. And it is unlikely that Hitler would risk launching a big war under such circumstances. For him it is a deadlock - to start a war in the West, when the Soviets at any moment can at any time at one blow defeat the Wehrmacht in the East - and the balance of forces in 1939 was completely different than in 1941 - a guaranteed loss, and delaying the start of the war is impossible for economic reasons. But Poland would rather chew off both hands than extend at least one of them to the Soviets.