Britain... What the Poles did for us.

What the Poles did for us......

*sigh*

If the Brits hadnt declared war on Nazi Germany, there wouldnt be a Poland today. The Poles should be thanking their lucky stars the Brits stepped in, albeit belatedly.

Well not to the Brits anyway, French were first in line. Poles were deciphering German messages as early as of January 33 and in February of the same year the Polish Army's General Staff placed an order at the AVA Radio Workshops based in Warsaw to build military Enigma doubles to Rejewskis’ specifications. Most of his reverse engineering work was based on a description of the militarized Enigma machine, as well as old key tables. In July 39 one of the working models of Enigma machines was passed on to the French on Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Waclaw Stachiewicz orders who authorized the Cipher Office to share all their knowledge on Enigma with the allies. As a result both French and the Brits got Polish-made clones of the Enigma machines, but the Brits got theirs in the beginning of August 39 when General Stewart Menzies was given a copy of Enigma machine.


People were manually decrypting messages at Bletchley Park and behold the breakthrough they achieved when British all of a sudden begun to read the Enigma coded messages in mid August of 1939 right after Stewart Menzies got his Polish Enigma clone. I wonder why and how?


In December of 1938 Germans upgraded their Enigma machines with 2 extra ciphering rotors as a result Poles required using 60 instead of only six cryptological bombs and same number of paper sheets sets to read the German messages. In case you wonder what cryptological bomb is you will find it to be a mechanical device designed by Rejewski for the purpose of breaking the enigma code. One can argue that his device is a pseudo computer and a precursor of the computer as a result of working on the Enigma code but that would be a weak argument, after all what is the computer? Is it a machine in modern sense of the word? On the other hand if computer is the idea of mechanical device to do some kind of calculation then once again this honor would probably go to the British inventor Charles Babbage almost a full century before.

I can see how reading the book "The Ultra Secret" would give you the idea that it was the Brits who broke the Enigma code. Author of this book also made a lot of claims which are simply lies. Unable to overcome the fact that General Menzies was given a copy of Enigma machine he claimed that Poles had stolen it from Germans thanks to some Polish agent who was in Germany. Polish contribution to the breaking of the Enigma code is not very well known in the West but to downplay it like Mr. Winterbotham did in his book "The Ultra Secret" just proves that you do not have to be factual to be published and still be considered an authority on the subject or reader for that matter any wiser for reading it. Polish historians are also partly to be blamed for this but in their defense I would have to state that promoting the fact that Poland had friendly relations with Britain and France prior to and during the war was not in ruling communists interest not to mention the fact that it would not sit well with the Soviets. An author of this story would have to include the fact of Polish Cipher Office cooperation with the French Deuxieme Bureau. According to the ruling communists, for the general public it was enough to know that Soviets liberated half of Europe from the fascists' and capitalist states like Britain and France are our enemy not our friends, therefore such work would never have seen the light of day.


Don’t fool yourself, it was not to help Poland. If that was your motivating factor Yalta would have never happened. As for thanking our lucky stars, who needs enemies when we have friends that would sell you out at their leisure and then claim that it was all for you. Ridicules don’t you think?

if it was not for Poles in England english would be second language and german first

Nazis. Didnt. Want. To. Invade. The. UK.

Arguably, if the Poles hadn't broken enigma so early on, there wouldn't be a Britain today.


They didn't want to invade anyone. Sea Lion must have all been in my head.

Not at all, youre comparing a war tactic to declaring war thats obsured. Using that context we can bring on thousands of hypothetics.

Heres one Americans would all be speaking German if Britian hadnt declared war on Germany.


Are you not aware that initially Hitler had no intention of war with Britian.

Do you also believe in the easter bunny and the tooth fairy?


If Hitler really, really wanted to invade Britain he would have routed the Brits in Dunkirk when the opportunity arose. He didnt and he let them retreat unhindered. He could have easily sank their navy and massacred their infantry.

Thats a bit much, the British navy was by far the most powerfull in the world at the time, he may have sunk a few ships but thats it. There are many arguments before and against Germanys lack of decisive action during Dunkirk and i find it hard to believe that Hitler "let them evacuate" out of the goodness of his heart.

I think that the intelligence gathering ability that was made possible by cracking enigma (and of course Turing & co for cracking on an industrial scale), was one of the decisive factors in winning the war. I am not equating declaring war with a tactic, that would be absurd.


Initially he had no intention of war with Norway either, or the Benelux for that matter.

Anyway, he spells it out pretty clearly in Mein Kampf. Neutrality would not be tolerated, Britain, Italy, and Germany were to form an alliance and take out France, then defeat the Soviets.


To underestimate the tactical (and strategic for that matter) advantage that the ability to read your enemies confidential communications brings...well.... Ok, you have a great argument there about bunnies and fairies.

Then why did the Brits use ordinary pleasure boats to evacuate their troops?


Why else would he let them retreat? He had a golden opportunity to smash the Brits. Some infantry were stranded in Dunkirk for days. Hitler had an open goal and declined to shoot. If he had neutralised the Brit army at that stage of the war, the war could have had an entirely different ending.

300,000 troops it was a case of everyman and their dingy to the rescue.


many reasons:
Wermacht needing rest and refuel
Worried about wermacht being in range of British navy
Over estimating British strength
RAF
Listening to Goering say i'll finish them off from the air, save the land troops (most probable)

Hitler made many howlers over the period of WWII, the most famous being to invade Russia in winter.


In that case there are many decisive factors in briging about the victory in that war. Its just to big a scale to tune it down to a single fact.

That and the timeless naval riddle of...how do you put an ocean going ship onto a beach?

Id just like to point out that the Germans sank a rather large quanity of our ships / boats - merchant navy, royal navy and various other boats/tankers during WWII - their intentions were not to kill, but to cripple the Island and stop supplies going to other Islands...See Malta:

bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/25/a4101625.shtml

I recall reading about war games re Sealion that took place in the early 1970s. They used as many of the original wartime personnel as they could. The results were that German forces could have successfully landed in England and advanced past several "stop lines" forming a bridgehead. The Royal Navy would then have closed the channel to German reinforcements causing the invasion to fail.

Thanks for pointing out the absolute obvious there ShellyS. Their intentions may have been to not kill but unfortunately they did. It was part of the deal you couldnt have one without the other. The convoys inflicted heavy losses on the U boats once they were up and running though.


The Royal Navy was a formidable weapon commonly over looked throughout WWII, we did pretty much spank the Gerries in that department. Take the Bismark for example, we took her out within something like 200 days and that was the most powerful and modern battleship at the time. Shame we lost the Battleship Hood during that fight but the trade was in our favour.

you are right about that as royal family is part German, changing name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor in 1917. Royal family ware pro German before and during war.


German air force would sink all British navy in channel in 1940 and remember Brits ware not like Polish soldiers in 1940 all they did is run.

Possibly, but fantasy what ifs aside, the battle of britain showed that the Germans didnt have control of the air so...


Absoutley, they tended to stay in port, and managed to breakout once or twice.

And they were doing so because French military intelligence had provided them with daily keys to enigma. Funny how Poles so often completely forget the French contribution but so often complain about not getting their share of the credit.


Remind me whose navy was in full retreat before even a single shot was fired, was it the British navy or the Polish navy.

Barney you are being delusional battle of Britain showed that the Germans had control over channel and they attacked England at will, the only way the Brits won the battle of Britain was do to change of German tactics and of cause Polish pilots.

There, you said it, no fantasy what ifs.

Ahh its the i hate everyone guy again piping up with his usual offerings.


Hes glorifying the German war effort to cover his own coutries shortcomings to make him feel better.

Firstly the royal navy would not have ALL been in the channel and even if they were the Luftwaffe launching an all out attack would have been met with total resilliance not only from the royal navy but all royal airforce reserves in Britian and southern France. Battle of Britian anyone?..... Its been proven time and time again the Stuka (German dive bombers) were sitting ducks for hurricanes and spitfires, even me109's were well beaten by our planes, let alone the navy blasting them out of the sky. Ill equipped land forces rallying armies at the last minute in France getting their ass kicked is one thing but youre living in a fantasy land there mate.

Whats really funny as this guy will probably come back bragging about Polish squadron 303, using British planes ie. spitfires and hurricanes, then he'll say how great the Polish fighters were whilst selectively failing to mention that the planes they flew and killed Germans were actually British - designed and manufactured.

I think we have a new Brit hater here, i think i need to bring on the old "come on back to Poland Marek, come on". This guy requires re-education of the highest level.

Wroclaw boy and Barney you are morons, Germans rolled over the French and British forces
in less time then Germany and Russia took to divided Poland again think objectively look at fact not your fantasies read some books educate your self.

How surprising to see you lying again.

Battle of France: 10 May to 25 June 1940.
Invasion of Poland: 1 September to 6 October 1939 (although some Polish forces were running away before 1 September).

France and Great Britain against Germany alone (please don't mention
the Italians - and I mean pleease :)).


Poland alone against Germany and Soviet Union (not to mention Slovakia :))

I'd say we did better ;)

That would be one way to look at it. Another way would be to note that the number of square metres of Great Britain which were occupied by Germans or Soviets is precisely the same as the number of square metres of Poland which was not occupied by both the Germans and the Soviets.

Poland never surrendered in World War II; although we were occupied by German and Soviet forces by 6th of October 1939 Polish government never officially surrendered and set up a government in exile where we continued the fight against Germany. Thousands of Polish forces made a tactical withdraw to Romania, France, and England including some of the navy which you claim to have fled where it could continue the fight. France on the other hand officially capitulated and signed armistice on June 22 1940 not on 25th of June 1940 like you stated, so who’s lying again Harry. No matter how much you wish it to be true it’s just not so. Now run along and play in your fantasy world will you.

Whoopdy fcuking doo.


What or the Austrians or the Japs and the countless other Axis countries that Britian faced alone.

Thank you; and your welcome btw.

Actually youre welcome and be thankful that we let you set up a (half assed) government in exile in our country biatch.

Feckinhell, WB. We were talking about the Battle of France - 1940.
During that battle the armed forces of France and Great Britain
fought against the armed forces of Germany (OK, OK - and Italy
in the last two weeks of the campaign lol).

Japs? Yer havin a laugh... *rolls eyes*