The Eve of the World War Two

A cover with a cachet ! 

Covers and postcards from Poland to me seem very deceptive nowadays - they look simple by looks but carry such intense stories beneath them !! 

The cachet on the cover shows a place in Poland - Gliwice 

Gliwice is a city in Upper Silesia, in southern Poland. The city is located in the Silesian Highlands, on the Kłodnica river (a tributary of the Oder). It lies approximately 25 km West from Katowice, regional capital of the Silesian Voivodeship.

The City has a very important history behind it !

 

 The Radio tower in Gliwice - postcard 

The Gliwice Radio Tower is a transmission tower in the Szobiszowice district of Gliwice, Upper Silesia, Poland. The Gliwice Radio Tower is 118 m (387 ft) tall (including the 8 m (26 ft) long spire on its top), with a wooden framework of impregnated larch linked by brass connectors. It was nicknamed "the Silesian Eiffel Tower" by the local population. The tower is the tallest wooden structure in Europe.

On 31 August 1939, the German SS staged a 'Polish' attack on Gleiwitz radio station, which was later used as justification for the invasion of Poland.

The Gleiwitz incident was a covert Nazi German attack on the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz on the night of 31 August 1939. The attack is widely regarded as a false flag operation, staged with some two dozen similar German incidents on the eve of the invasion of Poland leading up to World War II in Europe. 

The attackers had  posed as Polish nationals -a small group of German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish .  The operation was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of Polish anti-German saboteurs. To make the attack seem more convincing, the Gestapo murdered Franciszek Honiok, a 43-year-old unmarried German Silesian Catholic farmer, known for sympathising with the Poles. Several prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp were drugged, shot dead on the site and their faces disfigured to make identification impossible.

The Gleiwitz incident was a part of a larger operation carried out by Abwehr and SS forces. Other orchestrated incidents were conducted along the Polish-German border at the same time as the Gleiwitz attack, such as a house burning in the Polish Corridor and spurious propaganda.

Adolf Hitler invaded Poland the next morning after a lengthy period of preparations. During his declaration of war, Hitler did not mention the Gleiwitz incident but grouped all provocations staged by the SS as an alleged Polish assault on Germany. The Gleiwitz incident is the best-known action of Operation Himmler, the series of special operations undertaken by Nazis. 

The Gleiwitz incident served as the self made trigger for the World War Two - the war that ravaged Poland from both sides - just like how Belgium and France got ravaged in the First war ! 

I shudder to imagine the days of the war ! I pray the world is always at peace ! Amen !! 

Thanks Wojtek for this beautiful postcard and cover :) I am sure you had a very peaceful and happy New Year’s eve ! Stay blessed :)