Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Monday August 4, 1941. Courts, out of jail, and in the desert.

Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, facing front, seated with Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss and Phillip "Little Farvel" Cohen who shield their faces, and Louis Capone, in a Kings County Courtroom during jury selection.

On the same day Hitler met with a collection of his senior generals, all of whom urged him to commit to an advance on Moscow.  He declined their advice, and ordered instead that the Germans concentrate their forces on other targets, including eliminating pockets of resistance in their rear.



In the East, on the other side, the Polish Government in exile nominated Wladyslaw Anders as their senior commander for their forces to be raised in the Soviet Union.



Anders was of Baltic German extraction and was unusual for Pole in that he was a Lutheran.  He served in the Imperial Russian Army prior to and during World War One and then in the Polish Army after Poland separated from Russia.  He was a career officer who was captured by the Red Army after its invasion of Poland in 1939 and was in a Soviet prison up until being released to take command of the Polish forces to be formed in the Soviet Union.

It was Anders army that was taken out of the Soviet Union in 1942.  He never returned to Poland and died in London in 1970 at age 77.

A British soldiers' photograph:






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