Daniel Orr's Blog, page 86

September 9, 1944 – World War II: Pro-Soviet Fatherland Front seizes power in Bulgaria

On September 9, 1944, the Fatherland Front (FF) overthrew the pro-German government in Bulgaria during World War II. The FF, a coalition of various resistance groups that opposed the collaborationist regime, formed a new pro-Soviet government, signed a ceasefire with the Soviet Union, and declared war on Germany and the other Axis countries.

Soviet Counterattack in World War II

The coup occurred at the time that the Soviet Red Army was rapidly approaching. The rapid collapse of Axis forces in Romania brought chaos to the pro-German government in Bulgaria. On August 26, 1944, the Bulgarian government declared its neutrality in the war.  Bulgarians were ethnic Slavs like the Russians, and Bulgaria did not send troops to attack the Soviet Union and continued to maintain diplomatic ties with Moscow.  However, its government was pro-German and the country was an Axis partner.  On September 2, a new Bulgarian government was formed comprising the political opposition, which did not stop the Soviet Union from declaring war on Bulgaria three days later.  On September 8, Soviet forces entered Bulgaria, meeting no resistance as the Bulgarian government stood down its army.  The next day, Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, was captured, and the Soviets lent their support behind the new Bulgarian government comprising communist-led resistance fighters of the Fatherland Front.  Bulgaria then declared war on Germany, sending its forces in support of the Red Army’s continued advance to the west.

(Taken from The Soviet Counter-offensive – Wars of the 20th Century – World War II in Europe)

Aftermath The Red
Army now set its sights on Serbia,
the main administrative region of pre-World War II Yugoslavia.  Yugoslavia itself had been
dismembered by the occupying Axis powers. 
For Germany, the loss
of Serbia would cut off its
forces’ main escape route from Greece.  As a result, the German High Command
allocated more troops to Serbia
and also ordered the evacuation of German forces from other Balkan regions.

Occupied Europe’s most effective resistance struggle was
located in Yugoslavia.  By 1944, the communist Yugoslav Partisan
movement, led by Josip Broz Tito, controlled the mountain regions of Bosnia, Montenegro,
and western Serbia.  In late September 1944, the Soviet 2nd and
3rd Ukrainian Fronts, thrusting from Bulgaria
and Romania, together with
the Bulgarian Army attacking from western Bulgaria,
launched their offensive into Serbia.  The attack was aided by Yugoslav partisans
that launched coordinated offensives against the Axis as well as conducting
sabotage actions on German communications and logistical lines – the combined
forces captured Serbia, most
importantly the capital Belgrade,
which fell on October 20, 1944.  German
forces in the Balkans escaped via the more difficult routes through Bosnia and Croatia in October 1944.  For the remainder of the war, Yugoslav
partisans liberated the rest of Yugoslavia;
the culmination of their long offensive was their defeat of the pro-Nazi
Ustase-led fascist government in Croatia
in April-May 1945, and then their advance to neighboring Slovenia.

The succession of Red Army victories in Eastern Europe brought
great alarm to the pro-Nazi government in Hungary,
which was Germany’s
last European Axis partner.  Then when in
late September 1944, the Soviets crossed the borders from Romania and Serbia
into Hungary, Miklos Horthy,
the Hungarian regent and head of state, announced in mid-October that his
government had signed an armistice with the Soviet Union.  Hitler promptly forced Horthy, under threat,
to revoke the armistice, and German troops quickly occupied the country.

The Soviet campaign in Hungary,
which lasted six months, proved extremely brutal and difficult both for the Red
Army and German-Hungarian forces, with fierce fighting taking place in western Hungary
as the numerical weight of the Soviets forced back the Axis.  In October 1944, a major tank battle was
fought at Debrecen,
where the panzers of German Army Group Fretter-Pico (named after General
Maximilian Fretter-Pico) beat back three Soviet tank corps of 2nd Ukrainian
Front.  But in late October, a powerful
Soviet offensive thrust all the way to the outskirts of Budapest, the Hungarian capital, by November
7, 1944.

Two Soviet pincer arms then advanced west in a flanking
maneuver, encircling the city on December 23, 1944, and starting a 50-day
siege.  Fierce urban warfare then broke
out at Pest, the flat eastern section of the city, and then later across the Danube River
at Buda, the western hilly section, where German-Hungarian forces soon
retreated.  In January 1945, three
attempts by German armored units to relieve the trapped garrison failed, and on
February 13, 1945, Budapest
fell to the Red Army.  The Soviets then
continued their advance across Hungary.  In early March 1945, Hitler launched
Operation Spring Awakening, aimed at protecting the Lake Balaton oil fields in
southwestern Hungary, which
was one of Germany’s
last remaining sources of crude oil. 
Through intelligence gathering, the Soviets became aware of the plan,
and foiled the offensive, and then counter-attacked, forcing the remaining
German forces in Hungary
to withdraw across the Austrian border.

The Germans then hastened to construct defense lines in Austria, which officially was an integral part
of Germany
since the Anschluss of 1938.  In early
April 1945, Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front crossed the border from Hungary into Austria,
meeting only light opposition in its advance toward Vienna. 
Only undermanned German forces defended the Austrian capital, which fell
on April 13, 1945.  Although some fierce
fighting occurred, Vienna was spared the
widespread destruction suffered by Budapest
through the efforts of the anti-Nazi Austrian resistance movement, which
assisted the Red Army’s entry into the city. 
A provisional government for Austria was set up comprising a
coalition of conservatives, democrats, socialists, and communists, which gained
the approval of Stalin, who earlier had planned to install a pro-Soviet
government regime from exiled Austrian communists.  The Red Army continued advancing across other
parts of Austria,
with the Germans still holding large sections of regions in the west and south.
By early May 1945, French, British, and American troops had crossed into Austria from the west, which together with the
Soviets, would lead to the four-power Allied occupation (as in post-war Germany) of Austria after the war.

September 8, 1945 – U.S. Army enters the southern half of Korea up to the 38th parallel after Soviet forces occupy the northern half

On August 16, 1945, Soviet forces from Manchuria continued
south into the Korean
Peninsula and stopped at
the 38th parallel. U.S.
forces soon arrived in southern Korea
and advanced north, reaching the 38th parallel on September 8, 1945.  Then in official ceremonies, the U.S.
and Soviet commands formally accepted the Japanese surrender in their
respective zones of occupation. Thereafter, the American and Soviet commands
established military rule in their occupation zones.

East Asia

(Taken from Korean War – Wars of the 20th Century – Twenty Wars in Asia)

As both the U.S. and Soviet governments wanted to reunify Korea, in a conference in Moscow in December 1945, the Allied Powers agreed to form a four-power (United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and Nationalist China) five-year trusteeship over Korea.  During the five-year period, a U.S.-Soviet Joint Commission would work out the process of forming a Korean government.  But after a series of meetings in 1946-1947, the Joint Commission failed to achieve anything.  In September 1947, the U.S. government referred the Korean question to the United Nations (UN).  The reasons for the U.S.-Soviet Joint Commission’s failure to agree to a mutually acceptable Korean government are three-fold and to some extent all interrelated: intense opposition by Koreans to the proposed U.S.-Soviet trusteeship; the struggle for power among the various ideology-based political factions; and most important, the emerging Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Historically, Korea
for many centuries had been a politically and ethnically integrated state,
although its independence often was interrupted by the invasions by its
powerful neighbors, China
and Japan.  Because of this protracted independence, in
the immediate post-World War II period, Koreans aspired for self-rule, and
viewed the Allied trusteeship plan as an insult to their capacity to run their
own affairs.  However, at the same time, Korea’s
political climate was anarchic, as different ideological persuasions, from
right-wing, left-wing, communist, and near-center political groups, clashed
with each other for political power.  As
a result of Japan’s
annexation of Korea
in 1910, many Korean nationalist resistance groups had emerged.  Among these nationalist groups were the
unrecognized “Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea”
led by pro-West, U.S.-based Syngman Rhee; and a communist-allied anti-Japanese
partisan militia led by Kim Il-sung. 
Both men would play major roles in the Korean War.  At the same time, tens of thousands of Koreans
took part in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the Chinese Civil
War, joining and fighting either for Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces, or
for Mao Zedong’s Chinese Red Army.

The Korean anti-Japanese resistance movement, which operated
mainly out of Manchuria, was divided along
ideological lines.  Some groups advocated
Western-style capitalist democracy, while others espoused Soviet
communism.  However, all were strongly
anti-Japanese, and launched attacks on Japanese forces in Manchuria,
China, and Korea.

On their arrival in the southern Korean zone in September
1948, U.S.
forces imposed direct rule through the United States Army Military Government
In Korea (USAMGIK).  Earlier, members of
the Korean Communist Party in Seoul
(the southern capital) had sought to fill the power vacuum left by the defeated
Japanese forces, and set up “local people’s committees” throughout the Korean
peninsula.  Then two days before U.S.
forces arrived, Korean communists of the “Central People’s Committee”
proclaimed the “Korean People’s Republic”.

In October 1945, under the auspices of a U.S. military agent, Syngman Rhee, the former
president of the “Provisional Government of the Republic
of Korea” arrived in Seoul. 
The USAMGIK refused to recognize the communist Korean People’s Republic,
as well as the pro-West “Provisional Government”.  Instead, U.S. authorities wanted to form a
political coalition of moderate rightist and leftist elements.  Thus, in December 1946, under U.S.
sponsorship, moderate and right-wing politicians formed the South Korean
Interim Legislative Assembly.  However,
this quasi-legislative body was opposed by the communists and other left-wing
and right-wing groups.

In the wake of the U.S. authorities’ breaking up the
communists’ “people’s committees” violence broke out in the southern zone
during the last months of 1946.  Called
the Autumn Uprising, the unrest was carried out by left-aligned workers,
farmers, and students, leading to many deaths through killings, violent
confrontations, strikes, etc.  Although
in many cases, the violence resulted from non-political motives (such as
targeting Japanese collaborators or settling old scores), American authorities
believed that the unrest was part of a communist plot.  They therefore declared martial law in the
southern zone.  Following the U.S.
military’s crackdown on leftist activities, the communist militants went into
hiding and launched an armed insurgency in the southern zone, which would play
a role in the coming war.

Meanwhile in the northern zone, Soviet commanders initially
worked to form a local administration under a coalition of nationalists,
Marxists, and even Christian politicians. 
But in October 1945, Kim Il-sung, the Korean resistance leader who also
was a Soviet Red Army officer, quickly became favored by Soviet authorities.  In February 1946, the “Interim People’s
Committee”, a transitional centralized government, was formed and led by Kim
Il-sung who soon consolidated power (sidelining the nationalists and Christian
leaders), and nationalized industries, and launched centrally planned economic
and reconstruction programs based on the Soviet-model emphasizing heavy
industry.

By 1947, the Cold War had begun: the Soviet Union tightened
its hold on the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and the United States
announced a new foreign policy, the Truman Doctrine, aimed at stopping the
spread of communism.  The United States also implemented the Marshall
Plan, an aid program for Europe’s post-World War II reconstruction, which was
condemned by the Soviet Union as an American anti-communist plot aimed at dividing
Europe. 
As a result, Europe became divided into
the capitalist West and socialist East.

Reflecting these developments, in Korea
by mid-1945, the United
States became resigned to the likelihood
that the temporary military partition of the Korean peninsula at the 38th
parallel would become a permanent division along ideological grounds.  In September 1947, with U.S. Congress
rejecting a proposed aid package to Korea,
the U.S.
government turned over the Korean issue to the UN.  In November 1947, the United Nations General
Assembly (UNGA) affirmed Korea’s
sovereignty and called for elections throughout the Korean peninsula, which was
to be overseen by a newly formed body, the United Nations Temporary Commission
on Korea (UNTCOK).

However, the Soviet government rejected the UNGA resolution,
stating that the UN had no jurisdiction over the Korean issue, and prevented
UNTCOK representatives from entering the Soviet-controlled northern zone.  As a result, in May 1948, elections were held
only in the American-controlled southern zone, which even so, experienced
widespread violence that caused some 600 deaths.  Elected was the Korean National Assembly, a
legislative body.  Two months later (in
July 1948), the Korean National Assembly ratified a new national constitution
which established a presidential form of government.  Syngman Rhee, whose party won the most number
of legislative seats, was proclaimed as (the first) president.  Then on August 15, 1948, southerners
proclaimed the birth of the Republic
of Korea (soon more commonly known as South Korea), ostensibly with the state’s
sovereignty covering the whole Korean
Peninsula.

September 7, 1940 – World War II: German planes launch concentrated bombings of British urban centers

On September 7, 1940, in what the British called the “Blitz”,
the German Luftwaffe began a series of concentrated attacks of British urban centers,
launching 600 bombers and 400 fighters that came in successive bombing waves on
the center of London.
Large-scale Luftwaffe bombing attacks continued for the next several weeks,
hitting residential, industrial, and military targets and public works
facilities in many major centers across Britain,
including Bristol, Cardiff,
Portsmouth, Plymouth,
Southampton, Swansea, Birmingham,
Belfast, Coventry,
Glasgow, Manchester,
and Sheffield. 
Some 40,000 civilians were killed, and 50,000 wounded, while one million
houses were destroyed or damaged.

On September 15, 1940, in what is known as the “Battle of
Britain Day”, a combined 1,700 planes (1,100 Luftwaffe and 600 RAF) fought a
day-long air battle in the skies over London, in what Goering hoped would be
the ultimate destruction of the RAF.  By
then, the constant German pressure during Alderagriff (since August 24) had
greatly strained RAF strength of No. 11 Group (which was tasked to defend
southeast England, including
London), but
the sudden shift in Luftwaffe concentration toward the cities allowed the RAF a
respite. Also at this time, a crisis within the RAF was reaching the breaking
point, as Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, commander of RAF No. 12
Group (for southwest England),
criticized Air Chief Marshal Dowding’s conduct of the air campaign,
particularly the use of small RAF units to meet the massive German fleets.  Leigh-Mallory, like many senior RAF
commanders, favored large formations (per the “Big Wing” strategy) to meet the
Luftwaffe in pitched air battles.  As a
result, Downing was dismissed as commander of RAF Fighter Command.

Despite No. 11 Group’s losses, the RAF over-all was nowhere
near collapse, for in fact, British aircraft production, as were the other
war-related industries, was growing. 
Furthermore, the air battles, fought in British territory, gave the RAF
considerable advantages: downed RAF pilots who had parachuted to safety were
quickly sent up to fight again in another plane, while RAF planes were near
their fuel, supply, and communication lines. 
The Luftwaffe fought against tremendous odds: downed pilots and air crews
on land faced certain capture, or worse, lynching by angry mobs, and those on
the sea, death by drowning or exposure to the elements; and Luftwaffe planes
operated far from fuel and logistical lines, e.g. the Messerschmitt Bf 109
fighter plane, which functioned as a bomber escort, had only ten minutes of
flying time left upon arriving in Britain, and after which it had to turn back
for Germany, leaving the bombers undefended from RAF interceptors.

On September 17, 1940, with mounting Luftwaffe losses and
the RAF clearly not verging on collapse, Hitler acknowledged before the German
High Command that the German air effort in Britain would probably not succeed,
and gave instructions that preparations for Operation Sea Lion be scaled
back.  Nevertheless, Hitler stated that
the air attacks on Britain must continue, as ending the campaign would be an
admission of defeat, and that they were to be used as a cover for the fact that
the German military had begun preparing (since August 1940) for its most
ambitious operation of all, the conquest of the Soviet Union.

By October 1940, the “weather window” for the invasion of Britain had closed, as German planning had taken
into account that the onset of bad weather over the English
Channel would greatly impede a cross-channel naval operation.  On October 13, Hitler pushed back Operation
Sea Lion to the spring of 1941.  The air
offensive continued, although by November 1940, the Luftwaffe shifted to
nighttime attacks, as daylight operations were taking a heavy toll on men and
aircraft.  Official British
historiography points to October 31, 1940 as the date that the Battle of
Britain ended, although German air attacks would continue for many more months,
sometimes with great intensity particularly in October-December 1940 and even
well into early May 1941.  But by spring
of 1941, Hitler’s attention had invariably turned to other theaters of the war,
first to the Balkans with the invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece both in April
1941, and then to his greatest ambition of all, the conquest of the Soviet
Union (Operation Barbarossa), set for June 1941.  In the process, the bulk of the Luftwaffe was
moved to the east, greatly easing the pressure off Britain.

(Taken from Battle of Britain – Wars of the 20th Century – World War II in Europe)

Aftermath In the
Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe sustained some 2,600 airmen killed, wounded,
or captured, and 1,700 planes destroyed or damaged (comprising 40% of the
entire fleet).  While German aircraft
production continued, this considerable loss of men and aircraft meant fewer
Luftwaffe resources for Operation Barbarossa. 
At the end of hostilities in May 1941, Hitler continued to believe that Britain
was effectively knocked out of the European war and posed no serious threat on
the continent.  However, leaving Britain
unconquered turned out to be one of Hitler’s great strategic mistakes.  With German military resources soon directed
at the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
Britain
recovered and grew militarily.  Then with
the United States
entering the war on the British side in December 1941, and in alliance with the
other Allied partners, the British as part of the Allied force would return to
the continent in June 1944.

Contemporary thinking at the time attributed British success
against the Luftwaffe to the RAF fighter pilots in their Hawker Hurricanes and
Supermarine Spitfires, a depiction embodied in Churchill’s words, “Never in the
field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.  Only in the post-World War II period was it
revealed the critical role played by the ultra-secret Dowding system, which was
known only to very few top-level officials in government and the military.  The counter-argument is that while RAF No. 11
Group had been mauled during Operation Alderangriff, suffering heavy losses in
men and planes, and many destroyed airfields and supporting infrastructures,
the other RAF Groups (10, 12, and 13) remained powerful, and production of
aircraft continued.

September 6, 1965 – Indian-Pakistani War of 1965: Indian forces attack Pakistan Punjab

On September 6, 1965, Indian forces opened a new front by attacking Pakistan Punjab in the Indian-Pakistani War of 1965. The attack was launched to ease pressure on the lightly defended Indian-controlled Kashmir which was under threat from a powerful Pakistan armoured, air, and infantry offensive that had begun on September 1. Its flank threatened by the Indian counterattack, the Pakistani Army stopped its advance in Kashmir to divert forces to the new front.

Armed clashes between Indian and Pakistani forces at Rann of Kutch in April 1965 were a precursor to a full-scale war in Kashmir five months later.

(Taken from Indian-Pakistani War of 1965 – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 2)

Background As a result of the Indian-Pakistani War of 1947 (previous article), the former Princely State of Kashmir was divided militarily under zones of occupation by the Indian Army and the Pakistani Army.  Consequently, the governments of India and Pakistan established local administrations in their respective zones of control, these areas ultimately becoming de facto territories of their respective countries.  However, Pakistan was determined to drive away the Indians from Kashmir and annex the whole region.  As Pakistan and Kashmir had predominantly Muslim populations, the Pakistani government believed that Kashmiris detested being under Indian rule and would welcome and support an invasion by Pakistan.  Furthermore, Pakistan’s government received reports that civilian protests in Kashmir indicated that Kashmiris were ready to revolt against the Indian regional government.

The Pakistani Army believed itself
superior to its Indian counterpart.  In
early 1965, armed clashes broke out in disputed territory in the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat
State, India
(Map 3).  Subsequently in 1968, Pakistan
was awarded 350 square miles of the territory by the International Court of
Justice.  In 1965, India was still smarting from a defeat to China in the 1962 Sino-Indian War; as a result, Pakistan
believed that the Indian Army’s morale was low. 
Furthermore, Pakistan
had upgraded its Armed Forces with purchases of modern weapons from the United States, while India was yet in the midst of
modernizing its military forces.

In the summer of 1965, Pakistan made preparations for invading
Indian-held Kashmir.  To assist the operation, Pakistani commandos
would penetrate Kashmir’s major urban areas,
carry out sabotage operations against military installations and public
infrastructures, and distribute firearms to civilians in order to incite a
revolt.  Pakistani military planners
believed that Pakistan
would have greater bargaining power with the presence of a civilian uprising,
in case the war went to international arbitration.

War On August 5, 1965 and
the days that followed, some 30,000 Pakistani soldiers posing as civilians
crossed the ceasefire line (the de facto
border resulting from the 1947 Indian-Pakistani War) and entered Indian-held Kashmir.  The
Pakistani infiltrators carried out some sabotage activities but failed to
incite a general civilian uprising.  The
Indian Army, tipped off by informers, crushed the operation, killing many
Pakistani infiltrators and forcing others to flee back to Pakistan.

Then on August 15, the Indian forces
crossed the western ceasefire line and entered Pakistani-held Kashmir.  The offensive made considerable progress
until it was slowed at Tithwail and Pooch, upon the arrival of Pakistani Army
reinforcements.  By month’s end, the
battle lines had settled (Map 4).

The Indian Army cut off all escape
routes for the remaining Pakistani commandos in Kashmir.  In order to take the pressure off the trapped
commandos, the Pakistani Army carried out an offensive aimed at Jammu.  On September 1, in what became the first of
many large tank and air battles of the war, Pakistan
opened a combined armored and air attack on the town of Akhnoor. 
The capture of Akhnoor would cut India’s
communications and supply lines between Kashmir
and the rest of the country. 
Furthermore, Jammu, which was India’s logistical base in Kashmir,
would come under direct threat.  The
surprise and strength of the offensive caught the Indian Army off-guard,
allowing the Pakistanis to win territory. 
However, the Pakistani Army stopped before reaching its objectives and
made a command change to the operation. 
The delay allowed the Indian Army to regroup and mount a strong
defense.  When the Pakistani forces
restarted their offensive, they were stopped decisively near Akhnoor.

September 5, 1957 – Cuban Revolution: President Batista quells the Cienfuegos Mutiny

On September 5, 1957, Cuban President Fulgencio Batista violently quelled a revolt by junior Navy officers at Cienfuegos, a city located at the south central coast of the island. The revolt came after President Batista appointed certain officers to high-ranking Navy positions The leader of the mutiny also supported Fidel Castro’s ongoing rebellion to overthrow the national government (Cuban Revolution).  President Batista used the army and air force to crush the Cienfuegos Mutiny, inflicting some 300 fatalities across the city and forcing some of the mutineers to flee to the Escambray Mountains, where they reorganized as another branch of the M-26-7, Fidel Castro’s insurgent organization.

( Cuban Revolution – Taken from Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 2)

By early 1958, Castro’s insurgency was destabilizing Oriente Province, especially in the rural areas
which had come under the control or influence of the rebels.  Furthermore, four other anti-Batista armed
groups operated in the province, spreading thin the operational capability of
the Cuban Army.  Other insurgencies also
had emerged in Camaguey and Pinar del Rio
Provinces, as well as in the Escambray Mountains.

In February1958, Fidel Castro sent a contingent led by his
brother Raul to the Sierra Cristal Mountains,
located in northeastern Oriente
Province, where the
M-26-7 subsequently opened a second front. 
On April 1, 1958, Fidel Castro declared total war against President
Batista, which was a largely propaganda move that was ignored by the other
rebel groups, but underscored the supremacy of the M-26-7 in the Cuban
revolution.

Background of the
Cuban Revolution In March 1952, General Fulgencio Batista seized power in Cuba
through a coup d’état.  He then canceled
the elections scheduled for June 1952, where he was running for the presidency
but trailed in the polls and faced likely defeat.  Having gained power, General Batista
established a dictatorship, suppressed the opposition, and suspended the
constitution and many civil liberties. 
Then in the November 1954 general elections that were boycotted by the
political opposition, General Batista won the presidency and thus became Cuba’s official
head of state.

President Batista favored a close working relationship with Cuba’s wealthy elite, particularly with American
businesses, which had an established, dominating presence in Cuba.  Since the early twentieth century, the United
States had maintained political, economic, and military control over Cuba; e.g.
during the first few decades of the 1900s, U.S. forces often intervened
directly in Cuba by quelling unrest and violence, and restoring political
order.

American corporations held a monopoly on the Cuban economy,
dominating the production and commercial trade of the island’s main export,
sugar, as well as other agricultural products, the mining and petroleum
industries, and public utilities.  The United States
naturally entered into political, economic, and military alliances with and
backed the Cuban government; in the context of the Cold War, successive Cuban
governments after World War II were anti-communist and staunchly pro-American.

President Batista expanded the businesses of the American
mafia in Cuba, where these
criminal organizations built and operated racetracks, casinos, nightclubs, and
hotels in Havana
with relaxed tax laws provided by the Cuban government.  President Batista amassed a large personal
fortune from these transactions, and Havana
was transformed into and became internationally known for its red-light
district, where gambling, prostitution, and illegal drugs were rampant.  President Batista’s regime was characterized
by widespread corruption, as public officials and the police benefitted from
bribes from the American crime syndicates as well as from outright embezzlement
of government funds.

Cuba
did achieve consistently high economic growth under President Batista, but much
of the wealth was concentrated in the upper class, and a great divide existed
between the small, wealthy elite and the masses of the urban poor and landless
peasants.  (Cuban society also contained
a relatively dynamic middle class that included doctors, lawyers, and many
other working professionals.)

President Batista was extremely unpopular among the general
population, because he had gained power through force and made unequal economic
policies.  As a result, Havana
(Cuba’s
capital) seethed with discontent, with street demonstrations, protests, and
riots occurring frequently.  In response,
President Batista deployed security forces to suppress dissenting elements,
particularly those that advocated Marxist ideology.  The government’s secret police regularly
carried out extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances, as well as
arbitrary arrests, detentions, and tortures. 
Some 20,000 persons were killed or disappeared during the Batista
regime.

In 1953, a young lawyer and former student leader named
Fidel Castro emerged to lead what ultimately would be the most serious challenge
to President Batista.  Castro previously
had taken part in the aborted overthrow of the Dominican
Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo and in the 1948 civil
disturbance (known as “Bogotazo”) in Bogota, Colombia before completing his law studies at
the University of
Havana.  Castro had run as an independent for Congress
in the 1952 elections that were cancelled because of Batista’s coup.  Castro was infuriated and began making
preparations to overthrow what he declared was the illegitimate Batista regime
that had seized power from a democratically elected government.  Fidel organized an armed insurgent group,
“The Movement”, whose aim was to overthrow President Batista.  At its peak, “The Movement” would comprise
1,200 members in its civilian and military wings.

September 4, 1919 – Mustafa Kemal Ataturk leads an assembly of Turkish nationalists at the Sivas Congress

On September 4, 1919, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the Turkish National Movement met at Sivas in central-eastern Turkey to formulate policy for the preservation of unity, independence, and territorial integrity of the Turkish state. The week-long assembly (September 4-11, 1919) came in the heels of the preparatory Erzurum Congress. At this time, World War I had just ended and the defeated Ottoman Empire was supine and essentially defunct, and partitioned under military occupation by the Allied Powers: French, British, Italians, and Greeks.

Partition of Anatolia as stipulated in the Treaty of Sevres

(Taken from Turkish War of Independence in Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 3)

As a result of this circular, Turkish nationalists met
twice: at the Erzerum Congress (July-August 1991) by regional leaders of the
eastern provinces, and at the Sivas Congress (September 1919) of nationalist
leaders from across Anatolia.  Two important decisions emerged from these
meetings: the National Pact and the “Representative Committee”.

The National Pact set forth the guidelines for the Turkish
state, including what constituted the “homeland of the Turkish nation”, and
that the “country should be independent and free, all restrictions on
political, judicial, and financial developments will be removed”.  The “Representative Committee” was the
precursor of a quasi-government that ultimately took shape on May 3, 1920 as
the Turkish Provisional Government based in Ankara
(in central Anatolia), founded and led by
Kemal.

Sykes-Picot Agreement

Background of the
Turkish War of Independence On October 30,
1918, the Ottoman Empire ended its involvement
in World War I by signing the Armistice of Mudros.  During the war, the Ottoman government had
fought as one of the Central Powers (in alliance with Germany, Austria-Hungary,
and Bulgaria),
but in 1917 and 1918, it suffered many devastating defeats.  Then with the failure of the Germans’ 1918
“Spring Offensive” in Western Europe, the Anatolian heartland of the Ottoman Empire became vulnerable to an invasion, forcing
Ottoman capitulation.

The victorious Allied Powers in Europe (Britain, France,
and Italy) took steps to
carry out their many secret pre-war and war-time agreements regarding the
disposition of the Ottoman Empire.  Another Allied power, Russia, also was a party to some of
these agreements, but it had been forced out of the war in 1914 and
consequently was not involved in the post-war negotiations.

As a first measure and provided by the terms of surrender,
the French and British naval fleets seized control of the Turkish Straits
(Dardanelles and Bosporus) on November 12-13, 1913, and landed troops in
Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire’s capital.

During World War I, British forces gained possession of much
of the Ottoman Empire’s colonies in the Middle East, collectively called
“Greater Syria”, a vast territory covering Mesopotamia (Iraq), the Arabian Peninsula, Syria, and Palestine.  When the war ended, most of the Arabian
Peninsula gained independence under British sponsorship, including the Kingdom of Yemen
and later the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz, the precursor of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The most significant war-time treaty to be implemented in
the Middle East was the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, where Britain and France
drew up a plan to partition between them most of the remaining Ottoman
possessions, i.e. Syria and Lebanon to France, and Mesopotamia and Palestine to
Britain*.  As a result, following war’s
end, Britain and France took control of their respective
previously agreed territories in the Middle East.  These annexations subsequently were
legitimized as mandates by the newly formed League of Nations: i.e. the 1923
French Mandate for Syria and
the Lebanon, and the 1923
British Mandate for Palestine.  British control of Mesopotamia was formalized
by the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1922, which also established the Kingdom of Iraq.

The Allies also had drawn up a partition plan for Anatolia,
the Turkish heartland of the Ottoman Empire.  In this plan, Constantinople and the Turkish Straits were designated as a neutral
zone under joint Allied administrations, with separate British, French, and
Italian zones of occupations.  Southwest
Anatolia was allocated to Italy,
the southeast (centered on Cilicia) to France,
and a section of the northeast to Armenia.  Greece,
a late-comer in World War I on the Allied side, was promised the historic
Hellenic region around Smyrna, as well as Eastern Thrace.

With these proposed changes, a much smaller Ottoman state
would consist of central Anatolia up to the Black Sea, but no coastal outlet in
the Mediterranean Sea.  The Allies subsequently incorporated these
stipulations in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres (Map 8), an agreement aimed at
legitimizing their annexations/occupations of Ottoman territories.

The Allies wanted a breakup of the Ottomans’ centralized
state, to be replaced by a decentralized federal form of government.  In Constantinople,
the national government led by the Sultan and Grand Vizier (Prime Minister)
were resigned to these political and territorial changes.  However, Turkish nationalists, representing a
political and ideological movement that became powerful in the early twentieth
century, opposed the Allied impositions on Anatolia,
perceiving them to be a deliberate dismembering of the Turkish traditional
homeland.  As a result of the Allied
occupation, many small Turkish nationalist armed resistance groups began to
organize all across Anatolia.

Rise of the Turkish Independence Movement Under the
armistice agreement, the Ottoman government was required to disarm and
demobilize its armed forces.  On April
30, 1919, Mustafa Kemal, a general in the Ottoman Army, was appointed as the
Inspector-General of the Ottoman Ninth Army in Anatolia,
with the task of demobilizing the remaining forces in the interior.  Kemal was a nationalist who opposed the
Allied occupation, and upon arriving in Samsun
on May 19, 1919, he and other like-minded colleagues set up what became the
Turkish Nationalist Movement.

Contact was made with other nationalist politicians and
military officers, and alliances were formed with other nationalist
organizations in Anatolia.  Military units that were not yet demobilized,
as well as the various armed bands and militias, were instructed to resist the occupation
forces.  These various nationalist groups
ultimately would merge to form the nationalists’ “National Army” in the coming
war.  Weapons and ammunitions were
stockpiled, and those previously surrendered were secretly taken back and
turned over to the nationalists.

On June 21, 1919, Kemal issued the Amasya Circular, which
declared among other things, that the unity and independence of the Turkish
state were in danger, that the Ottoman government was incapable of defending
the country, and that a national effort was needed to secure the state’s
integrity.  As a result of this circular,
Turkish nationalists met twice: at the Erzerum Congress (July-August 1991) by
regional leaders of the eastern provinces, and at the Sivas Congress (September
1919) of nationalist leaders from across Anatolia.  Two important decisions emerged from these
meetings: the National Pact and the “Representative Committee”.

The National Pact set forth the guidelines for the Turkish
state, including what constituted the “homeland of the Turkish nation”, and
that the “country should be independent and free, all restrictions on
political, judicial, and financial developments will be removed”.  The “Representative Committee” was the
precursor of a quasi-government that ultimately took shape on May 3, 1920 as
the Turkish Provisional Government based in Ankara
(in central Anatolia), founded and led by
Kemal.

Kemal and his Representative Committee “government”
challenged the continued legitimacy of the national government, declaring that Constantinople was ruled by the Allied Powers from whom
the Sultan had to be liberated.  However,
the Sultan condemned Kemal and the nationalists, since both the latter
effectively had established a second government that was a rival to that in Constantinople.

In July 1919, Kemal received an order from the national
authorities to return to Constantinople.  Fearing for his safety, he remained in Ankara; consequently, he
ceased all official duties with the Ottoman Army.  The Ottoman government then laid down treason
charges against Kemal and other nationalist leaders; tried in absentia, he was
declared guilty on May 11, 1920 and sentenced to death.

Initially, British authorities played down the threat posed
by the Turkish nationalists.  Then when
the Ottoman parliament in Constantinople
declared its support for the nationalists’ National Pact and the integrity of
the Turkish state, the British violently closed down the legislature, an action
that inflicted many civilian casualties. 
The next month, the Sultan affirmed the dissolution of the Ottoman
parliament.

Many parliamentarians were arrested, but many others escaped
capture and fled to Ankara
to join the nationalists.  On April 23,
1920, a new parliament called the Grand National Assembly convened in Ankara, which elected
Kemal as its first president.

British authorities soon realized that the nationalist
movement threatened the Allied plans on the Ottoman Empire.  From civilian volunteers and units of the
Sultan’s Caliphate Army, the British organized a militia, which was tasked to
defeat the nationalist forces in Anatolia.  Clashes soon broke out, with the most intense
taking place in June 1920 in and around Izmit, where Ottoman and British forces
defeated the nationalists.  Defections
were widespread among the Sultan’s forces, however, forcing the British to
disband the militia.

The British then considered using their own troops, but
backed down knowing that the British public would oppose Britain being involved in another
war, especially one coming right after World War I.  The British soon found another ally to fight
the war against the nationalists – Greece.  On June 10, 1920, the Allies presented the
Treaty of Sevres to the Sultan.  The
treaty was signed by the Ottoman government but was not ratified, since war
already had broken out.

In the coming war, Kemal crucially gained the support of the
newly established Soviet Union, particularly in the Caucasus
where for centuries, the Russians and Ottomans had fought for domination.  This Soviet-Turkish alliance resulted from
both sides’ condemnation of the Allied intervention in their local affairs,
i.e. the British and French enforcing the Treaty of Sevres on the Ottoman Empire, and the Allies’ open support for
anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian Civil War.

War Turkish nationalists fought in three fronts: in the east
against Armenia, in the
south against France and the French Armenian Legion, and in the west against Greece, which was backed by Britain.

September 3, 1939 – World War II: Britain and France blockade Germany’s coastline, starting the Battle of the Atlantic

(Excerpts from Battle of the Atlantic (Wars of the 20th Century – World War II in Europe))

On September 1, 1939, Germany
invaded Poland; two days
later, September 3, Britain
and France declared war on Germany,
starting World War II.  On September 4,
1939, Britain
imposed a naval blockade of German ports. 
Under the newly established British Contraband Control Service and
French Blockade Ministry, the British Royal Navy and French Navy (Marine
nationale) under over-all British command, imposed a blockade enforcement
system where all ships passing European trade routes were required to stop for
inspection at designated British ports (later expanded to include other British
colonial ports along merchant routes in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian
Ocean).  The ships’ cargoes were examined,
and items found in a broad list of designated contraband materials, which
included ammunitions, explosives, and the like, but also even foodstuffs,
animal feed, and clothing, were subject to seizure.  The Allies intended these measures to force Germany,
which was deficient in natural resources and heavily dependent on importation
of food and raw materials for its people, civilian industries, and war
capability, to enter into peace negotiations, thus bringing the war to an end.

Instead, Germany
imposed its own naval blockade of Britain which, as an island nation,
was also heavily dependent on importation of commodities in order to survive,
as well as to continue the war.  Germany’s aim was to starve Britain into
submission.  The German Navy’s attempt to
stop the flow of materials to Britain
particularly from North America through the Atlantic Ocean, and the British
efforts to foil the Germans constitute what is known as the Battle
of the Atlantic.

By the time of the outbreak of World War II, the ambitious
expansion program of the Kriegsmarine (the German Navy) under Plan Z aimed at
achieving naval equality with the British Navy (the world’s largest fleet), was
far from complete, and the small German fleet (by comparison) simply could not
engage in open battle either the British or French fleets, the latter two
having much larger navies.

Instead, early in the war, the Kriegsmarine initiated a
strategy of commerce raiding, where German surface ships (battleships,
cruisers, destroyers, etc.) and submarines, which were called U-boats (from the
German: Unterseeboot; “undersea
boat”), were sent to the Atlantic Ocean to attack Allied and neutral-nation
merchant vessels bound for Britain.  The
Germans also used a number of armed merchant vessels, which were disguised as
neutral or Allied ships but manned by German Navy personnel, for commerce
raiding.  As well, later in the war,
long-range Luftwaffe planes, particularly the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, were
used for reconnaissance and attack missions.

The German heavy cruisers Deutschland and Admiral Graf
Spee, already in the Atlantic Ocean at the
outbreak of war, sank several Allied merchant ships.  The Allies organized several hunting groups
to locate these German ships, so straining their resources as the British and
French allocated three battle cruisers, three aircraft carriers, fifteen
cruisers, and many auxiliary ships to scour the Atlantic.  But in December 1939, the Graf Spee was caught and trapped near
the River Plate (Rio de la Plata), off the South American coast, and scuttled
by its crew near Montevideo,
Uruguay.

Despite this success, the early hunting-group strategy
proved counter-productive, as the Allies then possessed inadequate
technological resources to locate U-boats, whose strength lay in avoiding
detection by submerging underwater and remaining there until the danger
passed.  The U-boat’s other main asset
was stealth, and the first naval casualty of the war, the British ocean liner, SS Athenia, was attacked and sunk by a
U-boat (which it mistook for a British warship) on September 3, 1939, with 128
lives lost.  Also in September 1939 and
just a few days apart, two British aircraft carriers, the HMS Ark Royal and HMS
Courageous, were both attacked by a U-boat, with the former narrowly being
hit by torpedoes, while the latter was hit and sunk.  Then in October 1939, another U-boat
penetrated undetected near Scapa Flow, the
main British naval base, attacking and sinking the battleship, the HMS Royal Oak.

At the start of the war, the British military was
hard-pressed on how to deal with the U-boat threat.  During the interwar period, prevailing naval
thought and budgetary resources, both Allied and German alike, focused on
surface ships, and the belief that battleships would play the dominant role in
naval warfare in a future war.  German
U-boats had proved highly effective in World War I, causing heavy losses on
merchant shipping that nearly forced Britain out of the war, before the
British introduced the convoy system that turned fortunes around.

However, the British Navy’s implementing the ASDIC system
(acronym for “Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee”; otherwise
known as SONAR), which could detect the presence of submerged submarines,
appeared to have solved the U-boat threat. 
Naval tests showed that once detected by ASDIC, the submarine could then
be destroyed by two destroyers launching depth charges overboard continuously
in a long diamond pattern around the trapped vessel.  The British concept was that the U-boats
could operate only in coastal waters to threaten harbor shipping, as they had
done in World War I, and these tests were conducted under daylight and calm
weather conditions.  But by the outbreak
of World War II, German submarine technology had rapidly advanced, and were
continuing so, that U-boats were able to reach farther out into the Atlantic
Ocean, eventually ranging as far as the American eastern seacoast, and also
were able to submerge to greater depths beyond the capacity of depth
charges.  These factors would weigh heavily
in the early stages of the Battle of the Atlantic.

September 2, 1939 – Germany annexes Danzig

On September 2, 1939 one day after launching its invasion of Poland, Germany abolished the Free City of Danzig and annexed the territory into the Third Reich. The Free City of Danzig (present-day Gdansk, Poland) had been established in November 1920 by the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. The Free City comprised territory detached from pre-World War I Germany, including the Baltic port of Danzig and surrounding areas that included some 200 towns and villages. The Free City of Danzig was established to be neither German nor Polish territory, but a semi-autonomous entity administered by the League of Nations to allow newly independent Poland access to the Baltic Sea (the so-called “Polish Corridor”). As such, Poland was given rights to communication, railways, and port facilities in the Free City. Ethnic Germans comprised 98% of the Free City’s population.

(Taken from German Invasion of Poland – Wars of the 20th Century – World War II in Europe)

Background At the end of World War I, the Allies reconstituted Poland as a sovereign nation, incorporating into the new state portions of the eastern German territories of Pomerania and Silesia, which contained majority Polish populations.  In the 1920s, the German Weimar Republic sought to restore to Germany all its lost territories, but was restrained by certain stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles, which had been imposed on Germany after World War I.  Polish Pomerania was known worldwide as the “Polish Corridor”, as it allowed Poland access to international waters through the Baltic Sea.  The German city of Danzig in East Prussia, as well as nearby areas, also was detached from Germany, and renamed the “Free City of Danzig”, administered by the League of Nations, but whose port, customs, and public infrastructures were controlled by Poland.

In 1933, Hitler came to power and implemented Germany’s
massive rearmament program, and later began to pursue his irredentist ambitions
in earnest.  Previously in January 1934,
Nazi Germany and Poland had
signed a ten-year non-aggression pact, where the German government recognized
the territorial integrity of the Polish state, which included the German
regions that had been ceded to Poland.  But by the late 1930s, the now militarily
powerful Germany
was actively pushing to redefine the German-Polish border.

In October 1938, Germany
proposed to Poland renewing
their non-aggression treaty, but subject to two conditions: that Danzig be
restored to Germany and that
Germany be allowed to build
road and railway lines through the Polish Corridor to connect Germany proper and East Prussia.  Poland refused, and in April 1939,
Hitler abolished the non-aggression pact. 
To Poland, Hitler was
using the same aggressive tactics that he had used against Czechoslovakia, and that if it yielded to the
German demands on Danzig and the Polish Corridor, ultimately the rest of Poland would be swallowed up by Germany.

Meanwhile, Britain
and France, which had
pursued appeasement toward Hitler, had become wary after the German occupation
of the rest of Czechoslovakia,
which had a non-ethnic German majority population, which was in contrast to
what Hitler had said that he only wanted returned those German-populated
territories.  Britain
and France were now
determined to resist Germany
diplomatically and resolve the crisis through firm negotiations.  On March 31, 1939, Britain
and France
announced that they would “guarantee Polish independence” in case of foreign
aggression.  Since 1921, as per the Franco-Polish
Military Alliance, France had pledged military assistance to Poland if that
latter was attacked.

In fact, Hitler’s intentions on Poland was not only the
return of lost German territories, but the elimination of the Polish state and
annexation of Poland as part of Lebensraum (“living space”), German expansion
into Eastern Europe and Russia. 
Lebensraum called for the eradication of the native populations in these
conquered areas.  For Poland
specifically, on August 22, 1939 in the lead-up to the German invasion, Hitler
had said that “the object of the war is … to kill without pity or mercy all
men, women, and children of Polish descent or language.  Only in this way can we obtain the living
space we need.”  In April 1939, Hitler
instructed the German military High Command to begin preparations for an
invasion of Poland,
to be launched later in the summer.  By
May 1939, the German military had drawn up the invasion plan.

In May 1939, Britain
and France held high-level
talks with the Soviet Union regarding forming a tripartite military alliance
against Germany, especially
in light of the possible German invasion of Poland.  These talks stalled, because Poland refused to allow Soviet forces into its
territory in case Germany
attacked.  Unbeknown to Britain and France,
the Soviet Union and Germany
were also conducting (secret) separate talks regarding bilateral political,
military, and economic concerns, which on August 23, 1939, led to the signing
of a non-aggression treaty.  This treaty,
which was broadcast to the world and widely known as the Molotov Ribbentrop
Pact (named after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign
Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop), brought a radical shift to the European power
balance, as Germany was now free to invade Poland without fear of Soviet
reprisal.  The pact also included a
secret protocol where Poland,
Finland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, and Romania were
divided into German and Soviet spheres of influence.

One day earlier, August 22, with the non-aggression treaty
virtually assured, Hitler set the invasion date of Poland for August 26, 1939.  On August 25, Hitler told the British
ambassador that Britain must
agree to the German demands on Poland,
as the non-aggression pact freed Germany from facing a two-front war
with major powers.  But on that same day,
Britain and Poland signed a mutual defense pact, which
contained a secret clause where the British promised military assistance if Poland was attacked by Germany.  This agreement, as well as British overtures
that Britain and Poland were willing to restart the stalled talks
with Germany,
forced Hitler to abort the invasion set for the next day.

The Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) stood down, except for
some units that did not receive the new stop order and crossed into Poland,
skirmishing with the Poles.  These German
units soon withdrew back across the border, but the Polish High Command,
informed through intelligence reports of massive German build-up at the border,
was unaware that the border skirmishes were part of an aborted German invasion.

German negotiations with Britain
and France
continued, but they failed to make progress. 
Poland had refused to
negotiate on the basis of ceding territory, and its determination was
strengthened by the military guarantees of the Western Powers, particularly in
that if the Germans invaded, the British and French would attack from the west,
and Germany
would be confronted with a two-front war.

On August 29, 1939, Germany
sent Poland a set of
proposals for negotiations, which included two points: that Danzig be returned
to Germany and that a
plebiscite be held in the Polish Corridor to determine whether the territory
should remain with Poland or
be returned to Germany.  In the latter, Poles who were born or had
settled in the Corridor since 1919 could not vote, while Germans born there but
not living there could vote.  Germany
demanded that negotiations were subject to a Polish official with signing
powers arriving by the following day, August 30.

Britain
deemed that the German proposal was an ultimatum to Poland, and tried but failed to
convince the Polish government to negotiate. 
On August 30, the German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop presented the
British ambassador with a 16-point proposal for negotiations, but refused the
latter’s request that a copy be sent to the Polish government, as no Polish
representative had arrived by the set date. 
The next day, August 31, the Polish Ambassador Jozef Lipski conferred
with Ribbentrop, but as Lipski had no signing powers, the talks did not
proceed.  Later that day, Hitler
announced that the German-Polish talks had ended because of Poland’s
refusal to negotiate.  He then ordered
the German High Command to proceed with the invasion of Poland for the
next day, September 1, 1939.

September 1, 1961 – Eritrean nationalists attack Ethiopian police posts

On September 1, 1961, insurgents of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) stormed a number of police posts in western Eritrea, marking the start of the Eritrean War of Independence, a protracted conflict that would last three decades. The insurgents subsequently carried out more attacks against security forces.  In the period that followed, the ELF gained local support in its areas of operations in the rural Muslim-populated rural northern and western regions of Eritrea and increased its numbers with the inflow of many new recruits.  The rebels also increased their frequency of attacks against police targets, primarily to capture much-needed weapons.  By June 1962, the ELF had some 500 fighters, which included some police defectors who took along their weapons and ammunitions.  At this time, Muslims formed the vast majority of the ELF, which also advocated a pro-Muslim, pro-Arab ideological and religious struggle against the predominantly Christian Ethiopia.  Also for this reason, the ELF gained some military and financial support from a number of Muslim countries, including Syria, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.

On May 24, 1991, Eritrea
gained its independence from Ethiopia
following a 30-year armed revolution. Ethiopia
had annexed Eritrea
as a province in November 1962, inciting Eritrean nationalists to launch a
rebellion. Following the war, as Eritrea was still legally bound as part of
Ethiopia, in early July 1991, at a conference held in Addis Ababa, an interim
Ethiopian government was formed, which stated that Eritreans had the right to
determine their own political future, i.e. to remain with or secede from Ethiopia.

Then in a UN-monitored referendum held in April 23 and 25,
1993, Eritreans voted overwhelmingly (99.8%) for independence; two days later
(April 27), Eritrea
declared its independence. In May 1993, the new country was admitted as a
member of the UN.

Eritrea, Ethiopia and nearby countries

(Taken from Eritrean War of Independence – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 4)

Background In
September 1948, a special body called the Inquiry Commission, which was set up
by the Allied Powers (Britain,
France, Soviet Union, and United States),
failed to establish a future course for Eritrea and referred the matter to
the United Nations (UN). The main obstacle to granting Eritrea its independence was that for much of
its history, Eritrea
was not a single political sovereign entity but had been a part of and
subordinate to a greater colonial power, and as such, was deemed incapable of
surviving on its own as a fully independent state. Furthermore, various
countries put forth competing claims to Eritrea. Italy
wanted Eritrea returned, to
be governed for a pre-set period until the territory’s independence, an
arrangement that was similar to that of Italian Somaliland.
The Arab countries of the Middle East pressed for self-determination of Eritrea’s large Muslim population, and as such,
called for Eritrea
to be granted its independence. Britain,
as the current administrative power, wanted to partition Eritrea, with the Christian-population regions
to be incorporated into Ethiopia
and the Muslim regions to be assimilated into Sudan. Emperor Haile Selassie, the
Ethiopian monarch, also claimed ownership of Eritrea, citing historical and cultural
ties, as well as the need for Ethiopia to have access to the sea through the
Red Sea (Ethiopia had been landlocked after Italy established Eritrea).

Ultimately, the United States
influenced the future course for Eritrea. The U.S. government saw Eritrea
in the regional balance of power in Cold War politics: an independent but weak Eritrea could potentially fall to communist
(Soviet) domination, which would destabilize the vital oil-rich Middle East. Unbeknown to the general public at the time,
a U.S. diplomatic cable from
Ethiopia to the U.S. State
Department in August 1949 stated that British officials in Eritrea believed that as much as
75% of the local population desired independence.

In February 1950, a UN commission sent to Eritrea to
determine the local people’s political aspirations submitted its findings to
the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). In December 1950, the UNGA, which
was strongly influenced by U.S.
wishes, released Resolution 390A (V) that called for establishing a loose federation
between Ethiopia and Eritrea to be facilitated by Britain and to be realized no later
than September 15, 1952. The UN plan, which subsequently was implemented,
allowed Eritrea
broad autonomy in controlling its internal affairs, including local administrative,
police, and fiscal and taxation functions. The Ethiopian-Eritrean Federation
would affirm the sovereignty of the Ethiopian monarch whose government would
exert jurisdiction over Eritrea’s
foreign affairs, including military defense, national finance, and transportation.

In March 1952, under British initiative, Eritrea elected
a 68-seat Representative Assembly, a legislature composed equally of Christians
and Muslim members, which subsequently adopted a constitution proposed by the
UN. Just days before the September 1952 deadline for federation, the Ethiopian
government ratified the Eritrean constitution and upheld Eritrea’s Representative Assembly
as the renamed Eritrean Assembly. On September 15, 1952, the Ethiopian-Eritrean
Federation was established, and Britain
turned over administration to the new authorities, and withdrew from Eritrea.

However, Emperor Haile Selassie was determined to bring Eritrea under Ethiopia’s full authority. Eritrea’s
head of government (called Chief Executive who was elected by the Eritrean
Assembly) was forced to resign, and successors to the post were appointed by
the Ethiopian emperor. Ethiopians were appointed to many high-level Eritrean
government posts. Many Eritrean political parties were banned and press censorship
was imposed. Amharic, Ethiopia’s
official language, was imposed, while Arabic and Tigrayan,  Eritrea’s main languages, were
replaced with Amharic as the medium for education. Many local businesses were
moved to Ethiopia, while
local tax revenues were sent to Ethiopia.
By the early 1960s, Eritrea’s
autonomy status virtually had ceased to exist. In November 1962, the Eritrean
Assembly, under strong pressure from Emperor Haile Selassie, dissolved the
Ethiopian-Eritrean Federation and voted to incorporate Eritrea as Ethiopia’s
14th province.

Eritreans were outraged by these developments. Civilian
dissent in the form of rallies and demonstrations broke out, and was dealt with
harshly by Ethiopia,
causing scores of deaths and injuries among protesters in confrontations with
security forces. Opposition leaders, particularly those calling for
independence, were suppressed, forcing many to flee into exile abroad; scores
of their supporters also were jailed. In April 1958, the first organized
resistance to Ethiopian rule emerged with the formation of the clandestine
Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM), consisting originally of Eritrean exiles in
Sudan.
At its peak in Eritrea, the ELM had some 40,000 members who organized in cells
of 7 people and carried out a campaign of destabilization, including engaging
in some militant actions such as assassinating government officials, aimed at
forcing the Ethiopian government to reverse some of its centralizing policies
that were undercutting Eritrea’s autonomous status under the federated
arrangement with Ethiopia. By 1962, the government’s anti-dissident campaigns
had weakened the ELM, although the militant group continued to exist, albeit
with limited success. Also by 1962, another Eritrean nationalist organization,
the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), had emerged, having been organized in July
1960 by Eritrean exiles in Cairo, Egypt which in contrast to the ELM, had as
its objective the use of armed force to achieve Eritrean’s independence.

In its early years, the ELF leadership, called the “Supreme
Council”, operated out of Cairo
to more effectively spread its political goals to the international community
and to lobby and secure military support from foreign donors.

August 31, 1939 – German saboteurs seize the Gleiwitz radio station and air anti-German propaganda, giving Germany a pretext to invade Poland

In the lead-up to the war, German operatives launched a
series of sabotage operations in German territory in the guise that these were
committed by Poles, in order to give Germany
a pretext to invade Poland.  These actions, implemented under Operation
Himmler, targeted railway stations, customs houses, communication lines, etc.  As part of Operation Himmler, on the night of
August 31, 1939, German saboteurs wearing Polish uniforms seized the Gleiwitz
radio station in Silesia, Germany, and
aired a short anti-German message in Polish. 
This and other supposed Polish provocations were used by Hitler to
launch what he called a “defensive war” against Poland, stating that “the series of
border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles
no longer are willing to respect the German frontier.”

German invasion of Poland

(Taken from German Invasion of Poland – Wars of the 20th Century – World War II in Europe)

Background At the end of World War I, the Allies reconstituted Poland as a sovereign nation, incorporating into the new state portions of the eastern German territories of Pomerania and Silesia, which contained majority Polish populations.  In the 1920s, the German Weimar Republic sought to restore to Germany all its lost territories, but was restrained by certain stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles, which had been imposed on Germany after World War I.  Polish Pomerania was known worldwide as the “Polish Corridor”, as it allowed Poland access to international waters through the Baltic Sea.  The German city of Danzig in East Prussia, as well as nearby areas, also was detached from Germany, and renamed the “Free City of Danzig”, administered by the League of Nations, but whose port, customs, and public infrastructures were controlled by Poland.

In 1933, Hitler came to power and implemented Germany’s
massive rearmament program, and later began to pursue his irredentist ambitions
in earnest.  Previously in January 1934,
Nazi Germany and Poland had
signed a ten-year non-aggression pact, where the German government recognized
the territorial integrity of the Polish state, which included the German
regions that had been ceded to Poland.  But by the late 1930s, the now militarily
powerful Germany
was actively pushing to redefine the German-Polish border.

In October 1938, Germany
proposed to Poland renewing
their non-aggression treaty, but subject to two conditions: that Danzig be
restored to Germany and that
Germany be allowed to build
road and railway lines through the Polish Corridor to connect Germany proper and East Prussia.  Poland refused, and in April 1939,
Hitler abolished the non-aggression pact. 
To Poland, Hitler was
using the same aggressive tactics that he had used against Czechoslovakia, and that if it yielded to the
German demands on Danzig and the Polish Corridor, ultimately the rest of Poland would be swallowed up by Germany.

Meanwhile, Britain
and France, which had
pursued appeasement toward Hitler, had become wary after the German occupation
of the rest of Czechoslovakia,
which had a non-ethnic German majority population, which was in contrast to
what Hitler had said that he only wanted returned those German-populated
territories.  Britain
and France were now
determined to resist Germany
diplomatically and resolve the crisis through firm negotiations.  On March 31, 1939, Britain
and France
announced that they would “guarantee Polish independence” in case of foreign
aggression.  Since 1921, as per the
Franco-Polish Military Alliance, France had pledged military assistance to Poland if that
latter was attacked.

In fact, Hitler’s intentions on Poland was not only the
return of lost German territories, but the elimination of the Polish state and
annexation of Poland as part of Lebensraum (“living space”), German expansion
into Eastern Europe and Russia. 
Lebensraum called for the eradication of the native populations in these
conquered areas.  For Poland
specifically, on August 22, 1939 in the lead-up to the German invasion, Hitler
had said that “the object of the war is … to kill without pity or mercy all
men, women, and children of Polish descent or language.  Only in this way can we obtain the living
space we need.”  In April 1939, Hitler
instructed the German military High Command to begin preparations for an
invasion of Poland,
to be launched later in the summer.  By
May 1939, the German military had drawn up the invasion plan.

In May 1939, Britain
and France held high-level
talks with the Soviet Union regarding forming a tripartite military alliance
against Germany, especially
in light of the possible German invasion of Poland.  These talks stalled, because Poland refused to allow Soviet forces into its
territory in case Germany
attacked.  Unbeknown to Britain and France,
the Soviet Union and Germany
were also conducting (secret) separate talks regarding bilateral political,
military, and economic concerns, which on August 23, 1939, led to the signing
of a non-aggression treaty.  This treaty,
which was broadcast to the world and widely known as the Molotov Ribbentrop
Pact (named after Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign
Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop), brought a radical shift to the European power
balance, as Germany was now free to invade Poland without fear of Soviet
reprisal.  The pact also included a
secret protocol where Poland,
Finland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, and Romania were
divided into German and Soviet spheres of influence.

One day earlier, August 22, with the non-aggression treaty
virtually assured, Hitler set the invasion date of Poland for August 26, 1939.  On August 25, Hitler told the British
ambassador that Britain must
agree to the German demands on Poland,
as the non-aggression pact freed Germany from facing a two-front war
with major powers.  But on that same day,
Britain and Poland signed a mutual defense pact, which
contained a secret clause where the British promised military assistance if Poland was attacked by Germany.  This agreement, as well as British overtures
that Britain and Poland were willing to restart the stalled talks
with Germany,
forced Hitler to abort the invasion set for the next day.

The Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) stood down, except for
some units that did not receive the new stop order and crossed into Poland,
skirmishing with the Poles.  These German
units soon withdrew back across the border, but the Polish High Command,
informed through intelligence reports of massive German build-up at the border,
was unaware that the border skirmishes were part of an aborted German invasion.

German negotiations with Britain
and France
continued, but they failed to make progress. 
Poland had refused to
negotiate on the basis of ceding territory, and its determination was
strengthened by the military guarantees of the Western Powers, particularly in
that if the Germans invaded, the British and French would attack from the west,
and Germany
would be confronted with a two-front war.

On August 29, 1939, Germany
sent Poland a set of
proposals for negotiations, which included two points: that Danzig be returned
to Germany and that a
plebiscite be held in the Polish Corridor to determine whether the territory
should remain with Poland or
be returned to Germany.  In the latter, Poles who were born or had
settled in the Corridor since 1919 could not vote, while Germans born there but
not living there could vote.  Germany
demanded that negotiations were subject to a Polish official with signing
powers arriving by the following day, August 30.

Britain
deemed that the German proposal was an ultimatum to Poland, and tried but failed to
convince the Polish government to negotiate. 
On August 30, the German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop presented the
British ambassador with a 16-point proposal for negotiations, but refused the
latter’s request that a copy be sent to the Polish government, as no Polish
representative had arrived by the set date. 
The next day, August 31, the Polish Ambassador Jozef Lipski conferred
with Ribbentrop, but as Lipski had no signing powers, the talks did not
proceed.  Later that day, Hitler
announced that the German-Polish talks had ended because of Poland’s
refusal to negotiate.  He then ordered
the German High Command to proceed with the invasion of Poland for the
next day, September 1, 1939.