Feeling Patriotic

[winter]

In a few days it'll be the 85th anniversary of the Miracle at the Vistula, the battle that turned the Red Army tide in 1920 and saved Europe from another ravaging war. On the Polish side, that war was rather rich in miracles - attacks just as watches were changing, hitting the one weak point in a chain of iron, knowing that a unit would be that one hour late.

Now someone has dug up copies of the encrypted Soviet army dispatches. Decrypted. In Polish archives.

Turns out the Polish mathematicians, the previous generation of the lot that solved the Enigma, broke all Soviet codes. Which meant that Jozef Pilsudski knew what every officer was having for breakfast and how much vodka to go with it.

It kind of gives me that patriotic twinge for some reason. We might be a drunken rabble with delusions of grandeur, but when we kick arse, we do it in style :D

Comments

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

And 19 years later our guys kicked their asses too! Hooray!

(Well, that and then had to give up a tenth of our territory over anyway, but that's life. We get to be selectively patriotic 'round here.)

[winter]

Hell, you came out of it way better than we did. Then again, there weren't as many grudges against you for, say, reading Stalin's private mail in the manner described above...