Zdro Films II, Disc 1, Scene 2: Invasion of Poland, September, 1939

Some of us have fond memories of this item of furniture.

Glorioski!  It's Gene & Clara's bar cabinet!  Let's look inside.

We want that grey metal case.

This is JPZ's film case.

The leftmost film, in the brown can, is of Orchard Lake in 1941.  We want the second one.

It's a commercially-produced film for home projection.  Specifically, it is a Castle Films newsreel.

JPZ typed labels and affixed them to the inside of the film can top.

This film is up on Tye's Youtube channel.  Thanks, Tye! It is also on the DVDs sent out some time ago.

From Scene 1, Orchard Lake, 1941, we move back in time two years.  (That's my fault; that reflects the order in which I gave the film cans to the conversion pros.)  In September 1939 EJZ was starting his junior year in high school. 

How old was Casimir at that time?

Clara Matynka was just starting fifth grade.

There is a good Wikipedia article, with links, on Castle Films.  It was a home-movie company founded in 1924.  Its first commercial offering was a film on the Hindenberg explosion.

JPZ bought the Castle  "Invasion of Poland" film and added it to his collection.  His collection, by the way, also included boxing, demolition derby, and Donald Duck.

16:22  "Danzig"??  So in 1939 an American newsreel called Gdansk "Danzig."  

16:40  Ethnic Germans trudging either east or west, to Germany.  The corridor of land within Poland that went south from Gdansk was about 90 miles wide.  Wikipedia has good maps, photos, and writeup of "Poland 1939."

18:00  Appeasement did not work, did it?

18:51  Here's von Ribbentrop getting into his plane to fly to Moscow to sign the nonaggression pact.  We can see him then leaning forward to look out his airplane window.

19:00  Stalin and von Ribbentrop on the balcony of the Kremlin.

19:24 Of the three in top hats walking along, is that Daladier in the middle?

20:33  On this simple but to-the-point map, we can see the narrow Danzig Corridor, with Pomerania to the west and East Prussia to the east.

21:18  How did the news services get that batttle footage in 1939?  For example the view down the bomb bay of the German bombers?  Did the Germans release that intentionally?  Was that their idea of news or of a public relations effort?

21:31  George VI.  The real one.

21:54  "Rappel Immédiat!"    "Immediate recall!"

22:40  Is this a film montage to suggest or represent the torpedoing of SS Athenia?  Are parts of it film released to news outfits by the Reich?  If they did that, did they think that such scenes would paralyze us with fear?  I did read that Hitler assumed for a very long time that the US would not enter into war against Germany.

24:59 They had no tanks.  They made the last cavalry charge in world history.

Andrzej Wajda's film Lotna I recommend very highly.