Trish’s Reviews > Stalin's Nose: Travels Around the Bloc > Status Update

"Again Nazis did the Soviets' work. ...The Soviets wanted to kill national movements throughout eastern Europe. As the national armies would, eventually, turn against the liberators, they had to be eliminated. The liberation of Poland would take place on Soviet terms. Those who might resist communism had been killed. The nation was abandoned by the West."

Appreciating he historical commentary.
5/5

"In the last hours of resistance the Soviets finally responded to the desperate radio calls. The Poles were told to storm toward the river, where they would be evacuated by boats under cover of smoke and fire. There was no alternative. But when the fighters reached the shore there was no covering fire, no smoke, no boats. They were mowed down by the Germans.
3/5

"The Poles fought heroically..., while the Red Army waited and watched more civilians die...
"The Home Army held for sixty-three days, until they were beaten back...Near the end the Soviets began limited drops of supplies, but they used no parachutes and the ammunition that survived the fall was Russian-made, incompatible with the stolen German guns.
2/5

2 powerful pages, especially in Mar 2022:
"By the summer of 1944 Hitler's armies were in retreat...The Polish Home Army planned uprisings in advance of the Soviets, to speed their passage to Berlin...Young men and women armed with stolen weapons took the Germans by surprise...After five years of hunger and darkness Polish flags waved in the sunlight. Warsaw was free...But then,...Red Army halted its advance.
1/5

Starting to wonder if this is actually fiction.
The author and his aunt Zita meet up with Zita's sister Vera. Also his aunt. They have a brother Oto, and his uncle. But how is he connected? They don't seem to have another sibling to be his parent. Zita is from central Europe. The author's dad is Scottish Canadian and his mom is English. How is he actually related to these people?