Read Stuart Koehl’s article on the Battle of Britain. Today marks the anniversary of the turning point:
September 15 did not mark the largest air battle in the extended campaign called “The Battle of Britain”; neither was it the bloodiest (historian Alfred Price aptly described August 18th “The Hardest Day” in his eponymous book, on which the Germans lost 69 aircraft and the British a staggering 68), nor was it the last (German daylight raids continued well into November, including a belated appearance by the hopelessly outclassed Italian air force). But September 15 did mark the irrevocable “tipping point”, the day on which the German high command admitted to itself that air superiority could not be achieved in 1940, and therefore the planned German invasion of Britain, Operation Sealion, would not happen that year.
But the article is more about Poland than Britain. Koehl writes about the critical role played by Polish pilots in the RAF. They were seasoned as compared with the novice British pilots, and accounted for much of the RAF’s success. That dedication by the Poles was hardly reciprocated when Poland was left at war’s end to the Soviets.
The most remarkable thing about these men–and their brothers in RAF Bomber Command, and those who fought with the Free Polish Army under General Anders in Italy–was their fidelity to the cause for which they were fighting, which did not waver, even after it became apparent that the Allies had sold out the Polish cause, putting that sad country under the control of the Soviet Union. Knowing they could not go home again, they continued to fight, as the ancient Polish battle cry puts it “for your freedom and ours”.
Poland has been a most reliable ally, but the U.S. now seems intent on snubbing the Poles and discounting its substantial contributions to the security of Western Europe and the Middle East
–in order to “reset” its relations with Russia, a country that consistently works against U.S. interests around the world, supports governments antithetical to the United States (Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Iran and Syria), violates human rights on a massive scale, uses its control of European oil and natural gas supplies as an economic weapon, invades and partially annexes the territory of a neighboring state, and which seems intent upon subjugating all of its neighbors in a simulacrum of (if not the Soviet Union) the old Tsarist empire.
And that’s how the new administration expects America to re-earn the respect of the global community.
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