Really enjoyable talk, thank you. Lots of important context leading up to 1939. Juliette was excellent - please invite her back, Woody.

Excellent show and scholarship; an impressively crisp and richly detailed presentation of a fantastically complex history. Well done!

Thanks for the talk! The subject was broader than I had expected, learned a lot.

The highest mountain in Australia is Mt. Kosciuszko, named by the Polish explorer Paweł (Paul) Edmund Strzelecki in 1840, in honour of Tadeusz Kościuszko, general and hero of the Kościuszko Uprising and American Revolutionary War, because of its perceived resemblance to the Kościuszko Mound in Kraków, Poland

My grandparents ship's manifest list their "Nationality (Country of which citizen or subject)" as Austria and "Race or People" as "Polish".
At Benjamin Franklin's request Kosciuszko wrote the artillery curriculum for West Point.  Casimir Pulaski is considered the father of the US cavalry.

Brilliant talk guys. Incredibly informative. Thanks 👍🏼

Great to see Juliette on your show Paul, you must ask her back on again , great show !

This was a really good presentation. Juliette clearly knows her stuff and is such an engaging speaker. I know a little of the history discussed but there's always a lot more to learn.
So thanks to Juliette and Woody for bringing us this episode

Interesting context to the start of WW2,  assured and engaging delivery. Thank you Juliette and Paul

Fantastic and illuminating presentation on the richness of WW2 history BEFORE Sept 1939. I learned a lot. Please have Juliette on again. 👏

I enjoyed Juliette's presentation and would like to see her back. Thanks Woody.

Huge gap in my knowledge , I had never even thought to ask any questions about this. Very much enjoyed scrambling to keep up with Juliette’s excellent presentation.

A great background of Poland between the wars and the UK/France's limited support in 1939.

Excellent show, good to hear about the context of the 1939 decisions that are the end result.

British attitude about the Poles from a RAF Museum podcast "Poles found British reserved and condescending.  British expected the Poles to be uncivilized.  Asked by the hostess of a party if Poles lived in houses, two of the pilots borrowed two violins and extablished their cultural credentials by playing a Brahms duet."

That was just excellent!  Thank you so much for this brilliant presentation!  I’ll look forward to Juliette’s return to WW2TV.

Great discussion about the events bringing Britain into the war but the details of which are overlooked. I think the big surprise for the Europeans was Britain actually sticking to its position, the British diplomats had a history of making complicated linguistic promises of support which when examined promised very little

Enjoyable listening,learned quite a bit 👍

My family has a similar story on my dads side they’re from the area north of Kyiv left the chaos in the Russian Empire. My family came ended up divided on religious and economic lines.

My great grandfather remarried a non Jewish woman who was made to feel very unwelcome by her sisters in law. The family business was shoemaking but urban renewal cut apart inner city Detroit leading in part to the rebellion of 67.  The family argued over the store and who would take on running it then it was unfortunately like much of the commercial center of the Dexter - Linwood neighborhood burned down.

My information on the family was that I was of Russian descent from Kyiv when I was young. My dad reached out to his cousins and got the family back in touch. Ended up trading stories about the old world or what little we knew and followed up with genealogy.

Turns out the family was of Spanish origin which made a lot of sense but was surprising to hear my dad and especially grandfather were quick to pick up a tan in summer. They were part of a wave of migration to Imperial Russia particularly modern Ukraine, Belarus & Poland. Under a liberal period of Russian history when Tsar Alexander looked to import western artisanal, agricultural & manufacturing techniques by offering a home to persecuted Jews.

Although my family left as pogroms ramped up in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War. Which makes becoming British or American so appealing to people who have gone through war, persecution or in your guest’s family’s case literal enslavement. Not wanting to be labeled an other again and having that possibility in one of the world’s great powers is a powerful thing.

Mom mom’s family is very Polish so it’s cool to get a topic that I feel I can relate to on both sides of the family. I have Swedish and a bit of Irish ancestry as well but with a less of a direct personal connection to those aspects of the family.

A brilliant presentation, please bring Juliette back, thank you both.