The comment you linked did not address the direct military collaboration, e.g. the Luftwaffe being coordinated from Minsk. So please, do spell it out. You can’t, because you never did address it.
To be honest, when I first saw the claim about the Minsk radio station I immediately wondered if it was real, but The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pg. 621 does briefly discuss it and the author cited the ‘German Foreign Office papers, […] p. 480’. Strangely, though,not that manysources discuss it,and the few that I did find had surprisingly little to say about it; finding in depth English information on this radio station is frustratingly uneasy. A couple sources (The Fate of Poles in the USSR and The Polish Review) specifically claim that this station helped the Luftwaffe bomb towns, villages, and cities: a serious accusation that has attracted suspiciously little attention and reeks of Cold War sensationalism. Now I’m starting to wonder: did the Soviets even make good on their presumable promise to help the Luftwaffe?
Here is what pg. 480 of the German Foreign Office papers says:
“The Chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe² would be very much obliged to the People’s Commissariat for Telecommunications if—for urgent navigational tests—the Minsk Broadcasting Station could, until further notice and commencing immediately, send out a continuous dash with intermittent call-sign ‘Richard Wilhelm 1.0.’ in the intervals between its programmes, and introduce the name ‘Minsk’ as often as possible in the course of its programme.”
I don’t know if it’s because of my limited expertise in this particular subject or if there is some context that I am overlooking, but judging from this report alone, it really doesn’t sound that scandalous. It sounds downright boring, actually. What do you think: is sending out a continuous dash and repeatedly introducing a name in navigational tests a cause for concern…? Can you feel yourself sweating at all…? Do you think that you’ll lose any sleep tonight…? Even just a little bit…? Be honest.
A funny thing, though:
“One evening a soldier came to the place where I lived and told us he’d heard on the radio that everybody who didn’t want to be under German occupation was welcome in the USSR: the borders were open for everybody.”²¹ As she has heard about the Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany, she says to herself: “Maybe there is a way. Maybe the USSR will save my life.” So together with some friends and her brother, she decides, as she puts it, to take up the “Russian offer.”²² They leave Warsaw on foot on 28 September. She writes: “The next day we were refugees in the care of the Russian Army in Bialystok. […] We were well treated and got some food and shelter.”²³
Thanks for doing the digging! All I could find is partial compliance, in not even repeating the name, but just the word “Minsk.” I presume it may be capable of triangulation of some sort, but I don’t know for sure, and the only source I found showed the Soviets refusing to fully comply with the request.
So to clarify here, this is indeed used for navigation. At the time no GPS existed of course, so pilots had to rely on either radio signals or visual clues on the ground to tell them where they are. The radio signals, if the pilot could tell where they were coming from, would indeed help triangulate their location. Quite necessary, particularly in eastern Poland where German radio signals had a harder time reaching.
If the radio tower continually transmitted the requested callsign in between the other stuff, it would be easy to tell where the radio tower was. The Germans at this point expected the Soviets to help invade already as they had agreed upon. By mentioning “Minsk” a lot in the transmissions they effectively did the same thing, but a bit less overt. This allowed the Soviets to retain some element of surprise against the Poles.
On the 10th of September, the Nazis urged Molotov to begin the Soviet side of the invasion to uphold their end of the agreement, but Molotov held off due to the war with Japan. This gave them a convenient reason to wait until Polish resistance had been broken before going in. One week later, war was declared and the Soviets invaded.
The comment you linked did not address the direct military collaboration, e.g. the Luftwaffe being coordinated from Minsk. So please, do spell it out. You can’t, because you never did address it.
It did, because I did. I don’t care to play your posturing games.
To be honest, when I first saw the claim about the Minsk radio station I immediately wondered if it was real, but The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pg. 621 does briefly discuss it and the author cited the ‘German Foreign Office papers, […] p. 480’. Strangely, though, not that many sources discuss it, and the few that I did find had surprisingly little to say about it; finding in depth English information on this radio station is frustratingly uneasy. A couple sources (The Fate of Poles in the USSR and The Polish Review) specifically claim that this station helped the Luftwaffe bomb towns, villages, and cities: a serious accusation that has attracted suspiciously little attention and reeks of Cold War sensationalism. Now I’m starting to wonder: did the Soviets even make good on their presumable promise to help the Luftwaffe?
Here is what pg. 480 of the German Foreign Office papers says:
I don’t know if it’s because of my limited expertise in this particular subject or if there is some context that I am overlooking, but judging from this report alone, it really doesn’t sound that scandalous. It sounds downright boring, actually. What do you think: is sending out a continuous dash and repeatedly introducing a name in navigational tests a cause for concern…? Can you feel yourself sweating at all…? Do you think that you’ll lose any sleep tonight…? Even just a little bit…? Be honest.
A funny thing, though:
(Source.)
Thanks for doing the digging! All I could find is partial compliance, in not even repeating the name, but just the word “Minsk.” I presume it may be capable of triangulation of some sort, but I don’t know for sure, and the only source I found showed the Soviets refusing to fully comply with the request.
Nice dig! I found a Russian source which says the same: https://hrono.ru/sobyt/1900war/1939pol.php
So to clarify here, this is indeed used for navigation. At the time no GPS existed of course, so pilots had to rely on either radio signals or visual clues on the ground to tell them where they are. The radio signals, if the pilot could tell where they were coming from, would indeed help triangulate their location. Quite necessary, particularly in eastern Poland where German radio signals had a harder time reaching.
If the radio tower continually transmitted the requested callsign in between the other stuff, it would be easy to tell where the radio tower was. The Germans at this point expected the Soviets to help invade already as they had agreed upon. By mentioning “Minsk” a lot in the transmissions they effectively did the same thing, but a bit less overt. This allowed the Soviets to retain some element of surprise against the Poles.
On the 10th of September, the Nazis urged Molotov to begin the Soviet side of the invasion to uphold their end of the agreement, but Molotov held off due to the war with Japan. This gave them a convenient reason to wait until Polish resistance had been broken before going in. One week later, war was declared and the Soviets invaded.