INTERNATIONAL: Speed-up

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Old-Fashioned. Only Poland made no gestures toward the great gallery, broadcast no appeals for sympathy. Twenty-one days after the German-Russian pact, eleven days after the German invasion began, nine days after Britain's declaration of war, four days after Germany announced the capture of Warsaw, three days after Goring heralded victory and for propaganda purposes offered peace, the Polish gate between totalitarian Germany and totalitarian Russia was still defended. To convince the world it had fallen, Germans raced breathlessly in a week through the cycle—war for the sake of effect, victory for Germans at home, peace for the sake of propaganda. But even before the cycle was complete, as Britain and France remained unimpressed, the great weakness of the Polish-German lightning war became apparent to the world. If it were followed by peace, it could only be a lightning peace.