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Gershom Gorenberg 🟣 Profile picture
@GershomG
Sep 17, 2020 • 10 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
#OnThisDay Sept. 17, 1939: Soviet Union invades Poland, in accordance with the secret provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact….
Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski, the man who broke the Nazis' "unbreakable" Enigma cipher, had fled Warsaw & found refuge in Eastern Poland. When the Soviets invade, he & 2 young colleages flee again, this time to Romania…
@OrenNahari @MilHistNow
#War_Of_Shadows
Exploiting the chaos at the border, master codebreaker Rejewski & his colleagues evade internment by the Romanians & reach Bucharest.
There they ask the British embassy for help…

@calder_walton @SarahAWildman
An overwhelmed British official tells them to come back the next day. Desperate, they turn to the French embassy. French intelligence knew the Polish codebreakers…

#War_of_Shadows
The French embassy gives the 3 Polish codebreakers passports, visas, and tickets. Rejewski & colleagues board yet another train—this time across the southern rim of Europe, through Yugoslavia and Italy to France...

@dovalfon
Poland is doomed, but its secret weapon - Marian Rejewski - has escaped with his life...
The refusal of help by a British official in Bucharest, though, means that Britain loses the potential services of Polish codebreakers. The British don't fully know what they've lost…
Because British codebreakers can't believe Rejewski broke Enigma on his on. They're sure he received a stolen Enigma machine. …
The full consequences of this mistake are unknowable. It's possible that they would have to be measured in British ships sunk in the Atlantic while Bletchley Park struggles with the tougher German navy version of Enigma. ...
More in #War_of_Shadows.
publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/gershom…

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More from @GershomG

Gershom Gorenberg 🟣 Profile picture
Aug 15
Israeli legal officials tell Netanyahu: an independent state commission of inquiry into the war is the only way to avoid arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court. (Because the ICC’s jurisdiction applies only when national judicial systems fail to act.)
Legal officials told Netanyahu in meeting today that he needs to establish a state commission of inquiry.
News item says Netanyahu didn't decide.
What item left unsaid: Netanyahu desperately wants to avoid independent commission of inquiry with full judicial powers.
Reason is obvious: an independent judicial inquiry into war is likely to assign megatons of responsibility to Netanyahu.
Read 4 tweets
Gershom Gorenberg 🟣 Profile picture
Aug 4
I understand Joe Biden's frustration, but asking Netanyahu to stop bullshitting is like asking the sun to rise in the west.
"A person who lies is... responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it...The bullshitter...does not reject the authority of the truth... He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."
The quote is from Harry Frankfurt's immortal essay, "On Bullshit."
Required reading!
Read 4 tweets
Gershom Gorenberg 🟣 Profile picture
Feb 23
US Sect of State Blinken saying that Israeli settlements in West Bank are "inconsistent with international law" is indeed important symbolically.
However, news items on this are mixing up the history of US policy on settlement illegality.

@BarakRavidreuters.com/world/middle-e…
The Carter administration wasn't the first to label settlements illegal. That was US policy from 1967 onward. As seen in this cable of 8 April 1968 from the State Dept to the US embassy in Israel: Image
In 1976, the US ambassador to the UN, William Scranton, said in the Security Council that settlements violate IV Geneva and are illegal. Image
Read 6 tweets
Gershom Gorenberg 🟣 Profile picture
Nov 12, 2023
This @washingtonpost deep dive, like others, confirms Hamas deliberately provoked the invasion of Gaza, knowing that it was sacrificing countless Palestinian lives.
Image
@washingtonpost The deaths of thousands in Gaza are as much part of Hamas's plan as the deaths of Israeli civilians on October 7.
The goal was to set off greater conflict, in the name of achieving Hamas's goal - both cruel and utterly without a chance of success - of destroying Israel. Image
@washingtonpost Hamas fought its way through the thin line of Israeli soldiers on the border in order to reach civilians - to kill, take hostages, and commit other atrocities. Image
Read 9 tweets
Gershom Gorenberg 🟣 Profile picture
Aug 24, 2021
#OnThisDay 24 Aug. 1941, in a radio speech, Winston Churchill says that the Germans are carrying out mass executions on Russian soil.
"We are in the presence of a crime without a name," Churchill says.
ibiblio.org/pha/policy/194…
@waitmanb @EquusontheBuses @YehudahMirsky (1)
Churchill's knowledge of Nazi mass murder in occupied Soviet territory came from Bletchley Park, where master codebreaker John Tiltman's team had cracked the cipher used by special German police units to report how many people they'd shot. (2)
@calder_walton @spyhistory
Like this message from 18 July 1941, in which a Nazi police regiment reports that it had shot "1153 Jewish plunderers."
The reports were coldly bureaucratic.

@oferaderet @SpitfireFilly
Read 10 tweets
Gershom Gorenberg 🟣 Profile picture
Jun 25, 2021
#OnThisDay: 25 June, 1942: The hidden turning point in the war for North Africa and the Middle East in WWII---

@calderwalton @spyhistory @IntlSpyMuseum @DrJamesRogers @dahliasc @waitmanb @CamIntelligence
@spyhistory @IntlSpyMuseum @DrJamesRogers @dahliasc @waitmanb @CamIntelligence …As of 25 June 1942, Bletchley Park's codebreakers had silenced the Axis "Good Source" in Cairo - its best source in the war - who had been providing Rommel with British Army's most valuable secrets from Cairo…
@spyhistory @IntlSpyMuseum @DrJamesRogers @dahliasc @waitmanb @CamIntelligence …That day, British Gen. Claude Auchinleck made one of key strategic decisions of war: to mount defense of Egypt and Middle East at El Alamein, just 60 miles west of Alexandria…
Read 7 tweets

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