December 21, 2016 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
As Tarski Sails to America...
Tarski was invited as a speaker at the Unity of Science Congress
that was to be held at the Harvard University in the September of 1939.
Tarski was very fortunate to have managed to get a berth on the
last ship that left the Bay of Gdansk (Zatoka Gdańska) of the Baltic Sea to the
United States.
That was August 1939.
Poland was very soon to lose the independence it had very recently
gained after the World War I from the Soviet yoke.
In 1939, two big powers of the region, the Soviet Union and the
Nazi Germany signed a pack that goes by the name of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
(based on the surnames of the foreign ministers of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and
Stalin’s Soviet Union respectively).
It was a friendship of convenience, the primary goal being to
usurp the entire European territory and sharing it among themselves without getting
into bitter and bloody violence.
Moreover, the Weimer Germany under Hitler always considered the
western part of the Poland that had a lot of German ethnic minority to be part
of Germany.
Oddly enough, just a year ago in the November of 1938 Poland had
helped Hitler’s Germany in the partition of Czechoslovakia by invading Zaolzie.
One must understand that smaller nations of Europe had no love for
either Hitler’s Weimer Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union; it was sheer fear and
terror at the might of powerful German military built up that propelled them to
either build or ditch political alliances.
They all secretly tried to ally themselves either to France or to
Great Britain hoping they would be aggressive and assert themselves on the
European stage only to be bitterly disappointed.
These two world powers, United Kingdom and France were in no mood
to go through yet another war after having very recently come out of the
destruction and ruin of the World War I.
When no succor came from these powers, the poorer nations were
forced to ally themselves to these rising powers (Weimar Germany and the
recently turned Red Soviet Union) who were lusting for resources after the
terrible losses that the Great War had bestowed upon them.
Poland signed a German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact with Nazi
Germany in 1934, hoping to be safe from this rising evil.
But as we are aware, in world politics, there are no friends just
shared interests.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night and my fellow cousin ape.
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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