• Wrufieotnak@feddit.orgEnglish
    23·
    3 days ago

    As we don’t got the usual context, here the wikipedia intro to the article about the Defence of the Polish Post Office in Gdańsk 

    The Defence of the Polish Post Office in Gdańsk  (Danzig) was one of the first acts of World War II in Europe, as part of the September Campaign.[1][3]: 39, 42  On 1 September 1939 the Invasion of Poland was initiated by Germany when the battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish-controlled harbor of Danzig, around 04:45. Danzig paramilitaries and police, supported by Germany, immediately joined the offensive to take full control of the city, by capturing the Polish post office. Polish personnel defended the building for some 15 hours against assaults by the SS Heimwehr Danzig (SS Danzig Home Defence), local SA formations and special units of Danzig police. All but four of the defenders, who were able to escape from the building during the surrender, were sentenced to death by a German court martial as illegal combatants on 5 October 1939, and executed (the judgement was later acknowledged as judicial murder).

    • petrescatraian@libranet.de
      4·
      3 days ago

      It’s all fun and games nowadays, but I think it’s worth remembering that post offices were considered critical infrastructure back then (in my country I think they still are, officially, even though people rarely consider it as such). Until the widespread adoption of the telephone, having your settlement (city, town etc.) lack a post office (or any way of sending a letter anywhere) meant cutting it from the rest of the world - and even after that they were highly important, as you couldn’t send papers (as in documents) by email, so you had to mail them using the post office.

      My parents even got quite a bunch of postcards (if you’re too young to know what this is about search the internet for that) from all their vacations when they were young, which they all sent and received, as the name implies, via regular mail.