1 Ginny: Now that I've captured the Joneses for you, I want some sort of reward.
2 Hitler's Brain: Ja, ja, Germany und Russia will always be firm allies, whatever.
3 Ginny: No, I want a night out with Erwin.
3 Erwin: You do?
4 Haken: Hmmm. I suppose you can have die tickets to Shakespeare und die booking for a dinner of sauerkraut und sausages.
4 Hitler's Brain: I was looking forward to that!

In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was a mutual non-aggression pact between the two powers. Along with the treaty came a secret agreement to divide Eastern Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union. In particular, they agreed to a mutual invasion of Poland from both sides, resulting in the territory being split down the middle.

The invasion of Poland was the trigger that sparked full-scale war across Europe, as Britain and France responded by honouring their newly agreed defence alliance with Poland and declaring war on Germany.

But not content with a mere half of Poland, Hitler had his leaders draw up plans for Operation Barbarossa. After 22 months of friendly relations across the newly formed border running down the middle of Poland, during which Germany imported vast quantities of raw materials and resources from the Soviets, the Nazi forces surprised the relaxed Soviet army and launched a full scale invasion of Russia. The Nazis took the "Soviet half" of Poland within weeks and were soon deep into Soviet territory. The resulting conflict was one of the geographically widest and bloodiest battle fronts, not only of the war, but in history.

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2023-11-05 Rerun commentary: I mentioned in another recent rerun that I recently discovered that may maternal grandmother had some "youthful dalliances" that resulted in my mother and her older sister.

But a two or three years earlier I'd found out another astonishing fact about my grandmother that I hadn't known. She had also been married to another man prior to marrying (the man who I'd thought was) my grandfather, and her first husband died and was buried in Poland during the Operation Barbarossa invasion, fighting for the German Army.

It's a little weird how these things relate to comics I made years ago before I knew any of this about my family history.