The course of much of the 20th Century was decided at the gates of Warsaw in 1920, and this being the case, it never ceases to surprise me that the Soviet Polish War of 1920 is treated as little more than a historical footnote, when in fact it is an event that is as pivotally important and Napoleon's defeat in Russia in 1812. It was the event that made Soviet expansionism into Europe impossible, that destroyed one of the main pillars of the Bolshevik party's strategy and that  gave Stalin plenty of support for his stance against Trotsky's internationalism and ideas of 'permanent revolution.'

The Bolsheviks had a curious attitude to Russia, many of them arguably thought of themselves as Europeans first and Russians a very distant second, certainly Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and others seem to have had very little faith in their mother country. More specifically they had very little faith in Russians, themselves, of whom 80 per cent were peasants, lacking that essential revolutionary consciousness that Marx argued was necessary to be developed in the proletariat in order for revolution to occur.

9 p.m. February 27, 1933, the German Reichstag building is set ablaze. By the time firefighters had arrived, the parliament building was already gutted.

A communist outrage

Only four weeks earlier, Adolf Hitler had been appointed German Chancellor. On hearing the news of the fire, Hitler rushed to the site and there was met by Hermann Goring, who declared, "This is a communist outrage! One of the communist culprits has been arrested." Hitler saw it as a "God-given signal", and yelled that "All Communists must be hanged this very night."

The famous English playwright and novelist (William) Somerset Maugham (b.1874 – 1965) was one of the the leading authors of his day he was born at the British Embassy in Paris on 25th January, 1874. His father Robert Ormond Maugham, was a solicitor, working for the Embassy in France. 

He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and later at Heildelberg University in Germany, Maugham became a medical student at St. Thomas Hospital, London. Whilst training to become a doctor Maugham worked as an obstetric clerk in the slums of Lambeth and it was these experiences he used to help him write his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897).

It's not every day a member of your family hands you a folder which amongst other things contains photographs of one of your ancestors at an event that held great significance for the whole world. But this was the position I found myself in recently having visited my parents in Yorkshire. And it was especially pertinent as the event in question was Prime Minister Chamberlain returning from Munich with a certain piece of paper - and Great Uncle Reg was there, in close proximity to the man who had only hours before been meeting with Hitler.