In the evening of 16 Jan., [Axis] troops evacuated from Kielce. On the following day, 17 Jan., Warsaw was captured by Soviet troops. Hitler was furious at the abandonment of Warsaw after he had given the order to fight until the last man; he issued the order for the arrest of Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin, head of the Operations Branch of the German Army High Command, and for the sacking of both General Smilo von Lüttwitz of German 9th Army (to be replaced by General Theodor Busse) and General Walter Fries of XXXXVI Panzer Corps.

On 17 Jan., Konev received orders for his Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front to march toward Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) and capture the industrial region of Upper Silesia. En route, his troops captured Kraków unopposed on 19 Jan.

On 18 Jan., Soviet troops reached Lódz, Poland, capturing the city on the following day.

On 20 Jan., Colonel General Ferdinand Schörner replaced Colonel General Josef Harpe as the head of German Army Group A. On 22 Jan., after four days of confusion and racing to prevent envelopment, the remnants of the [Axis’s] 4th Panzer Army successfully fled to the Oder River; by that time, Soviet forces had already reached the river at a few spots also, establishing several bridgeheads.

On 25 Jan., Posen, Germany (now Poznan, Poland) became the target of a new Soviet 1st Guards Tank Army and 8th Guards Army attack, starting a long period of brutal street fighting in that city. Also on 25 Jan, General Friedrich Schulz of German 17th Army requested permission for his remaining 100,000 men to withdraw from Katowice, Poland, which was refused; he requested the same again on the following day, finally receiving authorization from Schörner.

On 27 Jan., Soviet troops reached the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. German 17th Army completed its evacuation of Katowice in the night of 27 Jan., and troops of the Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front entered the city on 28 Jan. On 31 Jan., Soviet troops captured Kienitz, Germany on the west bank of the Oder River.

I thought about making another Zionism‐related thread, but after reviewing what happened today in 1945 I decided to take a break from talking about Fascist accomplishments to Fascist losses instead. As you may know, the Third Reich intended Poland to be part of its Lebensraum or living room, but the Soviets and their collaborators crushed that settler–colonial dream.

Of course, many anticommunists will insist that postfascist, pre‐1989 Poland was at least as awful if not worse than the Fascist era, but such a claim only evidences anticommunists’ cluelessness of history.

I dedicate this to the Palestinian resistance. The neoimperialists wasted billions of dollars on all these expenses like jamming equipment, chemical weapons, drones, heavy machinery, and rockets that can wipe out entire neighborhoods. Yet here the Palestinians are with their goddamn homemade rockets and ’80s‐era landline telephones and they’re still humiliating the neocolonists. The resistance is easily the most consistent source of good news coming out of Gaza.

‘We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a while. For you must not forget that we can also build. It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.’

— Buenaventura Durruti, 1936