George Stanley McChrystal (b. August, 14, 1954)
General Stanley A. McChrystal is an American army general who was named the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, and assumed command of those forces in May of 2009.
General McChrystal is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. McChyrstal is a Green Beret and an Army Ranger, as well as a veteran commander in Special Operations, also known as “Black Ops.”
McChrystal served in Afghanistan as chief of staff of the military operations in 2001 and 2002. He also commanded the 75th Ranger Regiment and served tours in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Forces under General McChrystal’s command found and captured Saddam Hussein and with tracking and killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Mesopotamia (al-Qaida in Iraq).
General McChrystal replaced General David McKiernan…

http://www.historyguy.com/biofiles/mcchrystal_stanley_general.htm

On Sept. 3, 1939, Great Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand all declared war on Nazi Germany.  Germany began its invasion of Poland two days earlier, on September 1. Also on September 3, only hours after the British declaration of war on Germany, a German U-boat (submarine) torpedoed and sank the British ocean liner SS Athenia approximately 250 miles off the Irish coast, killing more than 100 people, including 28 Americans, out of the 1,400 or so on board. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to the American people in a radio address and cautioned that the U.S. was going to make a proclamation declaring neutrality in this latest European war.  Many Americans did not want a repeat of America’s involvement in the First World War, and were content to let the Europeans kill each other without American interference.

September 1, 2009, will mark the 70th anniversary of the Nazi German invasion of Poland, which sparked World War Two in Europe.  Within days of the invasion, Britain, France, and others declared war on Germany in response.  On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East, sealing the eastern European nation’s fate.  Poland was to be occupied (in part or in whole), for the rest of the war, and would lose a larger percentage of its population due to the war than any other participant in World War Two.

Read more at http://www.historyguy.com/worldwartwo/german_invasion_of_poland_1939.htm

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (also known as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty)

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a Non-Aggression treaty on August 23, 1939. This treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union set the stage for the German invasion of Poland a week later, which was the opening round of World War Two in Europe. The second part of this treaty remained secret, and called for the division of Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin.

By getting Stalin to agree to not oppose an invasion of Poland, Hitler was assured of a fairly easy war, or so he thought.  The agreement to divide Eastern Europe between them ensured that Moscow would not join the British and French in a defense of Poland.  The Soviet victory four days earlier in the short border war with Japan (See Battle of Khalhkin Gol) allowed Stalin to free up forces for his own aggression against Poland, the Baltic States, and Finland.

Had these two bloody-minded tyrants not signed this treaty, Hitler may not have invaded Poland, thereby triggering the European phase of World War Two.

The Flag of Poland

New page now online which looks at the wars of Poland from about 1600 to the Present.

At: http://www.historyguy.com/wars_of_poland.htm

The one MIA in the Gulf War/1st War
with Iraq, (compared to 1,740 MIA in the Vietnam War), was Navy
pilot, Captain Michael “Scott” Speicher was shot down and was neither
rescured, nor was a body found until, on August 2, 2009, the Pentagon
announced that U.S. Marines stationed in Iraq had found Speicher’s
remains.

See also: http://www.historyguy.com/GulfWar.html#gulfwarcasualties

and

U.S.
identifies remains of pilot missing in Persian Gulf
War–LA Times, Aug. 2,
2009

Ironically, or perhaps intentionally,
the Pentagon announced the recovery of Speicher’s on the 19th
anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, which occurred on
August 2, 1990, and sparked the following 19 years of war between the
U.S. and Iraq.

Uploaded a new page called The Wars and Conflicts of1939: The Eve of World War Two.

at: http://www.historyguy.com/worldwartwo/wars_of_1939.htm

key words for this page include: war, wars, 1939, world war one, spanish civil war, spain, france, britain, germany, italy, albania, ethiopia, poland, sino-japanese war, arab revolt, palestine revolt, german occupation, occupation of czechoslovakia, occupation of memel, occupation of klaipeda, lithuania, slovak-hungarian war, little war, italian invasion of albania, chile coup 1939, ariostazo coup, soviet-japanese border war, battle of khalkhin gol, nomonhan, german invasion of poland, case white, fall weiss, soviet invasion of poland, world war two starts, poland invasion, winter war, finland, russia, soviet union, russian invasion.

New and updated pages on the History Guy Website at http://www.historyguy.com include information on several wars and conflicts, including:

–The Habsburg-Valois wars of the 1400s and 1500s, which were waged largely in Italy between France and the Holy Roman Empire (which was dominated by Austria). See: http://www.historyguy.com/french_wars_in_italy_habsburg_valois_wars.htm

–The wars of The Habsburg Empire,(better known as Austria-Hungary), between the years 1815, at the end of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and 1918, at the end of the First World War, resulting in the collapse and death of the Habsburg Empire. See: http://www.historyguy.com/wars_of_habsburg_empire_austria-hungary_1815-1918.htm

–The wars in the region of Africa known as “The Horn of Africa,” including the nations of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia.  This page discusses such wars as Somalia’s “Mad Mullah,” the ongoing Oromo resistance in Ethiopia, the Ogaden War, the bloody Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars, the Somali Civil War, and, most recently, the Somali Pirate Attacks that plague the shipping industry off the coast of Somalia.

See :http://www.historyguy.com/wars_of_the_horn_of_africa.htm

President Obama’s Afghanistan Strategy (2009)
 On March 27, 2009, President Obama, flanked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, announced his new strategy toward the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Below are the video of his announcement and the text of President Obama’s announcement.  To see this page, go to:  http://www.historyguy.com/obama_afghanistan_strategy_2009.htm

The new page on the Wars of 1909 is now up at:
http://www.historyguy.com/wars_of_1909.htm