The Friendly, Trendy Portland of Yore

"That's right, Nazi boy!" (I remark that the Greek chorus-like chanting of "Peaceful Protest" at around 2:37 by the hitherto silent and unseen female attendees of the event reminds me of an insight garnered recently from an astute blogger on the web, whose name unfortunately escapes me, that the chanting of these words, so routine in such circumstances, is in no way meant as an attempt to pacify the crowd, but rather as a hypnotic exhortation to the media and to viewers of the video as to how they are to report the event).

Last spring, when we were still in the early stages of the Presidential primaries, and when Red and I still lived in Portland, she had the idea of scheduling an evening out in conjunction with a visit to a book signing for author whom she had read, and who had just then released a new nonfiction book about building a successful business as an entrepreneur.

At the time Donald Trump had won his first primaries, but he was considered mostly still an object of humor more than a serious threat to win the nomination by most in the media. Nevertheless there already had been an ugly incident in a building at Portland State in which a meeting of Trump supporters in a classroom had been violently interrupted by a Leftists who could not abide such a thing transpiring on "their" campus.

The book signing, for which advance tickets were required, was to be held on the premises of an apparel boutique in downtown Portland, the character of which might be easily described by that adjective trendy, which everyone seems to recognize in meaning but which elusive to the point that few have ever nailed down a permanent definition.

We arrived ahead of the schedule time waited but a few minutes in the line outside on the dark rain-soaked sidewalk in order to have our tickets scanned, which allowed us to enter. The ample crowd was already visible inside through the large glass windows of the apparel boutique. I didn't relish the idea of spending time squeezed into the awkward space, but I was up for the challenge.

I didn't know the author, and thus would not have recognized him. Red pointed him out to me, easily locatable by the attendees around his personage in the corner of the shop next to the booth where the alcoholic refreshments (one free glass of wine per event ticket) was to be dispensed. The dispensation of this liquid commodity had not yet commenced as well, since such things are choreographed in conjunction with the author's speech in a formula well time-tested through the recent eras of Internet promotions. The female bartender was just still setting up for her task, and was forced to repeat the same disappointing announcement to thirsty attendees every twenty seconds or so.

While waiting for the events to begin, and having nothing else to do within the claustrophobic space of the boutique, we chose to peruse the wares on sale, which consisted in a large part of a line of proprietary shirts, caps, and accessories, all of them dark in hue and many emblazoned with words in the same brazen sans-serif typeface declaring the owner of the item to be any one of various categories of social justice warrior, e.g FEMINIST.

Red picked up a cap with this last word across the front and held it up to me. "Just what you need," she said, in a playful neutral tone that concealed the slyness of the inside joke to me.

Her success at the neutralness of her delivery was evinced by the immediate injection into our conversation from a young black woman next to us whose eagerness gave evidence of her being the proprietress of the owner or perhaps even the designer of the clothing line.

"Yes, it would look great on you" she said, with that blend of purely capitalistic sales alacrity and leftist feel-goodness which is the lifeblood of the New Portland. "It's a popular item."

I even tried it on for a moment. Red got a big kick out of seeing it on my head. But I decided to pass on buying it.

After the wine was finally dispersed, we quickly sidled up to get our share of the refreshment in the form of one plastic glass each. Knowing full well of my tendency towards clumsiness in such situations, especially within a crowded shop, and wishing in no way to be the cause of an incident in which the liquid in the glasses were to come into contact with the precious items within the shop, I directed Red to stand with me in the corner where my arms might be free of random jostling.

It was not long before others of similar introverted nature found themselves in the same corner of the shop, in a quiet eddy amidst in the noise, and we engaged in pleasant conversation with a few of them as they came and went.

Among the people we spoke with was a young white woman,  apparently just out of college. She asked what we did for a living, and we gave our replies.

"I write software," I said with over-earnest eagerness, which of course prompted no follow-up interest on her part.

"I'm a naturopathic physician," said Red, which of course prompted several subsequent questions from the young woman.

When it came time for her to respond in kind, she described her work as being the coordinator of a government-funded program to re-bio-engineer the landscape of local businesses for better resource usage using crews consisting primarily of Somali immigrants.

I remarked how matter-of-factly this description rolled out of her mouth. There was not a hint of boasting about the prestige of such an occupation on the scale of social justice. She said it was if everyone else in the world had a similar job, or at least everyone she knew.

It was a pleasant evening, all in all. We eventually got our signed books and heard the author speak for a few moments, although we bailed fairly quickly to keep our dinner reservations, and to escape the crowd.

But before we left, as we still stood in the corner sipping our wine, I remarked in a low whisper to Red that I wondered what the reaction would be among those to whom we spoke, if I were to casually announce that I was a Donald Trump supporter.

As I have mentioned, Trump was still far from the nomination, but Red agreed with me that the conservation would take a sudden chilly turn.

I opined that were to have mentioned such a thing to woman who attempted to get me to buy the FEMINIST hat, that it might well play out like this: she would turn silent and walk away, and then a few moments later I would be accosted by a hitherto unseen large burly male who would quietly tell me, "Sir, you are making people here uncomfortable. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Thinking about this event from the ancient days of a year ago, and watching the video above (taken at the Portland Airport just two days ago) makes me wistful for that old Portland, now vanished into the pages of history. It was so civil back then.

There Will Be Blood in the Killing Fields of La-La Land

"We will...punch some people in the face...We will do it all with soul, with heart..."

From an anthropological point of view, this is a fascinating video. Have you ever seen, in your lifetime, a more enthusiastic endorsement by a crowd of a call for violence than this? I haven't. Even liberals wouldn't claim he is speaking metaphorically anymore. In the old days, they would have pooh-poohed it away. We are beyond that. Everyone knows that only real blood will satisfy them.

Everyone knows too that liberals know they are 100% in the right. They are gleeful that they get to challenge "evil." They savor a future of no-holds-barred confrontation against their enemies, i.e. the Nazis. For their opponents have no soul and no heart.

It's a vampire-like hunger that they have tasted.  History shows that once it reaches a certain stage, there are two ways it is eventually satisfied (1) by mass killings of millions of their enemies (i.e. the Cambodia scenario), or (2) by getting bloodied and hurt themselves (i.e. getting punched back).

Are we yet at that point of no return? It's getting harder to say that we aren't. In the event of Scenario 1, it is important to remember than the blood lust doesn't matter if the enemies that are destroyed are the enemies that they originally wanted to kill (since they want to avoid Scenario 2). In the end, any enemy will do. Even you.

They Need to Start Killing Someone

"White people, give your fucking money, your fucking house, your fucking property. We need it fucking all..." 

(It's interesting to imagine her saying all this in the video with a loaded gun. That's probably coming soon.)

What days we are living in. Last night Red was kidding me about how I had planned to scale back my attention to news ("the Twitter", as she calls it) now that Trump was in office. But that was way back in the ancient era when, as Paul Joseph Watson pointed out, we were all expecting to be holding Trump's feet to the fire to get him to follow through on his campaign promises.

How can one not be glued to the Twitter feed? When Red accused me of being "addicted," I pleaded guilty. The closest thing I've experienced to this in the past, I told her, was the old days in Europe before the Internet, when all the news came through the International Herald Tribune. In the Greek Isles, as late as 1999, it was such a delight to walk to the sundry store and find a new copy on the metal rack. A small purchase was worth an entire afternoon, evening, and next morning sitting on bed pouring over every little article, down to the smallest one-column-inch display ads.

What a strange world we lived in, when it possible to actually disconnect.

Open Up those Golden Exit Gates

Back in the ancient days of, say, just a couple years, when secession was associated with anti-federal government conservatism, the Left considered the idea to be nutty and racist.

Now that the Left has embraced the concept, what is the response of the Right? Go for it. Please. 

It seems to be the one thing the entire political spectrum can rally behind---that California needs to leave the Union ASAP.

Note: this does mean there will be only 49 states, however. Many counties in California will choose to remain in the U.S., and provided they are peacefully allowed to leave the control of Sacramento, they will actually form several new states, increasing the number to 51 or 52. When secessionist California is reconquered and readmitted to the Union, it will not be reunited, but remain in several pieces, just like Virginia (which is two states to this day). So in any case, we are living in the last days of the united California as we know it.

Green Arizona

So many interesting things have been happening in the world lately. So much to observe, and think about. Once upon a time in this blog I used to write about the personal things in my life, but I hardly feel the time to do that lately. My own life seems small and unimportant compared all that is going on, not in a bad or depressing way, but in a peaceful way. Sitting here in my office and looking out the window, I feel at times like Pu Yi attending to his pet crickets, while the Cultural Revolution swirls about him. I feel as if I have lived many lives already in one---too many lives to get too hung about the present moment.

Arizona is green right now. The hills around where live have sprung vegetation from the ample rain. It seems as if every time I go out into the back yard to check the rain gauge, it has collected another half inch. I guess it was worthwhile buying the gauge after all at the local hardware store. At the time I thought it would be a whimsical purchase. Not so.

As I tell people, I have no intuition about the seasons here, about what is normal and what is abnormal. It takes at least a year of living in a place to develop that, and that is only a start. I depend on others to inform me that this year has been wetter and colder than usual here.

I feel the coldness in the house. I purchases four space heaters---they came one day from Amazon Prime in a giant crate on the porch---and we have them running much of the time, in one room or another. Last night it was down in the Thirties. Portland weather, I tell my colleagues, over the video conference. They don't believe me. Of course Portland has had weather that is more like Colorado.

2020 Vision for the Democrats

If the Democrats have any horse sense at all, they will ignore all the voices that call for populist reform of the Party, especially of the Presidential nominating process.

Instead of decreasing the power of the superdelegates, they should increase it, so that they can nominate this guy in 2020.* That's probably the only way it will happen.

He's the good kind of white male, and the Davos crowd (the real caucus of the party) loves him. Hickenlooper is a governor of state that has actually been trending blue lately, and which went for Clinton over Trump by a margin that was greater than the polling projected. He would represent a "sane" restoration of the pro-globalist Establishment. His environmental record is not one that makes the enviros jump for joy, especially in regard to the all-important issue of fracking, but he would sign any global Climate Change agreement in a heartbeat. (source)

*unless of course they can get Jerry Brown to run.

The Political Philosophy of Uhhhhhhhhhhh

Best video about the Women's March, from Steven Crowder:

It's as simple as this, people: Donald Trump is a bad man. He says bad things that hurt people's feelings. He embodies oppression. He represents everything that is wrong with America, and everything that must be defeated and obliterated. He is the KKK-Nazis-Fascists all rolled into one. He must be opposed and resisted at every turn.

Do you really need to know more than that?

The Age of Irony Crashing and Burning

One of the best articles I have read recently by the younger generation, in this case by David Ernst. 

[Postmodernism] operates according to just one moral imperative: discredit anything that other people presume to stand for goodness, because the belief that anything is superior to anything else inevitably results in prejudice, interpersonal strife, and inequality.

So many in that cohort just get it. Amazing to think that just three years ago in 2014 I was introducing a conservative friend of mine (who went to high school with me) to the new concept of "triggering" that I had discovered on Tumblr. I informed him to his surprise that he was a "shitlord" just because he was a white male.

What a revolution we have had, so quickly. 

How We Avoid Civil War

The increasing tendency of the Left to openly embrace violence, and even assassination, as valid political tactics would be truly dangerous, were it not offset by the ability of their opponents to disarm them by simply repeating a syllable over and over.

For the uninitiated.

I think the young man in the video speaks for his generation: "Please don't troll us."

Democrats in the Trump Era

Task going forward for Dems: learn how to listen to folks in the heartland "who feel unheard"...

...in order to get them to shut the f@ck up:

The Establishment Shrieks

From this moment on, it’s going to be America First. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs.  Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body -- and I will never, ever let you down. (Donald Trump, Jan. 20, 2017)

Usually President inaugural addresses accomplish little on their own. This was not the case in 2017. Just by saying the words he did, Trump changed everything.

Why?

Because what he said was hitherto utterly disallowed as rhetoric within the public sphere: America First.

The instant these words came out of his mouth, I could practically hear the entire world Establishment shriek in horror.

In those two words, coming from a U.S. President, the edifice of the Establishment, which has depended for nearly a century on complete and utter unanimity within the political arena on the issues that really matter, is now shattered into tiny little pieces.

Never again will the words Trump spoke be off limits. They are fair game in the political arena now. And that alone change everything.

Why is "America First" so dangerous a concept to the Establishment. Why has it been taboo (or rather instant political death) for any politician to say them since World War II?

The reason is that despite what Bernie Sanders wants us to be believe, Establishment is not just the class of powerful and wealthy people who pull the political and economic levers of the country.  It is more than that. All ages of history have been dominated by such groups.

The Establishment, since the end of the First World War, has been centered on a specific concept of societal change. The core idea of this concept has been, or at least has evolved to be, what we can identify as globalist internationalism.

Simply put, this is the idea that in the Twentieth Century and beyond, the concept of individual nation states is outdated and must be replaced by a cooperative world-wide agreement.

All other ideas are secondary to this concept. It matters little what form this global governance takes place, or how it comes about. All that matters is that it happens.

All citizens in the west must come to see that nations as we know it, including all the individual nations of Europe, and including especially the United States of America, are a harmful anachronism that serve as toxic barriers to human progress. They must be done away with, gradually over time (so as not to freak people out too much along the way). But eventually all nations must be folded into supranational blocs, and eventually into a global government, which is under the domination of wise and powerful people who will the right actions that benefits the world as a whole. That's the Establishment's view of itself, at least.

If you're like most people living today in the western world, this concept of inevitable world government probably seems self-evident to you, so much that you might have a hard time wondering how anyone could argue against it.You've probably seen it in so many science fiction movies over your lifetime as something that will inevitably occur and which will be good. Maybe you've gotten misty-eyed singing along with John Lennon about the "world will live as one" when we get rid of nations (and religions, and private property).

If such is the case, you can pat yourself on the back as being a good Establishment follower. You were never supposed to believe that there is any sane alternative to this. The only other option was world-wide nuclear war and destruction, etc.

Since around 1920, nearly the entire political class of the Western world---in particular most of the most powerful people of the last century---have enthusiastically embraced this concept of inevitable global integration of power.

So important was it for them to achieve this goal that any dissent (that is, an advocacy of true nationalism) was the  easiest and quickest way to get one labeled an extremist. Entire generations of scholars and journalists have come of age and gone through their careers having embraced this idea, because they figured out along the way that to go against it was professional suicide. All "intelligent" people got this message during their education.

Besides, it just makes sense, after all.

As a corollary to this idea, it became expected that any United States President would recognize that as a "global leader," he or she has a responsibility that goes beyond the crude and outdated concept of simply looking out for the interests of Americans. Doing so would be the equivalent of declaring war on progress itself.

Of course, at times one says what one needs to say to get elected, but no one expects any politician to follow through on the vulgarities of placing America first. Once it office, a President is elevated to being one among a set of cooperating global leaders who are expected to consult each other for a wise mutual course of action that benefits the world as a whole. At least, that's one way of putting it.

We are very deep into this era. Along the way, the concept of "America First" became so foreign to the political Establishment that it barely makes sense to them.  Lindsay Graham, one of the most die-hard globalists in the Republican Party, pretty much said these exact words. "I don't what it means." Rarely has there been a better example of what Orwell wrote concerning Newspeak, of how the English language in Oceania had been re-engineered so that certain words and phrases, such as the rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence, lost their meaning or became nonsensical.

"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible." ---Orwell

But now with Trump it's too late to go back. After his speech, there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. If Trump does nothing else in his entire term, he has breathed rhetorical life into a concept that has been forbidden for a century, and which is kryptonite to the Establishment to even contemplate.

For all his bluster against billionaires, and even his opposition to the TPP, Sanders would have been a very pro-Establishment President. This is because he has no disagreement in principle with folding U.S. sovereignty into a global governance framework. He would have simply demanded that it be the right kind of agreement, based on the right set of principles, including of course "Climate Change,' which has been one of the the biggest hammers in the Establishment globalization arsenal over the last twenty years.

The Revolt Begins

Video of the year. Can't stop watching this and laughing. This guy already has a cult following on the Internet.

Art in the Trump Era

Genius at work. Respect where it is due. (source)

What do you think about this? Red says psychotic break. I say this is indeed art. Moreover I think proves my assertion that we are entering an artistic Golden Age.

Breakthrough in Progressive Theory

By now, everyone is used to the idea that in Leftist theory, it is impossible to be racist against white people. This is because racism implies oppression, and only white people have the power to oppress other races.

The genius of Leftist theorists at rationalizing their actions is amazing. From a survey of social media comes the new Progressive meme, freshly forged in the laboratories of Critical Theory, namely that it is is impossible to commit violence against the Right (i.e. anyone who disagrees with the Left).

This is because true violence is to identified with the oppression of other classes. Thus physical assaults against anyone on the Right by definition cannot be violence because such attacks are not a form of oppression, bur rather a form of opposition to oppression.

By extension, one can claim that it is a form of violence not to physical assault "Fascists," since by failing to confront them in the most direct way possible, one is tacitly allowing oppression (i.e. real violence) to continue.

If you need help understanding this, think of Nazi Concentration Camps (the Ur-source of all righteousness by the Left). Was it violence for Allied planes to drop bombs on these camps and destroy them? Or was it violence not to drop bombs?

Weaponized Madonna

2004: Conservatives embrace torture as an acceptable and useful tool of warfare.

2017: Liberals embrace Presidential assassination as an acceptable and useful tool of politics (note that it is a standard tool of Leftists/Marxists to claim they didn't say exactly what they just said. If you object to it, it means you're just too stupid and unsophisticated to understand what they really meant).

Recall in the Iliad how the gods of Olympus came to the battlefield to take sides with the Trojans and Greeks. Are we so removed from that era?

This is How We Get to Civil War

The Left thinks the Right are Nazis. The Right are thus deserving of no consideration of dialogue. They are deserving only of contempt, and now, of violence.

The Right welcomes the violent attacks on them. They know that the Left thinks they can get away with anything, because both sides know that the Left has the privilege of having the media, the law, and society backing them up---for now.

The Right wants the Left to attack more, because eventually the Left will attack so hard that it will morally justify a response from the Right. They are waiting for this.

Some on the Left sense that this newfound advocacy of violence will not be to their best interests in the long run. They call for moderation. Let's be respectful.

These voices will be drowned out, however, because any attempt by the Left to retreat from full-contact confrontation must necessarily imply something along the lines of "Perhaps Trump isn't so evil after all." One can imagine how that will be taken. There will always be other voices that say What the Fuck! Are you guys actually trying to have a dialog with Nazi-KKK-Fascists!? FUCK THAT!

The Right waits, knowing its day will come. This is the biggest example of yet of Godwin's Law, that the Left is losing. Their cry of "But they really ARE Nazis!!" doesn't work. Never go full Nazi. They did. They will lose.

Are you going to be the one to tell her she needs to tone it down?

Full-Contact Confrontation

The newfound flirtation with the idea of "justified violence" against their opponents expressed by many on the Left is part of the broader trend of full-contact confrontation against the Right, and in particular Trump supporters.

The idea is that the time for reasonable discussion is over. Too much is at stake. The only reasonable course of action is all-out rhetorical assault to stop and roll back what they see as impeding and obvious tyranny.

Among people that I know who are Leftists, this is the default mode I take when speaking with them. I assume that any show of deviance from "100% Anti-Trump" will be met with a stupefied response and outright anger at the idea that anyone they know could possibly believe such a thing.

Because of this, only among family members and a small subset of very close friends do I allow myself to candidly express my opinion. I figure everyone else is going to flip out.

License to Punch

Finally I can write about current events again coherently. It has been difficult since the election. Things have been moving so fast. When I write, I always try to encapsulate my thoughts about where I think things are going, in a way that is beyond the headlines. Who wants to echo the same boring stuff? So I try to see beyond that. But that has been difficult.

But perhaps things are starting to gel a bit, as far as the trends, and it becomes easier to formulate a coherent analysis.

We had the inauguration, then the Women's March. In regard to the former, Trump's speech was pretty much everything his supporters could have hoped for, and more. I didn't hear a smidgen of disappointment from any of them.

In regard to the latter---yesterday's march, as well as the events surrounding the inauguration, it becomes clear what the biggest trend I see right now, which is the open embrace of the violence by the Left.

This was clearly the trend during the election. The Left manufactured fake tales of harassment by Trump supporters, while ignoring the open violence that their own side committed. At the time, it struck me as a matter of willfully looking the other way.

But that has changed. Surveying across social media, it appears that a very common opinion that has formed among Leftists is along the lines of "I used to think that violence didn't solve anything, but lately I am starting to reconsider..."

We are heading into very interesting times.

The Rise and Fall of the Second Polish Republic

Polish destroyers during the Peking Plan (initiated late August 1939). View from Błyskawica of Grom and Burza.

1918 At the end of World War I, a treaty creates the Second Polish Republic, reviving Poland as a state for the first time since 1795.

1920 Polish-Soviet War. Poland repels an invasion by Soviet Russia.

1921 Poland and Romania sign a non-aggression pact, finding common interest against Russia

1922 Soviet Union is formed. Ukraine is absorbed into direct Soviet control.

1926 Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact.

1929 Charles "Chip" Bohlen (Harvard '27) learns Russian and goes to work for the U.S. State Department in Riga, Latvia.

1933 Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. Relations between the Soviet Union and Germany begin deteriorating immediately.

1934 Chip Bohlen goes to work at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow

1934 Poland and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact.

1937 Stalin purges the Red Army.

March 1938 German Army enters Prague without resistance. Germany directly annexes German-speaking border areas of Czechoslovakia.

Sept. 1938 Munich Agreement is signed. Britain and France agree to acknowledge German control over Czechoslovakia in order to avoid a war.

March 1939 German Army enters Prague without resistance. Germany directly annexes German-speaking border areas of Czechoslovakia.

Spring 1939 France and Britain agree to guarantee the existence and independence of Poland.

August 23, 1939. To the shock of the world, the foreign ministers of Germany and the Soviet Union announce that the two nations have signed a non-aggression pact. Unbeknownst to most of the world, the Hitler and Stalin have agreed on a secret protocol, by which they will divide Europe into spheres of influence. Poland in particular would be divided completely between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Other nations within their spheres of influence would remain nominally independent but with puppet governments.

August 24, 1939 Chip Bohlen in Moscow is informed of the secret protocol of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact. According to him, he relays the information urgently to President Roosevelt. The Polish government is not informed of the secret protocol.

August 24, 1939 The British government, through Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton De Wiart, head of the British Military mission, makes strong representations to Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz, commander-in-chief of the Polish Forces, that the most modern elements of the fleet be evacuated from the Baltic. Although Śmigły-Rydz resists the idea at first, he finally agrees. The operation to evacuate three destroyers to British ports begins on August 26.

September 1, 1939 Germany invades Poland.

September 14, 1939 Polish Army ordered to retreat to the Lwow area near the Romanian border.

September 17, 1939 Soviet Union invades Poland, quickly overwhelming the areas of the country not yet under German control.

October 6, 1939 Polish Army surrenders. Poland is divided by agreement and ceases to exist.

Official  photo of Edward Śmigły-Rydz as a Marshall of Poland. First published in Gazeta Polska in 1937.

The Great Polish Gold Heist of '39

They shocked the world in August 1939 when they shook hands and announced a neutrality agreement. On the left, Vyacheslav Molotov, Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union. On the right,  Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of the Third Reich. 

Might course of World War II have been substantially different had the Polish Army in 1939 been able to hold out in the southeastern part of Poland, forcing the Germans into a long, grinding war by using a resupply line through neutral Romania?

Would this have dissuaded Stalin from invading Poland so readily? It was this invasion, not the German one, that made the giant war inevitable.

Hitler and Stalin had previously agreed to the partition of Poland, in late August 1939, but they kept this part of their agreement secret, announcing only that they had agreed on a "non-aggression pact" (standard terminology of the time).

They announced this agreement to a shocked world on August 23, 1939. Up until that time, it had been believed in the west by many that Hitler and Stalin were mortal enemies who would never make such a peace. Suddenly the two great Socialist powers (Nazi and Bolshevik) had found a common cause.

The Poles, believing (correctly) this agreement to be a signal of imminent German invasion (but not simultaneous German and Soviet invasion),  took immediate action by sending the Polish Navy into the Baltic Sea towards safe western ports, to be used in the eventually resupply effort through the Black Sea and the Romanian port of Constanța, as was their plan.

The Polish government also sent the bulk of its state gold reserves abroad immediately, through Romania, where half of it was stored in the Romanian state banks, and the rest went into British and French banks for safekeeping (as the British and French had agreed to guarantee Polish independence).

When the calendar turned and the first day of September 1939 arrived, the Germans dutifully invaded Poland from both the German mainland, as well as from East Prussia. It was the first true test of the new German armed forces in action, using the blitzkrieg technique of mechanized infantry, tanks, and air raids in a coordinate fashion to achieve rapid advances and quick victory.

The blitzkrieg achieved early apparent success, but its long-term viability against a stubborn eney was not yet established. Unlike the reputation the battle earned in later years, Polish Army fell back and defended chosen terrain very well, even when outnumbered.

The Polish Amy was pushed into the east and southeast, as planned, but they also chose to defend the capital Warsaw, which is fairly close to the German border.

The situation in Poland as of Sept. 14, 1939, with movements of troops after that, including the Soviet invasion up through Sept. 20.. Warsaw capitulated Sept. 28, and all resistance ceased by Oct. 6.

Eventually Warsaw was cut-off from the rest of the Polish Army forces. Only at this point did the Polish commander give the order for the rest of the army to retreat. But by then, the remaining Polish forces were no match for the Soviet Army suddenly invading from the East, with the deception of coming to the aid of their Polish brothers. The Polish Army could offer little resistance.

Poof went the possibility of making a stand in the southeast of Poland, and resupplying the Poish Army through Romania. With no other mission, the Polish Navy stayed in western ports, its ships suddenly able to serve the war effort of France and Britain. The Polish gold stayed in western and Romanian vaults, where its presence was hardly burdensome to those keeping it.

Poland was thus divided three ways---the Germans annexed the north and west (including Silesia, Warsaw and the Baltic Sea ports), and the Soviets annexed the east, including the part bordering Romania.  As a reward for appeasement, the British and French took the navy, as well as half of the Polish gold reserves, the rest going to Romania.

It is considered by historians that the Poles were not made aware of the secret protocol being Hitler and Stalin to divide Poland between them.

What if the Poles had been tipped off to the secret protocol? 

Would it have made a difference in a way that they could have better prepared for this simultaneous invasion?

Perhaps, to accommodate this scenario with any chance of survival, they have had to abandon Warsaw early, and fall back almost immediately toward the rough country around Romanian border, far from the German troops, but with their teeth bared straight at the Russians in a such a way to convince Stalin that it was in his best interest to let the Germans grind themselves down in a war of revealing attrition against the Poles, rather than jumping in as an aggressor against the Poles.

How could the Poles have know this information?

In turns out that the information was discovered by a western power. In particular, the secret protocol was known to a U.S. State Department functionary at the Moscow Embassy within 24 hours of the announcement of Nazi-Soviet pact.

His name was Charles Eustis "Chip" Bohlen (Harvard '27). He had served in the embassy since 1934, after learning Russian and joining the State Department out of college. He was given the details by his contact in the Soviet government. According to his account later, he "urgently" relayed the information to President Roosevelt. It appears the information did not go any farther than that. In particular, it was not relayed to the Polish government.

Chip Bohlen

"Bohlen, over the years, has become known for his bluntness--and in the eyes of some, his realism. In part, this quality enable him to reach the top rank of the United States' career diplomats. When he entered the Foreign Service in 1929, he was soon singled out as one of the six most promising entrants. He was sent to Paris to study Russian to prepare for the opening of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union." (source)

Bohlen is an interesting man. He is one a group of six men featured in the book The Wise Men: Six Friends and How They Changed the World by Walter Isaacson, about a small group of upper class well-educated Americans who took the lead during the years after World War II to create a foreign policy that transcended political party, and thus guided America and the world into a new era of worldwide cooperation between nations, even in the midst of a long-term stand-off between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. According to Isaacson, in those early years these men proudly called themselves "The Establishment." It was meant to indicate that they could be trusted to guide the country no matter who was in the White House, and no matter who controlled Congress.