Yesterday Today

The Employees of the Danzig Post Office Fought the Germans For 15 Hours During the Invasion of Poland Before They Were Captured

**The German 105mm Howitzer seen mid recoil from a shot**

In 1939, it was obvious that Nazi Germany was on the war path. Austria had been annexed just a year earlier, and so also was the Sudetenland that belonged to Czechoslovakia. The British and French, who represented the defenders of the 1919 Treaty of Versaille, hesitated, hoping that Hitler’s imperialistic thirst was going to be satisfied by these territorial claims. But on 1st of September, Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

**SS Heimwehr-Danzig and SA begin their assault on the Polish Post Office**

The invasion codenamed Fall Weiss (Plan White) included an attack before the official declaration of war. The plan was developed as early as 1928. The invasion also implied on a secret agreement between the Germans and the Soviets, since USSR invaded Poland 16 days after the initial German attack.

This violation of international politics would continue all through Hitler’s European campaign, in Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg particularly, where he dismissed the notion of military neutrality of these countries.

**A Polish Switchboard Operator in the Polish Post Office**

Since the war began without any official warning, the first skirmish of WWII was fought not by soldiers, but by the employees of the Gdansk (Danzig) Post Office building. At the time, the Free City of Danzig was a semi-autonomous region and a German enclave. The City and its region were under the protection of the League of Nations, created by the Treaty of Versailles as a guarantee that the treaty would not be broken at any of its points. The Polish minority in the city gathered at the post offices, as they were proclaimed exterritorial units of Poland. Sort of like embassies.

Hitler already demonstrated his opinion on international politics in 1938, and the Poles sent some weapons caches together with a combat engineer, Second Lieutenant Konrad Guderski to organize an initial defense plan. The plan was intended to halt the Germans in a case of attack and hold them for six hours before the Polish Army could send in reinforcements to the demilitarized zone.

**The opening of the Polish Post Office “Gdansk 3” in 1925.**

Guderski’s second in command was a forty-year-old post office worker, Alfons Flisykowski. Together they prepared the defensive perimeter in and around the building. They cut the trees, to minimize cover for the invading force and barricaded the exits. In mid-August, just before the German attack, ten more employees were sent to the main Danzig post office, as it was obvious that the defense plan was going to be inevitable.

**German troops at rest in between attacks on the Post Office**

Their darkest predicaments had come true on the early morning of the 1st September. With the help of the ethnic Germans in Danzig, a siege was organized. Members of the police office, together with local SS and SA volunteers cut the telephone and electricity line that was supplying the post office building and laid a siege. Three ADGZ heavy armored cars were brought in by the police.

**The SS Heimwehr-Danzig huddle around a doorway keeping the Poczta Polska under close observation**

Inside the building, there were 56 men. Konrad Guderski, 42 local Polish employees, ten employees sent in from Poland in August, and Bydgoszcz, the building keeper with his wife and a 10-year-old daughter who lived in the complex. Except for Guderski, there were no professional soldiers during the siege.

The Germans attacked from two different directions, even entering the building, but were repelled soon after. During the frontal attack, two besiegers were killed, and seven were wounded. The attack from the rear was also repelled successfully.

**The German 105mm Howitzer opens fire on the Post Office**

The ineffective charge left the Germans in awe. But during their second attack, the group was better organized, and some Nazi supporters volunteered to assist them. Also, the armored vehicles were put to use.

**German troops creep up the side of the front of the Polish Post Office**

The leader of the group, Konrad Guderski, died during the second attack, by blowing himself up with a hand grenade to slow down the German advance through the building. The attack itself failed, as the rest of the Poles managed to drive out the Germans, even though their commanding officer had been killed.

**SS men attacking under cover of ADGZ vehicle.**

At this point, the siege was well into its sixth hour, but there was no sign of reinforcements. The commander of the Danzig police units, Willi Bethke, proposed to mine the post office and blow it up with its defenders. His idea was initially vetoed by Albert Forster, the head of the Danzig Nazi Party.

Soon the besiegers were joined by a Wehrmacht artillery detachment which provided mortar support, but the defenders stood their ground even under shell fire. After another failed attack, the Germans declared a two-hour ceasefire and called the Poles to surrender which they unanimously refused to do. In the meantime, German sappers were already planting explosives on the building’s side wall.

The exploding device went off and the Germans finally captured most of the building, but the remaining resistance had withdrawn successfully to the basement, where they made their last stand. Once again they refused to surrender, accepting the consequences, which meant death.

Bethke was made so furious by the Polish defiant stand, that he filled the building with gasoline and set it on fire, burning three of the defenders alive. The rest decided to capitulate to avoid incineration. The first two Poles who went out with a white flag were shot on sight. Six of them escaped, but two were caught the second day. The rest were apprehended and an immediate false trial was organized.

The trial – which was a mockery – sentenced the men to death on the accusation they were bandits. Since none of the apprehended was of military affiliation, they were denied the rights given to combatants by the Geneva Convention. The 16 wounded from the post office were transferred to a Gestapo hospital, where they all suffered death, most probably at the hands of the Secret Police agents. Among them was the 10-year-old daughter of the building’s superintendent, Erwina.

**The defenders being marched off to captivity**

A similar fate had struck eleven Polish railway workers south of the city after they foiled a German attempt to use an armored train, and were executed by the SA along with their immediate families. The defenders of the Danzig Post Office had held out for 15 hours. The reinforcements never came as they were occupied fighting the Wehrmacht invasion at the Tuchola Forest.

**Monument to the Defenders of the Polish Post Office, Gdansk.**

In 1979 in the People’s Republic of Poland a Defenders of the Polish Post Monument was unveiled in Gdansk. The ones who died during the siege and the ones who were executed afterward were posthumously relieved of their charges of banditry and rehabilitated.

46 Vintage Photos That Show Edwardian Ladies in Their Petticoats and Stockings

A petticoat or underskirt is an article of clothing, a type of undergarment worn under a skirt or a dress. Its precise meaning varies over centuries and between countries.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in current British English, a petticoat is “a light loose undergarment … hanging from the shoulders or waist”. In modern American usage, “petticoat” refers only to a garment hanging from the waist. They are most often made of cotton, silk or tulle. Without petticoats, skirts of the 1950s would not have the volume they were known for.[1] In historical contexts (16th to mid-19th centuries), petticoat refers to any separate skirt worn with a gown, bedgown, bodice or jacket; these petticoats are not, strictly speaking, underwear, as they were made to be seen. In both historical and modern contexts, petticoat refers to skirt-like undergarments worn for warmth or to give the skirt or dress the desired attractive shape. (Wikipedia)

45 Fascinating Historical Photos Volume 4

**Drying out clothes after Hurricane, Boston, 1938.**

Bernard Tussaud, grandson of Swiss modeller Madame Tussaud, holds two wax heads, one of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and the other of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. September 1935.

**John McCain (front right) with his squadron in 1965.**

**Survivors of the Wöbbelin concentration camp, 1945.**

**In February 1905, it was cold enough in St. Louis that the mighty Mississippi River froze solid.**

**Soldier of the German Wehrmacht in combat as a sniper sitting on a self-made seat in a tree. 1944.**

**Che Guevara (R) at the wheel of a US-made car with his second wife Aleida March (L) on their wedding day in Havana. 1959.**

**Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly Backstage, Oscars, 1956.**

**Housewife doing laundry using the first electric washing machine – Eatonville WA, 1910.**

**Convair B-36 aircraft fly over the Capitol for Harry S. Truman’s inauguration, January 20, 1949.**

**President William McKinley entering the Temple of Music, shortly before being assassinated – Sep 6, 1901**

**Drummer Ringo Starr is seen holding a sandwich in a scene from the Beatles’ film “A Hard Day’s Night,1964.**

**French soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870.**

**Leo Tolstoy with his granddaughter Tatiana, Yasnaya Polyana, Russia, circa 1910.**

**A Sandinista militiawoman smiles as she nurses her infant in Matagalpa, Nicaragua during the Contra War, 1984.**

**Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 1913, prisoner in large chains .**

Hattie Madders, winner of the Most Scary Woman in the UK title in 1883, was the only woman to hold the boxing heavyweight championship of the world title. Nicknamed ‘The Mad Hatter’ she allegedly won the belt in 1883, stopping Scottish pugilist Wee Willy Harris in the first round of their bout.

**Woman in three-wheeled vehicle, Washington, D.C. 1922.**

Wassily Kandinsky. With class in Kochel, Germany
1902.

**Robert McGee, scalped by Sioux Chief Little Turtle in 1864.**

**Two mummified cats, Egypt, 1200-700 BC**

**A little girl holds a penguin’s flipper as they walk together at London Zoo, 1937.**

**Maude Fealy (1883 – 1971) was an American stage and silent film actress who survived into the talkie era. Named “Most Beautiful Woman in the World” in 1903.**

**Edgware Road Station, and the first ever underground train journey, London.1862.**

**US Coast Guard Cutter Spencer destroys the Nazi submarine U-175, April 17, 1943.**

**An English nanny driving a motorized pram (stroller), 1922.**

**Jayne Mansfield with mini Mansfields, 1957.**

**Nazi Germany’s Indian Legion. France, 1944.**

**A member of the Ku Klux Klan holds a noose during attempts to suppress black voters in Miami, Fla., in 1939.**

**Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903 in Kitty Hawk North Carolina**

**Two boys hold their breath, amazed, on their first elevator ride – 1948.**

**Stephan Bibrowsky (1890-1932), known as Lionel the Lion-Faced Man. Sideshow performer for Barnum & Bailey’s Circus.**

**Statue of Liberty in Paris, 1877-1885**

**Inventor Erno Rubik demonstrates his cube in London in 1981**

**Smoking models learning proper cigarette smoking technique in practice for TV ad, 1953.**

**Princess Yvonne and Prince Alexander by their mother, Princess Marianne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn. 1955**

**Size of the donut hole through the years.**

**Tsar Nikolai’s II Car with skates, 1917.**

30 Wonderful Portraits of Artist Georgia O’Keeffe From Between the 1910s and 1930s

Georgia Totto O’Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O’Keeffe has been called the “Mother of American modernism”.

In 1905, O’Keeffe began art training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then the Art Students League of New York. In 1908, unable to fund further education, she worked for two years as a commercial illustrator and then taught in Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina between 1911 and 1918. She studied art in the summers between 1912 and 1914 and was introduced to the principles and philosophies of Arthur Wesley Dow, who created works of art based upon personal style, design, and interpretation of subjects, rather than trying to copy or represent them. This caused a major change in the way she felt about and approached art, as seen in the beginning stages of her watercolors from her studies at the University of Virginia and more dramatically in the charcoal drawings that she produced in 1915 that led to total abstraction. Alfred Stieglitz, an art dealer and photographer, held an exhibit of her works in 1917. Over the next couple of years, she taught and continued her studies at the Teachers College, Columbia University.

She moved to New York in 1918 at Stieglitz’s request and began working seriously as an artist. They developed a professional and personal relationship that led to their marriage in 1924. O’Keeffe created many forms of abstract art, including close-ups of flowers, such as the Red Canna paintings, that many found to represent female genitalia, although O’Keeffe consistently denied that intention. The imputation of the depiction of women’s sexuality was also fueled by explicit and sensuous photographs of O’Keeffe that Stieglitz had taken and exhibited.

O’Keeffe and Stieglitz lived together in New York until 1929, when O’Keeffe began spending part of the year in the Southwest, which served as inspiration for her paintings of New Mexico landscapes and images of animal skulls, such as Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue and Ram’s Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills. After Stieglitz’s death, she lived in New Mexico at Georgia O’Keeffe Home and Studio in Abiquiú until the last years of her life, when she lived in Santa Fe. In 2014, O’Keeffe’s 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 sold for $44,405,000, more than three times the previous world auction record for any female artist. After her death, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum was established in Santa Fe. (Wikipedia)

70 Interesting Photos of Street Scenes in Edinburgh, Scotland in the Early 1960s

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. Edinburgh is Scotland’s second-most populous city and the seventh-most populous city in the United Kingdom.

Recognised as the capital of Scotland since at least the 15th century, Edinburgh is the seat of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the highest courts in Scotland. The city’s Palace of Holyroodhouse is the official residence of the monarch in Scotland. The city has long been a centre of education, particularly in the fields of medicine, Scots law, literature, philosophy, the sciences and engineering. It is the second-largest financial centre in the United Kingdom, and the city’s historical and cultural attractions have made it the UK’s second-most visited tourist destination attracting 4.9 million visits, including 2.4 million from overseas in 2018.

Edinburgh’s official population estimates are 488,050 (mid-2016) for the Edinburgh locality, 518,500 (mid-2019) for the City of Edinburgh council area, and 1,339,380 (2014) for the wider city region. Edinburgh lies at the heart of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland city region comprising East Lothian, Edinburgh, Fife, Midlothian, Scottish Borders and West Lothian.

The city is the annual venue of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. It is home to national cultural institutions such as the National Museum of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland and the Scottish National Gallery. The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582 and now one of three in the city, is placed 16th in the QS World University Rankings for 2022. The city is also known for the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe, the latter being the world’s largest annual international arts festival. Historic sites in Edinburgh include Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the churches of St. Giles, Greyfriars and the Canongate, and the extensive Georgian New Town built in the 18th/19th centuries. Edinburgh’s Old Town and New Town together are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which has been managed by Edinburgh World Heritage since 1999. (Wikipedia)

**Princes Street looking west, Edinburgh, circa 1960**

**Castle Street, Edinburgh, circa 1960**

**Princes Street looking east, Edinburgh, circa 1960**

**St. Cuthbert’s horse-drawn milk cart, Canongate, Edinburgh, 1960**

**The ‘Pentland Hills Hotel’, 68 Camus Avenue, Edinburgh, 1960**

**View north from the castle, Edinburgh, circa 1960**

**By the Floral Clock, Edinburgh, 1961**

**East end of Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Fettes College, Inverleith, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Greyfriars’ Bobby’s Bar, Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Imperial Hotel, Leith Street, from the junction with Little King Street (the pub on the right is Moir’s Bar), Edinburgh, 1961**

**J. W. Mackie’s Shop & Tea Room, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Jenners Store, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Marcus’ Fur Shop, 97 Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Old Waverley Hotel from the Scott Monument, Princes Street, Edinburgh, circa 1961**

**Princes Street Gardens looking east, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Princes Street looking east, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Princes Street looking west from the Scott Monument, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Princes Street looking west, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Scott Monument, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Sunset from Calton Hill, Edinburgh, 1961**

**The Old Waverley Hotel, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1961**

**The ‘Roxburghe’ Hotel, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Usher Brewery Cart, Waverley Bridge, Edinburgh, 1961**

**West end of Princes Street at Binns Store, Edinburgh, 1961**

**Bus stop, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1962**

**Castle from George Heriot’s School, Edinburgh, 1962**

**High Street looking west, Edinburgh, 1962**

**John Knox’s House, High Street, Edinburgh, 1962**

**Looking west at St. Giles Cathedral, High Street, Edinburgh, 1962**

**Princes Street looking east, Edinburgh, circa 1962**

**Princes Street looking west, Edinburgh, circa 1962**

**River Almond, Cramond, Edinburgh, 1962**

**St. Mary’s Episcopalian Cathedral from Melville Street, Edinburgh, 1962**

**The castle from Frederick Street, Edinburgh, 1962**

**Canongate Tolbooth, High Street, Edinburgh, 1963**

**Greyfriars Bobby, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, circa 1963**

**Princes Street looking east, Edinburgh, 1963**

**St. Giles Cathedral, High Street, Edinburgh, 1963**

**Traffic policeman, junction of Frederick St. and Princes St., Edinburgh, 1963**

**Waverley Station from south St. Andrew Street, Edinburgh, 1963**

**West end, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1963**

**East Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, 1964**

**High Street Looking East at St. Giles, Edinburgh, 1964**

**John Knox’s House, High Street, Edinburgh, 1964**

**Junction of Princes Street and Shandwick Place, Edinburgh, 1964**

**Princes Street from Calton Hill, Edinburgh, 1964**

**Princes Street looking east, Edinburgh, 1964**

**Princes Street looking west, Edinburgh, 1964**

**Forth Road Bridge, River Forth, Queensferry, 1965**

**Princes Street looking east, Edinburgh, 1965**

**Princes Street Looking West, Edinburgh, 1965**

The Earliest Known Photos of 12 Major U.S Cities

Philadelphia, Pa.

**A view of 8th and Market streets downtown. It’s one of the earliest photos of the city, courtesy of Free Library of Philadelphia.**

New York City, N.Y.

**This home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a daguerreotype from 1848.**

Boston, Mass.

William Blake photographed this aerial view of Boston from a hot air balloon in 1860, courtesy of the Boston Public Library. It was the first successful aerial photographic effort in the U.S., according to the Air and Space Museum.

Washington, D.C.

**John Plumbe made a daguerreotype of the Capitol Building in 1846, according to the Library of Congress.**

Detroit, Mich.

**A view of Randolph Street in downtown Detroit from the 1890s, courtesy of the Walter P. Reuther Library.**

Miami, Fla.

**Gleason Waite Romer took this snapshot of Old Fort Dallas and the Seminole Club hotel in Miami in 1895. This photo comes from the State Archives of Florida.**

New Orleans, La.

**George F. Mugnier photographed a cotton shipment at a New Orleans dock in the 1880s, courtesy of the State Library of Louisiana.**

San Antonio, Tex.

**The earliest known photograph of the Alamo Church and Plaza in San Antonio comes from 1858, according to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library.**

Denver, Colo.

**This is a view of downtown Denver’s Blake Street in 1866 from the Denver Public Library.**

Las Vegas, Nev.

**This photograph of the First State Bank of Las Vegas, circa 1905, comes from the special collections at the library of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.**

Seattle, Wash.

Charles Terry’s residence on the northeast corner of James Street and Third Avenue in Seattle in 1865, courtesy of the Museum of History and Industry. The building later became Seattle’s Public Safety Building. Theodore E. Peiser took the photograph.

Los Angeles, Calif.

**This is an early view of Spring Street in Los Angeles dating from 1870 – 1880, from the California Historical Society Collection at the University of Southern California.**

Dressing a Victorian Woman in the 1860s

At the beginning of the Victorian era, all clothing was hand-made. Because of this, dresses were expensive, and only the wealthy could afford a large wardrobe. The less fortunate wore cast-offs, clothing from second-hand shops, or sewed their own. After the invention of the sewing machine in 1851, the industry began to change. Not only was clothing less expensive to produce, it was mass-produced, and by the end of the century, ready-made dresses were available to the general public at department stores.

A Victorian woman did not simply throw on a gown over her slip and panties, though. There were many layers to achieve the picture of fashion perfection. If you ever wondered how Victorian women got dressed 160 years ago, take a look at these amazing images.

The Last Public Execution By Guillotine, 1939

In the early morning of 17 June 1939, Eugène Weidmann became the last person to be publicly executed by guillotine. He had been convicted of multiple kidnappings and murders, including that of a young American socialite.

**Weidmann is placed in the guillotine seconds before the blade falls.**

Beginning with the botched kidnapping of an American tourist, the inspiring dancer Jean de Koven, Eugène Weidmann murdered two women and four men in the Paris area in 1937. His other victims included a woman lured by the false offer of a position as a governess; a chauffeur; a publicity agent; a real estate broker; and a man Weidmann had met as an inmate in a German prison. On the surface, his crimes seemed in most cases to have had a profit motive, but they generally brought him very small winnings. Born in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1908, Weidmann early showed himself to be an incorrigible criminal. He had been sent to a juvenile detention facility and then served prison terms for theft and burglary in Canada and Germany prior to his arrival in Paris in 1937.

**Weidmann is led away in handcuffs after his capture by police.**

**During the trial of Eugene Weidmann.**

After a sensational and much-covered trial, Weidmann was sentenced to death. On the morning of June 17, 1939, Weidmann was taken out in front of the Prison Saint-Pierre, where a guillotine and a clamoring, whistling crowd awaited him. Among the attendees was future acting legend Christopher Lee, then 17 years old. Weidmann was placed into the guillotine, and France’s chief executioner Jules-Henri Desfourneaux let the blade fall without delay.

Rather then react with solemn observance, the crowd behaved rowdily, using handkerchiefs to dab up Weidmann’s blood as souvenirs. Paris-Soir denounced the crowd as “disgusting”, “unruly”, “jostling, clamoring, whistling”. The unruly crowd delayed the execution beyond the usual twilight hour of dawn, enabling clear photographs and one short film to be taken.

After the event the authorities finally came to believe that “far from serving as a deterrent and having salutary effects on the crowds” the public execution “promoted baser instincts of human nature and encouraged general rowdiness and bad behavior”. The “hysterical behavior” by spectators was so scandalous that French president Albert Lebrun immediately banned all future public executions.

Guillotine was the only mean of execution that the French republic had ever known, the device was in service from 1792 to 1977. For almost 200 years the guillotine executed tens of thousands of culprits (or not) without ever failing to deliver a quick and painless death.

While it is easy to see the guillotine as barbaric, it is actually a lot less gruesome than it looks. Capital punishment was very common in pre-revolutionary France. For nobles, the typical method of execution was beheading; for commoners, it was usually hanging, but less common and crueler sentences were also practiced. When Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed the new method of execution to the National Assembly, it was meant to be more humane than previous capital punishments and also to be an equal method of death for all criminals regardless of rank.

Compared to many forms of capital punishment practiced to this day, the guillotine remains one of the best if we are judging based on pain and “cleanness”. In fact, the guillotine was developed with the idea of creating the most humane way to execute people. The condemned don’t feel pain, death is almost instantaneous and there are very few ways for things to be botched. The head of the victim remains alive for about 10-13 seconds, depending on the glucose and blood levels in his brain at the time. However, the head is believed to be more than likely knocked unconscious by the force of the blow and blood loss.

**Preparing the guillotine (the spot was changed later).**

**Weidmann is led to the guillotine, passing by the trunk that will be used to transport his body.**

**A crowd awaiting Weidmann’s execution gathers around the guillotine outside the Prison Saint-Pierre.**

60 Stunning Photos Showing Hat Styles of Beautiful Women From Between the 1920s and 1950s

58 Interesting Photographs That Shows Street Scenes of Georgia, USSR During the 1970s

Georgia is a country located in the Caucasus, at the intersection of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Georgia is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north and east by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. It covers 69,700 square kilometres (26,911 sq mi), and has a population of 3.7 million excluding the occupied territories. Georgia is a representative democracy governed as a unitary parliamentary republic. Tbilisi is the capital and largest city, home to roughly a quarter of the population.

During the classical era, several independent kingdoms became established in what is now Georgia, such as Colchis and Iberia. Georgians officially adopted Christianity in the early fourth century, which contributed to the spiritual and political unification of early Georgian states. In the Middle Ages, the unified Kingdom of Georgia emerged and reached its Golden Age during the reign of King David the Builder and Queen Tamar the Great in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Thereafter, the kingdom declined and eventually disintegrated under the hegemony of various regional powers, including the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire and successive dynasties of Persia. In 1783, one of the Georgian kingdoms entered an alliance with the Russian Empire, which proceeded to annex the territory of modern Georgia in a piecemeal fashion throughout the 19th century.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Georgia emerged as an independent republic under German protection. Following World War I, Georgia was forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union in 1922, becoming one of its fifteen constituent republics. By the 1980s, an independence movement emerged and grew quickly, leading to Georgia’s secession from the Soviet Union in April 1991. For most of the subsequent decade, post-Soviet Georgia suffered from economic crisis, political instability, ethnic conflict, and secessionist wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Following the bloodless Rose Revolution in 2003, Georgia strongly pursued a pro-Western foreign policy; it introduced a series of democratic and economic reforms aimed at integration into the European Union and NATO. The country’s Western orientation soon led to worsening relations with Russia, at one point even resulting in a brief war in 2008.

Georgia is a developing country, classified as “very high” on the Human Development Index. Economic reforms since independence have led to higher levels of economic freedom and ease of doing business, as well as reductions in corruption indicators, poverty, and unemployment. It is one of the first countries in the world to legalize cannabis, becoming the only former-communist state in the world to do so. The country is a member of international organizations across both Europe and Asia, such as Council of Europe, Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Eurocontrol, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development. (Wikipedia)