Then a month or two before my 18th birthday, I got a postcard saying I had been auto-registered. It was a rather disappointing denouement.
If it hasn’t been used in 50 years, is there some other use for the registry or the organization or why hasn’t this been cut yet?
The Selective Service auto-registers people from various data sources.
But this puts me in a weird spot: I've never actually registered. I am registered. But I did not register - which is the requirement.
There are Kafka-esque parts of the US government where this distinction could matter.
Informally, it's put forward as one of the most successful government programs in history: it succeeds at all it's objective, comes in at or under budget, employs few people, and avoids the scope creep that kills other successful programs.
It's only shortcoming: it doesn't actually do anything.
https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/source_view.php?SourceId=42...
Of course, this is old times now, but here is the same, there is no benefit to register, and you increase your risk to die.
Don't do it.
First one is definitely true and isn’t emphasized much and tbh I feel like that demand wasn’t unreasonable. Shipping people and things and providing defense would be a lot harder to an exclave than to contiguous territory. They did seriously overreact by invading, of course, and it seems like Mr H had some serious temperamental issues.
Second one I’ve never researched enough to know if it’s true or German propaganda.
I don’t recall the Germans ever claiming that Poland was about to invade them? Maybe I missed it.
Russians talk about further expansion too.