Poland was a problematic issue for the Big Powers throughout the Second World War. For Britain, Poland was a major stumbling block in British-Soviet relations as Polish-Soviet territorial disputes clashed with the needs of the British-Soviet-United States alliance. As the Polish government-in-exile attempted to obtain a guarantee of British support, and many thousands of Polish troops fought for the British cause, the perception grew that the Churchill government had a debt to pay. Ultimately, however, it was a debt which Britain could not discharge because of its dependence on Soviet participation in the war. In this book Anita Prazmowska looks at British policies from the point of view of wartime strategy, relating this to Polish government expectations and policies. She describes a tragic situation where Polish soldiers were trapped between the grandiose and unrealistic plans of their government and the harsh realities of a war which they fought with no prospect of a satisfactory outcome for them or their country.

An in-depth history of the attack that began World War II, and one country’s courageous fight against two unstoppable forces. Hitler’s military offensive against Poland on September 1, 1939 was the brutal act that triggered the start of World War II, wreaking six years of death and bloodshed around the world. But the campaign is often overshadowed by the momentous struggle that followed across the rest of Europe. In this thought-provoking study, each stage of the battle is reconstructed in graphic detail. The author examines the precarious situation Poland was in, caught between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He also reconsiders the pre-war policies of the other European powers—particularly France and Britain—and assesses the evolving scenario in a vivid, fast-moving narrative. Included throughout are first-hand accounts of soldiers and civilians who were caught up in the war as well as the Polish capitulation and its tragic aftermath.

From the cover. After staging a mock attack at Gleiwitz, Germany unleashed its blitzkrieg on Poland on September 1, 1939. Two week later, Soviet forces streamed into the beleaguered country from the east. By early October, Poland had fallen. In a vivid narrative that follows the invading armies from the battle at Westerplatte to the siege of Warsaw, David Williamson takes a fresh look at the opening campaign of World War II, shattering enduring myths and misconceptions and giving voice to the men -- German, Soviet, and Polish -- who did the fighting.

A revealing account of Polish cooperation with Nazis in WWII—a “grim, compelling [and] significant scholarly study” (Kirkus Reviews). Between 1942 and 1943, thousands of Jews escaped the fate of German death camps in Poland. As they sought refuge in the Polish countryside, the Nazi death machine organized what they called Judenjagd, meaning hunt for the Jews. As a result of the Judenjagd, few of those who escaped the death camps would survive to see liberation. As Jan Grabowski’s penetrating microhistory reveals, the majority of the Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors. Hunt for the Jews tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa, Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland. Drawing on materials from Polish, Jewish, and German sources created during and after the war, Grabowski documents the involvement of the local Polish population in the process of detecting and killing the Jews who sought their aid. Through detailed reconstruction of events, “Grabowski offers incredible insight into how Poles in rural Poland reacted to and, not infrequently, were complicit with, the German practice of genocide. Grabowski also, implicitly, challenges us to confront our own myths and to rethink how we narrate British (and American) history of responding to the Holocaust” (European History Quarterly).

Arthur Bliss Lane was a hugely experienced American Diplomat, having worked all over the world before his posting to the Polish Government in 1944. The Polish Government was then in exile in London and he gained a great deal of respect for the Polish leadership. He followed them back to their homeland in 1945 as the Poles sought to set-up a democratic state from the smashed debris of years of Nazi domination. What transpired was a new form of despotism in Soviets, in this memoir Bliss gives a detailed history of Poland from 1944-1947, the post-war border changes and the Soviet creation of a puppet state in Poland after WWII. In Bliss’ view the Poles were hung out to dry by the Allies after 1945 and his memoir provides compelling evidence of this.

The suffering of Syrian civilians, caught between the government’s barrel bombs and chemical weapons and religious fanatics’ beheadings and mass killings, shocked the world. Yet despite international law and political commitments proclaiming a responsibility to protect civilians from mass atrocities, world actors stood aside as Syria burned. Again and again, neighboring states, global powers, and the United Nations opted for half-measures or made counterproductive choices that caused even more harm. Alex J. Bellamy provides a forensic account of the world’s failure to protect Syrian civilians from mass atrocities. Drawing on interviews with key players, documents from the United Nations and other international organizations, and sources from the Middle East and beyond, he traces the missteps of the international response to Syria’s civil war. Bellamy systematically examines the various peace processes and the reasons they failed, highlighting potential alternative paths. He details how and why key actors prioritized their own national interest, geopolitical standing, regional stability, local rivalries, counterterrorism goals, or domestic politics rather than the welfare of Syrians. Some governments settled on unrealistic strategies founded on misguided assumptions while others pursued naked ambition; the United Nations descended into irrelevance and even complicity. Shedding new light on the decisions that led to a vast calamity, Syria Betrayed also draws out lessons for more effective responses to future civil conflicts.

Herbert Hoover's "magnum opus"—at last published nearly fifty years after its completion—offers a revisionist reexamination of World War II and its cold war aftermath and a sweeping indictment of the "lost statesmanship" of Franklin Roosevelt. Hoover offers his frank evaluation of Roosevelt's foreign policies before Pearl Harbor and policies during the war, as well as an examination of the war's consequences, including the expansion of the Soviet empire at war's end and the eruption of the cold war against the Communists.