A "chilling" and "expertly" written history of the 1939 September Campaign and the onset of World War II (Times of London). For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Poland, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's soldiers invaded, followed later that month by Stalin's Red Army. The conflict that followed saw the debut of many of the features that would come to define the later war-blitzkrieg, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate aerial bombing-yet it is routinely overlooked by historians. In Poland 1939, Roger Moorhouse reexamines the least understood campaign of World War II, using original archival sources to provide a harrowing and very human account of the events that set the bloody tone for the conflict to come.

The Second World War gripped Poland as it did no other country in Europe. Invaded by both Germany and the Soviet Union, it remained under occupation by foreign armies from the first day of the war to the last. The conflict was brutal, as Polish armies battled the enemy on four different fronts. It was on Polish soil that the architects of the Final Solution assembled their most elaborate network of extermination camps, culminating in the deliberate destruction of millions of lives, including three million Polish Jews. In The Eagle Unbowed, Halik Kochanski tells, for the first time, the story of Poland's war in its entirety, a story that captures both the diversity and the depth of the lives of those who endured its horrors. Most histories of the European war focus on the Allies' determination to liberate the continent from the fascist onslaught. Yet the "good war" looks quite different when viewed from Lodz or Krakow than from London or Washington, D.C. Poland emerged from the war trapped behind the Iron Curtain, and it would be nearly a half-century until Poland gained the freedom that its partners had secured with the defeat of Hitler. Rescuing the stories of those who died and those who vanished, those who fought and those who escaped, Kochanski deftly reconstructs the world of wartime Poland in all its complexity-from collaboration to resistance, from expulsion to exile, from Warsaw to Treblinka. The Eagle Unbowed provides in a single volume the first truly comprehensive account of one of the most harrowing periods in modern history.

An in-depth history of the Polish soldiers who served in World War 2, with previously unpublished first-hand accounts and rare photographs. There is a chapter of World War II history that remains largely untold; the monumental struggles of an entire nation have been forgotten, and even intentionally obscured. This book gives a full overview of Poland's participation in World War II. Following their valiant but doomed defence of Poland in 1939, members of the Polish armed forces fought with the Allies wherever and however they could. Full of previously unpublished accounts, and rare photographs, this title provides a detailed analysis of the devastation the war brought to Poland, and the final betrayal when, having fought for freedom for six long years, Poland was handed to the Soviet Union.

Intermingles an account of Poland's participation in the military effort of World War II with factual human-interest stories.

This book explores contemporary debates surrounding Poland’s 'war children', that is the young victims, participants and survivors of the Second World War. It focuses on the period after 2001, which saw the emergence of the two main political parties that were to dictate the tone of the politics of memory for more than a decade. The book shows that 2001 marked a caesura in Poland’s post-Communist history, as this was when the past took center stage in Polish political life. It argues that during this period a distinct culture of commemoration emerged in Poland – one that was not only governed by what the electorate wanted to hear and see, but also fueled by emotions.

The official end of World War II did not mean the end of the torments inflicted on civilians. This book brings us vivid personal accounts of ordinary people in Poland--Poles, Germans, Jews, Ukrainians, and others--caught up in the most violent war in history and its aftermath. No place experienced more intense suffering for a longer period of time than Poland--the first country to be invaded by both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia and the last to be "liberated". This is the story of how people survived the flames of war, and began to clear the rubble and try to rebuild their lives, from January to December 1945.