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The Eagle Unbowed: Poland And The Poles In The Second World War (2012)

by Halik Kochanski(Favorite Author)

4.15 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0674068149 (ISBN13: 9780674068148)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Harvard University Press

review 1: Kochanski’s book, surely, contains everything the general reader will ever want to know about Poland and the Poles in the Second World War – invasion (by Germany and Russia); occupation; exile; fighting under the British and the Russians; the Holocaust; the risings; and the final inexorable establishment of Soviet domination. The book is readable even through the dullest political passages, although I would have liked to have learned more about the main actors as people – Anders, Sikorski, Mikolajczyk. Kochanski takes up the Polish cause, but does not whitewash the Poles in their relations with Jews, Ukrainians, and even Germans.
review 2: A reasonably even-handed narrative history of Poland and the Poles in the Second World War. Kochanski does focus prim... morearily on the actions of the London Poles and the allied underground movement in Poland. Coverage is given to the Soviet-backed Lublin movement and the associated military forces. More depth on this side would seem merited, as this is the government that wound up in control of Poland in the post-war era. Kochanski is critical of the London government and its inability to respond to the conditions it faced on the ground. Once it became clear that liberation from the Germans would necessarily be by the Soviets, Polish policies needed to change to reflect that and mostly didn't. Kochanski ends with analysis of the post-war swings in Polish history of the war; the book would have benefited from a final reflection on what happened and what might have been done differently. less

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