Polish Poetry from the Soviet Gulags: Recovering a Lost Literature Review

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(More customer reviews)I am not knowledgeable about poetry. For this reason, my review is limited to the chapter authored by historian Marek Chodakiewicz. He combines facts and personal experiences related to his family (from the Grodno area), and estimates that 20% of present-day Poles have or had family members sent to the Gulags. [My own parents and grandparents were among those sent there].
Already 500 years ago, Muscovy would kidnap Poles and others for purposes of slave labor, and resettle them eastward. This tendency increased during the Partitions, and especially as a form of tsarist reprisal for the Polish insurrections of 1830 and 1863. Even after some of the deportees' descendants had survived many generations in exile, they were subject to renewed horrors. For instance, about 150,000 Soviet Poles perished during the Communist purges of 1934-1938.
WWII opened a new chapter in Russian aggression against Poland, the murder of Poles in places such as Katyn, and the deportation of Polish citizens to the interior of the USSR. In recent years, certain revisionists, based on Soviet archives, have tried to degrade the number of Poles exiled in 1939-1941 to only 390,000, which is 3-6 times smaller than previous estimates. Chodakiewicz refutes this revisionism. To begin with, he reminds us that closed Soviet archives, despite not having been written for propaganda purposes, are nevertheless well known to be notoriously unreliable. He points out that the 390,000 figure would make sense only if the number of prisoners per railroad car was 25, as stated in Soviet guidelines. To the contrary: There is a large body of testimonies, by both Polish and Jewish deportees, showing remarkable consistency about the fact that the numbers of prisoners per railroad car was 27-70 (occasionally higher), averaging about 40. Chodakiewicz supports a figure of 1,250,000 Polish deportees sent eastward during 1939-1941. This, of course, means that only a small fraction of these deportees were freed as a result of the Nazi-attack-induced "amnesty" of 1941.
The "liberation" of Poland from Nazi rule in 1944 by the Soviet "ally" did not change things. The deportations of Poles started anew. Approximately 50,000 Kresy Poles were arrested and sent to the interior of the USSR in 1944-1947, as were at least 100,000 Poles from Poland as defined by her post-WWII boundaries. This is in addition to 2,000,000 Poles expelled from the Kresy and resettled in postwar Poland.
Many of the surviving Siberian deportees were not freed until 1956, or even later. During the years of the Soviet puppet state (1944-1989), mention of the Siberian exiles could only occur sporadically, informally, and underground. After 1989, this once-taboo subject came out in the open. Many memorial societies have since been formed, including the Siberia Virtual Museum on the Internet.


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This work presents a translation of 25 poems that chronicle a largely unexamined period of Polish history. For fifty years the history of forced deportations of Poles to the Soviet work camps was a taboo subject in Poland. During the post-war communist era Poles were forbidden to discuss or publish any materials relating to the unlawful imprisonments, executions, and forced deportations to the Soviet gulags during WWII. Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1991, did the victims of Stalin's terror and their families begin to reveal their experiences. While enduring the inhumane conditions of the labor camps, Polish nationals wrote poems that today serve as a testimony to their faith, strength and courage. By translating a selection of poems written by Polish survivors the translator brings to English-speaking readers a riveting picture of the horror of the Siberian gulags.

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Hunting Warbirds: The Obsessive Quest for the Lost Aircraft of World War II Review

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(More customer reviews)Author Hoffman did well in bringing the Kee Bird (B-29) renovate-to-fly story to the reader. His vivid character descriptions made one feel he was in a smoke filled, "expat" barroom alive with dreams and deals. However much like the Kee Bird herself, Mr. Hoffman's book failed to clear the runway and fly the reader to a satisfying landing. After the Kee Bird tale the author lapsed into a meandering style as he wrote of hohum tell-me-about-yourself visits with vintage aircraft collectors and relatively mundane (cf. the Kee Bird) aircraft recovery ops. Additionally, as noted by another reviewer, if you are a student of vintage aircraft you already know of the Hoffman tales via PBS, Discovey, and aeronautical periodicals.

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La's Orchestra Saves the World: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)Alexander McCall Smith has built a following based on his serial novels -- the Mma Ramotswe mysteries set in Botswana as well as the two series of more general fiction set in his home town of Edinburgh. In those, each chapter is essentially a self-contained story, each of which builds on the events in previous chapters and creates a narrative arc leading toward the book's conclusion. In "La's Orchestra Saves the World", the author has taken a much more conventional structure, although his main character, La herself, is anything but a traditional heroine, although in her own way she is just as quirky as any Botswanan sleuth or 40-something Edinburgh bluestock philosopher.
La, the eponymous heroine, after a series of events, is living in the English countryside, somewhat rootless and aimless, when World War 2 breaks out. Her need -- never strongly felt -- to seek a place for herself gives way to a quest to make herself useful. She cares for a local farmer's hens, creates a garden -- and, to her own astonishment, creates a ramshackle kind of orchestra made up in part of the airmen from a local RAF base.
This is not a war novel in any sense; the conflict itself is distant from the day to day lives of La and her neighbors, even as they must cope with everything from the deaths of those they know to the vicissitudes of rationing. The style, plot and character development are as old-fashioned in feeling as La's proper name -- Lavender. But there is a hint of mystery and even tension when La comes on the scene. A Polish airman -- or is he? -- he plays the flute in La's orchestra, and helps out on the farm. But not everyone is as drawn to Felix as is La, and even she realizes there are some unanswered questions about his background...
Ultimately all is revealed, but this is not a conventional love story, either. While this book will probably appeal to those who enjoy reading the musings of Isabel Dalhousie in Alexander McCall Smith's Sunday Philosophy Club series, fans of the Ladies No. 1 Detective Club stories will find it much less vibrant and forceful, either in tone or characterization. The plot meanders gently to what some may find a disappointing conclusion, albeit one that makes sense of what has gone before.
It's an oddly passive story, albeit one that deals in a quiet way with all the major themes of life: love, war and a quest for identity and purpose. Those with the patience to keep reading will find much that is rewarding in a gentle kind of way, particularly in La's quest to create sense of meaning from what often seems to her to be a life that too detached.

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The Ice Road: An Epic Journey from the Stalinist Labor Camps to Freedom Review

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(More customer reviews)Stefan Waydenfeld's memoir is an outstanding contribution to World War II history. Originally published in Britain, in a small press run, THE ICE ROAD received outstanding reviews (including THE FINANCIAL TIMES) before disappearing from the market.
It will be hard for the reader to put this book down. Told without rancor, with smooth-flowing detail, this is also a story about coming of age, albeit in a world surrounded by tragedy.
Stefan Weidenfeld was one of the lucky ones - tens of thousands of Polish citizens were deported to the Soviet hinterlands, never to emerge and becoming unknown and ephemeral footnotes to history. This book is a monument to all of those who rode the freight cars East into oblivion.
Hopefully, this brilliant book will finally receive the attention it deserves.
George F Cholewczynski

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In a forgotten chapter of history, 1.5 million Polish civilians-arbitrarily arrested by Stalin as enemies of the people following the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939-were deported to slave labor camps throughout the most inhospitable forests and steppes of the Soviet Union. The Ice Road is the gripping story of young Stefan Waydenfeld and his family, deported by cattle car in 1940 to the frozen wastes of the Russian arctic north.

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When God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption Review

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(More customer reviews)The teaching of history is often distorted by selective presentation of past events. Virtually everyone has heard of the 5-6 million Jews killed by the Germans. Few outside Polish circles have a clue about the fact that 2-3 million gentile Poles were also murdered by the Germans, and a few hundred thousand by the Soviets--first as Poland's sworn enemy and then as an "ally". While Churchill and Roosevelt were dilly-dallying with "Uncle Joe" Stalin, he was still murdering Poles and executing his plans to deprive "liberated" Poland from her rightful independence, freedom, and sovereignity. The western powers shamelessly disregarded the Atlantic Charter and betrayed the Poles--who all along had been fighting on their side on just about every front, and who had played a significant, if not decisive, role in preventing the Luftwaffe from achieving air supremacy over the English skies as a prelude to the planned German invasion (Operation Sea Lion).
This work provides an absorbing personal account of the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Poles by the Soviet Union following the German-Soviet conquest of Poland in 1939. Wes Adamczyk, then a boy of 7, was to lose his father in the infamous Katyn Massacre, and his entire family was uprooted and sent to a living death in Kazakhstan. He was one of the lucky few to be released and to eventually find his way to a new life in the United States. Decades later, he fulfilled his wish to visit the site of his father's murder near Smolensk, Russia.
The reader is exposed to the brutality of the Soviet police as they ransack the Adamczyk home, destroy objects related to Polish patriotism, and herd the family ("enemies of the people") into overcrowded trains for the fateful trip east. Every day becomes a battle for survival. They are near starvation. However, individual Kazakhs and Russians show friendship towards the Poles. The young Adamczyk befriends Mr. Petrovitch on a fishing boat. The moving account tells how the elderly Russian teaches the boy the truth about Communism. It is lies on top of lies on top of lies. In fact, the continued spying by the Soviet police on the captive Poles does not stem from the fact that they suspect that the Poles may escape or revolt. The spying comes from the fear that the locals may learn the truth about the outside world from the Poles--that the non-
Communist world is not rotten, and that the Soviet Union is no workers' paradise.
Nazi Germany turns against its erstwhile Soviet ally, creating a chance for the Poles, consigned to eventual death from starvation, overwork, and disease, to escape the Gulag. Negotiations "succeed" in securing the release of captive Poles. But the Soviets drag their feet, and only a fraction of still-living captive Poles end up being released. The Adamczyk family has to stage a near-escape adventure to reach Iran. The squalor of the just-freed Poles is indescribable. Thousands die right there, including Wes Adamczyk's mother--ironically just a short time after having finally left the clutches of the Soviet hell.
Tens of thousands of previously-captured Polish officers are found to be conspicuously and unexpectedly missing, and the Soviets say, "They all escaped to Manchuria". As time drags on, the Adamczyks realize the fate of their father and the remainder of the POWs. The Soviets don't admit responsibility for the Katyn Massacre until 1990. The long cover-up by western governments is little better than the decades-long Soviet one. The west needed a second coverup to cover its first coverup of the conspiracy of silence about this heinous Soviet crime.
The Adamczyks, like all surviving Poles, get a cruel blow when they learn that Roosevelt and Churchill have betrayed their faithful ally Poland by giving away eastern Poland to the Russians, and allowed a Communist puppet state to be forced on the rest of "liberated" Poland. In a sense, all of the Polish sufferings and sacrifices turn out to have been in vain. The Adamczyks, and millions of other Poles, have no home to return to. The only "happy ending" is a new life in America.


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Poland in World War II: An Illustrated Military History (Hippocrene Illustrated Histories) Review

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(More customer reviews)"Poland in World War II: An Illustrated Military History" by Andrew Hempel is a great overview of the Polish military effort in the second World War. This book is a concise outline, and not a lengthy volume, so it makes a great introduction to the topic. With more than 50 black-and-white photographs, the people and events described are brought to life.
As this book is concise and written in a straightforward manner, it makes great reading for young people or even postgraduates like me interested in the topic.

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Poland's participation in World War II is generally little known in the West. This illustrated history presents the Polish military war effort, intermingled with factual human interest stories.

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"Final Solution": Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jew Review

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(More customer reviews)A most excellent insight. The author deals mainly with the period September 1939 to the Wannsee meeting in January 1942, making use of new material which has come to light. He illustrates with meticulous attention to detail how those entrusted with the grisly task - Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann, Frank etc - moved inexorably to their final position of Jewish extermination. The problems they had to deal with en route, including opposition from those who wanted to keep the Jews alive for indefinite slave labor and the economic expectancy of those Germans recently moved from "liberated" territories back to the Reich, are recounted in all their complex detail. The final chapter gives a selection of pertinent remarks from the murderers themselves. I have never read a more incisive and readable account of the incremental steps leading up to the Final Solution.

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How did it come about that a modern European state in the middle of the twentieth century planned and carried out the industrially organized mass murder of six million Jews, male and female, adults and children?Making extensive use of Russian, German, and Polish archives, Aly has provided the most exact and detailed reconstruction of the "Final Solution" yet achieved. As well as looking at the ideological imperative in the Nazi state to "solve the Jewish question" and at Hitler's own role, Aly investigates the actions of those running the Reich Security Headquarters in Berlin and of those numerous lesser figures on the ground who were in the eye of the storm, grappling with the planning failures inherent in Nazi resettlement plans and experiencing mounting difficulties in trying to be rid of "their" Jews. Aly illustrates, through the evidence he builds into an overall mosaic, the lunacy of Nazi race policy, and the variety of agencies that went into the gradual shaping of a policy of all-out genocide.

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Stalin's Drive to the West, 1938-1945: The Origins of the Cold War Review

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(More customer reviews)Since there are as yet no reviews on this book, I will post the review by Paul Saydak, who at the time was a doctoral student in history at Yale University.
The Cold War remains one of the most debated topics between scholars of American, Russian, West European and Central European history. Who was to blame for the start of the Cold War? Was it an aggressive Russian policy or American actions which set off the struggle? Likewise, was it the West's fault for having pushed Stalin into the arms of Hitler and set up a paradigm through which Moscow would continue to mistrust the Western powers even after the war? Given the lack of access to the Soviet archives, the academic community has produced a colorful array of interpretations explaining the initiation of the Cold War.
With the help of the newly available sources from Eastern Europe as well as a few from the former Soviet Union, R.C. Raack has undertaken to contribute to the field of Cold War interpretation in his latest work. Responding to recent historiography claiming that Stalin, after the West failed to give Moscow a firm alliance offer, had little choice but to sign the Nazi-Soviet pact in August 1939, Raack makes a case that Stalin in fact allied himself with Hitler for other reasons. Raack's major contribution to the field of interpretation of the origins of the Cold War lies in the fact that he dates Stalin's planned offensive intentions further back than most: back to 1938.
Raack dates Stalin's planned offensive intentions to 1938. They led the Soviet leader to advocate the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in the late summer of 1939. The earlier Soviet attempt to move westward was stopped by the Poles.
Citing the evidence of Molotov's private boastings of expansionism in the summer of 1940, Raack demonstrates Stalin's desire to expand into the west of Europe. This desire, according to Raack, led the Soviet leader to advocate the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in the late summer of 1939. The author writes that if Stalin's international motives are closely examined, we can infer that in 1938 and in 1939, Stalin wanted a general war in the West, though without his participation, with the British, French, and Germans bogged down in a mutually debilitating conflict over Czechoslovakia. It was this kind of war that his quick agreement with Hitler, manufactured in the summer of 1939, was designed to encourage. (p. 20) In fact, the Soviets did gain valuable time in the almost two years after the Nazi-Soviet Agreement with which to consolidate its new officer ranks (previously handicapped and reeling from massive purges). Additionally, Raack's contention about Soviet desires for westward expansion as early as 1938 is supported by the often ignored attempts by Moscow to do the same less than two decades earlier in the summer of 1920. That Soviet attempt to move westward was eventually stopped at the gates of Warsaw and pushed back by Józef Pisudski's Polish armies.
Raack's work offers other compelling contributions to Cold War scholarship. Probably the most interesting is Raack's contention that Stalin did not view the future of Nazism and Socialism as forever divergent. Introducing a possible affinity between Stalin and Hitler, Raack uses the recently available Soviet documentation to show that Stalin, in November 1939, testified to having believed that someday Communism and National Socialism would converge. Stalin told several trusted colleagues that he believed that the German political system would increasingly take on socialist characteristics leading to the eventual convergence.
The remainder of Raack's study documents further the increasing aggression of the Soviet army throughout the war. First, after two and a half weeks of fighting the Germans, the Poles found themselves attacked from behind by Soviet armies which, in cooperation with Hitler, partitioned Poland for the fourth time. The Finns were attacked soon afterwards in November 1939. By August 1940, the Balts were annexed to the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941, the Nazi attack on its former Soviet ally drew Stalin into the eventually victorious Allied coalition with the West.
What is refreshing about Raack's approach is his familiarity with East European sources which Western writers continue to ignore. For instance, he cites standard works in Polish on the period by such scholars as Piotr ¸ossowski, Krystyna Kersten, Jan Karski and Anna Cienciala. These studies enable him to portray with incomparably higher accuracy the East European experience in the context of Russian diplomacy with the West.
The immediate postwar period is illuminated by one of the most creative moments of Raack's book. Through his brilliant use of Soviet cinematic footage, the author captures Moscow's intentions at the end of the war. In May 1945, Stalin demanded that the Allies stage a repeat for cameras of the German surrender which had already occurred at Reims. On May 8, Soviet cameras and props were prepared for the affair in the Soviet-controlled German city of Karlshorst. Raack points out that the Soviet films which captured the event made sure to keep Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov in center screen throughout 'to emphasize the Red Army's major importance, this point likewise reiterated by the narrator.' (p. 115) An overnight feud among Allied powers about placement of representatives before the episode did not stop a favorable seating arrangement for the Soviets. Raack writes:
The squabble and the lack of Western preparation for the Soviets' pettifoggery here anticipated the conflicts to come and recalled such past inter-Allied wartime diplomatic exchange. It was an almost too obvious display of the East-West dichotomy that Stalin already had in mind. On the one side were the victorious Soviet armies; on the other, seated together as one scarcely significant group, were the Western Allies. This split is particularly emphasized in the Moscow-edited film, most certainly the official Soviet version, that was released in June [1945]. Already the Soviets were scorning that wartime parlance about 'allies'.... (p.116)
Raack shows the cynicism of Stalin's approach to the West at war's end. However, Stalin's intentions would not become fully apparent to Washington until 1946. Unfortunately for the Central and Eastern Europeans, the Red Army's presence upon their territory, until then unchallenged by the Americans, began what would become the loss of independence for Central and Eastern Europe for the next forty-four years.
The origins of Eastern Europe's occupation by Soviet troops, as presented by R.C. Raack's book, deserve more than a casual read. For those interested in his argument about Stalin's early aggressive strategies towards the West, and for those tired of historians making ignorant generalizations about Central and Eastern Europe, or for those who simply want a good solid account of the origins of the Cold War, Raack's book is a rare find.


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Exploiting new findings from former East Bloc archives and from long-ignored Western sources, this book presents a wholly new picture of the coming of World War II, Allied wartime diplomacy, and the origins of the Cold War. The author reveals that the widely believed story that Stalin’s purposes in European diplomacy from 1938 on were mainly defensive is a fantasy.

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Rome's Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 1914-1939 (Polish and Polish American Studies) Review

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(More customer reviews)For all of the closeness of Poles and Catholicism during the Communist era, this closeness was not as pronounced during the interwar era. A notable feature of this work is the inclusion of information seldom mentioned anywhere else. For instance, we learn that Roman Dmowski was irreligious most of his life, and did not join the Church and receive his First Holy Communion until 1937 (p. 137), which was near the end of his life. Even then, he probably remained an atheist. (p. 84). Pilsudski was also not particularly religious. (p. 175).
Contrary to those who are obsessed with Polish anti-Semitism, and accuse Pease of excusing it, he does no such thing. He merely tries to rationally understand it, realizing that it is fallacious to see Jews as scapegoats: "...the Church harbored not only bigots, but also advocates of toleration who urged protection of this vulnerable minority. In addition, Christian attitudes and rhetoric regarding Jewry should not be considered in isolation, as often happens, but rather in the context of the widespread belief that the Jews were just one part of a general modernist assault on Catholic morality and society; an enemy, to be sure, but by no means the only or even the worst enemy." (p. 118).
Nor is Fr. Kolbe merely excused by the fact that the publication of anti-Semitic articles took place while he was out of the country. Kolbe scolded his journalists for their anti-Semitic zeal. (p. 123). In any case, all this brouhaha about Kolbe is misplaced. Pease should have noted that non-flattering portrayals of other religions were a common, if not universal, feature of pre-ecumenical times. In fact, the publication associated with Kolbe also wrote unfavorably of Protestants and other non-Catholics. See the Peczkis review of: Mary's Knight: The Mission and Martyrdom of Saint Maksymilian Maria Kolbe. Finally, any objective discussion of anti-Semitism must recall the fact that prejudices went both ways: Traditional Jewish teachings against Christ and Christians were at least as hostile as Christian teachings against Jews. How many Jewish publications, at the time, contained articles unfavorable to Christianity?
Pease accuses the Church of wanting it both ways: Speaking out against Jewish conduct and then condemning the animosities and outrages against Jews that this presumably incited. (p. 119). This is a non-sequitur. Speaking out against somebody is not synonymous with encouraging violence against them. Also, considering the fact that Jewish authors and journalists have been writing much ill against Poland since time immemorial, could it not equally be said that this materially contributed to an atmosphere of little regard for Poland, facilitating such outcomes as the Teheran-Yalta betrayal of Poland?
The author has a fine analysis of Freemasonry. (p. 115-on). He adds: "As a student in Rome in 1917, he [Kolbe] was shocked and galvanized by the antireligious brazenness of a massive Masonic demonstration outside the Vatican walls, and resolved to dedicate his life to converting the sworn enemies of Christ." (p. 122). Not mentioned is the fact that not only Catholicism, but also some branches of Protestantism, had regarded Freemasonry as fundamentally incompatible with Christianity, if not actively anti-Christian.
Interestingly, Pease realizes that the frequently-combative attitudes of the Church had a rational foundation. He writes: "After all, on the whole, Masons and politically active Jews did support the laicization of Polish education and society, and the noticeable Jewish presence in the Polish Communist movement was axiomatic...The difference was that the threats in other lands were distant or theoretical were in Poland seen as immediate and tangible." (p. 112; see also p. 124).
Pease includes a chapter on the beginnings of WWII. The conduct of Pius XII must be kept in perspective: "Often overlooked is the fact that the papal `silence'--if it can fairly be called--in response to the Shoah was preceded and foreshadowed by the analogous and painfully cautious reaction of the Holy See to the German assault on Catholic Poland that touched off the Second World War." (p. 195).


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When an independent Poland reappeared on the map of Europe after World War I, it was widely regarded as the most Catholic country on the continent, as "Rome's Most Faithful Daughter." All the same, the relations of the Second Polish Republic with the Church—both its representatives inside the country and the Holy See itself—proved far more difficult than expected.Based on original research in the libraries and depositories of four countries, including recently opened collections in the Vatican Secret Archives,Rome's Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 1914-1939presents the first scholarly history of the close but complex political relationship of Poland with the Catholic Church during the interwar period. Neal Pease addresses, for example, the centrality of Poland in the Vatican's plans to convert the Soviet Union to Catholicism and the curious reluctance of each successive Polish government to play the role assigned to it. He also reveals the complicated story of the relations of Polish Catholicism with Jews, Freemasons, and other minorities within the country and what the response of Pope Pius XII to the Nazi German invasion of Poland in 1939 can tell us about his controversial policies during World War II.Both authoritative and lively,Rome's Most Faithful Daughtershows that the tensions generated by the interplay of church and state in Polish public life exerted great influence not only on the history of Poland but also on the wider Catholic world in the era between the wars.

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The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (Clarendon Paperbacks) Review

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(More customer reviews)Gellately's research radically alters our understanding of how the secret police operated in Nazi Germany, as well as in the German Democratic Republic and elsewhere. Essentially, Gellately is challenging the notion that the Gestapo was omnipotent, i.e. there was an agent on every corner who provided the regime with all the information it needed. By looking at remaining files in the area of Wurzburg, Gellately found that only a small number of total agents were available to cover a relatively large area. He concludes that even if those agents worked all day and all night, they still would not be able to accumulate the type and amount of information that they did. So, if there was not a Gestapo agent on every corner, how was the regime able to detect the smallest signs of non-compliance and how could they enforce their racial policies? Gellately suggests that the key factor was the willingness of Germans to provide the authorities with information about alleged criminal activities. In fact, most cases began with denunciations or self-policing. In other words, the Gestapo was reactive, not proactive. Gellately suggests that without this cooperation, the Gestapo would have been far less efficient and successful. So just why did the Germans denounce each other? Gellately found that motives were usually quite petty. One had to worry about being denounced by former lovers, business competitors, jealous neighbours, and so on. In fact, Nazi officials tried to put the brakes on the denunciations. In a nutshell, Gellately is suggesting that the secret to the success of the Gestapo was not that it had an agent on every corner, but that the population was so willing to denounce each other for personal gain. The result was an environment of self-policing. There was a Gestapo agent on every police corner, but just in the minds of the German people. But according to Bentham's theory about pan-optic society, that was enough. Germans behaved because they thought they were being watched, whether they were or not was neither here nor there. Gellately's work suggests that there are a lot of problems with the notion of a totalitarian regime. Total control is not only impossible, but not necessary in even the most notorious regimes. Far from being a regime which depended completely on terror and compulsion, the Nazis appear to have been successful largely because of public participation. The only shortcoming is that Gellately's evidence is drawn from one set of files from one part of Germany. We have to assume that the results here would be similar if not identical to other areas, even though we have no evidence from those other areas. Gellately is aware of this and it is beyond his control since most Gestapo files were completely destroyed. This book is a must read for German and Holocaust historians.

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How was the Gestapo able to detect the smallest signs of non-compliance with Nazi doctrines--especially "crimes" pertaining to the private spheres of social, family, and sexual life?How could the police enforce policies such as those designed to isolate Jews, or the foreign workers brought to Germany after 1939, with such apparent ease? Addressing these questions, Gellately argues that the key factor in the successful enforcement of Nazi racial policy was the willingness of German citizens to provide authorities with information about suspected "criminality." He demonstrates that without some degree of popular participation in the operation of institutions such as the Gestapo, the regime would have been seriously hampered in the "realization of the unthinkable," not only inside Germany but also in many of the occupied countries.Offering an intriguing examination of the everyday operations of the Gestapo and the product of extensive archival research, this incisive study surveys the experiences of areas across Germany, drawing out national, local, and regional implications.

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Did the Children Cry: Hitler's War Against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945 Review

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This book is known less for its content than for the controversy that has surrounded it. Nominated for the Janusz Korczak Literary Award, it was subsequently beset with a flurry of Jewish protests. After a spate of bad publicity, and the threat of legal action, the award was belatedly presented--but without any ceremony.
One reason give for challenging the Janusz Korczak Literary Award is the transparently bogus charge that this book "sanitizes" Polish behavior. Even a cursory reading of it reveals just the opposite. Lukas criticizes Polish conduct many times. For example, he discusses Polish-German collaboration (e. g., pp. 141-142), even citing an Israeli study that estimates that there were 7,000 Polish collaborators in all (p. 152; which, incidentally, means that about 1 in every 4,000 Poles had been a collaborator). Another reason given for challenging the Janusz Korczak Literary Award is the claim that this book is "borderline anti-Semitic". Indeed it is--if one understands anti-Semitism to be any criticism of Jewish conduct under any circumstances. Lukas, for example, points out that Jews were commonly prejudiced against Poles just as Poles were commonly prejudiced against Jews (p. 152). He also gives examples of Jewish selfishness against fellow needy Jews at the same time that he gives examples of Polish selfishness against fellow needy Poles (p. 28). Lukas also cites a Jewish historian who faults the method that Jewish organizations used to recover Jewish children after the war (p. 220). Is all this anti-Semitism? Let the reader decide.
And, far from overstating the extent of Polish assistance to Jews, Lukas quotes a wide range of estimates (both Polish and Jewish) of how many Poles were involved in such aid (pp. 155-157). Lukas also provides figures for the deaths in some of the extermination camps. The collective death toll at Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka ranges from 1.65 million to 2.54 million (p. 230).

The genocide against Jews is well known, but Lukas makes it clear that Poles were also victims of genocide. The genocide of Poles does not spark the imagination as much as the industrial-scale gassing and cremation of Jews by the millions, but it was no less real. Heinrich Himmler stated (p. 17) that all Poles will disappear from the world and that all Poles will be destroyed. Martin Bormann (p. 21) asserted that Slavs should be kept alive only as long as they are needed as forced laborers. 2-3 million Polish gentiles, including roughly half of the Polish intelligentsia, were already murdered. Of course, since the Polish population was much larger than the Jewish one, the genocide of Poles had to be a long-term German project, with greater emphasis placed on passive genocide, at least until Germany won the war. Hitler spoke of reducing the Slavs' fertility and, by 1942, the Polish birth rate had fallen by 80% relative to its prewar level (p. 87). SS General Odilo Globocnik noted that the mass killings of Poles and their replacement with German colonists meant that Poles would be gradually crushed "economically and biologically"(p. 107). Heinrich Himmler wanted the General Government (German-occupied central Poland) to be completely Germanized within twenty years (p. 107).
Throughout this book, Lukas consistently relates the experiences of Polish and Jewish children to each other. Both, for instance, experienced the horror of the German conquest of Poland. Both experienced a breakdown of morality caused by the privations of the German occupation. Both learned how to lie and steal to survive. Both quickly learned not to trust anybody. Both were in German concentration camps. Both were used in sadistic experiments conducted by Dr. Mengele. Both experienced sexual assaults (including homosexual assaults) by German guards and officials (pp. 95-96, 202). Both were sent to secret schools in their respective communities. Both took part in clandestine cultural activities. Both enjoyed the childrens' books written by Polish Jew Janusz Korczak. Both held odd jobs to help their parents. Both were forced to work in Germany as forced laborers under appalling conditions. Both were involved in the rescue of their compatriots. Both served in their respective guerilla movements. Both had to watch their parents die, and both experienced death at the hands of the Germans in large numbers. Both were commonly left orphaned. Both experienced difficulties in locating still-surviving relatives (with postwar Germans commonly resisting attempts to identify kidnapped Polish children: pp. 211-214). Finally, both experienced adjustment problems after the war. For example, both Polish and Jewish children commonly internalized the German hatred directed against their respective nationalities, scorning their respective heritages, and sometimes actually believing that their nationalities had deserved their sufferings.
Let us return to the contrived fuss surrounding the Janusz Korczak Literary Award. The reader can clearly see that this book does not fit with the template of modern thinking--where the genocide of Jews is given disproportionate attention, is accorded a special term (Holocaust), and any attempt to compare it with any other genocidal event is called "relativizing the Holocaust." In contrast to all of this, Lukas consistently juxtaposes the experiences of Polish and Jewish children. Perhaps that is what motivated the outburst of hostility to this book. So long as Jewish sufferings are thought to be higher than those of others, or at least more worthy of public attention than those of others, specifically the Poles, any such juxtaposition will be unbearable, especially for a book that is to receive any special recognition.



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Based on eye-witness accounts, interviews, and prodigious research by the author, who is an expert in the field, this is a unique contribution to the literature of World War II, and a most compelling account of German inhumanity towards children in occupied Poland.

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When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland Review

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(More customer reviews)"When Nationalism Began to Hate" is an excellent book. The title is a bit sensationalistic and a bit misleading.
WNBtH is a history of eighteenth century Polish nationalism. It is an attempt to answer the question: Why is it that decent Poles, and certainly decent Polish Catholics, in the 1880s, could not and did not publicly support an anti-Semitic brand of nationalism, and yet by the 1930s, this had changed -- Polish Nationalism and Polish Catholicism were both often openly anti-Semitic?
What happened?
Porter takes the reader on a journey through the tragedies of Polish history, and the uprisings that Poles mounted to resist German and Russian colonizers' attempts to eliminate Polish identity, and the theorizing that went on behind these uprisings.
Philo-Semitism was a marked feature of Polish Romantic nationalism, and Jews did participate in the struggle for Polish freedom. Many Poles saw Jews as an integral part of Poland. Mickiewicz created Jankiel, a Polish Jewish hero of the national epic, "Pan Tadeusz." Patriotic Jewish Poles were not just a feature of fiction; Jews like Michal Landy gave their lives in the nationalist struggle.
A feature of Mickiewicz's Romantic Nationalism was the concept of Poland as the "Christ of Nations," that would struggle for the uplift of all humanity. This wasn't just rhetoric -- Poles fought internationally. Poles like Haym Solomon, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and Casimir Pulaski contributed to the American Revolution in this multi-national, Christian-inspired spirit.
Poland's many uprisings against Russian and German colonizers ended tragically, with the deaths and deportation of many, and even harsher attempts to stamp out Polish language and culture.
These tragedies changed Polish nationalists' views of time -- could time really result in progress? -- and what constituted a Pole. Could Lithuanians, Belorussians, Ukrainians, and Jews ever be part of a successful Polish nation state?
Peasants presented a particular problem. A popular argument stated that Polish uprisings failed because the peasants did not support them, and, in fact, had no reason to. Did it matter to them if they slaved for Poles, Austrians, or Russians? What did peasants care about Poland's literary heritage? They couldn't read. Some regarded peasants as inherently lesser creatures, perhaps inferior because of reincarnation.
Similar questions were asked about Jews and other ethnic minorities.
The answers that Poles, struggling with a highly multi-cultural, multi-faith population, came up with are fascinating, and speak to the mult-cultural, multi-faith world many of us live in today. One can hear echoes on nightly news discussions of how to address Spanish speaking, or Muslim, immigrants to the US.
Porter emphasizes that there is nothing inherently Polish, or Catholic, or Polish-Catholic, about anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism was a development of one train of nationalist thought, a train of thought inspired by Social Darwinism and Scientific Racism.
Roman Dmowski, the proponent of this train of thought, wrote with brutality about forcing nationalism on peasants, whether they liked it or not, and forcing deportation on Poland's Jews. Dmowski stated, "Every Pole should be the enemy of every German he meets."
Dmowski had suffered under colonization, and he was a trained biologist. He was influenced by Social Darwinism, and saw life as a struggle for the survival of the fittest. He wanted Poles, as he understood Poles, to survive.
Dmowski rejected Poland's Romantic Nationalism, as embodied by Mickiewicz, and Mickiewicz's multicultural, philo-Semitic view of Poland. That approach -- the Romantic approach -- was worthlessly "spiritual" in Dmowski's view, and doomed to failure. Poles and Poland needed to enter the Darwinian struggle for life, and renounce any touchy-feely notions of solidarity with others who were not ethnic Poles.
Again, though this is a scholarly book, it is a fasciating read. Porter writes well. The questions the book engages are questions we are all contemplating in our increasingly globalized world.
I wish I could place "When Nationalism Began to Hate" on the required reading list of all of those who read a book that made a very big splash recently, Jan Tomasz Gross' "Neighbors."
Though I'm sure Gross did not intend this, "Neighbors," and the flood of media that accompanied its release, encouraged the stereotype of Poles as mindless, inherently anti-Semitic, brutes.
As WNBtH shows, multi-cultural societies present a series of challenges, and that is especially true when multi-cultural societies face the added stress of foreign occupation, colonization, and attempts at the elmination of the culture being colonized.
Polish thinkers developed varied ways of dealing with their oppression, and of responding to multi-culturalism. Their words, written a century ago, have resonance for us today.

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In When Nationalism Began to Hate, Brian Porter offers a challenging new explanation for the emergence of xenophobic, authoritarian nationalism in Europe. He begins by examining the common assumption that nationalist movements by nature draw lines of inclusion and exclusion around social groups, establishing authority and hierarchy among "one's own" and antagonism towards "others." Porter argues instead that the penetration of communal hatred and social discipline into the rhetoric of nationalism must be explained, not merely assumed.Porter focuses on nineteenth-century Poland, tracing the transformation of revolutionary patriotism into a violent anti-Semitic ideology. Instead of deterministically attributing this change to the "forces of modernization," Porter demonstrates that the language of hatred and discipline was central to the way "modernity" itself was perceived by fin-de-siecle intellectuals.The book is based on a wide variety of sources, including political speeches and posters, newspaper articles and editorials, underground brochures, published and unpublished memoirs, personal letters, and nineteenth-century books on history, sociology, and politics. It embeds nationalism within a much broader framework, showing how the concept of "the nation" played a role in liberal, conservative, socialist, and populist thought.When Nationalism Began to Hate is not only a detailed history of Polish nationalism but also an ambitious study of how the term "nation" functioned within the political imagination of "modernity." It will prove an important text for a wide range of students and researchers of European history and politics.

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Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a powerful work. The tale of a young man's painful relationship with his father is elegantly interwoven with the father's recollection of life as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Poland. Spiegelman's skill and honesty make this a raw, gut-wrenching read, though the tale is somehow ultimately uplifting.
I first read this book as a teenager, and would highly recommend it to people of any age. Over the years, I have re-read it frequently and shared it with friends of all ages. All have taken much from Spiegelman's tale.
A few notes must be made in response to the 10/26/97 comment posted below by a reviewer from Ontario, Canada. It is quite clear that this reviewer did not, in fact, read the book. (S)he mistakenly attacks Spiegelman for portraying the Poles as rats, and wonders if he would be offended if a book were written portraying Jews as rats. Anyone who took the time to read Maus (or merely to examine it's cover!) would know that it is, in fact, the Jewish people who are portrayed as mice/rats, whereas the Poles are portrayed not as vermin, but rather as pigs.
In fact, far from a "vicious" attack against Poles, there are many acts of kindness by Polish people portrayed in the book. Certainly there is unkindness as well, but how can the reviewer forget that this is a factual account of Vladek Spiegelman's life, told from his perspective. If unkind acts by Polish people are a part of that life, then they should be in the book.
Finally, the reviewer in question inelegantly raises a point of some merit, though it is one that is only tangentially related to Spiegelman's work. The Polish people did, in fact, suffer horribly at the hands of both Nazis and Soviets alike. Their death toll in the concentration camps numbered in the millions, and should never be forgotten or omitted when discussing the Holocaust. This book, however, is about Vladek Spiegelman, and so surely it cannot be assailed for its focus on events from his perspective.
Spiegelman's fidelity to his father's! story is to be admired, not attacked. And certainly not by a reviewer who could not be bothered to read the book.

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Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland (Oxford Studies in Modern European History) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an excellent study of Arthur Greiser who was the Nazi leader of the area of Poland around Gdansk- an area where he came to be really hated. 15000 people attended his hanging. Greiser spent his life trying to become a model Nazi. The author believes that this was partly because he was trying to make up for what the Nazis viewed as past errors- such as the fact that he had been a Free-Mason and was late to join the party. He became particularly zealous to overcome these 'deficiencies'. He proposed bizarre intiatives like killing people with Tuberculosis but Hitler refused to countenance this. Epstein stresses the prominent role he took in the Final Solution. This excellent and well-researched study is backed up by some interesting private correspondence which makes an already compelling story even more engaging as we see that in his letters home he could seem like a loving family man whilst at the same time acting as a total monster in the area of Poland he controlled. I would have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone interested in the Second World War.
I really hope this book wins a prize- it deserves it.

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Model Nazi tells the story of Arthur Greiser, the man who initiated the Final Solution in Nazi-occupied Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, Greiser was the territorial leader of the Warthegau, an area of western Poland annexed to Nazi Germany. In an effort to make the Warthegau "German," Greiser introduced numerous cruel policies. He spearheaded an influx of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans. He segregated Germans from Poles, and introduced wide-ranging discriminatory measures against the Polish population. He refashioned the urban and natural landscape to make it "German." And even more chillingly, the first and longest standing ghetto, the largest forced labour program, and the first mass gassings of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were all initiated under Greiser's jurisdiction.Who was the man behind these dreadful policies? Catherine Epstein gives us a compelling biographical portrait of Greiser the man: his birth in the German-Polish borderlands, his rise to Nazi prominence in Danzig, his actions as party leader in the Warthegau, and his trial and execution in postwar Poland. Drawing on a remarkable array of German and Polish sources, she shows how nationalist obsessions, political jealousies, and personal insecurities shaped the policies of a man who held remarkable power in his Nazi fiefdom. Throughout, Epstein confronts a burning question of our age: why do individuals imagine genocide and ethnic cleansing to be solutions to political problems?

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Blitzkrieg Unleashed: The German Invasion of Poland, 1939 (The Stackpole Military History Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)While there is much to like about Mr. Hargreaves account of the Polish Campaign which is taken primarily from the German point of view there are several deficiencies with this book that make it difficult for me to recommend it. The maps do not complement the text very well particularly as one tries to understand the movements of the opposing sides. The book fails to include an order of battle or any information about the Red Army's invasion of eastern Poland. Hargreaves writes well and draws upon a number of primary sources to illustrate his text which follows in a logical pattern but it left much out such as the Luftwaffe's or Kreigsmarine's respective roles in the campaign.

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At dawn on Friday 1 September 1939 the Germans launched their land, sea and air assault on Poland.The World became aware of the awesome power of Hitler's Third Reich and the limitless and ruthless nature of his ambition.

The Blitzkrieg (Lightning War) attack, spearheaded by Panzers, took the German forces to the gates of Warsaw in a week.The vital port of Danzig fell, crushed by naval and air bombardment and land assaults.The Polish Air Force, out-numbered and out-gunned, were driven from the skies.In a month Warsaw fell amid great bloodshed and in six weeks the Poles were defeated.

The speed of the German conquest was matched by its brutality.Lives and property meant little to the invaders and civilians and POWs were summarily executed.Jews received particular attention and these atrocities were not just perpetrated by the SS but soldiers of the Wehrmacht.

Blitzkrieg Unleashed is told in the words of those who conquered Poland, thanks to the author's research into letters, diaries, unpublished accounts, official documents and histories and newspapers.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Churchill's Triumph: A Novel of Betrayal Review

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(More customer reviews)"Old men, worn down by war, who couldn't properly finish what they had begun. It summed up the story of Yalta." - Author Michael Dobbs, in CHURCHILL'S TRIUMPH
From February 4 - 11, 1945, Churchill, Stalin and FDR met at Yalta in the Crimea to tie up the loose ends of World War II. Each had an agenda: the American President wanted the establishment of the United Nations, Russia's entry into the war against Japan, and his personal place in history; the British Prime Minister wanted a free Poland (as, unstated, a block to Soviet westward expansion); the Communist Party Secretary General wanted territory in Eastern Europe and spoils. In the end, it was the wily, rapacious Stalin that dominated the conference. FDR, exhausted and sick and with only eight weeks to live, no longer had the mental energy to perceive and resist Uncle Joe's duplicity. And Winston, though he fought like a lion, was, much like the British Empire, no longer relevant to the larger designs of the world's two new superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
CHURCHILL'S TRIUMPH, presumably solidly based in the factual history of the summit, is a fictional narrative of the conference as seen through the eyes of Winston, who, apparently ignored and abandoned by his friend Roosevelt, is beside himself with frustration at his inability to alter the course of diplomacy and appeasement.
Perhaps the most engaging character of the story is that of Churchill's manservant, the loyal but cheeky Frank Sawyers, a real person who, unfortunately, exited history after leaving his master's service in 1946. (Loyal readers of Michael Dobb's will remember Sawyers from a previous book in the Churchill series, Churchill's Hour. Indeed, Google "Frank Sawyers" and there's virtually no information on the man beyond his inclusion in the author's books - a pity.)
CHURCHILL'S TRIUMPH suffers, I think, from the inclusion of a fictitious subplot involving a refugee Pole, Marian Nowak, held virtual prisoner by the Russians and pressed into service by his jailers as a plumber at Churchill's borrowed Crimean residence, the Vorontsov Palace. The uneasy relation between the British PM and Nowak, which carried through to the end of the book set in 1963, allowed Winston to pronounce what he thought his nebulous triumph at Yalta to have been. But to me, this subplot seemed contrived and, at its conclusion, overly melodramatic. Another sidebar, this taking place in the fictitious Polish village of Piorun, was sufficient to illustrate the validity of Winston's ominous forebodings regarding Soviet intent in Eastern Europe.
The Yalta story, as the basis for a novel about Churchill, is powerful enough by itself and doesn't need embellishment. Particularly revelatory of the conference were the words of Octavius from Shakespeare's "Julius Ceasar" quoted by the PM as they put their signatures to paper in the concluding signing ceremony:
"Let us do so, for we are at the stake and bayed about with many enemies. And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear, millions of mischiefs."

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The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in the Second World War Review

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(More customer reviews)This book recounts the role of Polish pilots in the Allied war effort. It discusses how the Poles accounted for a disproportionate share of German planes downed over England. It also discusses the personal lives of the pilots, including the homesickness felt every Christmas. The all-but-forgotten sufferings of the Poles under both German Nazis and Soviet Communists is recounted in some detail. There is discussion of the heartbreak and outrage experienced by the pilots once they learned that the western Allies betrayed Poland to Soviet control after the war, ruling out a return home for most of the pilots. The postwar lives of some of the pilots are also recounted. The ingratitude of the British shown in politics was duplicated by much of the civilian population soon after the war. The short memory of the British, who forgot that Poles were fighting for the very survival of Britain a few short years earlier, were now clamoring for the Poles to go home. Other details are also provided. There is even mention of a Polish pilot, decades after the war, locating, in Bavaria, the German pilot he had shot down back in September 1939.

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