Poland and the Second World War, 1938–1948

Poland and the Second World War, 1938–1948

Author: Evan McGilvray

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2019-04-30

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 1473889723

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A detailed chronicle of Poland’s efforts during World War II from beginning to end, by the author of Narvik and the Allies. The invasion of Poland by German forces (quickly joined by their then-allies the Soviets) ignited the Second World War. Despite determined resistance, Poland was quickly conquered but Poles continued the struggle to the very last day of the war against Germany, resisting the occupier within their homeland and fighting in exile with the Allied forces. Evan McGilvray, drawing on intensive research in Polish sources, gives a comprehensive account of Poland’s war. He reveals the complexities of Poland’s relationship with the Allies (forced to accept their Soviet enemies as allies after 1941, then betrayed to Soviet occupation in the post-war settlement), as well as the divisions between Polish factions that led to civil war even before the defeat of Germany. The author narrates all the fighting involving Polish forces, including such famous actions as the Battle of Britain, Tobruk, Normandy, Arnhem, and the Warsaw Rising, but also lesser known aspects such as Kopinski’s Carpathian Brigade in Italy, Polish troops under Soviet command, and the capture of Wilhelmshaven on the last day of the war.


First Polish Armoured Division 1938–47

First Polish Armoured Division 1938–47

Author: Evan McGilvray

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military

Published: 2022-07-20

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 1526724162

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The First Polish armored Division was formed in Scotland in February 1942 from Polish exiles who had escaped first Poland and then France. Its commander, Stanislaw Maczek, and many of its men had previously served in Polish 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade (10 BKS), which had taken part in the Polish invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and given a good account of itself in the defense of Poland against German and Soviet invasion of 1939. Under Maczek’s leadership the division was trained and equipped along British lines in preparation for the invasion of France. Attached to 1st Canadian Army, the division was sent to Normandy in late July 1944. It suffered heavily during Operation Totalize but went on to play a crucial role in preventing an orderly German withdrawal from the Falaise Pocket by its stand at Hill 262. They then played their part in the advance across Western Europe and into Germany. This detailed history, supported by dozens of archive photos, concludes by looking at the often-poor treatment of Maczek and his men after the war.


Independence Day

Independence Day

Author: M. B. B. Biskupski

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-09-13

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0199658811

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A discussion of how modern Poland was created by the application and manipulation of myths about its past, and the symbols that represented them.


East Central European Migrations During the Cold War

East Central European Migrations During the Cold War

Author: Anna Mazurkiewicz

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-05-06

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 3110610639

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"An extremely useful and much needed survey. Over eleven chapters, authors from eight countries cover the complex history of migration from the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1993. Following in the footsteps of Klaus Bade’s Encyclopedia of European Migrations, the authors make extensive use of sources in national languages, while providing an extensive overview of population movements in the region between the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic Seas. The individual chapters shed light on phenomena overlooked in other volumes, including individual state reactions to various migratory phenomenon, and the political, economic, and ideological consequences of human movement. The chapters of this volume are uniform not only in their informative nature, but also in suggesting new pathways for in-depth research." Adam Walaszek, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland "Eastern Europe is an emblematic space of mobility and its Cold War history cannot be told without considering migration from and into the countries of the region. This volume comes at a timely moment and provides a uniquely comprehensive account, full with useful information for further research. It will be a must-read both for migration studies scholars and for area specialists." Ulf Brunnbauer, Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg, Germany "The Handbook is a gift to students of migration on three counts. It gathers the expertise of scholars fluent in the languages – and familiar with the archives – of Eastern and Central Europe. Thus it brings the multi-layered and complex histories of movement beyond the flat descriptor of "Soviet bloc" or Eastern European migrations. The Handbook is both rich and lucid, presenting in-depth materials on the European twentieth-century, on one hand, and organizing each chapter in a similar way, offering the reader transparently comparable histories. From Estonia south to Albania, and from the USSR west to the GDR, each chapter elucidates a complex migration history distinguished by national politics, ethnic composition, and economics – moving from the cataclysmic impacts of World War II to the international migrations and politics of Cold War movement, as well as the politics of Cold War emigrants themselves. Each chapter ends with an epilogue on post-1989 international migrations and a valuable addendum on published and archival sources. Finally, the Handbook models the kind of high quality work produced by international scholarly cooperation at its best." Leslie Page Moch, Michigan State University Table of contents Introduction (Anna Mazurkiewicz) Albania (Agata Domachowska) Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (Pauli Heikkilä) Bulgaria (Detelina Dineva) Czechoslovakia (Michael Cude and Ellen Paul) Germany (Bethany Hicks) Hungary (Katalin Kádár Lynn) Poland (Sławomir Łukasiewicz) Romania (Beatrice Scutaru) Ukraine (Anna Fiń) USSR (Alexey Antoshin) Yugoslavia (Brigitte Le Normand)


Anders' Army

Anders' Army

Author: Evan McGilvray

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2018-02-28

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1473889758

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Along with thousands of his compatriots, Wladyslaw Anders was imprisoned by the Soviets when they attacked Poland with their German allies in 1939. They endured terrible treatment until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 suddenly put Stalin in the Allied camp, after which they were evacuated to Iran and formed into the Polish Second Corps under Anders command.Once equipped and trained, the corps was eventually committed to the Italian campaign, notably at Monte Cassino. The author assesses Anders performance as a military commander, finding him merely adequate, but his political role was more significant and caused friction in the Allied camp. From the start he often opposed Sikorski, the Polish Prime Minister in exile and Commander in Chief of Polish armed forces in the West. Indeed, Anders was suspected of collusion in Sikorskis death in July 1943 and of later sending Polish death squads into Poland to eliminate opponents, charges that Evan McGilvray investigates. Furthermore, Anders voiced his deep mistrust of Stalin and urged a war against the Soviets after the defeat of Hitler.


East Central European Migrations During the Cold War

East Central European Migrations During the Cold War

Author: Anna Mazurkiewicz

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-05-06

Total Pages: 717

ISBN-13: 3110607905

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"An extremely useful and much needed survey. Over eleven chapters, authors from eight countries cover the complex history of migration from the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1993. Following in the footsteps of Klaus Bade’s Encyclopedia of European Migrations, the authors make extensive use of sources in national languages, while providing an extensive overview of population movements in the region between the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic Seas. The individual chapters shed light on phenomena overlooked in other volumes, including individual state reactions to various migratory phenomenon, and the political, economic, and ideological consequences of human movement. The chapters of this volume are uniform not only in their informative nature, but also in suggesting new pathways for in-depth research." Adam Walaszek, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland "Eastern Europe is an emblematic space of mobility and its Cold War history cannot be told without considering migration from and into the countries of the region. This volume comes at a timely moment and provides a uniquely comprehensive account, full with useful information for further research. It will be a must-read both for migration studies scholars and for area specialists." Ulf Brunnbauer, Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg, Germany "The Handbook is a gift to students of migration on three counts. It gathers the expertise of scholars fluent in the languages – and familiar with the archives – of Eastern and Central Europe. Thus it brings the multi-layered and complex histories of movement beyond the flat descriptor of "Soviet bloc" or Eastern European migrations. The Handbook is both rich and lucid, presenting in-depth materials on the European twentieth-century, on one hand, and organizing each chapter in a similar way, offering the reader transparently comparable histories. From Estonia south to Albania, and from the USSR west to the GDR, each chapter elucidates a complex migration history distinguished by national politics, ethnic composition, and economics – moving from the cataclysmic impacts of World War II to the international migrations and politics of Cold War movement, as well as the politics of Cold War emigrants themselves. Each chapter ends with an epilogue on post-1989 international migrations and a valuable addendum on published and archival sources. Finally, the Handbook models the kind of high quality work produced by international scholarly cooperation at its best." Leslie Page Moch, Michigan State University Table of contents Introduction (Anna Mazurkiewicz) Albania (Agata Domachowska) Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (Pauli Heikkilä) Bulgaria (Detelina Dineva) Czechoslovakia (Michael Cude and Ellen Paul) Germany (Bethany Hicks) Hungary (Katalin Kádár Lynn) Poland (Sławomir Łukasiewicz) Romania (Beatrice Scutaru) Ukraine (Anna Fiń) USSR (Alexey Antoshin) Yugoslavia (Brigitte Le Normand)


Katyn

Katyn

Author: Wojciech Materski

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 616

ISBN-13: 0300151853

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In the spring of 1940, the Soviet Union carried out the mass executions of 14,500 Polish prisoners of war - army officers, police, gendarmes, and civilians - taken by the Red Army when it invaded eastern Poland in September 1939. This work details the Soviet killings, the elaborate cover-up of the crime, and the subsequent revelations.


Caviar and Ashes

Caviar and Ashes

Author: Marci Shore

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 959

ISBN-13: 0300128622

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""In the elegant capital city of Warsaw, the editor Mieczyslaw Grydzewski would come with his two dachshunds to a cafe called Ziemianska."" Thus begins the history of a generation of Polish literati born at the ""fin de siecle,"" They sat in Cafe Ziemianska and believed that the world moved on what they said there. ""Caviar and Ashes"" tells the story of the young avant-gardists of the early 1920s who became the radical Marxists of the late 1920s. They made the choice for Marxism before Stalinism, before socialist realism, before Marxism meant the imposition of Soviet communism in Poland. It ended tragically. Marci Shore begins with this generation's coming of age after the First World War and narrates a half-century-long journey through futurist manifestos and proletarian poetry, Stalinist terror and Nazi genocide, a journey from the literary cafes to the cells of prisons and the corridors of power. Using newly available archival materials from Poland and Russia, as well as from Ukraine and Israel, Shore explores what it meant to live Marxism as a European, an East European, and a Jewish intellectual in the twentieth century.