FIRST TO FIGHT
THE POLISH WAR 1939
On 1st September 1939 German forces attacked Poland with such ferocity that no distinction was made between civilian and combatant. ‘The date should be engraved in the memory of every schoolchild in Europe, yet it has become a largely forgotten struggle, trivialised or ignored outside Poland,’ Roger Boyes commented in the Times.
‘It is a harrowing, but very needed, account of the first engagement of the Second World War and an attempt at bringing the true, but little known, story of Polish heroism and suffering to English-speaking readers,’ Poland’s ambassador to Britain, Arkady Rzegocki, wrote in the
Telegraph. The Molotov-ribbentrop pact, carving up Poland between Hitler and Stalin, paved the way for the invasion. ‘Poland was exposed to every kind of atrocity that modern conflict could devise,’ Rzegocki wrote, ‘with the Germans unleashing race war against the Poles in the west and the Soviets employing class war in the east.’
‘Moorhouse’s description of initial Polish hopes of British support and their gradual disillusionment do not make for easy reading for an Englishman,’ Boyes conceded. Moorhouse tries to counter the narrative that although the Polish cavalry fought bravely, it was hopelessly outgunned by the superior German force. The fact is, the Poles were simply outspent.
‘Moorhouse has expertly laid bare this simple truth: that when two totalitarian regimes make common cause, everyone in their immediate neighbourhood is likely to be trampled underfoot,’ Boyes concluded.
Rzegocki agreed. ‘The first few weeks of the war and what followed is a testimony and a warning of the kind of atrocities that human beings driven by extreme ideologies are capable of. It is also a lesson learned: that NATO, European and bilateral alliances, such as the one between the UK and Poland, are vital if a tragedy like this is to never happen again.’