Moving, compelling and deeply important, this is the untold story of the fate of Poland in the Second World War.
In this powerful and original new book, Halik Kochanski recounts for the first time in a single volume the fate of those Poles during the Second World War who were trapped in occupied Poland, those forced into exile, and those who escaped.
Ask the average historically knowledgeable person what they know about Poland at this time, and the replies you will receive will include the Warsaw Uprising, and the Holocaust. One or two of the more knowledgeable may add Enigma, or even Katy﹛ and Yalta to the list. And yet the truth is that the Polish people's experiences in the Second World War are probably the most varied, complex and interesting of any nation - and also the least well known as a whole.
The Polish experience of the Second World War was different from that of any other country. No other country was invaded jointly by two separate enemies, Germany and the Soviet Union, both intent not on conquest but on the total destruction of Poland. Partitioned between the two countries, Poland saw part of her territory annexed by Nazi Germany and her eastern provinces incorporated into the Soviet Union: as an independent country, it officially ceased to exist. Terror reigned as both occupiers sought to impose their authority over the Poles. Poland lost six million of her population in the Second World War. The story of the three million Polish Jews who died in the Nazi Holocaust is well known but the fate of the remaining three million has largely been forgotten. Equally, whilst historians have acknowledged the German reign of terror against the Polish population, the scale of deaths caused by the Soviet deportations to Siberia and Kazakhstan has mostly been ignored. And if Poland's experience was unique, so was her reaction. Poland formed four different armies, playing a key role in the conflict across Europe and beyond - in France, Italy, Lebanon, the Western Desert and the Netherlands, as well as in Poland itself.
The Eagle Unbowed draws extensively on published and unpublished memoirs, as well as original interviews with survivors, to bring alive the events of this time: showing the individual human interactions between invader and invaded, occupier and occupied, deportee and unwilling host, which could make the difference between life and death, and which reveal humanity at its best as well as its worst. The author also has the unique advantage of being able to draw on the first-person narratives of her own family members. Between them, they underwent every major aspect of the Polish experience apart from the Holocaust itself - occupation, internment, deportation, starvation, forced labour, living in hiding, working in the Home Army and the Underground Government, fighting in both Soviet and Allied armies; the bizarre combination of fighting in the underground army against the Germans one week and volunteering for work in Germany itself the next; being a refugee in Switzerland, escaping to Italy and being shipped to a new life in Britain; and being repatriated to western Poland from exile in Kazakhstan and from the former eastern Polish territories.
This is perhaps the most important 'missing' work on the whole conflict - filling an important gap in the history of the Second World War. Accessibly written for both a specialist and general readership, it will appeal to those who enjoyed Andrew Roberts's The Storm of War.
