Poland 1939

March 9, 2020
Military historian Moorhouse (Berlin at War) revisits the opening campaign of WWII—the 1939 invasion of Poland—in this dense and exhaustive account. Contending that the Poles have long been rendered “nameless, voiceless victims, bit-part players in their own narrative,” Moorhouse uses diaries, memoirs, and archival documents to correct the historical record. Caught between Hitler’s determination to annex historically German regions lost under the Treaty of Versailles that brought an end to WWI and Stalin’s desire to seize territory guaranteed in the “secret protocol” of the German-Soviet nonaggression pact, Poland was doomed to be the first domino to fall, despite the valor of its armed forces. Moorhouse documents the implications of France and England’s refusal to send military aid (an estimated 200,000 Polish civilians and soldiers died in the two-front invasion) and describes how Germany’s blitzkrieg tactics, as well as its extensive bombing of towns and cities and refusal to distinguish combatants from noncombatants, foreshadowed the brutal nature of the war and the transformation of Poland into “a Nazi dystopia in which populations were expropriated, deported, or murdered on a whim.” Moorhouse successfully fills in the gaps of an episode that receives cursory treatment in most WWII narratives, but armchair historians may be overwhelmed by the level of detail. This granular account is for completists only.

April 1, 2020

There remain a number of myths about the invasion of Poland in 1939. Moorhouse (Berlin at War; The Devils' Alliance) seeks to use modern historiography to correct these falsehoods. He reminds readers that all of Germany's surprise attacks on the morning of September 1, 1939, were failures. Polish forces, for the most part, fought valiantly, winning minor victories first against Germany and later against Stalin's Red Army. In return, both Germany and the Soviet Union engaged in executions, mass killings, and other atrocities against both military personnel and civilians. Moorhouse estimates that Germany committed 15 massacres every day while the Soviet Union killed 22,000 Polish officers and officials in the Katyn Massacre. One overriding theme is that Germany imposed a race war in western Poland while the Soviet Union embarked upon a class war in the eastern half of the country. Although Stalin painted the Soviet invasion as a liberation, the Red Army's presence was nothing more than a military invasion meant to secure land promised from the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, maintains Moorhouse. VERDICT A solid analysis of World War II's first major operation, this work should appeal to any readers interested in Polish history or the war's beginnings.--Matthew Wayman, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., Schuylkill Haven

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2020
A fresh, well-documented look at the Nazi-Soviet invasion and partition of Poland in September 1939, rejecting both "the Nazi mythology of an easy Blitzkrieg victory" and "the Soviet lie that the Red Army never invaded at all." An accomplished British historian of World War II, Moorhouse delves deeply into this five-week opening to the larger conflict, showing how it presaged the horrors to come. The author notes how this campaign--during which Hitler restoked the animosity between Poland and Germany through a series of fabricated border skirmishes and plunged headlong into invasion to quell Polish "terror" and defend German "honor"--is too often overlooked in WWII histories. Just as he did in his previous book, The Devil's Alliance: Hitler's Pact With Stalin, 1939-1941 (2014), Moorhouse refreshingly looks beyond the chronicles of the victors, clearly portraying the shameful lack of action on the parts of Britain and France to come to the defense of the country it had sworn to defend as well as the ongoing Soviet efforts to disguise its subsequent invasion as some kind of "humanitarian intervention." The fact is that Hitler and Stalin had already agreed to divide the country via a German-Soviet nonaggression pact, which would have essentially wiped Poland off the map. While the British and French vowed to protect the country if attacked, they were in no military position to do so and hoped, futilely, that by threatening war, Germany would back down. What the author demonstrates splendidly is the tenacity of the Polish resistance and bravery in the face of the Nazi onslaught, a spirit inculcated through centuries of invasion and occupation. This was not an easy annexation, as the Nazis had hoped. Moreover, as Moorhouse ably shows, the overwhelming air power and targeting of noncombatants, as well as racial murder and revenge, foreshadowed later atrocities. An excellent study by a thorough chronicler that adds considerably to the historical record. (16-page insert; 10 maps)

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