Author: David G. Williamson Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1473817285 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 275
Book Description
This study of the Polish resistance movement chronicles the operations of various factions from WWII through the postwar battle for power. The Polish partisan army famously fought with tenacity against the Wehrmacht during World War II. Yet the wider story of the Polish underground movement, which opposed both the Nazi and Soviet occupying powers, has rarely been told. In this concise and authoritative study, historian David Williamson presents a major reassessment of the actions, impact and legacy of Polish resistance. The Polish resistance movement sprang up after the German invasion of 1939. As the war progressed, it took many forms, including propaganda, spying, assassination, disruption, sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Many groups were involved, including isolated partisan bands, the Jewish resistance, and the Home Army which confronted the Germans in the disastrous Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Going beyond the Second World War, Williamson's graphic account chronicles the clandestine civil war between the Communists and former members of the Home Army that continued until the Communist regime took power in 1947.
Author: Michael Alfred Peszke Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476610274 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 255
Book Description
This military history covers the attempts of General Wladyslaw Sikorski and his successor (General Kazimierz Sosnkowski) to integrate Polish forces into Western strategy, and to have their clandestine forces declared an allied combatant. It addresses such topics as Poland's part in the Norwegian and French campaigns, the Battle of Britain, Polish intelligence services, Polish radio communications, the Polish Parachute Brigade, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Bomber Offensive, the Katyn graves, Polish air crews in the RAF Transport Command, the Tehran Conference, Polish Wings in the 2nd Tactical Air Force, the Bardsea Plan, the invasion of Normandy, the Pierwsza Pancera, the Warsaw Uprising, Operation Freston, the disbanding of the Polish Home Army, and the Yalta Conference.
Author: Joshua D. Zimmerman Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1316298256 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 473
Book Description
The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945 examines one of the central problems in the history of Polish-Jewish relations: the attitude and the behavior of the Polish Underground - the resistance organization loyal to the Polish government-in-exile - toward the Jews during World War II. Using a variety of archival documents, testimonies, and memoirs, Zimmerman offers a careful, dispassionate narrative, arguing that the reaction of the Polish Underground to the catastrophe that befell European Jewry was immensely varied, ranging from aggressive aid to acts of murder. By analyzing the military, civilian, and political wings of the Polish Underground and offering portraits of the organization's main leaders, this book is the first full-length scholarly monograph in any language to provide a thorough examination of the Polish Underground's attitude and behavior towards the Jews during the entire period of World War II.
Author: Timothy Snyder Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465032974 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 546
Book Description
From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century. Americans call the Second World War “the Good War.” But before it even began, America’s ally Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, German and Soviet killing sites fell behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single story. With a new afterword addressing the relevance of these events to the contemporary decline of democracy, Bloodlands is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history and its meaning today.
Author: Eleanor H. Ayer Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1442440996 Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
She was a young German Jew. He was an ardent member of the Hitler Youth. This is the story of their parallel journey through World War II. Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck were born just a few miles from each other in the German Rhineland. But their lives took radically different courses: Helen’s to the Auschwitz concentration camp; Alfons to a high rank in the Hitler Youth. While Helen was hiding in Amsterdam, Alfons was a fanatic believer in Hitler’s “master race.” While she was crammed in a cattle car bound for the death camp Auschwitz, he was a teenage commander of frontline troops, ready to fight and die for the glory of Hitler and the Fatherland. This book tells both of their stories, side-by-side, in an overwhelming account of the nightmare that was World War II. The riveting stories of these two remarkable people must stand as a powerful lesson to us all.