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A book split into 3 parts, with before, during and after scenarios. Copious footnotes, maps galore and 36 appendices. 2 sections of plates. Obviously well researched. This long book is on a very interesting subject that should have been right up my reading alley. It wasn't.
My complaints are many. I thought the author Norman Davies got bogged down far too often. Trying to justify his opinion over and over again became repetitive. The first part discussing east west European alliances should have been a brief history. Author Davies gave us history back as far as the nineteenth century and even at one point called Tsarist Russia a “liberalising regime”. No doubt that can be debated but in the context of the book it was pointless. We, the reader got page after page of in depth analysis of these Western / Eastern machinations that were interesting in themselves but I was wanting to read a book on the lead up to Warsaw Rising. I can read many general histories of Grand Alliances.
That leads to the 2nd part of the book that was about the rising itself. I came out the end of this vital part of the book a bit perplexed. It seemed I had read little on the military aspect of the event. Or at least if I did it got lost in the rhetoric. Also at this point the author included “Capsules”. Short stories from eye witness's for example. Interesting in themselves but interfered with the flow. And when they came they sometimes made little sense as to the general gist of the history being told.
The final part took in the aftermath, everything from the treatment of Poland by the USSR through to the thoughts and memories of the survivors. This part of the book I found the most interesting but even then it was padded with “capsules” and long rhetorical treatise by the author about the mistreatment of Poland by both East and West.
Some final complaints. Why not trust the reader to understand Polish names, “Premier Mick” for example drove me up the wall. “First Ally” instead of Poland's name itself being used. Poems are nice but they just added to the length of an already long book. So many pointless analogies. The main text ended on an analogy and I just shook my head and thought why insult my intelligence. All this, and a few more things I have no doubt forgotten, made me question who this book was aimed at. I like to think that I am fairly well read on WW2 history but I had this feeling that the book was aimed at a sympathetic audience that was going to lap up the rhetoric no matter what. A form of confirmation bias? I mean the book is hardly for WW2 beginners but to not use Polish names throughout the text insults the intelligence of the amateur historian with good knowledge.
Now I am not going to say that others should not read this book. It is a very interesting subject. Anyone with any interest in the Poland and the Eastern Front should get something out of this book no matter it being a long slog. I learnt a lot. I learnt a heck of a lot to put it bluntly. And with that learning it is hard not to think that the author is right in the final treatise that he calls Interim Report. The treatment of Poland in terms of the political machinations of the west was weak kneed at best. At worst it was darn right Machiavellian. As to the Nazis and the USSR? History has been the judge and they are damned forever for their inhumanity to their fellow man. The criminal treatment of the people of Poland had no justification. May the perpetrators of such inhumanity rot for eternity.
