Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

First to Fight: The Polish War 1939, by Roger Moorhouse. 2019. Bodley Head, London

A Tour de Force: Every Imaginable Detail on Poland in 1939, and Its Legacy

Every once in a while, an outstanding book comes that that towers over most others. This is one of them.

THE COURSE OF POLAND’S 1939 DEFENSIVE WAR AGAINST GERMANS AND SOVIETS

The odds against the Poles were formidable. The Germans enjoyed an asymmetry (my term) of 3:1 in artillery, 3:1 in tanks, and 5:1 in aircraft. Moreover, the German equipment was generally more advanced, more mobile, and more effective. (p. 19).

Still, the Poles had some temporary successes. At Westerplatte, the Germans thought that they could just blow away the Polish garrison in a matter of hours. Think again. (pp. 14-15). At Tczew, Germans supposed that they could blow up a crucial bridge. Poles re-routed the disguised German transport of commandos, and the bridge was blown up. (pp. 21-22). At Mokra, the Germans were turned away after suffering approximately 500 dead. (p. 34). At Oksywie, south of Danzig (Gdansk), Poles engaged the Germans in prolonged WWI-style trench warfare. (pp. 186-188). At Wegierska Gorka, the Polish forces, though greatly outnumbered, held the bunkers for 20 hours. (pp. 26-27). At Wlodawa, on September 29 and 30, Polish forces routed the invading Red Army. (p. 258).

The combat was not as one-sided as commonly believed. During the entire war, the Polish forces destroyed some 1,000 German tanks and armored vehicles, and around 600 aircraft. (p. 263).

This work recounts countless German atrocities. Moorhouse rejects the German exculpation that the saturation bombing of Wielun, in the first hours of the war, was a case of a mistaken military target. It was cold-blooded murder, in which as many as 1,600 Polish civilians died. (p. 23). [This greatly dwarfs the endlessly-publicized bombings of Guernica and Rotterdam.]

Some 16,000 Polish civilians and disarmed POWs were deliberately murdered by the Germans just in September. (p. 263). [Tens of thousands of additional Poles would be murdered by the Germans in the remainder of 1939, and millions more during the entire German occupation of Poland (1939-1945)].

Now consider Bloody Sunday [Blut Sonntag] at Bydgoszcz [Bromberg]. The local German minority began an uprising, and fired on the Polish troops. The troops and local Poles put it down, killing as many as 400 Volksdeutsche in the process. (pp. 97-98). In savage reprisal, the arriving Wehrmacht murdered thousands of Poles. (pp. 116-117). German propaganda turned all this around, accusing Poles of murdering thousands of defenseless Germans. For more on this, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/1939-war-myths-bydgoszcz-polish-killers-serwanski/

At Krojanty, the Polish cavalry charged a German infantry position. The Germans fled in terror. But then a German armored unit arrived at the scene, and fired on the Polish cavalry. Still, half the cavalry escaped the German fire. This incident has been twisted by German propaganda, and gone down in history, as a suicidal act of Polish cavalry charging German tanks. Even American radio correspondent William Shirer was taken in by this German lie. (p. 147). More on this later. Ironically, Polish cavalry charges were not rarely successful in breaching German lines, as admitted by the Germans themselves. (p. 31, 196).

Around 200,000 Polish soldiers and civilians died in the 1939 War. (p. 265). During the siege of Warsaw itself, some 10,000 Varsovians perished. (p. 240).

CANDOR ON THE ZYDOKOMUNA: JEWS WERE BLIND TO THE ANTISEMITISM OF THE RUSSIANS

Although some members of other non-Polish nationalities supported the invading Red Army in Eastern Poland, the Jews did so to an extreme. Moorhouse implicitly refutes the canned Polish-antisemitism excuse for this treasonous conduct. He quotes Zofia Chometowska, a Polish eyewitness, as follows, “‘The Jews are the worst,’ she wrote: ‘They cheerfully shout “BOLSHEVIKI IDUT!”–“The Bolsheviks are coming!” They have forgotten that the Russians hate them, and they await them impatiently…They look at use with malice and rejoice in our misfortunes.” It was not an isolated example. According to a local policeman, some of the Jews in Boryslaw (Boryslav) organized a symbolic funeral for Poland, with a procession following a coffin draped in a Polish flag.” (p. 176). Obviously, this was an actively anti-Polish act, and not some kind of mere “gratitude to the Soviets for not falling into the hands of the Nazis”, as Jewish apologists commonly tell us.

ANTIFASCISTS! LEFTISTS TWIST THEMSELVES INTO PRETZELS TO EXPLAIN AWAY THE SOVIET-NAZI ALLIANCE

Moorhouse discusses one of the implications of the 1939-1941 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, “For those on the political left, the invasion was particularly discomfiting, as it damaged the perceived credibility and moral standing of the Soviet Union…It was difficult to sell the idea of the USSR as the bastion of anti-fascism, when it so publicly colluded with fascists.” (p. 179). Yeah, no kidding. It exposed the total phoniness of the political left.

I now consider deeper and lasting issues, which go far beyond WWII itself.

THE AUTHOR’S VISION FOR HIS BOOK. POLAND HAS NOT BEEN HEARD!

Moorhouse tells the reader why he wrote this work, “This book, therefore, is an attempt to embrace some of that new Polish historiography, and so rebalance the wonky Western narrative of the Second World War’s opening campaign…In doing so, the book finally brings Polish voices–memoirs, diaries and archival accounts–into the story. One can only hope that the Poles will no longer be rendered by future historians as nameless, voiceless victims, bit-players in their own narrative.” (p. xxi).

CONFRONTING THE 1939 BRITISH AND FRENCH BETRAYAL OF POLAND

In describing the situation in the summer of 1939, British historian Moorhouse writes, “Despite all the earnest talk of active support, British politicians and military planners knew full well that there was very little that they could or would do to practically help Poland in her hour of need.” (p. 51).

He adds that, “Impressive words, no doubt, but the truth was that Britain and France were planning to defend Poland using vowels and consonants alone.” (p. 129). Also, “Meat was never put onto the bones of the resulting alliance with the Poles, despite the airy promises of Gamelin and Ironside in that troubled summer of 1939.” (p. 269).

Historian Moorhouse candidly thus assesses the long-term aftermath of England’s broken promise, “One might have hoped that The British would, at least, keep the flame of truth alive. Sadly, however, that was not to be the case. Here one cannot speak of an active suppression of the facts, but Britain’s own heroic wartime narrative left little popular appetite for, or interest in, that country’s humiliating betrayal of its Polish ally. Even though a large number of Polish veterans of 1939 made their homes in the UK after their nation’s defeat, and after Poland fell to communist [Communist] control in 1945, their stories were scarcely heard.” (p. xx, emphasis added).

WHY THE “POLISH CAVALRY CHARGED GERMAN TANKS” CANARD PERSISTED SO LONG

Moorhouse comments, “…German propaganda: a way or ridiculing the enemy while producing a stereotype of Polish foolhardiness and German superiority. Ordinarily, perhaps, the story might–like other German propaganda myths—have quietly died off, enduring the death of a thousand corrections. But in Poland’s case, it seemed nobody after the war had a vested interest in correcting it; the Germans had many more egregious crimes to expiate, the Soviets were not minded to defend the pre-war Polish regime, and the British and French were seemingly content to allow the narrative of Poland as an inept and incompetent ally to prevail. Only Poles in exile tried to speak the truth, but seen all too often as the archetypical ‘Cold Warriors’ and serial disturbers of the peace, they would make little headway against the combined forces of ignorance and inertia.” (p. 268).

INNOVATIONS IN THE POLISH MILITARY (YES)

Roger Moorhouse dispenses with another misconception as he writes, “In any case, the Polish army was not the backward-looking cavalry-centered anachronism that German propaganda would have the world believe…the cavalry fought dismounted, armed with the ferocious 75mm field gun. Neither was the Polish army shy of innovation. Polish armorers developed the highly effective WZ-35 anti-tank rifle, as well as the excellent WZ.1928 machine gun, and the Vis pistol–a variant of the iconic Browning M1911 Colt–which appeared in 1936, and is often described as one of the best handguns of the era.” (p. 46).

For another outstanding recent work on Poland’s 1939 Defensive War, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2020/10/20/polands-1939-defensive-war-definitive-work-poles-and-not-only-jews-were-racial-enemies-of-the-third-reich-forczyk/

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Other matters of interest:

1920 POLISH-BOLSHEVIK WAR: THE MIRACLE ON THE VISTULA

Historian Moorhouse unhesitatingly calls the Polish victory, in the Battle of Warsaw, the “Miracle on the Vistula”. (p. 43). He fully realizes that it thwarted the spread of Communism to Western Europe.

REJTAN AT THE TIME OF THE PARTITIONS

Author Moorhouse has a place for a drama. He reaches back to earlier periods of Polish history. Here is how he assesses the First Partition of Poland, “One of the few Polish senators to protest against the country’s betrayal was Tadeusz Rejtan, who begged his fellow nobles in the Sejm to reject the partition, then tore his clothes open at the chest, and threw himself onto the floor of the chamber, imploring the king ‘on the blood of Christ’ not to “play the part of Judas [and] kill the Fatherland’. But, the deed was done, and the partition was agreed. The dishonest subtext of the treaty was clear: Poland was collapsing into chaos, and her dutiful neighbors were rightfully stepping in to restore order. It was a narrative that would run and run.” (p. 38).