Poland 1939
The Outbreak of World War II

By Roger Moorhouse, Basic Books, 2020, 320 pages
Reviewed by Jim Stasiowski, April 15, 2021

Is there any day more perfect for optimism than a wedding day?

Atop my dresser I have a beautiful black-and-white photo of my mom and dad (see attachment), posing in their cozy Baltimore home in that first hour of their 50-year marriage journey, he in a snug dark suit, she in a lustrous white gown, its regal length swirled onto the floor in front of her, as if she were toes-deep in sea foam.

They’re smiling, but are they really? Something’s not quite right. If theirs was the love story I know it turned out to be, why do the smiles look scripted rather than spontaneous?

Were there thunderstorms that day? Was the best man tardy? Disheveled? Or perhaps it was the date.

September 2, 1939.

Six time zones to the east and a little more than 24 hours before Victoria Cecilia Bigda and Albin Joachim Stasiowski wriggled into their celebratory outfits, Hitler’s nightmare-gray-clad Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe punched across the sovereign border of Poland, the homeland of my mom’s and dad’s moms and dads.

Poland. How can anyone connected to that chronically conquered nation ever be optimistic? Has anyone’s homeland been more grievously and routinely battered by its bullying neighbors? Is it any wonder that its national anthem starts with this melancholy line: “Poland is not yet lost”?

Roger Moorhouse, author of this painful history, is angry about historians’ lazy conclusion that the Nazis steamrolled Poland merely by showing up. In his forcefully delivered opinion, Poland, although trampled yet again, actually put up one hell of a fight, short though it was.

Blitzkrieg, German for “lightning war,” is the image that endures, but Moorhouse argues that that is another triumph not for the Nazis’ military prowess, but rather for their equally lethal propaganda machine. Most Poles resisted, Moorhouse writes, stalling Hitler’s plan for a carefree, glorious first campaign.

And remember, Germany’s wasn’t the only powerful military attacking Poland in September of 1939; shortly after the Wehrmacht violated the western border, the Soviet Union, colluding with Hitler to divide up a pulverized neighbor, invaded from the East.

Here’s how Moorhouse explains what he calls the retrospective “simplistic mythology of an all-conquering Blitzkrieg”:

(I)n Poland’s case, it seemed that nobody after the war had a vested interest in correcting (that myth): the Germans had many more egregious crimes to expiate, the Soviets were not minded to defend the prewar Polish regime, and the British and French were seemingly content to allow the narrative of Poland as an inept and incompetent ally to prevail.

Ah yes, the British and the French. Does not the stench of Munich 1938 still fill the air?

Unlike in their betrayal of Czechoslovakia, the British and French actually spoke up after September 1, 1939, declaring (two days later) war on Germany in support of their Polish allies. Notice, please, the verbs “spoke up” and “declaring”; the announcement was the extent of their help.

The blockheads in Paris and London, unchastened by the proof of their gullibility in Munich the previous year, were convinced that this time, their concerted bluff would be effective. Moorhouse argues that, rather than immediately sending infantry divisions or air squadrons, the British and French deployed declarations – wars of words vs. German armor – to make Hitler cower in his Berlin bunker.

Cower there he did, but not until nearly six years later. By contrast, every day in that bleak September, with beleaguered Poles desperately clutching unfounded rumors that their allies soon would send help, Hitler was practically dancing with glee while the British and French did all the cowering.

Cowering even earned an enduring nickname: the Phony War; the French, as is their custom, turned a more poetic phrase, Drôle de Guerre, as if Poland’s misery were amusing theater.

Here’s a place name from World War II that undeservedly escapes the shame of “Munich”: “Hove.” On Sept. 22, the French and British met at the English seaside town with that benign-sounding place to discuss what role they should pursue. Moorhouse disdainfully spares just a few paragraphs on those strategy sessions in which mostly silence was invested in Poland. His plaintive conclusion: In Allied eyes, it seemed, Poland was already a lost cause.

British pluck and grit in the war are justifiably revered. Chief among the heroes is the practically canonized Winston Churchill, but even he was, to put it charitably, bamboozled about Poland, especially by the Soviet Union’s thrust from the East.

Moorhouse writes: Churchill was among those thus misled. In his famed “Enigma” speech, broadcast on October 1, 1939, he praised Poland’s “indestructible soul” and rightly noted the Kremlin was motivated primarily by Russian national interest. But he was wrong when he described the new German-Soviet frontier through Poland as an “eastern front” that Hitler “does not dare assail.” His erroneous assumption – which was shared by many – was that it had been German-Soviet tensions that had brought the Red Army into Poland. In truth, it was the opposite. It was merely the first manifestation of the cozy division of spoils agreed to in the Secret Protocol to the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

I am very glad I read “Poland 1939,” but it was with no pleasure that I learned of the savagery that Germans and Soviets inflicted on the people from whom I am descended. It is likely that Stasiowskis and Bigdas I never met were tortured, murdered, left homeless, destitute, naked, starved by two ruthless nations that considered the Poles of 1939 subhumans.

Although he is no prose stylist, Moorhouse is excellent at re-creating the horrors of the attacks on Poland (and triumphs of the good guys, many more than you might think from your long-ago history lessons), and at using surviving diaries to capture not only the battlefield action, but also the extraordinary emotions of a doomed people. Many times, I marveled at the courage of those to whom Poland was more than just a place to live.

If the concept of roots has ever meant more to readers than just a nice lawn and a mailbox, “Poland 1939” will make even those of non-Polish descent feel the soil into which their toes powerfully curl.

Moorhouse’s occasional questionable word usages and annoying clichés – “a shadow of its former self … dire straits … took it to another level” – subtracted some of my regard for his literary skills.

But “Poland 1939 succeeds as more than mere literature or mere history. I thank him for his remarkable scholarship, his willingness to blame whoever deserves it (including some less-than-honorable Poles) and his adding depth to my understanding of those enigmatic, unconvincing smiles on the faces of two newlyweds.