A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II (Vintage) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I usually find history books dull, but this one is well written and surprisingly readable. The title implies that this book is about the Kosciuszko Squadron, but it also covers Polish history from World War I until their freedom from Soviet rule. Kosciuszko Squadron was 303 Squadron of the British Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain, which with 126 kills was the highest scoring squadron of the battle. After the fall of Poland, many of its soldiers, sailors, and airmen made it to Britain where they begged to get into the fight. At first the Polish fliers were shown little regard, but when the British were in trouble, they finally let the Poles fly. 303 Squadron (and 302) in Hurricane fighters accounted for over 150 German planes shot down. The Poles also filled out squadrons of RAF Bomber Command, and along with their fellow fighter pilots, fought with distinction and high casualties until the end of the war. Poland also fielded an airborne brigade that fought in Holland, and armored division that fought in France, and several infantry divisions that fought in Italy.
Poland fought a little known war with the Soviet Union in 1919-1920 in which they embarrassed the Soviets and in particular Stalin, who would later get his revenge. When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Nazi propaganda portrayed them as easy prey, using cavalry against tanks and running from battle. To some extent, this vision of the Poles still is believed to this day. This book goes a long way to dispel that misinformation. Although greatly out-gunned, the Poles put up a valiant fight with antiquated equipment, killing over 16,000 German soldiers, destroying 1/4 of their tanks, and shooting down 1/5 of their planes. The Poles were still fighting hard when Stalin stabbed them in the back when he signed a pact with Hitler and invaded Eastern Poland. The Russians murdered thousands of Polish officers and soldiers in one of the most despicable acts of World War II that they never admitted until long after the war. Throughout their occupation during the war, the Poles had a large underground army (which the Allies did little to help) that continued to defy the Germans and were prepared to fight when the allies came to liberate Poland. The Poles actually helped the Soviet cause by subtle sabotage of the rail systems that impeded German troop and supply movements to the Russian front. Unfortunately, the only Allied army to arrive was the Soviet Army, and we all know what followed for decades. Even under the Soviet thumb, the Poles refused to give up their religion and national pride and shunned Marxism. Today, Poland is again a free country thanks to the Solidarity Movement and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I was outraged to learn the details of the disgraceful treatment of the Polish Nation by Roosevelt and Churchill. We sold them out at Yalta along with millions of refugees to please Stalin. After fighting and dying to preserve freedom, they had no free home to return to. Some returned to Poland where they were not well received by the Soviet's puppet government and others scattered around the world. The final insult after the war was the British victory parade in London. Not a single Pole was allowed to march for fear of offending Stalin. When the Poles arrived in Britain, they started out as distrusted, then they became heroes due to their air exploits, and finally they sank to outcast status. They deserved better treatment than they received, certainly more than our illustrious French allies.

Standard histories of World War II generally minimize, distort or simply ignore Poland's role in defeating Hitler. This book performs an invaluable service to the truth.

While the pilots of the Kosciuszko Squadron are its chief protagonists, this book has a much larger scope. More than half its pages are devoted to other aspects of Poland's fight in World War II and to that country's betrayal by its supposed allies, the British and the Americans.

The Poles fiercely resisted the German invasion, killing over 16,000 German soldiers, destroying more than 25% of their tanks and shooting down over 20% of their aircraft. Later, over 200,000 Polish soldiers, airmen and sailors made their way to Western Europe and North Africa, the 3rd largest allied force in those theaters behind the Americans and British. Back at home, over 350,000 underground fighters continued to resist the Germans. In both cases, the Poles vastly outnumbered their counterparts from all other occupied nations combined. Moreover, Poland was the only occupied nation that would not form a collaborationist, puppet regime under the Nazis.

Other vignettes in the book include the key role of Polish cryptographers in cracking Germany's Enigma codes and the Polish underground's critical contributions to spreading disinformation about allied war plans, including the invasion of Normandy.

When Britain "stood alone" against Hitler, it actually depended greatly on the Poles, who constituted over 20% of the RAF's pilots. During the Battle of Britain, they not only contributed an even greater percentage of RAF "kills," but also taught the British superior aerial combat tactics. Without the Poles, it is likely that Germany would have won air superiority over Britain and launched an invasion.

Instead, Hitler put the conquest of Britain on hold, redeployed his forces to the east and invaded the USSR in violation of his pact with Stalin. At this point, Churchill and his government quickly forgot their debt to the Poles, and began to worry more about ensuring that Stalin would not sign a separate peace with Hitler. Soon, in a striking emulation of Neville Chamberlain's attempt to appease Hitler by inviting him to take Czechoslovakia, Churchill and FDR offered the eastern half of Poland to Stalin. Meanwhile, they assured the Poles that the territorial integrity of their nation was inviolable. This secret deal was made long before the Red Army had re-entered Poland on its drive into Germany.

In the cruelest irony, the Poles' success in defending Britain made their own country expendable. Just as ironically, the British and the Americans effectively decided to enforce the terms of the Hitler-Stalin pact, which granted the eastern half of Poland to the USSR. When word of this dirty deal finally leaked to the Poles fighting in the west, many wanted to lay down their arms, but eventually did not. In yet another irony, a year after the war Churchill was concerned about "an iron curtain," yet much culpability for it lay with him.

Poles will read this book with a melancholy mixture of pride and anger, Britons and Americans with an uneasy combination of admiration for the Poles and shame at their own nations' conduct.

Olson and Cloud provide a broad overview of Polish history. As if to prove that Polish heroism is not the product of Polish self-flattery, the authors cite numerous prominent non-Polish personages to support their contentions. The progressive aspects of Polish society are attested by the democratic May 3, 1791 Constitution, the freeing of slaves by Kosciuszko but not Thomas Jefferson (p. 23), and the granting of women's suffrage in Poland before the USA (pp. 39-40).

Gordon Welchman, one of Ultra's top cryptographers, acknowledges that, without the Poles' breaking of the "invincible" German Enigma code, British efforts would never have gotten off the ground (p. 39). Numerous British military and political figures are cited who recognized the skill and effectiveness of Polish pilots. Pointedly, Ronald Kellett, Air Chief Marshall Frederick Rosier, British air minister Sir Archibald Sinclair, and Sir Hugh Dowding all state that (p. 163), without Polish help, the RAF would have lost the Battle of Britain! British parliamentarian Sir Douglas Savory is quoted as saying that Polish sabotage of German transports to the eastern front had contributed greatly to the collapse of the German offensive (p. 278). Field Marshall Viscount Alanbrooke (p. 374) asserted the indispensability of Anders' army in the Allied advance through Italy.

Several anti-Polish myths are refuted, including the tale of Polish cavalry charging German tanks and the Polish Air Force being promptly destroyed (p. 71). The long-lived caricature of Poles as an emotional and ungovernable people is shown to have originated from Poland's conquerors two centuries ago (p. 24). One hears frequent accusations of the Polish underground having been motivated by anti-Semitism for not supplying the Jewish Warsaw ghetto fighters (April 1943) with more than a few tens of guns. The authors implicitly demolish this charge by demonstrating the desperate shortage of arms that beset Polish guerillas as late as the ill-fated Warsaw Uprising (August-October 1944). Specifically, only 28 of the promised 301 Allied supply airdrops (October 1943-March 1944) were ever made (p. 285), largely to avoid offending Stalin. The underground forces of Greece, Yugoslavia, and France each received 10-20 times the arms airdropped on Poland (p. 283).

Stereotyped comments about prewar Polish anti-Semitism are made (p. 41) without adequate historical context. Reference to prewar Polish discriminatory policies against Jews neglects the magnitude of Jewish economic dominance. At 10% of the prewar Polish population, Jews owned over 40% of Poland's wealth, and were comparably over-represented at universities. The prewar economic boycotts and numerus clausus at universities were, using modern parlance, a form of affirmative action designed to get more Polish gentiles, recently emergent from peasant backwardness aggravated by 123 years of foreign rule, into Jewish-dominated institutions. Olson and Cloud recognize (p. 41) that Poland's Jews were disproportionately leftist and pro-Soviet. Unfortunately, the accusation of Poles killing hundreds of Jews at Jedwabne (p. 204) is uncritically accepted. The weight of evidence implicates the Germans as the perpetrators of this atrocity. The Poles were actually relegated to a compelled subsidiary role (perhaps 40 Poles, certainly not "half the town"). The Poles were forced to round up and guard the Jews. Whether the Poles were involved in the actual torching of the Jew-filled barn, consensually or not, has not been established by convincing evidence.

Although almost every non-Pole knows about the 6 million Jews, very few know about the 3 million Poles, including upwards of half of educated Poles, who were murdered by the Germans and Soviets during the war. These losses took three decades to heal (p. 408). The Katyn massacre of tens of thousands of Polish officer POWS is highlighted. Sir Owen O'Malley, having comprehended the Soviet murderous action, was very critical of the ensuing British whitewash (pp. 268-269). Even Joseph Goebbels recognized the fact that the Poles had received a brushoff, by the British and Americans, as if the Poles were the enemies (p. 271). Roosevelt displayed a callous disinterest in Soviet crimes. Air Marshall John Slessor, indignant over the cold-blooded Soviet betrayal of the Warsaw Uprising that alone had cost over 200,000 Polish lives, chided anyone who still trusted Stalin (p. 347). Lord Vansittart and George Orwell also supported Poland's cause (p. 341).

The authors spend much time discussing the dirty stinking doublecross at Yalta. George Kennan (p. 369) called the Yalta communique "the shabbiest sort of equivocation..." To add insult to injury, far too many Britons and Americans adopted a "blame the victim" mentality in accusing the Poles of being chauvinistic and otherwise spoilers of the Soviet-western alliance. However, US ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane resigned to protest the Truman administration's lukewarm reaction to the farcical postwar "free election" in Soviet-occupied Poland (p. 405). The Poles were not even allowed to participate in the postwar victory parade in London. Ten members of the British Parliament protested this gross indignity (p. 5), as did Air Marshall Philip Joubert de Ferte (p. 398.

Poles can learn several lessons from their bitter experiences. One is to be leery of allies' loyalty. Another is to never agree to anything without a specific, ironclad commitment to reciprocity. [One thinks of Sikorski allowing himself to be pressured into signing (p. 222) a pact with the Soviets on July 30, 1941, scarcely a month after the German attack on the USSR, without Stalin being required to recognize Poland's prewar eastern border. This was the beginning of the end of Polish postwar sovereignty that eventually ended at Yalta]. Never again should Poles be fooled or badgered into silence, as they notably had been by Roosevelt (pp. 261-262). A major factor in the shabby treatment of Poland has always been the almost universal ignorance of Poland by British and American politicians, and the general public. Though much easier said than done, Poles must do a much better job of "selling themselves" to non-Poles, especially to those in influential positions. For example, the Scot Lord Dunglass (pp. 379-380) fiercely defended Poland before the Parliament, thanks to earlier Polish friendship.