The purpose of this very valuable addition to the literature on the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 is straightforward. Roger Moorhouse insists that too little attention has been paid in the West to the heroic resistance of the Poles to German aggression. They were, indeed, the first nation to stand up to Hitler’s appetite for empire and they paid a grim price for that decision. By the end of the war close to six million Poles, half of them Polish Jews, had perished.
The great strength of this new account lies in the extensive use of Polish sources, all too often overlooked entirely when trying to piece together the history of the campaign. Moorhouse insists that the Germans did not have it all their own way, despite the great disparity in the number of men and weapons between the opposing sides. From the first resistance on the frontier to the final desperate battles in early October, the Polish army and air force gave as good as they could. On occasion, they bested their opponent. The SS Germania division, carelessly at rest in a forest, was subjected to a ferocious night attack using bayonets that left piles of German corpses and demoralised those who survived.
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