Overview

The book is about how Colonel Zygmunt Berling, a disgruntled Colonel of the Polish inter-war army - once captured by the Red Army and imprisoned - betrayed his country whilst in captivity between 1939-1941, and after 1941 vied, in his mind with General Anders, for power in establishing a Polish Army out of the hundreds of thousands of Poles captive in the Soviet Union. After 1942 Anders took many of these Poles to the west and formed his own army, the so-called 'Anders Army' which fought alongside the Western Allies, notably in Italy but was doomed to remain in the West as exiles after 1946. Berling, in contrast, at the last moment deserted Anders and remained in the Soviet Union and helped to form a Polish army there. This army fought alongside the Red Army right into Berlin, but was never trusted by the Soviet government, nor was Berling. The army formed by Berling, gave a fig leaf of respectability for Soviet annexation of Poland and provided the base for the Polish Peoples' Army.

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9781911628781

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In terms of content, McGilvray dives into important events scarcely touched upon by other books... -- (08/01/2019)

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Evan McGilvray has written a number of books on Poland as well as biographies. He is well versed in Poland and Polish society and away from the usual Krakow and Warsaw ‘hothouses’ of middle-class elites who actually know little about their compatriots. Evan McGilvray is now in the process of following up this work with another provisionally entitled ‘How to Explain Stupid – or Western Democracy Today’. Evan McGilvray was born in Winchester in 1961 and is a graduate of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL. He lived in Poland between 1991 and 1994 and visits often.

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