Not available to order
Publication date:
16 January 2014Length of book:
540 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442226654
This definitive study provides a comprehensive diplomatic history of Poland during the most seminal period in its existence, when its destiny lay in the hands of France, Great Britain, and the United States. Although sovereign in principle, Poland was little more than an object of the Great Powers’ politics and rapidly changing relationships from the end of WWI to the end of WWII. Focusing on the shifting policies of the Great Powers toward Poland from the Treaty of Versailles to Yalta, the book ends with Poland’s tragic abandonment by the West into the hands of the Soviet Union. Enriched by unique anecdotal and archival material, this book will be essential reading for all those seeking to understand Poland’s role in twentieth-century history.
The thirtieth-anniversary edition of Jan Karski’s masterful work is a welcome resource for scholars and general readers alike. Karski’s clear prose reads as convincingly today as it did when first published in 1985. The sum of his insights, The Great Powers and Poland is a classic read for students of the two great wars, the Cold War that followed, and the Polish revolution that cracked open the Iron Curtain. This moving history is filled with a sense of Poland’s century-long struggle to be free and self-determining—an event Karski lived to see with the end of the Communist occupation. The Great Powers continues to enlighten because it is told in the voice of one who lived through many of the events it retells.