The Great Powers and Poland: From Versailles to Yalta

by Jan Karski

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442226654
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	01/16/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	540
File size:	971 KB

About the Author

Jan Karski (1914–2000) was a young diplomat when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. Taken prisoner by the Soviet Red Army, Karski escaped and joined the Polish underground. He infiltrated both the Warsaw Ghetto and a German concentration camp and then carried the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to a mostly disbelieving West. After World War II, Karski earned a Ph.D. from Georgetown University, where he served as a distinguished professor in the School of Foreign Service for forty years.

Table of Contents

Part I: The Great Powers and Poland between the Two World Wars (1919–1939)
Chapter 1: The Polish Question during World War I
Chapter 2: The Versailles Peace Conference, January 18–June 28, 1919
Chapter 3: The Polish-Bolshevik War and the Curzon Line
Chapter 4: Poland's Eastern, Northern, and Southern Boundaries: A Profile of the Reborn State
Chapter 5: German-Soviet Secret Understanding, 1919–1932
Chapter 6: Poland in the Foreign Policy of France, 1921–1932
Chapter 7: Two-Faced Eastern Neighbor, 1921–1932
Chapter 8: The Crucial Year, 1933
Chapter 9: The Polish-German Declaration of Nonaggression, January 26, 1934
Chapter 10: Franco-Polish Relations, 1933–1936
Chapter 11: The Era of Appeasement, 1937–1938
Chapter 12: France and Poland after the Remilitarization of the Rhineland
Chapter 13: Hitler's Demands on Poland, October 1938–March 1939
Chapter 14: Soviet-Polish Relations, 1934–1938
Chapter 15: The Meaning of the British and French Guarantees, March–April 1939
Chapter 16: Hitler's Decision to Isolate and Crush Poland, April–August 1939
Chapter 17: Nazi-Polish Relations and the Problem of Russia
Chapter 18: Hitler-Beck Diplomacy: A Make-Believe World
Chapter 19: Anglo-French-Polish Military and Economic Agreements: Commitments in Bad Faith, 1939
Chapter 20: War and Peace in Soviet Diplomacy, 1939
Chapter 21: The Anglo-Polish Pact of Mutual Assistance: Poland Misled, August 25, 1939
Chapter 22: France, Great Britain, and Russia during the German-Polish Campaign
Part II: The Great Powers and Poland during the Second World War (1939–1945)
Chapter 23: Poland after Defeat
Chapter 24: The Polish-Soviet Pact of July 30, 1941
Chapter 25: The “Four Freedoms” and the Atlantic Charter
Chapter 26: Soviet-Polish Relations, July 30, 1941–April 25, 1943
Chapter 27: The British-Soviet Alliance of May 26, 1942: Churchill's Secret Diplomacy
Chapter 28: British and American Attitudes toward Poland, 1941–1943
Chapter 29: The Tehran Conference: Roosevelt's Secret Diplomacy, November 28–December 1, 1943
Chapter 30: The Entry of the Red Army into Poland, January 1944
Chapter 31: Churchill's Efforts to Implement the Polish “Formula”
Chapter 32: Roosevelt and the Polish Issue on the Eve of the 1944 Presidential Election Campaign
Chapter 33: The Warsaw Uprising, August 1–October 2, 1944
Chapter 34: The Poles Entrapped in the Homeland and Abroad, August–October 1944
Chapter 35: The Aftermath of the October Conference in Moscow
Chapter 36: Prologue to the Yalta Conference
Chapter 37: The Yalta Conference, February 4–11, 1945
Chapter 38: The Meaning of the Yalta Agreement: Diplomacy and Semantics
Epilogue
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

The thirtieth-anniversary edition of Jan Karski’s masterful workis 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.

Dennis P. McManus

Jan Karski's long-overlooked second book follows the social trials and political tribulations of Poland from its resurrection as a sovereign state after World War I to its tragic destruction during World War II to its brutal subjection to communist rule in the aftermath of the war. The Great Powersand Poland offers readers a new understanding of Poland's predicament in the twentieth century—a fate resting largely in the hands of negligent allies and rapacious neighbors. For the many readers fascinated by Karski's wartime memoir, Story of a Secret State, this book offers the context, presenting serious scholarship that is at once accessible, compelling, and heartbreaking.

Wanda Urbanska

Originally published in 1985 by University Press of America, Karski's second book provides a comprehensive examination of the role played by Germany, Great Britain, France, the United States and Soviet Union in shaping the fate of Poland after the country regained its sovereignty in 1918. The book focuses on the shifting policies of 'the Great Powers' toward Poland from the Treaty of Versailles to Yalta, and ends with Poland’s brutal subjection to communist rule in the aftermath of World War II. Karski’s research and his in-depth analysis are richly supplemented with archival material and interesting anecdotes. The Great Powersand Poland offers readers a new understanding of Poland's predicament – a fate resting largely in the hands of negligent allies and rapacious neighbors – and its place on the world’s political map of the twentieth century.

Jan Karski Educational Foundation

Jan Karski was the wartime emissary of the Polish underground which first reported to President Roosevelt on the [Nazi] massacre of the Jews in [occupied] Poland.. .. His book, produced after many years of research, is a truly remarkable work. It not only provides the first comprehensive diplomatic history of Poland and the Great Powers, but it is well written, enriched by informative anecdotes and new material from recently opened archives.

Foreign Affairs - Zbigniew Brzezinski