Polish War

1941, Poland. Though war rages around her and occupying German forces march steadily onward, 16-year-old Aleksandra has lived her life sheltered from danger. Until one day, she goes to school—never to return. Pushed roughly into a truck with other schoolgirls like her, a single ominous word tells her all she needs to know about her fate: Lebensborn.

In the shadow of World War II, a young woman’s life is forever changed. Krista Schulz, a 17-year-old German girl living in Poland, faces a harrowing loss as the Nazi occupation shatters her peaceful life. After witnessing the brutal murder of her beloved grandparents, the Nazis are now hunting her. Krista flees her village, carrying the weight of unanswered questions and a heart heavy with grief. Determined to survive and find purpose in the chaos, Krista makes her way to Warsaw. As she grows from a frightened young girl into a resolute young woman, Krista discovers the strength within ...

Dying Echoes: Memoirs of the War 1914-1920 by Stanisław Kawczak was first published in Poland in 1936 (Milknące Echa: Wspomnienia z Wojny 1914-1920). It tells the story and experiences of a young Polish conscript in the Austrian army who fought during WWI wearing the Austrian uniform against the Russian army on the Eastern Front and the Italian army on the Southern Front. Kawczak began his military career as a corporal, and was promoted to officer cadet, lieutenant, and finally captain. From the beginning of the war his heart was in the struggle for Polish independence and the defeat of ...

In 1941, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a desperate warning to the world—one few believed, and fewer acted upon. This official diplomatic appeal, long overshadowed by the better-known Polish White Book, lays bare the calculated brutality of Nazi rule in Poland. It is a cry for help carved into history—a document meant not for reflection, but for action. The German Occupation of Poland exposes the Nazi regime’s systematic plan to erase an entire nation: to destroy its culture, enslave its people, and extinguish resistance through terror. Inside this rare report are: ...

There is a chapter of World War II history that remains largely untold: the story of the fourth largest Allied military of the war, and the only nation to have fought in the battles of Leningrad, Arnhem, Tobruk, and Normandy. This is the story of the Polish forces during the Second World War, the story of millions of young men and women who gave everything for freedom and in the final victory lost all. In a cruel twist of history, the monumental struggles of an entire nation have been largely forgotten, and even intentionally obscured. No Greater Ally redresses the balance,

New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is internationally renowned as master of the European espionage thriller. Unfolding in September of 1939 as Hitler’s Wehrmacht ravages Warsaw, the Polish Officer discloses the clandestine existence of Polish Military Intelligence.

Rok 1670. Szlachcic i najemnik Michał Hieronim Dantyszek zaczyna żałować, że kiedykolwiek dla Rzeczypospolitej walczył i zabijał… Bohater zostaje najemnikiem, walczy we Francji oraz w angielskiej wojnie domowej. Za granicą poznaje trzy osoby, z którymi bez reszty złączy się jego żywot: siedzącego w więzieniu pod zarzutem szpiegostwa Jana Kazimierza Wazę, arystokratkę Marię Ludwikę Gonzagę i polskiego magnata Jerzego Sebastiana Lubomirskiego.

The vivid memoirs of Heinrich von Brandt, a young law student swept up in Napoleon's reshaping of Europe and dispatched to Spain with the Vistula Legion of the newly formed Duchy of Warsaw. Brandt becomes an officer of the voltigeurs, light infantry who were used to skirmish, patrol, screen battlefield movements, and engage the guerrilla insurgency. He fought battles at Tudela, Santa Maria, and Valencia, as well as sieges at Zaragoza and Tortosa, and participated in numerous smaller engagements, earning the French Légion d’honneur and the Polish Order of Virtuti Militari.

Winter 1939: Danusha and her family are forced to flee their home when the Nazis invade Poland. Danusha’s mother, Anna, changes her name and secures a position as a housekeeper in a German doctor’s mansion in Kraków where Gestapo meetings are hosted in the kitchen. Her secret is their salvation, but what Danusha remembers most is the solitude, with only her baby brother and the girl in the mirror for company.

In this remarkable work, renowned historian Professor Norman Davies draws from years of meticulous research to recount the compelling story of the Polish II Corps or "Anders Army", and their exceptional journey from the Gulag of Siberia through Iran, the Middle East, and North Africa to the battlefields of Italy to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with Allied forces. Complete with firsthand accounts from the men and women who lived through it, this is a unique record of one of the most fascinating episodes of World War II.

The German invasion of Poland on 1 September, 1939, designated as Fall Weiss (Case White), was the event that sparked the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The campaign has widely been described as a textbook example of Blitzkrieg, but it was actually a fairly conventional campaign as the Wehrmacht was still learning how to use its new Panzers and dive-bombers. The Polish military is often misrepresented as hopelessly obsolete and outclassed by the Wehrmacht, yet in fact it was well-equipped with modern weapons and armor.

From the windswept coast of Wales to the trenches of Europe, no one escapes the tides of history. The Exile’s Daughter is a sweeping historical novel interweaving the fates of displaced Poles, rural Welsh villagers, and the shifting fronts of the First World War. The story opens with a flash-forward to 1914, Olsztyn, Poland, with a deadly explosion that sweeps up a young Polish soldier into German captivity. Wounded and shuffled between work camps, he witnesses the grim realities of forced labour and the shifting fortunes of war, from Tannenberg to the Western Front. His story is ...

In 1943, with Lvov's 150,000 Jews having been exiled, killed, or forced into ghettos and facing extermination, a group of Polish Jews daringly sought refuge in the city's sewer system. The last surviving member this group, Krystyna Chiger, shares one of the most intimate, harrowing, and ultimately triumphant tales of survival to emerge from the Holocaust. The Girl in the Green Sweater is Chiger's harrowing first-person account of the 14 months she spent with her family in the fetid, underground sewers of Lvov.

On the day the Pentagon releases the UAP videos, a dying test pilot whispers: “We stole it.” April 27, 2020. In a hospice room, Robert Bourque finally tells the story he wasn’t allowed to tell. His confession drags us back to February 1945—London basements, forged papers, and a suicidal order from OSS and SIS: infiltrate Der Riese near Breslau, steal the Nazis’ impossible craft called Die Glocke, and get it out before the Soviets close the noose and the SS blows the site. The Bell doesn’t fly like an airplane. It moves like thought. Bourque gets ninety seconds of combat power, a...

From the award-winning and acclaimed author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, From Warsaw with Love tells the epic story of how Polish intelligence officers forged an alliance with the CIA in the twilight of the Cold War. In 1990, soon after the Polish people voted in their first democratic election since the 1930s, the young Polish government sent a veteran spy, who’d battled the West for decades, to rescue six American officers trapped in Baghdad.

Many Americans labor under the misconception that the nation’s colonial and national heritage was almost wholly accomplished by an English migration, and the notion of early American diversity ends at an acknowledgment of the slave trade conducted between Southern buyers, Northern shippers, the African continent, and the Caribbean region. However, early America witnessed the development of New York by the Dutch, the southernmost regions by Spain, and what would become eastern Canada by the French after lengthy battles with Britain.

In 1943 Polish underground fighter John Wiernicki is captured and beaten by the Gestapo, then shipped to Auschwitz. In this chilling memoir, Wiernicki, a Gentile, details life in the infamous death camp, and his battle to survive, physically and morally, in the face of utter evil. The author begins by remembering his aristocratic youth, an idyllic time shattered by German invasion.

It’s 1937. Poland is about to catch fire. In the boxing ring, Jakub Szapiro commands respect, revered as a hero by the Jewish community. Outside, he instills fear as he muscles through Warsaw as enforcer for a powerful crime lord. Murder and intimidation have their rewards. He revels in luxury, spends lavishly, and indulges in all the pleasures that barbarity offers. For a man battling to be king of the underworld, life is good. Especially when it’s a frightening time to be alive.

After a brief revival following World War I, during which it successfully defeated a Soviet attempt to invade in an effort to carry "international revolution" into Germany and Central Europe, Poland once again fell victim to its neighbors in 1939. Adolf Hitler's Third Reich and Josef Stalin's USSR collaborated in the conquest and then split Poland between them. The Germans instituted oppressive rule in their portion of Poland, executing some 7,000 people on political grounds and imprisoning thousands of others.

On July 15, 1410, Tannenberg was the site of another decisive battle between the army of the Germanic Teutonic Order and that of Poland-Lithuania, a battle now commonly referred to as the Battle of Grunwald (after a nearby village). German nationalism saw the destruction of the Russians as vengeance upon the Slavs for the defeat of 1410, and the Nazis also exploited that sentiment during their invasions of Poland and Russia.