Understanding the processes of enslavement and – perhaps even more crucially – those enabling annexations, seems particularly relevant at a time when Putin’s Russia is openly declaring its desire to rebuild the Soviet empire, waging an open war against independent Ukraine and a consistent political war against the democratic West, flooding it with skilfully created and targeted disinformation.
The thematic section opens with Richard Overy’s article exploring the fateful fifth year of the war from the perspective of the Western Allies. The author aptly notes that the events of 1944 made it abundantly clear that for the Western powers, the war began in defence of Poland – a country in Eastern Europe – but over time it turned solely into a campaign to liberate Western Europe from German domination. The second thematic piece, by a Hungarian researcher Réka Kiss, examines the difficult choices faced by Hungarians during the war. Among the remaining contributions, two focus on matters closely related to Gdańsk. Based on thorough source research, Ryszard Rybka and Wojciech Samól trace the evolution of the Military Transit Depot at Westerplatte as a fortress detachment of the Polish Army, while Jarosław Tuliszka lays out in chronological detail the last moments of the heroic defence of the Polish Post Office in the Free City of Gdańsk and the dramatic surrender of its defenders. In their article, Monika Sołoduszkiewicz and Wojciech Łukaszun explore the wartime fate and poetic work of Home Army Second Lieutenant Maria Orlicz. Her pieces are part of the numerous donations that have been the core of the Museum of the Second World War’s collection. In the reports section, we present a text by Karol Szejko and Katarzyna Łuczak, describing the course of an international conference – World Battlefield Museums Forum – held by the Museum in October 2022. The volume concludes with a review by Przemysław Benken of Daniel Kores’ biography of Colonel Józef Szostak, pseudonym Filip.
Table of contents of this issue
