The United States and Poland. by Piotr S. Wandycz; Edwin O. ReischauerReview by: Wallace FarnhamSlavic Review, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 356-357Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2496380 .

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356 Slavic Review

THE UNITED STATES AND POLAND. By Piotr S. Wandycz. Foreword by Edwin 0. Reischauer. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1980. xvi, 465 pp. $25.00.

To publish a book on recent Polish history in 1980 was unwittingly to give a formidable hostage to fortune, but Piotr Wandycz has come through splendidly. The United States and Poland is a historical work that necessarily focuses on recent decades and on the origins of Poland's present upheaval. Recent events flow inexorably from the scene as Wandycz left it, which is high testimony to his grasp of his subject. He has given us an illuminating history and a timely commentary.

This multifaceted book is primarily an analytical history of American-Polish rela- tions, broadly conceived in economic and cultural as well as political and diplomatic terms. Into this the author has woven large chunks of Polish history for the good reason that most Americans know too little about it to grasp his main subject well without such help. As a further aid, he relates Polish experience to better-known European themes. Given the wide ramifications of much of the subject - during two world wars and the Cold War - the book is also at many points good general history. It was a task well conceived and well executed.

It was not an easy task. Relevant studies are spotty and too often emotional or ideological. Wandycz has relied upon previous work but has handled it with uncommon care. Most notably, he has drawn what is valuable from post-1945 Polish historiography without being sabotaged by the distortions that censors have forced upon it. His judicious treatment of difficult materials and topics inspires confidence. Not least among the merits of the book is its lengthy bibliographical essay on materials published in English.

There is a "one-sidedness" to the story, as Wandycz observes, since the United States has usually been more important to Poland than Poland to the United States. Until late in the eighteenth century, contacts were fragmentary, though during the "democratic revolutions" each country drew upon the history of the other. In the nineteenth century, Poland was for Americans chiefly a moral "cause," while the flow of Poles to America swelled. Two-thirds of the book deals with the period since 1914, turbulent years for Poland with the United States a strong or potentially strong force. The author incisively portrays the succession of problems and traces in considerable detail the political and economic connections between the two countries. Inevitably, he labors long over the "Polish question" during the two world wars, and he is steadily concerned to show the interplay of diverse elements, from American politics and Polish-American organizations to internal Polish conditions and relations among the great powers. Two thorough chapters bring "People's Poland" up to his own ink well. If there is a general theme, it is that Polish-American relations were less one-sided than they seemed. As events in 1939 and since 1945 proved, Poland was more than the "burdensome local issue" that Franklin Roosevelt thought it to be, and except in 1918 American naivete and short-sightedness harmed American interests as well as Polish. Wandycz is always even-handed and never simplistic. He avoids the waiting traps, whether of exaggerating the role of individual Poles like Kogciuszko in America, or depicting Poles as romantic heroes without warts, or of simply lamenting events at Teheran, Yalta, or in 1956. It is a comprehensive, insightful book, throwing light in many directions.

The United States and Poland is notable among other things for judicious analysis and a dearth of moralistic or ideological preaching. The conclusion at one crucial point is typical: "Neither Wilson, Pilsudski, Dmowski, Paderewski, or the Russian Revolution alone was responsible for Poland's rebirth - all had their share in it" (p. 130). The reader may at times feel that the trees are more evident than the forest, as in detailed narratives of interwar economic problems, for example, or of the fumblings of American policymakers in the 1950s and 1960s. But for the most part the forest stands out sharply, and the frequent portraits of a troubled scene at critical times are very enlightening. Wandycz is constantly aware of the diverse elements of his subject and weaves them

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Reviews 357

together well. The lengthy explorations of Polish history might have become distracting but did not. Together they form an excellent synthesis of the subject, and they are well used to develop the central theme. If there is any fault in the author's multidimensional account, it is in the limited treatment of the Poles in America, who appear largely through their organizations. The lives of these people, their "America letters," and the responses in Poland are elusive but important themes, mirrored only in part by pressure groups and the Polish vote. In all, however, most readers will be as grateful as I am for a book that splendidly illuminates a rich subject that is more important than it seemed to be until recently and that leads directly into the rise, program, and fortunes of the union Solidarity.

WALLACE FARNHAM University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

DEUTSCHLAND UND DER POLNISCH-SOWJETISCHE KRIEG 1920. By Gerhard Wagner. Veroffentlichungen des Instituts fur europaische Geschichte, vol. 93. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1979. viii, 294 pp. DM 74.

This is an authoritative study of the domestic and foreign policy reaction of Weimar Germany to the events of the Polish-Soviet war of 1920. The work is based on an exhaustive examination of German government records, Reichstag debates, and news- paper accounts, as well as interviews with surviving eyewitnesses of this particular historical episode. The author does not provide new theoretical perspectives or a revisionist interpretation of the events of 1920. Instead, he gives a detailed description of developments during the 1920 crisis whose main features have already been well estab- lished in previous works. Wagner avoids the personal bias and predilection to overdrama- tize often found in the accounts of direct participants, notably those of J6zef Pilsudski and Lord d'Abernon, as well as the narrow ideological treatment which the subject has generally received.

The author may come closest to challenging the conventional judgment of Western historians when he argues that the defeat and retreat of the Red Army in August 1920 was less the result of a spectacular battle, the so-called miracle on the Vistula, than the consequence of inadequate planning, faulty coordination, lack of equipment, and an overextension of their supply lines that made a complete retreat of the Red Army from Poland virtually inevitable. If the defeat of the Soviet forces could be deduced from the application of standard professional military criteria, one wonders why the Reichswehr, certainly a professional army of the highest caliber, should have been so completely mistaken in predicting a Soviet victory over Poland. This is a question which arises naturally from the author's argument but to which no answer is given.

Although it addresses the wider international dimensions of the 1920 war, the book concentrates on the German neutrality decision, the problems in maintaining this neutrality, and the political consequences of this stand. When the German government formally declared its neutrality on July 20, 1920, the decision received immediate support from all political parties in Germany, a rarity in the annals of the turbulent Weimar republic, and it was accepted with considerable relief in both Warsaw and Moscow, as each side had feared that Germany might side with the opponent. While a policy of neutrality seemed the best course to safeguard Germany's international peace and internal stability, it was not an easy policy to execute. In opting for neutrality, a decision which was made on the faulty assumption of an impending Soviet victory, the German government gave priority to the foreign policy goal of revising the Versailles Treaty at the risk of promoting internal turmoil and unrest as the consequence of having the Red Army stationed on Germany's eastern frontier. The neutrality decision involved not only a

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