The way the new authorities were established between 1944 and 1945 is one of the key issues for the historiography of the Central-East European states. Firstly, because for the next forty years after the war had finished the events were mythicized. Secondly, sometimes the problem’s depiction remains under the influence of current political conditions although since the victory of democracy the standard of objectivism has much increased. Hence, it seems important to bring new sources into scientific circulation, mainly those from the Soviet archives, for the reason that some aspects of introducing political power in the discussed countries derived from the Soviet foreign policy. Goals of the USSR’s activity in the region have been a subject matter of constant, even boisterous, discussions amongst the Russian academic community for the last 15 years. Some of the researchers take the view that the ideology of spreading Socialism beyond the USSR borders was the keystone of Russian activity. The others claim that the strategic goal of the soviet authorities was protection of the political security of the state and during Stalin’s reign – protection of his personal power, which was identified with the stability of the regime. Poland had a specific position in the system of priorities of the USSR foreign policy towards Western Europe. Stalin wanted to transform it into a strong, ethnically unified and friendly (in his understanding) state – a partner (of the USSR) to secure both countries after the Second World War. To guarantee this, anti-Soviet activists and radical rightists had to be removed from power in Poland. To serve this purpose the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) was created in Moscow and a manifesto (which on the reverse has notes handwritten by Stalin) was prepared. The communist propaganda for the following forty years assured Polish society that it happened in Poland. The creation of PKWN secured cooperation between the Red Army command and Polish civil administration recognized by Moscow. Moreover it avoided the need for a direct occupying governing body. Thus Stalin had an advantage in the future fight for this type of political system and its maintenance in Poland and on the international arena. In addition, he achieved it all in defiance of intentions and plans of the Allies, who were confronted with an accomplished fact. After the PKWN was created Stalin was given an extra argument in discussing “the Polish issue” with the Allies.

The political system determines relations between the state or state related institutions like the parliament, the government, the jurisdiction, political organizations and various groups of interests. It also consists of a set of norms and regulations, which provides a base for their functioning: constitutions, electoral law etc. To classify the political system which has been built in Poland since the PKWN, it is necessary to take into account the conception of political regime as a specific form of political organization, a system of official and unofficial norms and mechanisms regulating mutual interaction between the authorities and the society. When the PKWN took over the power, new mechanisms of exercising power were introduced. A new model of society formed by deatomisation, and so called social engineering was introduced. In order to put social ties under state control an attempt to eliminate private property was made. The new model of society characterized also with a new role of political parties, an exchange of the elites, subordination of the science and education to one ideology. The idea of democratic elections was rejected. Communication and media was under political control. Local and economic local governments were removed. Changes in the trade union movement transformed it into a cell of the political power. The political life was theatricalized and any privacy was politicized. The communist rule based on five elements (Marxist theses): 1) the politics was monopolized by the Marxist-Leninist party; 2) a candidate for any executive had to be accepted by the party what was know as “the system of nomenclature;” 3) the nationalization of the economy; 4) the central distribution of all resources; 5) the policy of terror, reprisals and mass propaganda – all thought to gain control of hearts and minds. The second half of 1944 marks the beginning of the totalitarian system in Poland, which was at its height in 1948–1956. The inconsistent way different elements of the system were bound together allows us to define this incoherent organism as hybrid. The political system which has been built since the PKWN times, based on cooperation of ideologically and organizationally contradictive rules. The analyzed period created manners and attitudes of those in power and those under control which still remain in effect.

The international situation of Poland in 1944–1947 resulted from the political priorities of the power members of the Great Coalition and, as it seems, to less extent from the policy of the Polish government. The importance of Polish interests was decreasing from August 1943. Creating plans of a new world order, the USA and Great Britain deferred rather to USSR’s wishes. Many researchers consider the concessions to have gone too far comparing the USSR’s commitment to the war in the Far East. It is believed that the attitude of Washington was the crucial for the Polish issue. For the USA the Central-East Europe and Poland itself were located on the periphery of its political concerns. Great Britain was more involved and better orientated in the complex situation of the region, but it was not able to pressurize Moscow, on its own, to respect at least the Yalta conference resolutions, which assumed the multiparty system and democratic parliamentary elections. Poland was also expected to be bound to the West by the economic contacts. In the period after 1945 the British politics was increasingly active and nuanced. It concerned both the Polish Western borders and the economic policy, but as situation in the region of Balkans and Turkey embittered it became more important to stop the communist influence in those countries where it was still possible. There was no real international policy towards Poland either during the war or the postwar period. The USA and Great Britain wanted to make long lasting peace and settling the area of influence system appeared to serve this purpose well. After 1945 the Washington and London policy consisted in reacting against certain events and was short of a long term, clear political conception. Moscow took advantage of the weaknesses of the Western countries’ politics binding Poland down to the USSR and cutting it off from the West in cooperation of the local authorities. Although the article does not focus on the Polish communist politics, it was not without a meaning for the international situation of Poland.

Most of the Poles deported in years 1944 and 1945 from the province of Bialystok were internees – people incarcerated without charges or trial for an indefinite period of time. It affected particularly those having connections with the Polish Underground Movement, mainly the Home Army (AK). Detained and deported were also people who were accused of collaboration and those who accepted German citizenship during the war. What helped the UB to expose the underground movement and dismantle its structure was an operation with a codename “Tempest” carried out by the Home Army itself. Under the operation members of the civil and military conspiracy, subordinated to the Polish government, revealed themselves to the entering Soviet soldiers. Deportations of the internees were conducted by the Soviet Political Police – NKWD and the military counterintelligence – Smiersz. However, in the Bialystok province, they were actively supported by functionaries of the Polish security apparatus (UB). While in the other territories of Eastern Poland (Polska Lubelska) the UB arrested only individuals, in Bialystok it surrendered 900 people to the Soviets. It constituted almost 20 per cent of the total number deported from the whole of Bialostocczyzna. From August 1944 to February 1945 about 5000 people were taken to the detention camps in the USSR, 3300 of them had been related to the Polish underground conspiracy. The greatest number of deportations occured in November 1944, when there were higher rank officers of the Soviet security in Bialystok – Wiktor Abakumov and Lavrientij Canava. They supervised a three-week long operation under which 2900 people were arrested and deported to the Ostaszkov camp. Destinations of the others deported from Bialostocczyzna were camps in Stalinogorsk, Charkov and Riazan.

The article discusses hitherto little-known events of a Polish–Ukrainian conflict in the north-western part of the Przemysl district (between Dynow and Przemysl) during the first months of 1945. The conflict was embittered by murders which had been committed on individual Poles in the beginning of 1945. In turn, over thirty assaults on Ukrainian people took place from February till June that year. Attacks on: Skopow village on the 27th of March (61 were killed), Brzuska on 11th of April (187 victims), Bachow (95 victims) and Malkowice (at least 116 were killed) rank among the biggest ones. At the time of other attacks amid those killed were Greek Catholic priests and the members of their households. Partly, those murders were committed to pressurize local Ukrainians into emigrating to the Soviet Ukraine within the framework of the contemporary population displacement. Both the police and the Security Service failed to ascertain and capture the perpetrators. The assaults on the Ukrainian population stopped in June 1945, probably as a result of an agreement between the underground independence movement and representatives of the local OUN–UPA structures. It is impossible to establish who committed the murders of the local Ukrainians. After having analyzed the available documents (Polish and Ukrainian), reports of the suspects who were questioned by SB officers and witness accounts and also the course of events, the author came to a conclusion that at least some of those attacks were carried out by groups of the Polish underground movement under command of Roman “Sęp” Kisiel, who during the occupation was a commandant of BCh in the Przemysl district. In autumn 1944 on the basis of his former subordinates from local posts of BCh, part of whom worked in the police, he created the People Security Service in order to protect the Polish locals. It is hard to asses the exact numbers of this organization but in July 1945 1746 people revealed themselves as its members to the chief of the WUBP in Rzeszow. The SB officers ascribed to Kisiel’s groups twelve raids that caused the deaths of over 500 people. Nevertheless he was not brought to account for that. The responsibility for some of those attacks is probably held by minor Polish robber bands or neighbouring units of the underground movement.

The article depicts the communist system of oppressing the Catholic Church in Poland between 1944 and 1953. In the light of certain facts it is pretty obvious that the security apparatus must have been prepared to fight the clergy from the very beginning, especially that it was known to support the underground movement. Although, the priests were not openly persecuted before 1947, individuals happened to be victimized by the UB. According to information the MBP received from the Bialostocczyzna region, after 1945 the local clergymen stayed in touch with the resistance forces: stored its weapon or archives, performed church services. The oppression of the Church intensified in 1947–1953; most of the clergies’ trials that finished in long jail sentences took place that time. In order to discredit the Church and reduce its influence the Fifth Section of the Fifth Department, founded on the 11th of January 1946 in Bialystok, was instructed to organize an internal spy ring. But while realizing the task, many difficulties were encountered. Because the neutralization of the catholic clergy was to be achieved by recruiting secret cooperators who would hinder the Church from conducting the political propaganda (as it was called), unfriendly attitude of priests to the system was really an obstacle. In this case the security apparatus failed as shows the result of the election held on the 19th of January 1947, when similarly to the referendum, priests from the region voted predominantly against the people’s democracy. In 1949 the action taken against the catholic Church was joined by the prime minister – Józef Cyrankiewicz. In his expose, on 10th of January, he declared that using pulpits to spread anti-state propaganda and supporting the underground would be punished to the full extent of the law. He also announced that those priests who would prove their patriotism would be taken in care. This activity culminated in show trials of the priests accused of cooperation with the anticommunist underground. One of the first convicted was a curate of the Barglow parish in the Augustow district, Zygmunt Poniatowski. Being kept under more and more meticulous surveillance, the clergymen became the object of increasing pressure. The goal of such an action was to break the anticommunist defiance and subordinate the priests to state authorities. However, the cooperation between the Church and the underground movement has never been broken. The article ends with one of the most famous events of that time: the case of Kazimierz “Huzar” Kamienski who went on trial in 1953 together with some priests. Victimizing the Church, however, did not stop. It lasted on in different forms and variable intensity.

The article presents the results of a research on reports of autopsy carried out in the Cracov’s Institute of Forensic Medicine at the turbulent postwar time. An occasion to publish this material is the 200th anniversary of foundation of the Cracov Department of Forensic Medicine. The collection of autopsy reports contains more or less detailed descriptions of the cause of death of at least 72 people killed by UB and Militia functionaries in fight, during a police chase or by “accident”. Some of the victims were known for writing about non-communist resistance units. There are some precise descriptions of injuries, which had been received by people who were killed or who committed suicide in prison, indicating brutal beating and tortures to death. During the first year after the liberation of Cracov the Institute performed an autopsy on 25 bodies of people killed for unknown reasons or brutally murdered in assaults by Soviet soldiers who were stationed in the town. The Cracov prisons sent in cadavers of those whose health was ruined by hard prison conditions. In March 1945 groups of approximately 8 corpses were found on fields around Cracov, no traumatic cause of death was noted. Its is probable that those bodies had been left behind by transports taking the prisoners away during a mass NKVD’s action. The Institute examined also 36 corpses of functionaries who died fighting or were assassinated and corpses of random victims of gunfights. Amongst three hundred more or less anonymous people who died in the streets of Cracov during those years, there were wildly known cases, like the assassination of Narcyz Wiatr “Zawojna” shot in the Planty by the UB, Ró˝a Berger killed during anti-Semitic riots, and the case of a brutally murdered prosecuting attorney Roman Martini who had been carrying out a secret inquiry into Katyn.

The author tries to reconstruct and analyze the acts of sabotage carried out in Poland by the German intelligence from March to August 1939. The fact that there was German diversion in Poland was held back from the world public opinion. Its existence is, however, confirmed by documents of the Polish Government Police, the Polish counterintelligence, the German intelligence service and the German secret service preserved in Polish and German archives. Both, the intelligence and the secret service planned those acts of sabotage in detail. An example of their activity is the series of assaults on German property situated in either Polish or German territory performed in August 1939. The sabotage organization created by the Wroclaw Abwehra at the end of July 1939 numbered around 10 800 collaborators (6800 Germans and 4000 Ukrainians). They were particularly active in Silesia and the provinces of Great Poland (Wielkopolska) and Little Poland (Malopolska).

One of the most surprising aspects of the history of the Ghetto of Warsaw was that it constituted for some time a relatively safe refuge for anti-German conspiracies. By the end of 1941, a rumor appeared that the Ghetto had become a seat of the NKVD. Historians hotly debate this information. This article, an extension of a paper given during the 2003 conference on “The Holocaust and Intelligence” and a part of a larger project on “The Holocaust, Communism, and the Jews of Warsaw,” examines the issue of the Ghetto residentura. From the beginning of the war, the Jews participated in numerous underground organizations in Poland. Almost all leftist conspiracies created their centers in Warsaw and had their cells in its Ghetto. After the German attack against the Soviet Union, Polish communists intensified their activities. In January 1942, they were invited to the newly established Polish Workers’ Party, which also grew quickly in the Ghetto of Warsaw. The resistance led by the Polish Government-in-Exile kept an eye on the leftist groups. In 1943, it established the Civic Anticommunist Committee (Społeczny Komitet Antykomunistyczny). Its archive includes documents produced by Polish underground intelligence institutions active from 1939. The earliest report, from October 13, 1941, describes the activities of Colonel Glebov in the Ghetto of Warsaw. Previously, on September 6, 1941, General Stefan Grot-Rowecki, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army, informed his supervisors in London that a number of Soviet parachutists were spotted in German-occupied Poland and that an NKVD Major Klebov hid in the Ghetto. Another document from the “strictly confidential personal papers” of Stanisław Mikołajczyk, a Deputy Prime Minister of the Government-in-Exile, from September 20, 1941, describes “the activities of the Comintern’s agents on the Polish territories,” including a certain “Klebow/Clebow/Glebow.” In May 1942, Polish resistance reported on a Red Army Commissar Klimkov working in Warsaw. After the destruction of the Ghetto of Warsaw in May 1943, new information about an NKVD residentura appeared. It included Jewish survivors but operated mostly on the outskirts of Warsaw and was dominated by Russians and Poles. Considering all the contextual elements of Warsaw’s situation in 1940 and 1941, it is likely that NKVD agents operated in the Ghetto. The intelligence operations in the Ghetton of Warsaw constitute a legitimate issue worthy of further study. Systematic research in the Russian archives can present a completely new picture of the Jewish communist resistance in Warsaw only sketched in this article.

The tragedy of Katyn had repercussions not only in Poland but also in other European countries. One of them was Slovakia which at the time of war was an independent country of Hitler’s “New Europe.” The situation of this country was very specific. As a German ally it was under its constant control, but culture and tradition bound it to the Slavic world, of which Russia had been considered the most important representative. After news about the massacre reached Slovak public opinion, an idealized notion of Russian politics was called into question. The media reported on the sensational discovery almost immediately – on the 14th of April 1943. However, since the first news was supplied only by German sources, it sounded suspicious and was believed to be a part of war propaganda. This attitude changed as soon as the results of analyses, carried out by a widely respected pathologist – Prof. Frantisek Subik, were published. Not only was he the only Slovak who witnessed the exhumations, but also a member of the international commission examining the gravesite. Soon after his return from the USSR he shared his impressions and gave a detailed account of his findings during a lecture he held on the 9th of May 1943. Almost all the important newspapers (“Slovak,” “Gardista,” “Slovenska Pravda,” “Slovenska Politika”) wrote about the lecture in a politically correct way. Nazi propaganda in Slovakia also exploited the facts fittingly.

After the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established, official press was directly subordinated to the Office of the Reich Protector, the head of which for a long time was Wolfgang Wolfram von Wolmar. During weekly briefings editors-in chief were told what information ought to be published and what kind of a comment on current political events was required. The author has studied all the Prague newspapers and some of the magazines which came out from mid-April till the end of June 1943. The Protectorate press mostly published official German documents, among which there was also information about the discovery of mass graves in Katyn, provided by the DNB on the 14th of April 1943. The report prepared by the pathologists and criminologists who worked there appeared in the beginning of May. The readers could read the testimony of a Polish writer Emil Skiwski and, above all, testimonies of two witnesses from the Protectorate, a pathologist Frantisek Hajek and an eminent writer Frantisek Kozik. Hajek as a member of the international group of physicians participated in the autopsy, Kozik visited Katyn together with other European writers. Their testimonies were published and, on the 30th of April, Kozik gave a speech on the radio. The press was occupied mainly with commentating on the relationship between the Polish emigrants in London and the Soviet government, who exploited the Katyn issue to put the London emigrants in the shade and rolled out the Moscow emigrants under Wanda Wasilewska’s leadership. The most involved commentator was Karel Werner, the redactor-in-chief of the “Poledni list” magazine and later the “Vecerni Ceske Slovo” daily paper. The editorial articles and commentaries differentiate as the employed figures of speech are considered. Journalists who worked in reputable newspapers, while reporting on the felony, did not use expressions like “an animal excess of the gangsters,” “Jewish torturers” or “the beast of Bolshevism.” Those phrases were employed by journalists who had worked as editorial staff for the tabloid press before 1938. The anti-Semitic articles were written mostly by editors who had previously worked for the “Vlajka” magazine – Pachmayer, Sourek and a keynoter, anti-Semite Rudolf Novak. Frequently given opinion (27 times) was that Bolshevism had not changed since 1917 and was still the same. Not so rare (21 times) were presumptions that Great Britain would betray the Poles because it is far more important for her to maintain the alliance with Moscow. A warning that Katyn is a lesson of what would happen to the Czechs under the Bolshevik rule was mentioned 17 times. And finally, it was stated 14 times that the German army on the Eastern front protected Europe from spreading of Bolshevism.

In 1940, a significant number of French prisoners got in touch with Polish soldiers, themselves prisoners, or with Polish civilians with whom they mixed in the “kommandos” to which score of them were dispersed. Those forced encounters influenced the way the two nationalities perceived each other, and the spiritual brotherhood, born under arms, lasted after the defeat. With the advance of the Soviet army, French and Polish prisoners had shared common experience. If the stories of the ex-POWs returning to France were ignored, contained or scorned owing to the political and social strength of the French Communist Party, the fact remains, nevertheless, that this moment of shared history Polish and French provided a basis for the profound sympathy that links the two nations.

The Western Section created in summer 1942 was a part of the Department of Press and Information of so called Delegatura of the Polish Government in Exile. Its goal was to perform as a news agency and the coordinator of propaganda in the territories incorporated to the Third Reich and in the western territories claimed in compensation for the war. The section collected, studied and compiled information. In 12 comprehensive situational reports, a number of telegrams and special dispatches sent to London before August 1944 it informed the authorities about the situation. In cooperation with the underground press it also educated the Polish society. The section issued three magazines, a satiric supplement, several books, many leaflets and brochures. It also organized a base to reconstruct the Department of Press and Information in Western Poland.

In 1940 the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist (OUN) split into two (mutually) hostile factions, one headed by Stepan Bandera that came to be known as OUN-B and the other by Andriy Melnyk (OUN-M). The competition between them intensified after Germans had invaded the USSR on 22nd of June 1941. Following a shift in the German ethnic policy and increasing repressiveness towards the Ukrainians, both factions began to create their own military structures. In 1943, probably, the executives of the OUN-B decided to subordinate the military units of the OUN-M. In July 1943 the guerrilla squads of the OUN-M were forced to join the Banderites’ Ukrainian Partisan Army (UPA). Some of the Melnyk’s soldiers who evaded it asked the Third Reich for support. As a result of negotiations the Ukrainian Self-Defence Legion (ULS), also called the 31st SIPO Auxiliary Battalion was formed. To be precise, it was created in early autumn 1943 under an agreement between the SD in Luck and the local command of OUN-M. At the beginning the ULS was to fight Soviet guerillas and Polish self-defence units. However, it was soon converted into a kind a police unit, which was often used for pacification. At the beginning of 1944 the ULS was developed into an independent battalion. In the middle of 1944 it consisted of 5 front-line sotnyas (companies). The Legion was closely related to the OUN-M although the Germans replaced the fallen officers mainly with Petlura’s soldiers. The ULS had its own political command, but as time passed, its influence on the soldiers was more and more limited by the SD officers, who served in the squad. The military command of the unit was Ukrainian but, at the same time, the commander-in-chief was German (it was strictly subordinated to the German commander-in-chief). At first the ULS fought against the Soviet partisan and the Polish 27th Infantry Division of Home Army (AK) in Volhynia, for the next half a year it was garrisoned in the region of Hrubieshov, where it struggled with the Bataliony ChΠopskie and AK units and pacified Polish villages. In the end of July 1944 it was redeployed to the north of Cracov, where it also participated in military actions against the civilian population and the Polish underground movement. In September 1944 the group of Col. Diaczenko suppressed the Warsaw Uprising and secured the area of the Kampinos forest. At the beginning of 1945 the battalion appeared in Slovakia and was next moved to Slovenia to fight against the Tito’s partisans. Growing dissatisfaction caused by German reluctance to fight for Ukraine led some of the legionaries (soldiers) to desertion. After having been incorporated to the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS, the ULS’s combat story finished.

Between March and August 1942 about 2,000 Belarussian civilians (Polish citizens, members of the Orthodox Church) were evacuated to Iran together with the Army of Anders. At the time, the Soviet authorities attempted to keep people who were not ethnic Poles in the USSR. For this reason the Belarussians had to declare themselves Polish catholic or even change their surname. The Polish citizens of the Belarussian nationality were well-disposed towards Poland. The fact that the Polish government helped them to leave the “inhuman land” inspired their gratitude. Their loyalty to the state was expressed by declarations of the Belarussian Committee, led by a priest Michal Bozerianow, addressing the Polish Government and the president of the USA. The committee was founded in 1942 in Iran. The aforesaid declarations proclaimed the will of the Belarussian nation to affiliate with Poland, not with the USSR. According to Bozerianow, the Belarussian question could have been used as an argument in the Polish-Soviet dispute over the Polish eastern borderland. Therefore, the commitee asked to introduce its representative to the National Council. However the Polish Government left the proposition out of consideration. In 1943 most of the Belarussian refugees were transferred to East Africa. Although not all the Belarussians supported the Soviet authorities, and those who were refugees had very positive attitude towards Poland, the whole Belarussian community was believed to be biased towards the Communists and against the Poles. It led to an open religious conflict which lasted until the closure of the camps. The conflict changed the mood of loyalty and caused unwillingness to cooperate with the Polish people. In 1948, after the liquidation of the Polish camps in Africa, most of the Polish citizens of Belarussian nationality forced their way to Europe and America. Some of the Belarussians joined the Belarussian Association in the Great Britain.

The death of Jozef Franczak represents the end of the underground fight for the Polish independence. Before the war he was a non-commissioned officer. Then he fought in the war of 1939. On escaping from Soviet captivity at the end of 1939 he started a conspiracy and continued it for the next 24 years. Under the German occupation he was a commander of a secret squad and after the “liberation” a commander of patrol in the division of Capt. Zdzislaw “Uskok” Bronski. After 1953 he went into hiding, supported by his collaborators. The Communist Secret Service estimated the number of people who helped him at over 200. He hid in villages near Piaski town, 30 kilometers southeast of Lublin. The article reveals facts from the last period of his hiding and the SB methods which were supposed to lead to his apprehension (or elimination). His nearest family and people suspected of helping him came under careful scrutiny. It is worth noting that listening devices were installed at homes of his sisters and friends. Moreover, in the buildings of the SB collaborators who lived near to the households of the suspected people there were located so-called points of undercover observation. More than once, two or three SB officers with the aid of a secret collaborator kept them under surveillance for as long as a month. One of the main methods employed by SB officers, who wanted to track Franczak down, was recruiting people who lived in the area as common informers. Their task was to ask around about his hide-outs and watch the members of the closest family and other people who were involved. It is estimated that at the time, the SB enlisted more than a hundred people who yielded to blackmail, expected material gains or were guided by patriotic motives. Thanks to the systematic operational research, in January of 1963 the right candidate for a secret agent was selected. He was a close relative of Franczak’s fiancée. He lived in Lublin but following SB orders he started visiting his hometown and collected information about the fugitive and his helpers. Having the confidence of Franczak’s family he was put in touch with “Lalek” in August of 1963. From that moment on SB started an operational “game,” which succeeded thanks to information provided by the secret collaborator. On the 21st of October 1963 Jozef Franczak was surrounded and shot down by an operational group of SB-ZOMO officers.

How should Poland deal with Western ignorance about its history? The misconceptions are so huge, especially about World War II, that many Poles react with understandable defensiveness. But uncritical views of the Polish past – which stress only the positive – will convince no-one, and are in any case unsound history. There is perhaps no more bothersome and unpleasant topic at the moment for historically minded Poles than supposed “Polish collaboration” with the Nazis. But if one approaches the matter dispassionately, one sees that Poland has nothing to fear from probing considerations of this issue. There are of course controversial issues that need to be explored indepth: the actions of the construction battalions (Baudienst), the Institut für deutsche Ostarbeit, the local Polish police (policja granatowa), the exact practices of signing Poles onto the Volkslisten. But when the dust clears, Poland remains the country in Europe that did the least to support the Nazi war effort. Its oppositional stance is explained, however, not through ideologically based determination of Nazi Germany to destroy Poland. In fact, the Nazis had wanted Poland as an ally. But Poland refused. This refusal lay not in some superior moral quality that happened to animate the Poles of an earlier period, but rather in an absolute determination of Poles to protect national sovereignty. Polish nationalism – good, bad, and neutral – functioned to rule out collaboration in the minds of Polish leaders and Polish citizens. In this case historical analysis can help defuse an emotionally charged issue. There is much that was heroic and inspiring in Polish history. But once one rejects a protective attitude toward the Polish past – one that confuses history for myth – one can also make better use of that past. It becomes something not to feel proud of – after all we have inherited it, not created it – but something to measure up to, a recognition that we stand on others shoulders and that the circumstances we inherit are not of our own making. Heroic deeds of the past thus inspire the humility of respect rather than the arrogance of fear. A similar argument might be made about Polish Stalinism: for very specific historic reasons Poles cooperated in constructing of the new Soviet-type society far less than other subject peoples in East and Central Europe. But that would be the subject for a new essay.