Review - Poland Wasn't Lost Yet
The book by the Polish author Tomasz Lubienski carries with it the air of an autobiography mixed with a personal reckoning with the Polish pre-war elite of whom extended members of his family were part of. One was an undersecretary in the Foreign Ministry under Josef Beck, and it are his accounts that give the best insight into the aloofness of the Polish government in the year leading up to the outbreak of WW II.
However, this will be a very short review, and here are the reasons for that:
The book doesn't know what it wants to be. Like trying to navigate the delta of a great river you never know where the author is going, what his point is going to be - and my guess is neither did the author himself know. Like in a series of unconnected essays the narrative flows back and forth without aim and purpose.
The book doesn't know what it wants to be. Like trying to navigate the delta of a great river you never know where the author is going, what his point is going to be - and my guess is neither did the author himself know. Like in a series of unconnected essays the narrative flows back and forth without aim and purpose.
If it was written to provide insight into the Polish psyche and how it dealt with the defeat in 1939, it did so in a way that only addressed a Polish audience. If you're unaware of the discussions in Poland with regards to that matter, you might as well be a blind man trying to describe the colors of the rainbow.
If it was written to show the hubris of the Polish elite before September 1939, to show the general atmosphere, the (lack of) military preparations, the massive chauvinistic propaganda that more and more conjured up the pictures of Polish cavalry riding between the pillars of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: it does little of that, too little to serve as an objective and informative piece. Getting that information is exactly the reason why I bought this (because there's so little we in Germany and elsewhere know about pre-war Poland!) - and it doesn't deliver the goods.
You never know what the book really is about: is it about history, about Poland, about the author, about his family? Due to the lack of structure that question remains unanswered.
Verdict: 1/5. Doesn't know what it wants to be, doesn't provide any valuable new information of the time leading up to WW II; get some Polish guy on a webforum and let him ramble on pseudo-philosophically, that should have about the same effect as Lubienski's book. I'm just happy I didn't buy it and only took it from the local library...
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