Poland: Where World War II Began – A talk by Roger Moorhouse
Poland: Where World War II Began - A talk by Roger Moorhouse
This is the third episode in the Studying Poland Today webinar series presented jointly by the Kosciuszko Foundation and the Project on Poland Past and Present. The purpose of the series is to raise the level of expert knowledge about Poland in foreign countries and, in particular, to strengthen Polish Studies in the universities of the English-speaking world.
Roger Moorhouse examines Poland’s fate in the opening two years of World War Two – from the signature of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939 to the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. He covers the German and Soviet invasions of Poland in September 1939 and the two brutal occupation regimes that followed. He also addresses the question of why this period is so often misunderstood in the Western narrative of the war.
Roger Moorhouse is a historian and author specializing in modern German and Central European history, with a particular interest in Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and World War Two in Europe. A visiting professor at the College of Europe in Warsaw, he is also the author of a number of books on modern German history, including "Killing Hitler", "Berlin at War", "The Third Reich in 100 Objects" and "The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941". He is a regular commentator in the specialist and general press and a consultant for film and television. His latest book "First to Fight: The Polish War 1939" - on the September Campaign that opened World War Two in Europe - was published by Bodley Head in the UK, and Znak in Poland, in September 2019.
