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Warsaw 1920: Lenin's Failed Conquest of Europe by: Adam Zamoyski List Price: £14.99 City Travel Guides Price: £9.99 You Save: £5.00 (33%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Hardcover EAN: 9780007225521 ISBN: 0007225520 Label: HarperPress Manufacturer: HarperPress Number Of Pages: 160 Publication Date: February 04, 2008 Publisher: HarperPress Studio: HarperPress Sales Rank: 4219 Related Items:
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 Rating:  - A Superbly Concise Description of this Important CampaignThis is a superbly written little book that provides a concise history of the 1920 campaign that resulted in the defeat of Soviet forces by the newly formed Polish Army. Books describing military campaigns can often be tedious but Zamoyski overcomes this by writing with such elan that you find yourself rushing through the book. Thumbnail sketches are provided of the main protagonists including Pilsudski, Sikorski, and the Russians Tukhachevsky and Budionny as well as many other players including a young, and insubordinate political officer, Stalin. Other, more detailed tomes are available, (Norman Davies, 'White Eagle Red Star', 1972) but for the reader who is seeking a brief description of this most important of battles Zamoyski has done an ... Read More: Rating: - Please read more history booksI could not help but become incensed when I read Y. Mann's review of this book above. I suggest Mr. Y. Mann of NY that you go and read some more books on Eastern Europe and Poland from the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, pre-world war I and WW2. You can start with God's Playground by Norman Davies and amongst others continue to For Your Freedom and Ours by Olson and Cloud. Quote "The idea here, apparently, is that it is OK for the Poles to take lands that belonged to them over a century ago before Poland was partitioned" well then according to you the very creation of a free Polish state was wrong. The Poles had offered the Whites help against the Bolsheviks in an agreement of a free Poland but the Whites refused to acknowledge that a Poland even ... Read More: Rating: - Short and to the pointHaving recently reread Norman Davies' account of the Polish Soviet war I was pleased to see that this book had been released. It is not the book that Davies' is, and does not really offer anything new, and Zamoyski more or less concedes this point himself. He has set out to offer an accessible and readable account of this overlooked and important conflict, which still echoes through those countries today. This he has achieved. If the book feels unsatifyingly short, it is probably only to Eastern Europe bores such as myself. To people coming fresh to the subject and the region it a quick and informative read which i would recommend. Zamoyski is to be commended for bringing his status, hard won from fuller tomes on more popular subjects, ... Read More: Rating:  - Disappointing historyThis is a short book, some 140 pages of text and I have to say I am disappointed in the author. I read Zamoyski's book on Napoleon's invasion of Russia and thought it was quite good, but here, I'd say he's very much lacking. This is a 'niche' subject that few have covered and to date, as this book shows, it is a subject filled with bias and hypocrisy. The reader is confronted by the old idea that the not yet created Soviet Union wanted to and WOULD HAVE exported their revolution to Germany through Poland. That is an idea that is not based in fact, there were many who wanted to export the Revolution but at the same time, and this is in fact what really happened, there were those who understood that in time a revolution would begin anyway. That is the ... Read More: Rating: - The shame of our intellectual eliteFew people are aware of the humiliating defeat inflicted on the Red Army in 1920. The Polish Army, with virtually no help from the West, destroyed an army several times its own size. Zamoyski demonstrates that the aim of Red Army--one of its leaders was Stalin--was nothing less than the conquest of Europe. Fresh from crushing the White Russian armies, they marched to the banks of the Vistula, and with Germany in turmoil, it looked as though nothing would stop them short of the Rhine. Even though morale began to crumble in the Polish Army, enough units maintained cohesion for Pilsudski to execute a daring flanking manoeuver which utterly routed the Red Army. Amazingly, Pilsudsky was not even a professional soldier, but his plan is recognised as a ... Read More: |
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