Poland's part in the Battle of Britain

Contemporary Review, July, 2004 by Michael Karwowski

For Your Freedom and Ours: The Kooeciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II. Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud. William Heineman. [pounds sterling]20.00. 495 pages. ISBN 0-434-00868-0.

No less an authority than Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, chief of the RAF's Fighter Command in 1940, asserted that Polish pilots, escapees from the Nazi Blitzkrieg on Poland the previous year, played a vital, even decisive role in winning the Battle of Britain. The Kooeciuszko Squadron, one of only two all-Polish squadrons in the battle, proved to be the elite among 'the few' who, in Winston Churchill's famous words, were owed so much by so many. During the crucial six weeks of the aerial conflict, the Kooeciuszko was credited with shooting down more than twice as many enemy aircraft as any RAF squadron for the same period. Five of the Squadron's thirty-four pilots received the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), the RAF's top decoration for achievement and valour by a commissioned officer.

In 1996, The Queen testified to the role the Poles played in proving their mettle as Great Britain's only ally in those dark days of Nazi supremacy. 'If Poland had not stood with us in those days, the candle of freedom might have been snuffed out', she said. The tribute testifies to the spirit of the Polish slogan 'For Your Liberty and Ours', implying Poland's unity with all fighters against tyranny.

This passionate and beautifully-written book by two leading American journalists returns the compliment not only to the Polish pilots who helped to turn the tide of Nazi aggression but to the many thousands of soldiers and sailors who played a major part in every Allied campaign in Europe and North Africa in World War II.

Appropriately, the Kooeciuszko Squadron, named after Tadeusz Kooeciuszko, a Polish officer who helped George Washington win the American War of Independence, was first formed in Poland in 1919 by a group of US pilots, volunteers in the victorious Polish war against the first Soviet expansion into Europe. They were led by Merian Cooper, who later became a Hollywood producer responsible for some of film director John Ford's most notable Westerns. Indeed, the Squadron's insignia incorporated a stylised version of the American flag.

But For Your Freedom and Ours is less about how much the Poles and the West have to be grateful to each other in their common fight for political freedom, and more about the Poles' betrayal in World War II and its bitter aftermath by Churchill and, especially, Franklin Roosevelt. The book analyses in painful detail the two Allied leaders' appeasement of the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, widely supported by their press and public, which led to Poland's being handed over as a sacrificial lamb to the Communists in a vain effort to buy a lasting post-War peace. As George Orwell, author of Animal Farm, the biting satire of Soviet totalitarianism, commented at the time: 'Those people in the press and government don't see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you'.

In this respect, For Your Freedom and Ours testifies to the fact that while the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain's, appeasement of Hitler was a decisive factor in the outbreak of World War II, Churchill and Roosevelt's appeasement of Stalin over Poland was a primary cause of the Cold War and of the divided Europe that followed. But the book brings the story full-circle with the Polish trade union Solidarity's leading role in bringing about the fall of totalitarian Communism in Europe and Russia in 1989 and Poland's admission to NATO in 1997. On that occasion, President Clinton told the Poles: 'Together, we will work to secure the future of an undivided Europe, for your freedom and ours'.