Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939-1947

by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

Between 1939 and 1947 the county of Janów Lubelski, an agricultural area in central Poland, experienced successive occupations by Nazi Germany (1939-1944) and the Soviet Union (1944-1947). During each period the population, including the Polish majority and the Jewish, Ukrainian, and German minorities, reacted with a combination of accommodation, collaboration, and resistance. In this remarkably detailed and revealing study, Marek Jan Chodakiewicz analyzes and describes the responses of the inhabitants of occupied Janów to the policies of the ruling powers. He provides a highly useful typology of response to occupation, defining collaboration as an active relationship with the occupiers for reasons of self-interest and to the detriment of one's neighbors; resistance as passive and active opposition; and accommodation as compliance falling between the two extremes. He focuses on the ways in which these reactions influenced relations between individuals, between social classes, and between ethnic groups. Casting new light on social dynamics within occupied Poland during and after World War II, Between Nazis and Soviets yields valuable insight for scholars of conflict studies.

512 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 2004

About the author

Born in 1962 in Warsaw, Poland is a Polish-American historian specializing in East Central European history of the 19th and 20th century. His historical works include: After the Holocaust: Polish-Jewish Relations in the Wake of World War II, and Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland. Chodakiewicz lives in the Greater Washington, DC area.

He earned B.A. degree from the San Francisco State University in 1988, M.Phil. from Columbia University, and Ph.D. with distinction from Columbia University in 2001. His Ph.D. thesis was entitled: Accommodation and Resistance: A Polish County Kraśnik during the Second World War and its Aftermath, 1939-1947. Between 2001 and 2003 Chodakiewicz was an assistant professor at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville as the holder of the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies of the Miller Center of Public Affairs. In 2003, Chodakiewicz was appointed Research Professor of History and in 2004 Professor of History at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC, where he teaches and conducts research on East Central Europe and Russia. His expert areas include History, Democracy Building, Communism, American Foreign Policy and International Relations. Since 2008, he has also held the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies at IWP. In April 2005, Chodakiewicz was appointed by President George W. Bush for a 5-year term to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Chodakiewicz has also served as Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Patrick Henry College since 2008.

Chodakiewicz specializes in East Central European history of the 19th and 20th century including the history of Poland, Habsburg and Romanov Empires, Jewish-Polish relations, environmental politics, intellectual conservative tradition, and extremist movements including Communism and Fascism. His special area of interest is World War II and its aftermath. In 2003 Chodakiewicz received the Jozef Mackiewicz Literary Prize in Warsaw for his two-volume book of history entitled Ejszyszki.

Source as of 21.09.2015: wikipedia