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Some readers may find the book parsimonious in the use of socalled nice words about Poland and the Poles. I must confess to a deliberate attempt to compensate for the traditional way of discussing the problem, especially by sympathetic foreigners. The remarkable thing about evaluations of the Poles is that while many foreigners have lavished on them praise for real or imaginary virtues, their own political and spiritual leaders have had very harsh things to say, even if mostly for "internal consumption" only. It was, after all, Jozef Pilsudski who repeatedly called the Poles "a nation of idiots." Was he less concerned over Poland than the peddlers of sentimental phrases? It seems to me that the essentially tragic quality of the Polish problem requires a different approach from that fit for mere melodrama.
The above is from the preface to a book called White Eagle On a Red Field by Samuel Sharp which was published back in 1953 (you can download it for free here). For this book, Sharp read "much of the underground press published in Poland during World War II, as well as materials relating to the history of the tragic Warsaw Uprising of 1944, not fully available in English" which is what made me read it even though it's an old book.
Anyway, I've also read some of the sympathetic studies Sharp mentions elsewhere in the preface, but I was wondering if any Polskis could recommend me some books on the second half of twentieth-century Poland, and some more recent studies of Polish politics etc. of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Recommendations of Polish historians would be great!
Whilst every history book has its author's points to prove (and therefore its own bias), I really am not looking for the idiotic, one-sided ravings of petty-minded nationalists. Cool, calm studies by non-partisan Polish historians are what I'm after, as far as "cool and calm" are possible when discussing your own country's history.
Oh, the recommended books can be written in Polish. I'm learning Polish at the moment, so one day I will be able to read them.
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