Norman Davies - Trail of Hope: The Anders Army, an Odyssey Across Three Continents

This electronic edition published in Great Britain in 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright Norman Davies (text) 2015

Copyright Rosikon Press 2015

Photographs: Janusz Rosiko

Layout: Maciej Marchewicz

Collaboration: Jan Kasprzycki-Rosiko

Copyediting: Mary Murphy, Iwona Zych

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ISBN: 978-1-4728-1603-0
ePub ISBN:-978-1-4728-1605-4
PDF ISBN:-978-1-4728-1604-7

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INTRODUCTION

I HAVE LONG WANTED TO PRODUCE A BOOK ON GENERAL ANDERS AND HIS ARMY, BUT FOR MANY YEARS WAS UNABLE EITHER TO FIT IT INTO MY SCHEDULE OR TO DECIDE ON ITS FORM AND CONTENT.

A book proposal for an academic study of the subject, which would have been similar to my work on the Warsaw Rising Rising 44 failed quite recently to find favour with my British publishers, and I was forced to think again. But I did not lose my conviction that a comprehensive survey of the Anders story was long overdue.

The decision to give preference to a popular, richly illustrated album was inspired by three factors. First, I was greatly pleased by my earlier cooperation with Rosikon Press over To and From, an album, which presented modern Polish history through the medium of philately and postal history. Secondly, I became aware that the number of eyewitness memoirs was multiplying fast, providing valuable insights into every stage of the saga. And thirdly, having noticed the abundance of unpublished photographic materials, I realised that a visual approach could be more effective than the traditional academic route. I found the title Trail of Hope or Szlak nadziei long before any detailed plans had been laid.

I also felt strongly that my work should strike a different tone from that of its predecessors. Most of the existing literature concentrates on two episodes either on the martyrology of Poles deported to the USSR in 19401941, or on the culminating Battle of Monte Cassino in May 1944. These remain vital elements within the whole. Yet I was determined to show more. I wished to convey something of the geographical grandeur of the Trail, which led from Russia and Central Asia through half a dozen Middle Eastern countries to Italy, England, and eventually to more distant continents. I wished to explain the wartime context of the adventures of the Andersowcy (the Anders Army), whose destiny was shaped by successive shifts in the strategic framework: by Operation Barbarossa in 1941; by German defeats at Stalingrad, Kursk, and El Alamein in 1942; by the Allied offensive in Italy in 19431944; and by the Yalta Agreement of 1945. Above all, I wished to demonstrate not only the rich diversity of people, who answered to Anders command, but also the extraordinary variety of their experiences and emotions, from death and despair, to fear and longing, ordeals and self-sacrifice, and, at the end, to a mixture of relief, resignation, bitterness, and hope.

The main text was written at pace, without any laborious research, drawing on knowledge that had accummulated in my head over the decades. My task was assisted by the fact that in the previous year I had presented a course of twenty lectures on the subject at the Oriental Institute of the Jagiellonian University in Krakw. In the second stage, flesh was added to the bones by inserting scores of substantial extracts from memoirs and eyewitness reports, thereby counterbalancing the historians views with the voices of people who had completed the Trail in person. Each of the 20 chapters was then embellished by hundreds of pictures, many collected by an Internet appeal. The sheer weight of the pictorial material ensures that the historians contribution does not dominate.