As Moorhouse helps us to see in this exemplary military history, to begin at the beginning of the war reveals where choices were made, and how they mattered.

The purpose of this very valuable addition to the literature on the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 is straightforward. Roger Moorhouse insists that too little attention has been paid in the West to the heroic resistance of the Poles to German aggression. They were, indeed, the first nation to stand up to Hitler’s appetite for empire and they paid a grim price for that decision. By the end of the war close to six million Poles, half of them Polish Jews, had perished.

...[a] chilling, indignant narrative.

Moorhouse’s readable narrative guides us through military events from the first German attack to the last skirmishes on October 6.

A fresh, well-documented look at the Nazi-Soviet invasion and partition of Poland in September 1939, rejecting both 'the Nazi mythology of an easy Blitzkrieg victory' and 'the Soviet lie that the Red Army never invaded at all.'.

...dense and exhaustive.