Authors:
- Challenges prevailing interpretations of the British approach to the Polish question, arguing that British policymakers continued to feel themselves indebted to the Polish opposition even as their power to influence the shape of post-war Poland diminished
- Offers the only full analysis of British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin’s policy towards Poland
- Explores the considerable continuity between the wartime and post-war years, rather than treating the war as a discrete period
Part of the book series: Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World (SCCCW)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This book examines the outcome of the British commitment to reconstitute a sovereign Polish state and establish a democratic Polish government after the Second World War. It analyses the wartime origins of Churchill’s commitment to Poland, and assesses the reasons for the collapse of British efforts to support the leader of the Polish opposition, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, in countering the attempt by the Polish communist party to establish one-party rule after the war. This examination of Anglo-Polish relations is set within the broader context of emerging early Cold War tensions. It addresses the shift in British foreign policy after 1945 towards the US, the Soviet Union and Europe, as British leaders and policymakers adjusted both to the new post-war international circumstances, and to the domestic constraints which increasingly limited British policy options. This work analyses the reasons for Ernest Bevin’s decision to disengage from Poland, helping to advance the debate on the larger question of Bevin’s vision of Britain’s place within the newly reconfigured international system. The final chapter surveys British policy towards Poland from the period of Sovietisation in the late 1940s up to the October 1956 revolution, arguing that Poland’s process of liberalisation in the mid-1950s served as the catalyst for limited British reengagement in Eastern Europe.
Authors and Affiliations
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LSE Department of International History, London, UK
Andrea Mason
About the author
Andrea Mason is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: British Policy Towards Poland, 1944–1956
Authors: Andrea Mason
Series Title: Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94241-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-94240-7Published: 29 November 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-40402-4Published: 20 February 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-94241-4Published: 19 November 2018
Series ISSN: 2731-6807
Series E-ISSN: 2731-6815
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 232
Topics: History of Modern Europe, History of World War II and the Holocaust, Political History, Foreign Policy