Norman Davies on the Warsaw Rising
PR dla Zagranicy
John Beauchamp
30.07.2014 10:51
-
Michał Kubicki interviews Prof. Norman Davies on 'Rising 44'.
Published in 2004 for Western readers, ‘Rising 44. The Battle for Warsaw’ by British historian Norman Davies to this day remains one of the most reliable sources of information about the events of 1944.
In this archive interview, reporter Michał Kubicki speaks to Norman Davies shortly after the launch of the book.
He describes the Warsaw Rising as ‘an effort to assert Polish independence, […] a natural consequence of the decision taken in 1939 to fight the German occupant. There wasn’t anything unusual about it; what was unusual was the way the Allied powers behaved.’
Talking about the aftermath of the 63 days of street fighting, Professor Davies says that ‘it decimated the generation of young people who in other circumstances would have become the natural political elite in Poland after the war’.