A useful book on a grim but pivotal period of history. The book doesn't attempt to give a comprehensive view of events in Poland, and so cannot really be faulted for skating pretty lightly over the situation of the Jews, and for avoiding the hard fact that the destruction of the radical Left -- both by the pre-War regime and then by the German AND the Russian invaders -- had made a strong political and military resistance almost impossible. Still, resistance there was, and Korbonski describes it with fascinating detail. He claims, with what truth I do not know, that the resistance tried to rotate the assignment of reprisal-killings among as many militants as possible, to prevent the creation of a psycho-killer elite within what was supposed to be the people's movement. ( )