'We shall rebuild anew a powerful nation': UNRRA, internationalism and national reconstruction in Poland

Journal of Contemporary History

Volumn 43, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 451-476

  Reinisch, Jessica ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Displaced persons (DPs); Poland; Postwar; Reconstruction; Repatriation; UNRRA

Indexed keywords

EID: 57749131563     PISSN: 00220094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0022009408091835     Document Type: Review

References (139)

1. John Vachon, 10 January 1946, in Ann Vachon (ed.), Poland, 1946: The Photographs and Letters of John Vachon (Washington, DC 1995), 4-5.
2. UN, S-1021-0143-35, Herbert Lehman, 14 February 1945.
3. Editorial in Winning the Peace (St Louis, MO 1944), 1. The Food and Agriculture Organization actually pre-dated UNRRA.
4. UN, S-1021-0143-1/13, In the Wake of Armies, Issue 7, October 1945.
5. UN, S-0407-0032-15, Minutes of Field Supervisors and Staff Meetings, January 1947.
6. NA, FO 371/38956, Jan Masaryk, 'Czechoslovakia looks East and West', 13 March 1944.
7. E.g. L.K. Hyde, The United States and the United Nations: Promoting the Public Welfare, Examples of American Cooperation, 1945-1955 (New York 1960), 36.
8. Frank Boudreau, 'The Problem of World Health', in Winning the Peace (St Louis, MO 1944), 69.
9. UN, S-1021-0170-10, 'People Displaced - UNRRA's part in their repatriation and resettlement', December 1944.
10. Walter Dushnyck and William Gibbons, Refugees are People: The Plight of European Displaced Persons (New York 1947).
11. Arthur Bliss Lane, I Saw Poland Betrayed: An American Ambassador Reports to the American People (New York 1948), 224.
12. Caroline Moorehead, Dunant's Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross (London 1998), 506.
13. John Vachon, 22 January [1946], in Ann Vachon (ed.), op. cit., 17.
14. Michael Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (New York 2002), 230.
15. E.g. Yury Boshyk, 'Repatriation and Resistance: Ukrainian Refugees', in Michael Marrus and Anna Bramwell (eds), Refugees in the Age of Total War (London 1988);
16. Anthony Sutcliffe, An Economic and Social History of Western Europe since 1945 (1996), 11.
17. Charles Maier, 'The Politics of Productivity', in Charles Maier (ed.), The Cold War in Europe: Era of a Divided Continent (Princeton, NJ 1996), 185.
18. UNRRA operated in Albania, Austria, Byelorussian SSR, China, Czechoslovakia, Dodecanese Islands, Ethiopia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Korea, the Philippines, Poland, San Marino, Ukrainian SSR and Yugoslavia. It also operated Displaced Persons programmes in Germany and China.
19. E.g. Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943-1948 (1991 [first published 1984]);
20. Andrzej Paczkowski, The Spring Will be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom (2003 [first published 1995]).
21. Frank P. Walters, 'Dumbarton Oaks and the League: Some Points of Comparison', International Affairs (April 1945);
22. Leonard Woolf, 'The International Post-War Settlement', in Julian Huxley et al., When Hostilities Cease (London 1943);
23. Arnold Brecht, 'Distribution of Powers between an International Government and the Governments of National States', American Political Science Review 36(5) (October 1943), 862-72;
24. Egon Ranshofen-Wertheimer, 'International Administration: Lessons from the Experience of the League of Nations', American Political Science Review 36(5) (October 1943).
25. Helping the People to Help Themselves (London 1944), 9.
26. Rajchman to Noel-Baker, February 1944, in Martha Balinska, For the Good of Humanity: Ludwik Rajchman, Medical Statesman (1995), 187.
27. E.g. Marvin Klemmé, The Inside Story of UNRRA: An Exercise in Internationalism (New York 1949).
28. Allan G.B. Fisher, 'International Institutions in a World of Sovereign States', Political Science Quarterly 59(1) (March 1944), 10.
29. Fisher later worked at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund: see The Author's and Writer's Who's Who, 1949.
30. Esp. in tariff control and armament: Arthur Salter, 'World Government', in Mary Adams (ed.), The Modern State (London 1933).
31. David Runciman, 'The Concept of the State', in Quentin Skinner and Bo Strath (eds), States and Citizens (Cambridge 2003).
32. Salter, 'World Government', op. cit., 272.
33. Arthur Salter, Slave of the Lamp (London 1967), 82.
34. On the first world war collaborative authorities, see Frank Trentmann, 'Coping with Shortage: The Problem of Food Security and Global Visions of Coordination, c.1890s-1950', in Frank Trentmann and Flemming Just (eds), Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of the Two World Wars (2006).
35. E.g. John Fischer Williams, 'A Reconstruction of the League of Nations?' Agenda 2(1) (February 1943);
36. Arthur Salter, Personality in Politics (London 1947), 132.
37. Also see Charles Maier, 'Empires or Nations - 1918, 1945, 1989', in Carl Levy and Mark Roseman (eds), Three Postwar Eras in Comparison (2002), 55.
38. Julian Huxley, in Julian Huxley et al., When Hostilities Cease (London 1943), 21;
39. Woolf, 'International ... Settlement', op. cit., 16-17.
40. Leland Goodrich, 'From League of Nations to United Nations', International Organisation (February 1947).
41. NBKR 4/381, Noel-Baker, 'What kind of a League?' 22 April 1941.
42. NBKR 4/499, 'The International Secretariat of the Future: Lessons from Experience by a Group of Former Officials of the League of Nations', RIIA, March 1944, 11-12.
43. James Sheehan, 'The Problem of Sovereignty in European History', American Historical Review 111(1) (February 2006), 1-15, at 10.
44. NBKR 4/500, Noel-Baker to Sean Lester, 22 June 1942 (original emphasis).
45. NBKR 4/749, 'Verbatim record of the fourth meeting, 12 August 1946'.
46. NBKR 4/499, 'The International Secretariat of the Future', op. cit., note 31, 18.
47. Whitley Bay Guardian, 20 February 1981, in IWM, 98/25/1.
48. Kathryn Hulme, Undiscovered Country (London 1967), 300, 200.
49. NARA 840.50 Recovery/7-2243, Herbert Lehman (Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operation) to General Haskell et al., 22 July 1943.
50. E.g. George Woodbridge, The History of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (New York 1950), vol. I, 12;
51. NARA, 840.50 UNRRA/74A, circular, 9 December 1943.
52. Roman Dyboski, 'Economic and Social Problems in Poland', International Affairs 16(4) (July 1937), 592.
53. NARA 840.50/Recovery/6-1847, Benjamin Cohen (Department of State), 18 June 1947;
54. 840.00/1-943, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, 'The European Question and America', November 1944.
55. Hilaire Belloc, 'The Test is Poland', The Weekly Review, 4 January 1940.
56. Richard Lukas, Bitter Legacy: Polish-American Relations in the Wake of World War II (Kentucky 1982), 97;
57. Lane, Poland Betrayed, op. cit., 143.
58. Acheson, in Lukas, Bitter Legacy, op. cit., 100.
59. Balinska, Ludwik Rajchman, op. cit., 197.
60. See, for example, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, The Rape of Poland: Pattern of Soviet Aggression (New York 1948).
61. Woodbridge, UNRRA, op. cit., vol. II, 204.
62. European Regional Office, UNRRA at Work No.5: UNRRA in Poland, February 1946;
63. UN, S-1021-0170-12, DP Operation, 'Report of Central Headquarters for Germany', April 1946, 18.
64. Also see Michael Fleming, 'Seeking Labour's Aristocracy? The "Westphalian incident" and Polish Nationality Policy in the Immediate Aftermath of War', Nations and Nationalism 13(3) (2007), 464.
65. In January 1946, regional offices were opened in Katowice, Krakow, Lodz, Poznan, Gdynia, and, in September 1946, in Szczecin.
66. th April 1946', 2 September 1946.
67. Also see W.Brus, 'Postwar Reconstruction and Socio-Economic Transformation', in M.C. Kaser and E.A. Radice (eds), The Economic History of Eastern Europe, 1919-1975 (Oxford 1986), vol. 2: Interwar Policy, The War, Reconstruction, 576-7.
68. Woodbridge, UNRRA, op. cit., vol. II, 229.
69. The impact of UNRRA on the Polish economy, Operational Analysis Papers No. 45, April 1947. The Polish programme made up 16.4 per cent of the whole programme, and one-fifth of the European programme.
70. Thad Paul Alton, Postwar Polish Economy (New York 1955), 268-9, 283.
71. Also see Stanley J. Zyzniewski, 'The Soviet Economic Impact on Poland', American Slavic and East European Review 18(2) (April 1959), 205-55.
72. John Vachon, 10 January 1946, in Vachon, op. cit., 4.
73. UN, S-1021-0183, 'Background Material for Welfare Planning, Poland', August 1944.
74. Martha Balinska, 'Assistance and not mere relief: the Epidemic Commission of the League of Nations, 1920-1923', in Paul Weindling (ed.), International Health Organisations and Movements (Cambridge 1995), 81-2.
75. Interview with Jakub Berman, in Teresa Toronska, Oni: Stalin's Polish Puppets (trans. Agnieszka Kolakowska) (1987), 247, 242. Berman (1901-1984) spent the war years in the Soviet Union, returned to Warsaw in 1944 and became a member of the Politburo.
76. Mikolajczyk, Rape of Poland, op. cit., 253.
77. Woodbridge, UNRRA, op. cit., vol. II, 207.
78. UN, S-1021-0183-07, 'Emergency Welfare Services: report of the studies sub-committee of the standing technical committee on welfare', December 1944, 23.
79. UNRRA at Work No.5. Also UN, S-0527-1083-07, C.R. Stein (Temporary UNRRA delegation to Poland) to Toni Sender (DP Division, UNRRA Washington), 25 August 1945.
80. The Impact of UNRRA, 65. The population had been reduced from 35 million to 24 million.
81. Eugene M. Kulischer, The Displacement of Population in Europe, International Labour Office, Studies and Reports Series O, No.8 (Montreal 1943);
82. Mark Spoerer and Jochen Fleischhacker, 'Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany: Categories, Numbers and Survivors', Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33(2) (Autumn 2002), 188.
83. UN, S-0527-1083-08, T. Kochanowicz (Central Planning Office, Warsaw) to C.M. Drury (Chief of Mission), 'Requirements of intellectual and manual workers in Poland', 22 March 1946. On details of the dearth of specialists, see Woodbridge, UNRRA, op. cit., vol. I, 202. Fewer than half of the 12,900 doctors of pre-war Poland had survived.
84. UN, S-0527-1083-08, Roland Berger to UNRRA Mission in Italy, France and ERO London, 28 March 1946.
85. UN, S-0527-1083-07, Roland Berger to Mr Skrzeszweski (Minister of Education), 18 February 1947.
86. UN, S-0527-1083-07, C.M. Drury (Chief of Mission) to S. Jedrychowski (Minister of Navigation & Foreign Trade), and Mr Wolski, 18 September 1946.
87. The Impact of UNRRA, 76-7.
88. UN, S-0527-1084-02, UNRRA Poland Mission to UNRRA Central HQ, Arolsen, 'Answers to DP Questions', 12 November 1946.
89. IWM, 84/47/1, Slogans, 17 August 1946, sent by Regional Repatriation Officer, Hanover Region, to all F.S.O.'s, 22 August 1946, (original emphasis) - these slogans were presumably designed to be used on posters and in other repatriation publicity.
90. Berman, in Toronska, Oni, op. cit., 302, 334.
91. Paczkowski, Spring Will Be Ours, op. cit., 151.
92. Lukas, Bitter Legacy, op. cit.;
93. Woodbridge, UNRRA, op. cit., 219.
94. John Vachon to Penny, 13 April [1946], in Vachon (ed.), op. cit., 57.
95. Woodbridge, UNRRA, op. cit., vol. II, 221.
96. UN, S-0527-1084-02, 'Meeting at the Ministry of Public Administration on Repatriation problems', 15 July 1946.
97. UN, S-0527-1084-02, Mrg. Rusek, 'The State Repatriation Office (P.U.R.) and the Question of Repatriation: Information received from PUR at Gdynia', 15 March 1946.
98. W.J. Stankiewicz, 'Socio-Economic Changes in Post-War Poland', Political Science Quarterly 71(3) (September 1956), 391.
99. UN, S-1021-0183-06, 'Country Welfare Study - Germany - for use in connection with the care of Displaced Persons in Germany', March 1945.
100. UN, S-0527-1084-08, 'Social Insurance System' [undated]. Interview with Mr Modlinski (Head of Social Insurance Department, Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare), 6 May 1946.
101. UN, S-0527-1085-01, Conference with Polish Minister for Repatriation, 2 August 1946.
102. UN, S-0527-1083-07, 'Statement on Relief Standards', 12 February 1946.
103. UN, S-0527-1083-07, 'London meeting on repatriation problems', 13-27 February 1946.
104. IWM, 95/26/1, Tadeusz Stepiciski (Polish Transport Leader) to Rhoda Dawson, 5 October 1946.
105. UN, S-0527-1084-02, 'Meeting at Ministry of Public Administration on Repatriation problems', 15 July 1946.
106. Moore, in Vachon (ed.), op. cit., xiv-xv. Vachon initially got 1200 zlotys a day for living expenses; by February 1946 this went up to 1750 zlotys. He noted that Polish UNRRA drivers earned 75 zlotys a day; white-collar government jobs got 4000 to 5000 zlotys a month. Blackey got 1600 zlotys a day for meals, and observed that 'the average Pole' earned between 2000 and 3000 zlotys a month.
107. IWM, 95/26/1, 'The Stagnant Pool' [undated, ca.1992], 6-7; Lecture notes [undated];
108. Willi Frischauer, 'Journey into Europe', Illustrated, 28 April 1945.
109. IWM, 98/25/1, Diary, 1945.
110. IWM, 98/25/1, '"Practical Christianity": Major Heath's Address on German D.P. Camp' [undated], 'The week ahead - talk by Mrs Muriel Heath', 24 February 1955.
111. IWM, 95/26/1, UNRRA Team 106, Föhrenwald Camp Wolfratshausen, 'Memo of F.M. Wilson & P. Bonot', 30 July-13 August 1945.
112. IWM, 87/14/1, Nora O'Connor, Memoirs [undated], 14.
113. IWM, 98/25/1, Diary, e.g. 24 May 1945.
114. UN, S-0407-0039-01, James Layton to UNRRA Regional Directors, 16 June 1947.
115. Francesca Wilson, Advice to Relief Workers (London 1945), 23.
116. UN, S-1021-0170-02, 'The College of Arts for Displaced Persons'.
117. IWM, 95/26/1, Wanda Czarnocka to Rhoda Dawson, 20 September 1946; Dawson to Czarnocka, 24 October 1946.
118. One survey calculated that 33 per cent of Polish DPs receiving UNRRA assistance in Germany had registered in agricultural professions, making up the largest single vocational group. Another calculated that 45 per cent worked in 'agriculture, forestry or food processing': UN, S-1021-0183-13, 'Occupational Skills of Employable Displaced Persons Receiving UNRRA Assistance in Germany, Austria and Italy', July 1946. S-1021-0170-13, The Central Committee of the Council, Reports of the Administration on Displaced Persons Operations as required by Resolution 92, 1946.
119. Czeslaw Milosz, in Ewa Czarnacka and Aleksander Fiut, Conversations with Czeslaw Milosz (San Diego 1981), 48.
120. Mikolajczyk, Rape of Poland, op. cit., ix.
121. UN, S-0527-1084-02, Paul Jokelson, 'UNRRA Camp Director at DP meeting at Fritzlar', 6 May 1946.
122. IWM, 95/26/1, 'Suggested scheme for a broadcast: Transport to Poland', 17 January 1948.
123. Hulme, Undiscovered Country, op. cit., 251.
124. Lane, Poland Betrayed, op. cit., 38.
125. Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind (London 1953), 19.
126. For his more detailed analyses of Poland's relationship with Russia, see Milosz, Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition (trans. Catherine Leach) (London 1968).
127. Rajchman to Noel-Baker, in Balinska, Ludwik Rajchman, op. cit., 191.
128. Geoffrey Hosking, 'Playing Down the Nation: Review of Richard Vinen, A History in Fragments', TLS, 15 December 2000.
129. E.g. Lubomyr Y. Luciuk, Heroes of their Day: The Reminiscences of Bohdan Panchuk (Ontario 1983), 11.
130. E.g. see essays in Philipp Ther and Ana Siljak (eds), Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948 (Oxford 2001);
131. Michael Fleming, 'Seeking Labour's Aristocracy?' op. cit.;
132. Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (2003).
133. Jan Gross, 'The Experience of War in East Central Europe: Social Disruption and Political Revolution', in Kersten, Communist Rule, op. cit., xix.
134. Also see Jan Gross, 'Social Consequences of War: Preliminaries to the Imposition of Communist Regimes in East Central Europe', Eastern European Politics and Societies 3(2) (1989), 198-214;
135. Jan Gross, 'War as Revolution', in Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianskii (eds), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944-1949 (1997), 17-40.
136. Padraic Kenney, Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists 1945-1950 (1997), 7-8.
137. Paczkowski, Spring Will Be Ours, op. cit., 180.
138. Also see Tymon Terlecki, Polska a zachod: proba syntezy (Polish Writers Association, London 1947);
139. Oscar Halecki, The Limits and Divisions of European History (1950).