Forgotten history
被遺忘的歷史
A killing field
殺戮之地
Everyone agrees that the second world war was seismic. Ask when it started, however, and views differ, revealingly. For Chinese, it was the Japanese attack of July 1937. Soviet and Russian histories mark June 22nd 1941, when the perfidious Nazi invasion began. Britain and France regard the period between the declaration of hostilities in 1939 and May 1940 as the 「phoney war」, or drôle de guerre.
所有人都認同第二次世界大戰影響深遠。但是關於二戰始於何時，大家卻觀點各異。對中國人來說，1939年7月日本入侵打響了二戰的第一炮；蘇聯和俄羅斯則將1941年6月22號納粹背信棄義、入侵蘇聯視作二戰的開端；而英法則認為，從1939年對德宣戰到1940年5月的這段時間處屬於「虛假戰爭」（處於戰爭狀態但並未實際交戰的時期）。
But as Roger Moorhouse, a British historian, notes, there was nothing phoney about the war in Poland. The opening five weeks of slaughter were a gory template for the 300 that followed: 200,000 people died, the overwhelming majority of them Poles, and mostly civilians. Poles would be 「exposed to every horror that modern conflict could devise」, including indiscriminate aerial bombing, and massacres of civilians and pows.
但是，正如英國歷史學家羅傑·穆爾豪斯(Roger Moorhouse)所指出的那樣，這段所謂的「虛假戰爭」對波蘭來說卻是血淋淋的「真實」。戰爭序幕以一場長達五周的殘酷屠殺拉開，接下來的是300起類似的殺戮：總計有20萬人喪生，死者幾乎全部都是波蘭人，其中大部分還是平民。波蘭人幾乎經歷了「現代戰爭所能製造的所有恐怖」，包括無差別空襲，對百姓和戰俘的肆意屠殺。
Yet the campaign fought by Nazi Germany from September 1st 1939, the associated Soviet invasion on September 17th, and the brave, chaotic and doomed defence launched by Poland, are strangely absent from standard histories, in any language. The last serious British study of this aspect of the war was published in 1972. The biggest television history of the conflict, 「The World at War」, a 26-part documentary broadcast in 1973, interviewed most of the surviving decision-makers—but did not include a single Polish contributor.
但奇怪的是，1939年9月1號德國納粹發起的這場戰爭，連同隨之而來的9月17號蘇聯入侵以及波蘭人英勇忙亂的徒勞抵抗，在所有語言的書面記載中都銷聲匿跡了。英國關於這場戰爭的最後一項嚴肅研究發表於1972年。1973年，講述二戰的26集大型紀錄片——「戰爭中的世界」（《二戰全史》）播出，該紀錄片採訪了大部分倖存下來的二戰決策者——其中沒有一位是波蘭人。
Mr Moorhouse's book remedies that gap, weaving together archival material, first-hand accounts, perceptive analysis and heartbreaking descriptions of Poland's betrayal, defeat and dismemberment. Prewar Poland was a big country, with the world's fifth-largest armed forces. But it was an economic weakling. The combined Polish defence budget for the five years before the outbreak of war was just one-tenth of the Luftwaffe's allocation for 1939 alone. The Poles had courage, flair and grit. But they lacked the decisive elements: armour and air-power. Military planning was plagued by secrecy and mistaken assumptions. Some of the top commanders were notable duds.
穆爾豪斯的著作填補了這段空缺，該書整合了與波蘭遭受的背叛、戰敗和瓜分相關的檔案材料、第一手記錄，深入分析和令人心碎的採訪。戰前波蘭是一個大國，擁有世界第五大規模的武裝部隊。但是經濟實力卻非常虛弱。戰爭爆發前五年波蘭的國防預算加在一起僅是德國納粹空軍1939年預算的10%。波蘭人驍勇堅毅、不乏戰爭天分，但他們缺少的卻是至關重要的東西——裝甲車和空中力量。軍事計劃也因泄密和誤判毀於一旦。一些高級指揮官蠢鈍如豬。
Despite that, Hitler's stuttering war machine was repeatedly halted, bloodied and on occasion even defeated by the Polish defenders. The myth of invincible Blitzkrieg was burnished, self-interestedly, by the Nazis themselves. For their part, the Western allies, Britain and France, portrayed Poland as a hopeless cause to justify their defence of their ally 「using vowels and consonants alone」. One of many striking anecdotes on this score concerns Britain's reluctance to bomb Germany—on the ground (seriously) that it risked damaging private property.
儘管如此，波蘭的保衛者們一次又一次地重擊或逼停希特勒大軍，偶爾甚至能擊敗他們。德軍所謂的戰無不勝的「閃電戰」神話多數是自我美化和宣傳。然而英法方面，作為波蘭的西方盟友，卻將波蘭描繪成無可救藥，以此來為自己對盟國僅作「口頭支援」的無恥行徑加以辯護。關於英軍不願轟炸德國的原因有個令人啼笑皆非的軼聞——他們（嚴肅地）擔心轟炸會破壞德國土地上的私人住宅。
Kremlin self-interest skewed the story, too. Stalin's march into eastern Poland, under a secret deal with Hitler, was justified on the (fictitious) basis that the Polish state had already ceased to exist, and that only Soviet intervention could restore order. In fact, the savagery of the Soviet occupiers matched, and sometimes even exceeded, that of the Nazis. Both invaders, writes Mr Moorhouse, applied a 「brutal, binary, totalitarian logic: a racist binary in the German case, a class binary in the Soviet.」 In the eyes of the Nazis, a circumcised penis justified execution. For the Soviets, a soft, uncallused palm signalled an intellectual who ought to be eliminated. In all, 5.5m Polish citizens (including 3m Jews), or a fifth of the entire pre-war population, would perish.
為了自身利益，蘇聯也歪曲了事實。史達林與希特勒暗中達成協議，入侵波蘭東部，對外卻將自己的行動解釋為：波蘭作為一個國家已經不復存在，只有蘇聯的介入才能維持秩序。實際上，蘇聯侵略者的野蠻程度跟納粹不相上下，有時甚至有過之而無不及。作者穆爾豪斯寫道，兩個入侵者都採用了「蠻橫的，二元論的極權主義邏輯：德國納粹以種族劃分，蘇聯以階級劃分」。在納粹看來，猶太人的身份就足夠構成死刑，在蘇聯人眼裡不事生產的知識分子階層就應當被消滅。結合兩者的邏輯劃分，總共有550萬波蘭公民（包括300萬猶太人），也就是戰前整個波蘭人口的五分之一，合該死亡。
The surrender of Poland's regular forces on October 6th did not mark the end of the fighting. A well-organised underground army, reporting to the government-in-exile in London, continued the struggle until the further and final betrayal of Poland's interests by the Western allies at Yalta. It all deserves more than the simplistic but widespread caricature of a country which met the invading tanks with a cavalry charge. As Mr Moorhouse admirably explains, Poland's cavalry was in fact remarkably effective. The blame for defeat, and for the subsequent distortion and neglect of Poland's story, lies elsewhere.
10月6日，波蘭正規軍投降，但這並不意味著戰鬥的結束。一支組織良好的地下軍隊仍然在抵抗，由遠在倫敦的流亡政府遙控指揮，直到西方盟友進一步在雅爾達徹底的「出賣」波蘭，這一反抗才宣告失敗。波蘭的抗爭，遠比史書中一筆帶過的「用騎兵衝鋒挑戰裝甲坦克」的誇張描述更值得歌頌書寫。就像穆爾豪斯先生所揭示的那樣，波蘭騎兵實際上在戰爭中出奇的有效。波蘭的最終戰敗，以及其隨後一段被歪曲被遺忘的屈辱史，其實另有他因。