Robert Blobaum

File Under: Something is better than nothing.

You know you're in trouble with a book when the author begins his study with a long introduction as to the inadequacies of their source material, particularly when your goal is to present a narrative which runs counter to the conventional wisdom of Polish history. Blobaum seems to console himself with the thought that we are still in the early days of the urban history of the Great War as a topic.

That said, Blobaum does offer the reader a useful story of the arc from late Tsarist Warsaw, to the dawn of the city's rise as the capital of the new Polish state, with the first brick through the window being that there actually seems to have been a great deal of support for the Russian cause in 1914; possibly a commentary on how the Russian state had gone to some lengths to conciliate Polish social elites in the wake of 1905. From there though, it's an unrelenting story of misery, as first, Warsaw was cut off from coal supplies in Germany that were never replaced, followed by the inexorable decline of living standards.

As for the German occupation of the city, the one positive that can be pointed to is that occupation, in creating a Polish-led council on which to pawn off matters of social welfare, did create the germ of a Polish civil government. Otherwise, Warsaw's first German adventure is mostly a story of theft of labor and resources for the German war effort; a trial run for the catastrophe to come.

Besides considering matters of social relations, woman's history, and Jewish-Gentile conflict, Blobaum ends on the note that the real "Miracle on the Vistula" might be that Pilsudski showed up in time to prevent a violent social explosion.… (mer)