The Forgotten Battlefield? September 1939 and the History of World War II

The Institute of World Politics

This lecture event is part of the 14th Annual Kościuszko Chair Conference presented by the Kościuszko Chair of Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium Studies. About the lecture: Dr. Radzilowski will discuss the Invasion of Poland in 1939 by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and the seemingly deliberate amnesia about the campaign that persisted for almost 80 years. He will examine Poland’s defensive strategy and its successes and failures and why historians have failed so often to understand the campaign’s importance. He will draw on recent scholarship on the topic as well as comparisons with another campaign that is similarly misremembered, the Sino-Japanese War that began in 1937. Lastly, Dr. Radzikowski will examine the role of Cold War politics and efforts of Western countries to save face after their inadequate response to the threats of totalitarianism in the 1930s and 1940s in shaping popular perceptions of these campaigns. About the speaker: Dr. John Radzilowski has taught history, art history, and geography at University of Alaska Southeast on the Ketchikan campus since 2007. Prior to moving to Alaska, he taught history courses at the University of St. Thomas, Hamline University, and Anoka-Ramsey College in Minnesota. Dr. Radzilowski also served as assistant project director at Center for Nations in Transition, at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota where he helped design and administer USAID and State Department-sponsored training programs for business, economics, and political science faculty and NGO leaders in Ukraine and east central Europe. Dr. Radzilowski’s research and teaching interests are wide-ranging and diverse: immigration and ethnicity, military history, war and genocide, the impact of technology on the history and geography of the Great Plains and Midwest, local and regional studies, and the history of Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and central and eastern Europe.