Resistance
The Underground War in Europe, 1939-1945
- Published: 3 March 2022
- ISBN: 9780141979021
- Imprint: Penguin eBooks
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 960
The best book about the resistance I have ever read. It addresses the story with scholarly objectivity and an absolute lack of sentimentality ... it is marvellous to read a study of such breadth and depth, which reaches balanced judgments.
Max Hastings, Sunday Times
Ground-breaking ... a superb, myth-busting survey of the many ways in which the subjugated peoples of Europe tried to fight back.
Saul David, Daily Telegraph
A full and nuanced account of all the different forms of resistance... a timely book.
Times Literary Supplement
An excellent comparative study of wartime resistance in all its forms.
BBC History
This history of resistance in the Second World War is as moving as it is comprehensive.
The Critic
Eminently readable ... subtle, multilayered and kaleidoscopic ... Kochanski's gripping account of the activities of the resistance includes, as might be expected, tales of derring-do and extraordinary courage as well as tragedy, betrayal and Nazi barbarism.
Andrew Stuttaford, Wall Street Journal
This ambitious history offers the first unified picture of resistance against Nazi Germany in the many countries it invaded ... Dispensing with heroics and highlighting the imperfect, human nature of the underground, [Kochanski] nevertheless depicts a vital defence of dignity, spirit, and the future, mounted against all odds.
New Yorker
Halik Kochanski's Resistance reads less like a work of history and more like a chronicle of a partisan war foretold ... her scrupulous scholarship, and her refusal to romanticize the grim, grimy work of being a resister, does make Resistance something of a primer for the many Ukrainians now fighting to undermine Russian authority.
Yuliya Tymoshenko, Project Syndicate
A superb account of Poland during the second world war ... The pain and loss is poignantly evoked by Kochanski ... The Eagle Unbowed, a model history, conveys with harrowing immediacy the plight of the Polish people in the conflict.
Ian Thomson, Spectator
Poland's war was so terrible as to almost defy summary ... this book is opinionated, fluid and forceful.
Oliver Bullough, New Statesman
PRAISE FOR THE EAGLE UNBOWED: 'An extraordinary achievement ... a brilliant exercise in historiography ... Kochanski neither debunks nor sensationalises. The truth is far more powerful than the legend. It's great history writing'
Herald