Book contents
- Survivors
- Maps
- Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare
- Survivors
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Warsaw Besieged
- 2 The Killing Years
- 3 Pawiak Prison
- 4 The Warsaw Ghetto
- 5 Information Wars
- 6 School of Hard Knocks
- 7 Matters of Faith
- 8 Spoiling for a Fight
- 9 Home Army on the Offensive
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Information Wars
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2022
- Survivors
- Maps
- Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare
- Survivors
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Warsaw Besieged
- 2 The Killing Years
- 3 Pawiak Prison
- 4 The Warsaw Ghetto
- 5 Information Wars
- 6 School of Hard Knocks
- 7 Matters of Faith
- 8 Spoiling for a Fight
- 9 Home Army on the Offensive
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter 5, “Information Wars,” is the opening case study of four intelligentsia-built resistance systems, which consider how the intelligentsia responded to Nazi persecution with projects bent on maintaining national traditions and rebuilding a Polish state. It examines the one that undergirds the rest: underground information creation and trafficking that kept the elite connected and funneled news into and out of the city. In response to the closure of Polish-language press, radio bookstores, and libraries, a number of educated Poles created an underground world of secret newsletters and journals to keep the city informed about occupier behavior and the circumstances of the wider war. This project involved entangled networks of individuals who were brutally punished if caught, and the work of writing, editing, couriering, and reading underground press initiated many Varsovians into anti-Nazi “conspiracies.” Information sourced in the occupied city was not merely for local consumption but was painstakingly smuggled out by a sprawling network of Polish and international couriers toting encrypted information to the states of the Grand Alliance. This chapter argues that the ability of Poles in Warsaw to counter Nazi propaganda narratives with their own information was essential to all later successful opposition.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- SurvivorsWarsaw under Nazi Occupation, pp. 140 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022