Cornell University Press, 2017, 320 pgs.
During World War II, Warsaw was decimated by the Germans and the Soviets. Around 84% of the city was destroyed. It is estimated that between 150,000 and 250,000 were killed in the Warsaw Uprising. Before that, however, Warsaw also experienced another tragedy. During the First World War, it suffered hardships that caused mass starvation and outbreaks of diseases that devastated the city. Robert Blobaum calls what Warsaw went through, “a minor apocalypse.”
After the outbreak of what was then known as the Great War, Warsaw was put under extreme military restriction. Warsaw was not yet part of a free and independent Poland; before the war it was known as the third city of the Russian Empire. At the beginning of the war, Warsaw’s supplies were often requisitioned by the Russian military. Its population was also under stress. It ebbed and flowed due to deportations, evacuations, men leaving the city for work, arrival of refugees and injured soldiers. In 1915 the population began to stabilize somewhat. The Russian authorities were forced out of the city and the citizens of Warsaw were put under a new regime: the German military. However, the fleeing Russians continued to take supplies from the city. The Germans instituted rationing of food and other supplies such as coal and soap. The city’s population was able to acquire some food despite inflation caused by the war. However, the Germans started banning certain kinds of food that could be sold on the free market which restricted the food supply even more and the threat of starvation loomed again.
“In February 1916, sales of meat and meat by-products, poultry, and fish were specifically prohibited in eleven Warsaw bazaars ‘in the interest of public health,’” he writes. “A week later the transport of livestock and meat from Warsaw County, even to the city of Warsaw, was prohibited.”
All of this restriction caused very long lines stores, growing poverty, and ever-increasing inflation. Some of Warsaw’s citizens grew so desperate that they started begging. There were even begging rings established who put young children in all of the busiest streets of Warsaw to beg for the group.
Blobaum analyzes the economic and cultural impact the Great War had upon Warsaw in great detail. He explains the extent of the devastation that it saw, as well as how it used such a tragedy to innovate — the expansion of the urban welfare system by the Warsaw Citizens Committee, is a good example of this. He used numerous sources for his in-depth analyses including primary sources, newspapers and other periodicals, and books which he lists in the bibliography. The book also contains a comprehensive index.
Robert Blobaum is Eberly Family distinguished professor of History at West Virginia Univerisity. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska and has authored two other books: Rewolucja: Russian Poland, 1904-1907, Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, and many articles.
This review is based on an advanced reader copy.
