of Poland. As time went on, I became struck by the scarcity of scholarly work on Catholicism in Poland during the period of my specialization, the phase of the independent Second Republic whose free existence began in 1918 and ended in 1939. This was outwardly an interval of “normal” church-state relations that lacked both drama and the noble theme of the Church as the defender of Polish culture and national identity against foreign oppressors, which is considered its chief historical merit. I guessed that there must be more to the story, and decided to try to find out.
The resulting book you are reading is not intended to be a comprehensive history of the Catholic Church in Poland between the wars. Its more modest two goals are to describe and explain the significance of Catholicism in Polish politics from 1914 to 1939, and of Poland in the politics of the wider Catholic world. I hope it will be considered a worthwhile contribution to the fields of the history of Poland and the Catholic Church in general. It attempts to explore the issue of Catholicism in the public life of the interwar Second Republic in greater depth than has been done before. Along the way, maybe it will help to shed light on the important but somewhat overlooked pontificate of Pius XI, the first “Polish pope,” according to one way of looking at it, and add some useful words to the lively controversy over the conduct of Pope Pius XII during the Second World War.
If the book manages to do these things, it is not due to any insight of mine, but to the advantage of having been able to carry out extensive original archival research in a variety of locations in four different countries. In particular, I have had the good fortune to examine collections of documents from the rich holdings of the Vatican Secret Archives only recently opened to scholars. While I owe a great deal to the earlier work of accomplished predecessors in the study of interwar Polish Church history, as the notes and bibliography will demonstrate, it may be fair to claim that mine is the first monograph on the subject to have the benefit of such a wealth of primary sources.
Readers may deserve a brief explanation of my chosen usage of place-names, a tricky business in writing about a region of mixed populations, many languages, shifting frontiers, and long memories, where the adoption of one form or another may confuse, or be construed as taking sides in old disputes. In general, if an accepted term for a place exists in English, I have used it; if not, I have employed the variant corresponding to the interwar boundary lines: hence, for example, Warsaw, Upper Silesia, and Danzig, but Poznań, Breslau, and Kaunas. The closest calls involve the two metropolises of what was then eastern Poland, but now are parts of successor states to the former Soviet Union. The city called Wilno in Polish, now Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, was usually referred to as Vilna in English parlance of the time, so Vilna it will be here. On the other hand, having discerned no comparable Anglophone consensus regarding the city known as L’viv in contemporary Ukraine, I have settled on the Polish Lwów. Along the same lines, I am aware that Polish opinion objected to the expression “Corridor,” which implied the injustice and artificiality of one notoriously contested sector of the boundary between Poland and Germany, but it remains the most recognizable shorthand name for the international dispute it stood for, so I have not tried to avoid it. Of course, none of these choices has the slightest intention of hinting at any covert authorial opinion on the merits of these arguments. While widely accepted, the term “Uniate” can offend Eastern-rite Catholics, who rightly note its origins as a label of opprobrium; my occasional resort to it here is meant to lessen repetitiveness of language, and intends no disrespect. There are fewer such hazards in Italy: while there are subtle shades of difference among the terms “Holy See,” “Apostolic See,” and “Vatican,” I have used them interchangeably as pertaining to the papacy, its policy, or its authority.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the generous help that has come to me along the way. My labors have been aided in large part by research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for International Education at my own University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. A research fellowship from the Pew Evangelical Scholars Program provided a year’s leave of absence from other duties at UWM to devote to the project. I am indebted as well to many individuals, who deserve much credit for the worth of the book, such as it is, and no blame for its shortcomings, which are my responsibility alone. The list is long, and only a few can be mentioned by name. I have benefited greatly from the advice and example of my mentors, Professor Piotr S. Wandycz and Professor Anna M. Cienciała, and my predecessor and colleague at UWM, the late Professor M. K. Dziewanowski. A dear friend of long standing, Dr. Thomas S. Dyman, looked over the manuscript with expert eyes at various stages of preparation, offering encouragement and valuable suggestions for improvement. Aformer colleague, Professor Kathleen Wellman, and her family acted as gracious hosts during a research stay in Rome, and a family friend, Teresa Korzeniowski, arranged accommodations in Warsaw for similar purposes. For their efforts toward the production of this book, my sincere thanks go to Professor John J. Bukowczyk, editor of the Polish and Polish-American Studies Series, and to the team at Ohio University Press: Nancy Basmajian, managing editor; Gillian Berchowitz, assistant director and senior editor; Ricky S. Huard, project editor; Beth Pratt, production manager; John Morris, copyeditor; and Chiquita Babb, designer and typesetter. Donna G. Genzmer, director of the Cartography and GIS Center, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, prepared the maps. Krystyna K. Matusiak, senior academic librarian at the UWM Libraries, assisted in reproduction of photographs.
A select few people have meant more to me than I am able to convey in words and have contributed to the making of the book in ways indirect but profound. My parents, Wanda Adkins and H. W. Pease, inspired a youthful interest in history that I never outgrew. My parents-in-law, Wiktor and Zofia Barczyk, have touched me with their appreciation for their son-in-law’s professional focus on the land of their birth. Above all, I have been blessed by the love, support, and patient forbearance of my cherished wife, Ewa Barczyk, director of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries, and our children; and it is to them, as before, that this book is dedicated.
Abbreviations
| AAN | Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw |
| AAN-MSZ | Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, AAN |
| AAN-MWRiOP | Ministerstwo Wyznań Religijnych i Oświecenia Publicznych, AAN |
| ADSS | Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale, ed. Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, and Burkhart Schneider (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965) |
| AGND | Archiwum Adiutantury Generalnej Naczelnego Dowództwa (Archiwum Belwederskie) (microfilm), Yale University Library |
| ANP | Achilles Ratti (1918–1921), ed. Stanisław Wilk, Acta Nuntiaturae Polonae 57 (Rome: Institutum Historicum Polonicum Romae, 1995–96) |
| APIP | Archiwum polityczne Ignacego Paderewskiego, ed. Halina Janowska (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1973–74) |
| APP | Archiwum Prymasów Polskich, Archiwum Archidiecezjalne w Gnieźnie, Gniezno |
| ASV | Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Vatican City |
| BPPP | Bulletin périodique de la presse polonaise, France, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères |
| DBFP | Documents on British Foreign Policy, Great Britain, Foreign Office |
| HIA | Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, Calif. |
| IDDI | I documenti diplomatici italiani, Italy, Ministero degli Affari Esteri |
| IHGS | Instytut Historyczny im. Generała Sikorskiego, London |
| NKUPMJP | Naczelny Komitet Uczczenia Pamięci Marszałka Józefa Piłsudskiego, AAN |
| PIA | Joseph Pilsudski Institute of America, New York |
| RDHS | Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War, ed. Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, and Burkhart Schneider (Washington, D.C.: Corpus Books, 1968) |
| SDNA | State Department Decimal File, National Archives, Washington, D.C. |
| Szembek | Diariusz i teki Jana Szembeka (1935–1945), ed. Tytus Komarnicki and Józef Zarański (London: Polish Research Centre, 1964) |
Guide to Pronunciation
The following key provides
