The author has examined numerous WWII-era Hollywood films, evaluated them for their content on Poland (usually absent, seldom neutral or positive, and frequently negative), compared them with portrayals of other Allied nationalities, and diagnosed the reasons for these developments. It all boiled down to how Poles were seen, who had an interest in belittling Poland, and what little capability the Poles had for getting the truth out.

Poles do not intervene neither interfere – Admin.

By Bob Lamming 

I’ve been sensitive to the defamation of the Poles since my 1950s childhood in the Middle West. I’ve studied and engaged with this subject over decades as an adult.

For whatever it’s worth – I am not an expert or a scholar – Hollywood’s War is one of the most substantial and cogent works I’ve seen in this field.

It reminds me of Thomas Gladsky’s Princes, Peasants and Other Polish Selves, which I read when it came out twenty years ago – a study of how Poles have been portrayed by non-Polish writers in America.

Both authors demonstrate an impressive command of their subject. However, some differences bear noting.

Biskupski focuses on a narrow period rather than the whole – that of arguably the most cataclysmic event in world history to date, which was nowhere more extreme or tragic than in Poland.

Biskupski addresses a clearly defined subgenre of what Dana Alvi has called “the Polish nation libel,” while Gladsky (as I recall after many years) addresses it mostly or entirely in his chapter on post-WW II Jewish fiction.

The most significant difference stands out in the peculiarity of Biskupski’s material – motion pictures in their golden age, and at a time of war, when “truth was the first casualty.”

The efficiency of this medium in shaping public attitudes far exceeds that of the literary written word. Moreover, these effects are very hard to rectify.

Under such circumstances, the assassination of a national character is an especially repugnant moral transgression, a point which those who’ve been stung by this issue understand all too keenly.

Biskupski writes with a high degree of clarity and precision. Hollywood’s War is rich in well-supported, pithy summations:

* “Hellman’s script [of “The North Star,” 1943] achieves a double obfuscation” (145-6);

* Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” provides an account that’s “not just inaccurate; it is a purposeful effort to present a fraudulent version of the first campaign of the war” (149);

* “The Mask of Demetrios” (1944) “[i]ronically . . . represents exactly the kind of crude racial stereotyping of which the Nazis were guilty . . . . mak[ing] the whole enterprise an elaborate effort, tinged with race propaganda, to present the most repulsive image possible of the Poles” (133).

Many statements of this nature are logically ordered and skillfully turned.

Biskupski watched some 400 full-length movies and burrowed through Hollywood archives I wouldn’t have imagined existed, by which means he has probed the minds of Hollywood producers at work – altering a script, adapting a novel, inserting or deleting characters and scenes.

At one point Biskupski presents the results of his survey of a collection of over 1200 cheaply made short films, very popular then with American youth (200). Out of some 3600 characters, not one was Polish.

A lie that’s just a falsehood is relatively easy to call attention to and contradict. But a lie that’s spun from innuendo and omission is harder to engage.

Furthermore, its ideological consequences are likely to have been subconsciously assimilated. Addressing convictions of this nature can be risky. It requires more explaining than most are willing to put up with, and most normal people will feel antagonized at having their (unexamined) opinions challenged.

Biskupski manages this difficult task comfortably (granted that none of his usual audience is likely to need much convincing). Despite the necessary breadth, complexity and nuance of Biskupski’s exposition, the reader experiences no strain.

An overview of the historical context is necessary to determine the accuracy of what came out on film. The early chapter on Poland in WW II may be the best brief summary I’ve read of this epic – as contrasted with popular stereotypes. Chapter 3, on “Radical Hollywood and Poland,” explaining the background of Hollywood’s ideology, is superb.

The ever-volatile topic of Polish-Jewish relations is negotiated with competence and sensitivity. As far as I can tell, Biskupski avoids putting his foot into anything incendiary on either side of the line, while simultaneously telling it like it is.

The 98 pages of notes are full of interesting tidbits and revealing explanations. I didn’t know that John Paul Jones served as a mercenary to Catherine II of Russia (“a principle architect in the [18th century] destruction of Poland”) (309), or that FDR showed his contempt for Poland by appointing as ambassador in 1938 an “Irish political hack . . . who had been jailed twice for corruption” (258).

Two ambassadors appear in the important “Mission to Moscow” (1942). Warner Brothers depicts Davies as “the soul of probity,” Grzybowski as “sarcastic . . . duplicitous . . . slippery . . . [and] arrogant” (138). In reality – Biskupski insists, based on his reading of the two diplomats’ memoirs – the American was “self serving . . . . intellectually limited . . . [and] ignorant,” whereas the Pole was “a man of unusual intelligence [and] discerning judgment . . . who knew Russia well” (291).

I am not a great fan of movies. Sometimes I really enjoy one, but more often I’m disappointed and feel that watching was waste of time, if not actually a degradation of spirit. More and more I sense that all forms of popular entertainment, of which movies are emblematic, have been fashioned to debauch and manipulate the public – a misgiving that’s in no way contradicted by Biskupski’s argument.

Being a veteran, though, I followed the major Vietnam movies with interest as they came out, one after another, in the 1970s and early 80s.

I happened to watch “The Deer Hunter” twice. It has a minor Polish character who’s repugnant and subjected to verbal abuse. In my second viewing – as I recall – on a video cassette, I noted that the most extreme abusiveness against this character had been removed.

The usual complaints from an ever-sensitive Polonia, in this instance anyway, must have won a small concession.

But “Good Morning, Vietnam” really floored me. Well do I remember AFVN, and that cock’s crow broadcast at six o’clock every morning. But I was unprepared for the sheer **nastiness** of the juxtaposition between two radio announcers – first an extremely obnoxious Polish-American, then his extremely charming Irish-American replacement.

Biskupski’s lengthy analysis of how the Irish have been indulged by Hollywood, of the favored-nation status they long ago won for themselves among Hollywood’s Jewish gatekeepers, was an eye-opener for me. It explained an awful lot, not just about the dynamic informing a plot device in one major movie, but also about a recurring, if frequently subtle flavor in the American melting pot.

This brings to mind how the book left me hanging – seemed just a bit incomplete – in one respect.

Why is no mention made of the fact that “Hollywood’s War” did not end in 1945, or even change its tactics?

In one of the book’s many fine-grained analyses, Biskupski puts his finger on “a particularly nasty gesture . . . . that would be lost on most viewers” (pertaining to a surname honored by Polish Americans, which a 1942 Columbia picture assigned to a “repulsive” character) (196).

Now, there’s a scene in Schindler’s List (1993) where a Polish cabaret slut performs tenderly before a room full of uniformed SS men. Biskupski describes exactly this same kind of relationship in a film that’s set in occupied Norway (“Edge of Darkness,” 1943).

In Spielberg’s version, a Jewish woman is brutalized in a basement as the Polish camp follower caresses German officers upstairs. The camera moves back and forth, wordlessly conveying an extremely offensive impression.

The uninformed American viewer will accept this scene at its surface value, with nothing further to remark on or remember in it. However – and all the more so because of this – the mud that’s been flung will stick.

Spielberg’s Polish tramp sings the signature song of a Polish film star of the era – “Milosc ci wszystko wybaczy (Love will forgive you for everything).

This is a perfectly startling – and far more widely viewed -reincarnation of Columbia’s “particularly nasty gesture . . . . that would be lost on . . . [all but a very few] viewers” today.

(For a moving account of the actress and vocalist Hanka Ordonowna, see Warsaw: The Cabaret Years, by Ron Nowicki.)

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I wonder why Biskupski makes nothing of this seamless continuity. I wonder what his view would be on the feasibility of filling in this enormous blank, of accounting for the past six decades or so of a phenomenon that he dissected with such a sure hand in the 1930s and 40s.

There is another little nuance that didn’t quite sit well with me.

After making his case, at the end of his book, Biskupski addresses the obvious question of why. What is the reason for this unmitigated hatchet job on the image of a particular nation?

Biskupski attributes it to a combination of factors.

Most compelling was the administration’s need to present the Soviet Union sympathetically to the American public during the war against Nazi Germany. Since both the anti-Polish Soviet alliance with Germany in the first two years of the war and the Soviets’ own ethnic cleansing of Poles had been barbaric in the extreme, this presented a problem – calling for an extreme solution.

Next, a very large number of the Hollywood caste were Jews, with family roots in the old Polish region of Eastern Europe. For whatever reason – and Biskupski does not attempt to justify their sentiments – these people had very ugly feelings about Poland. To the extent there were exceptions, they found it convenient to acquiesce in the larger consensus of Jewish Hollywood.

Finally, the pro-Soviet wartime policies of the Roosevelt administration – which took considerable interest in Hollywood’s potential for shaping US public opinion – were perfectly consistent with the prevailing mindset in Hollywood. Chapter 4, on “The Roosevelt Administration and Film,” is a well-written and meticulously substantiated indictment.

All of this seems logical enough. But from today’s perspective it’s natural to ask: Why are the ugly, anti-Polish stereotypes still coming steadily out of Hollywood . . . decades after the circumstances Biskupski points to have ceased to exist?

Biskupski’s book is not aimed at this question, nor does it need to be, and he covered the terrain he staked out flawlessly enough (as far as I can tell).

Nevertheless, I feel there’s a structural oversight in the argument here: that neglecting to at least acknowledge the consistency with which Hollywood has denigrated the Polish for a very long time – since WW II – is somehow shortsighted and remiss.

After invoking such a parade of Communist Jews, unanimously abusing Poland in the hour of her gravest torment – lest anyone jump to conclusions – Biskupski is at pains to write, in the final paragraph of his book, “There was no conspiracy against Poland in wartime America” (230).

This too makes perfect sense. However, I can’t help but feel at the same time that Biskupski is distancing himself from a label that connotes malignant lunacy and invites kneejerk ridicule or censure – another remarkable feat of cultural conditioning that’s been covertly achieved, contrary to fact and through skullduggery.

Both the means and the motive were present. Whether or not there was “a conspiracy against Poland,” the methods and results were just the same.

“A rose by any other name . . . ”

Besides, what could be more unscrupulously conspiratorial than Communism? Biskupski leaves no doubt that (Jewish) Hollywood was Red.

So again I feel – in a vague and general but still important sense – the author is begging another essential question.

There is an even more tangential observation that may be worth making in relation to the larger phenomenon, of which Biskupski’s book explores an important tributary.

These almost exclusively Jewish wellsprings of anti-Polish defamation (hardly limited to Hollywood) are not unique. There is another – non-Jewish, and loudly anti-Jewish – complex of sources that also besmirch Poland – especially in the WW II era – through the same proven techniques of omission, innuendo, the cheekiest of lies, and the steady drip-drip-drip of repetition.

Though their power base lies outside of Hollywood and the entertainment industry, the bearers of this outlook are well entrenched here, having found clear points of access to the US power structure – e.g., through CIA programs like Operation Paperclip; practitioners of mind-control research, like the LSD phenomenon associated with certain pharmaceutical giants; Nazi rocket scientists in the US space program; the anti-human behavioral psychological sciences, with their roots in the mid-nineteenth century German Empire; and the notorious Prussian education system, going even farther back.

(For background on the 2nd, 4th, and 5th of these, see the interview with Hank Albarelli – #104 at Gnostic Media; The Leipzig Connection, by Lionni; and J. T. Gatto’s Underground History of American Education.)

Over the past half dozen years I have found, to my surprise and dismay, that the post-911 US “truth” (alias “patriot,” or “skeptics”) movement is rife with spokespersons of the neo-Nazi persuasion. I cannot determine if these figures are political opportunists, agents provocateur, or both.

Perhaps on some level, beyond the veil of everyday appearances, the Jewish Communists and (neo-)Nazis are joined at the hip. It’s an interesting hypothesis. These two ostensible antipathies are all too much alike in their tendency towards groupthink, beehive totalitarianism, violence, amorality, and – most pertinent to this discussion – their extraordinary hatred of Poland.

I have a hunch that the resolution of this conundrum could reveal a lot about the deep politics of, say, the post-Romantic era.

I am unaware that anyone has tied all of this together in a single, coherent explanation – along with such curiously unprecedented real world events as the annihilation of the upper echelons of Poland’s government two years ago in – what official sources on all sides assure us was – an airplane “accident” at Smolensk.

Biskupski was under no obligation to go so far afield . . . or take up position on any dangerously awkward terrain. Yet the subplot to which he’s brought such penetrating insight fits a larger context, where questions like these echo disturbingly, without an answer.

Notwithstanding such dangling uncertainties and quibbles-in-the-margin, the book superbly defends its thesis, stated artlessly and with characteristic restraint in the very first sentence: “Hollywood presented a fundamentally distorted and negative portrayal of Poland and Poles during the Second World War” (ix).

Hollywood’s War, of course, has been translated to Polish.

I learned not long ago that an accomplished, New York-based documentary filmmaker from Poland is planning to make it the subject of his next work. In fact, that’s how I heard about and why I read the book.

I can’t imagine how such a broadly drawn yet delicate expose of malevolent propaganda could be effectively interpreted in an hour or two of film. I wish the director luck. Perhaps a belated antidote to Hollywood, in Hollywood’s own medium, will at last gain ready access to a broader public.

I find the device of character assassination hauntingly persistent, pervasive, relevant – and scarcely limited to international Machiavellian politics. The effects of this wrong are especially corrosive, for its perpetrators seldom face exposure, nor is their subtle yet destructive handiwork redressed – except, as here, long after the damage has been done, and as little more than a scholarly footnote which, for all practical purposes, will go unread.

Yet this proclivity of character – so aptly expressed in the motto, “For your freedom and ours,” and so jealously expunged by the pimps of tyranny – retains an abiding, elevating influence in whatever Society its owners find their home, regardless of the outcome of all the wars and battles everywhere.

I find that certain critical formulations in this book reverberate with an awful urgency for America today, i.e., “[the] assault on simple decency . . . [the] `moral callousness in our public mind’ . . . . [and the] endorsement of . . . enormous political lie[s]” (143).

Unfortunately, whatever its merits, and whatever it may have to teach us about ourselves, quite apart from the defamation of the Poles, Hollywood’s War is likely to be read by none but those who are already persuaded of its thesis, and who feel some passion for defending that particular truth.

But the fact this book exists is still a triumph. Even if one is just another member of the choir, it’s good to hear a larger truth articulated well, whose suppression one has always recognized, though never yet so finely understood.

If nothing else has been accomplished, at least I go forth now better armed, and renewed in my conviction.