Handbook of the Polish Army 1927

Published halfway between the new Polish Army’s surprise humbling of the vast but untrained Red Army in 1920 and its obliteration at the hands of Hitler’s Wehrmacht in 1939, this handbook gives the British War Office’s official view of the new kid on the European block. It is, however, much more than a portrait of the Polish army in isolation – as it also gives a rundown of the new Polish state – its natural features, roads and rail, population, ethnography, religion, education and ‘national character’. There is much on the constitution and Government of the new state; and another chapter is devoted to the industry, agriculture and natural resources of Poland. The chapters on the army itself are completely comprehensive, covering command, training, Arm., transport, Organisation, recruitment, uniforms, artillery, cavalry and mechanisation and much more. Poland’s navy and air force, too, are not forgotten. With charts of uniform insignia, maps this is a complete picture of a new state and its army before nemesis arrived.