| Reviews | Polish American Studies, 65.2

Reviews

Francis Casimir Kajencki. The Pulaski Legion in the American Revolution. El Paso, TX: Southwest Polonia Press, 2004. ISBN 0-9627190-7-2.

Francis Casimir Kajencki. American Betrayal. Franklin Roosevelt Casts Poland into Communist Captivity. El Paso, TX: Southwest Polonia Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9627190-8-0.

The recent passing of Frank Kajencki has deprived Polonia of not only a dedicated researcher, but one of the few serious historians concentrating their efforts on the pre-mass migration era. His earlier biographies of Joseph Kargé, Casimir Pułaski, and Thaddeus Kościuszko established his reputation for thorough research, insightful analysis, and clarity in presentation. The two works under consideration here continue that tradition.

In The Pulaski Legion in the American Revolution, Kajencki has, in effect, penned a sequel to his earlier biography of Casimir Pułaski by focusing on the creation and exploits of the Pułaski Legion, a unit that has been long on myth and short on serious scholarly attention. He begins the story by briefly recounting Pułaski's experience in Europe, his arrival in America, and his attempts to obtain a commission in the Continental Army within the context of growing American frustration with the large number of European adventurers applying for high rank in the American army. This context also helps to explain Pułaski's role at the Battle of Brandywine. Indeed, Kajencki's thoroughly researched analysis of the events at Brandywine, interpreted through the expertise of a trained military officer, offer, along with his previous biography, the most authoritative account of Pułaski's contributions on that field. Kajencki follows this with an examination of Pułaski's appointment as the first commander of American cavalry and his successful attack on a numerically superior British force at Haddonfield, New Jersey.

Kajencki does not shy away from controversy. He next investigates the sometimes acrimonious relationships between Pułaski and American officers subordinate to him due to his appointment to head all cavalry forces. Kajencki presents a picture that is relatively favorable to the Pole, placing much of the blame for the acrimony on the personal ambition of some of the American officers, as well as the general resentment of foreign officers then prevailing. Although some questions still remain, Kajencki supports his conclusions with specific primary source evidence that makes for a compelling case.

With Pułaski's eventual resignation as "Commander of the Horse," Kajencki moves on to describe the creation of the "Pulaski Legion," a mixed unit of cavalry and infantry organized in the European tradition of such forces. Kajencki shows that, contrary to the assertion of some early Polish-American writers, there were actually very few Poles in the unit. The officers were mostly French or of other "foreign" nationality, while the rank and file were recruited from Americans, a large number being Marylanders due to the location of the Legion's primary recruiting station. With meticulous care he details the many difficulties Pułaski faced in recruiting the Legion, and also the unit's organization. Kajencki also amply documents a close friendship between Pułaski and the Marquis de Lafayette, whose strong backing Pułaski enjoyed both as commander of cavalry and later in recruiting his Legion.

Kajencki provides a detailed account of the inauspicious debut of the Legion, which found itself the victim of a surprise British attack at Little Egg Harbor that cost it some thirty casualties including the commander of its infantry, Lt. Col. Carl von Bose. Although previous authors generally called into question Pułaski's diligence in guarding against a British attack, Kajencki argues that the surprise resulted from the defection of a former Hessian deserter, who had been placed in the Legion by higher authority, then fled back to the British with detailed information on the Legion's deployment and served as a guide for the "redcoats" in their surprise attack on Pułaski's outposts.

Following the Little Egg Harbor debaâcle, Pułaski and his Legion were reassigned to the Southern Theater when British forces landed there in an effort to subdue the southern colonies. Kajencki's presentation of the role of the Legion in the South not only provides valuable information on its activities, but also sheds further light on actions in South Carolina that have generally been presented only in brief outline. When Pułaski arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, with the first portion of his Legion, the city lay open to an advancing British army. Although the governor planned to surrender the city, both Pułaski and the ranking American commander, Gen. William Moultrie, determined to defend Charleston. To provide time for the arrival of the main American army under Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, Pułaski led the Legion forward on May 11, 1779, determined to ambush the British vanguard. Most historians have passed off this affair as a serious defeat costing the Legion heavy casualties including Col. Michael Kovats and Capt. Jan Zielin;ski. Kajencki explains that the ambush failed because one of Pułaski's officers, Lt. Col. Charles F. Bedaulx, acted prematurely, exposing the ambuscade before the British were fully trapped. Kajencki also argues that although the Legion was roughly handled, it did achieve its main strategic goal which was to delay the British march, gaining time for the arrival of Lincoln's forces to defend Charleston. Because of this, Kajencki argues that Pułaski actually saved Charleston from capture.

When Gen. Lincoln arrived, he entrusted Pułaski with command of all the light troops in the army. At the Battle of Stono River Ferry, the Legion performed well in halting a British advance as the American army retreated. Pułaski continued in command until his unfortunate death from wounds received at the Siege of Savannah in October 1779. Kajencki notes that the British considered Pułaski "a great partisan leader" and his cavalry "the best cavalry the rebels ever had," and that the French were also favorably impressed by him at the Siege of Savannah. Following its commander's death, the Legion was eventually incorporated into the partisan unit led by Col. Charles Armand.

Kajencki's history of the Pułaski Legion is the first serious historical treatment of this unit. In it, he makes a compelling case for the success the unit enjoyed in the South where it was employed in duties more fitting cavalry and light infantry. His work is thoroughly supported by primary source documentation from a variety of archives in Poland, Sweden, and the United States. Accompanied by excellent maps and other illustrations, the volume is as well researched and written as it is attractive. It will no doubt serve as the definitive account of the Pułaski Legion for the foreseeable future.

Venturing beyond his normal research interests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Kajencki's last contribution to historical literature is American Betrayal: Franklin Roosevelt Casts Poland into Communist Captivity. This work explores the fate of Poland during the Second World War, focusing especially on what Kajencki terms Franklin Roosevelt's "personal and naïve policy of appeasing Russia." Commencing with an overview of the beginning of World War II, he is careful to title the initial chapter "Germany and Russia Plunge the World into War," a clear statement of Soviet complicity in the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Kajencki reviews Polish defensive strategy, the effectiveness of the Polish defense, and the hopelessness of the situation once the Red Army marched into eastern Poland in cooperation with the German invasion. He ends the chapter with an indictment of the British and French who not only failed to honor their treaty obligations to Poland in 1939, but in the various conferences and treaties that made Poland a victim for the second time as it became little more than a pawn in the wartime diplomacy of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Chapters 2 and 3 of American Betrayal detail, respectively, Soviet attempts to destroy Poland and the Katyn Forest massacre. Chapter 4, which Kajencki acknowledges closely follows Stefan Korbon;ski's The Polish Underground State: A Guide to the Underground, 1939–1945, reviews German and Russian crimes in Poland, as well as the organization, extent, and activities of the Polish Underground. Chapter 5 continues this analysis with emphasis on the Polish Home Army and its achievements in support of the Allied cause. With the context established, the heart of Kajencki's tome begins with Chapter 6 where he analyzes the duplicitous agreements approved by Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt at Teheran and Yalta. Kajencki points to one of Roosevelt's early statements to Churchill�"I know that you will not mind my being brutally frank when I tell you that I think I can personally handle Stalin better than either your Foreign Office or my State Department."—to prove that FDR naïvely, and no doubt with no little amount of egotism, believed that his personal intervention could "handle" Stalin. As Kajencki points out, the agreements at Teheran and Yalta violated the principles Churchill and Roosevelt adopted in the Atlantic Charter, yet both leaders agreed to Stalin's seizure of eastern Poland with little concern for Poland or its citizens who were sacrificing so much for the Allied cause. Further, Roosevelt duplicitously agreed to keep the initial Teheran agreements secret, no doubt for domestic political purposes since he was courting the Polish vote for the upcoming elections in 1944.

With the death of FDR in April 1945, Harry Truman became president. Although Truman took a much harder approach to negotiating with the Soviets, as Kajencki shows, the new president chose to carry out the agreements reached by his predecessor even when it became obvious that the Soviets had no intention of adhering to the agreement for free and open elections in Poland. Kajencki goes on to describe in detail the efforts of U.S. Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane in support of Poland and the Government-in-Exile in London, the fraudulent Soviet-controlled national "elections" in Poland, and the U.S. Congressional investigation into the Katyn Forest massacre. Throughout American Betrayal, Kajencki provides ample evidence in the form of documentary and eye-witness accounts to bolster both his story and the conclusions he draws. It is a very sad story of a nation that gave everything it had to give to the Allied effort in World War II, only to find itself betrayed by not only the Soviets, but the British and Americans as well. Much of this, Kajencki argues, was due to the total failure of the personal political diplomacy initially undertaken by FDR in the erroneous belief that he could influence Stalin in the same manner that he did American politicos. Based on extensive research in archives in the United States and the United Kingdom, American Betrayal is a solid piece of scholarship. While it follows a path already trodden by others, its value should not be underestimated because of the documentary evidence it provides to buttress its conclusions.

Readers of the two volumes reviewed above will agree that Polonia has lost a very valuable scholar with the passing of Francis Casimir Kajencki.

James S. Pula

Purdue University

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