Agent Zo

I have noticed a new genre of biography and it is very much to my liking as a generalist.

The subject’s story is intertwined with the wider historical picture. I recently read Agent Zo, ostensibly the life of Elżbieta Zawacka. However, it also describes the war in Poland and particularly Warsaw so you get two books for the price of one. She is a brave, tough, resourceful woman. One example is when she is sent from Warsaw to go to the Polish government in exile in London. Her dangerous journey could be a book in itself. Incidentally when she eventually reaches London she is staggered at the lack of insight the London Poles have into what the Resistance are doing in Poland and is not impressed that they keep office hours. She does not hide her feelings and is predictably unpopular. Then the problem arises of how to get her back to Warsaw, something earnestly desired I suspect. For various reasons the only option is to parachute but of course her male superior rules that out because she is a woman. This is red rag to a bull.

She goes as the only woman on a parachuting course at Audley End in Essex with Polish Special Forces. To digress, the military requisitioned so many grand country houses that the SOE was dubbed the Stately ‘Omes of England. As it turns out she is the only woman to parachute into Poland in the war. Her role for much of the war is to act as a courier linking Resistance networks; a dangerous job travelling on forged papers. Inevitably there is betrayal by one of the members of her cell.

The backdrop is the brutal German invasion of Poland and then the no less brutal Russian occupation towards the end of the war. Large numbers of Polish soldiers, sailors and airmen served with the Allies. It was a shameful betrayal when Churchill did not stand up to Stalin and allowed him to occupy Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and what became East Germany. Admittedly he had his reasons but it was a humanitarian catastrophe. You may remember the libel case Lord Aldington brought against historian Nikolai Tolstoy who he claimed accused him (and Harold MacMillan) of repatriating Poles to certain death under the Soviets. It was a complex case that in financial terms both sides lost. Tolstoy was morally right and Aldington was obeying orders. That puts it in a nutshell.

In conclusion Agent Zo is excellent so long as you have the stomach for brutality, concentration camps, starvation and torture. The Warsaw Uprising is unflinchingly depicted.