Katarzyna Nowak’s dense and nuanced Kingdom of Barracks: Polish Displaced Persons in Allied-Occupied Germany and Austria joins a growing bookshelf of works shedding light on the immediate postwar years in Europe and the plight of refugees. Caught between the pull to return to their homeland, anxiety over the onset of communism there amplified by representatives of the Polish government-in-exile in London, and pressures of Allied regimes of control, Polish DPs had relatively little power. Yet they expressed themselves in newspapers, fiction, diaries, letters, petitions, requests, complaints, and other means—all of which Nowak has mined for information.

Nowak sets herself the challenging task of writing a grassroots history of Polish DPs. Not only does she seek to avoid privileging the perspectives and paperwork of aid organizations, but she also brings the voices of common people alongside professional writers. “This approach means reading refugee poems and jokes, especially the bad ones, through a magnifying glass, excavating details from obscure novels published in a dozen copies only, and reading the grievances of the poorest of the poor along with the essays of artists and journalists, thus undoing the hierarchies perpetuated in top-down narratives” (14).

In this way, Nowak explores the pressures brought to bear on the Polish DP population. While the Allied powers initially pushed for repatriation for practical purposes, members of the Polish military units under control of the government in London actively opposed repatriation. Over time, the new government in Warsaw sent its own emissaries and the DPs faced a barrage of propaganda at the nexus of the developing Cold War. Within this maelstrom, Nowak traces how displaced Poles navigated the ideologically charged environment of the camps and made decisions about day-to-day life, as well as their long term trajectories.

The first couple of chapters explain how nearly a million and a half Polish citizens found themselves under Allied control at the end of the war and how the camps were organized. The bulk of the Polish DPs had served as forced or voluntary laborers in German farms and factories, although they were soon joined by POWs and others. A handful of Allied commands as well as the evolving international organizations with their multiple agendas oversaw hundreds of camps.

Chapters 3 through 6 examine different aspects of DP life, including nutrition, hygiene, education, culture, and other arenas, all highlighting the reactions of the Polish refugees. The final two chapters revolve around the overarching issue of where to settle. As Nowak explains, unlike Soviet citizens, Poles were not forced to repatriate. Nonetheless, the Allies exerted pressure on them to do so, at least until 1947. Those DPs who, due to their own proclivities or outside influence, wanted to migrate abroad, had to navigate multiple obstacles, including gaining coveted spots.

While the book’s individual chapters focus on a variety of aspects of life in DP camps—with particular attention to class and to a lesser extent gender—the overall narrative arc explores Polish identity formation in exile. “This book reframes the making of exile identity as a cultural negotiation and a way of collective healing, inscribing this episode in the history of migration and the process of sharpening national identity” (255). Given this intentional focus, it is somewhat odd that Poles and Polishness are never defined.

Nowak is certainly correct in pointing out in the introduction the ways in which Polish Jews and Catholics separated themselves in the DP camps. Yet she also notes that this bifurcation could never be total. Nonetheless, for most of the book, it is clear that Polishness is understood as an ethnic and religious, rather than a national, category. Thus, the rare moments when Nowak inserts quotations from Polish Jews or scholarship about their experiences are confusing. Additionally, it is difficult to determine who is being counted in the demographics presented.

Kingdom of Barracks will be of great use in the graduate classroom and for scholars interested in Polish history, migration studies, refugees, and the Second World War and its aftermath. Undergraduates or general readers would require some orientation, as Nowak assumes a high level of familiarity with the period and its main players. The book, however, repays the effort. The proliferation of illustrations, both visual and written, provides an unusually well-documented and representative picture of the large and small dilemmas of Polish DPs.