A Question of Honor is the gripping, little-known, and brilliantly told story of the scores of Polish fighter pilots who helped save England during the Battle of Britain, of the many thousands more from Warsaw to Monte Cassino who sacrificed their lives to fight the Nazis, and of their country’s stunning betrayal by Roosevelt and Churchill at the end of World War II. The book centers on five pilots of the renowned Kosciuszko Squadron, which had originally been formed by a contingent of American volunteers in the 1919-1920 Soviet-Polish war as an expression of gratitude for its namesake’s role in America’s own war for independence. The authors show how the Polish fliers, already experienced in air combat, and driven by their passionate desire to liberate their homeland from the Nazis, were at first treated with disdain by their British colleagues, but quickly became the most successful squadron in the RAF.  Their story is skillfully embedded in a revelatory history of Poland during World War II, highlighting as never before the fierce struggle of the Poles both in and outside of Poland to regain their independence, and the tragic collapse of their dream in the “peace” that followed.

"Veteran journalists and authors Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud use the pilots’ story as the centerpiece of an impassioned, riveting account of Poland’s betrayal by Britain and the United States…. The book’s title refers to Winston Churchill’s vow that Poland’s allies would honor their commitment to restoring the country’s independence; it was a vow that evaporated at war’s end." - Newsweek

"Olson and Cloud’s book is both a tribute to the Polish pilots and, more broadly, an eloquent indictment of the realpolitik that led Britain and America to turn their backs on Poland later in the war in a craven attempt to appease Stalin.” - The Times of London

"A gripping account of personal gallantry and of political treachery. On a par with the recent best-sellers about the fighting men of World War II." - Zbigniew Brzezinski

PURCHASE